What percentage of PhDs at LLNL and LANL are routinely doing PhD level work compared to PhDs outside of these Labs?
2 comments:
Anonymous
said...
Normally a Ph.D. involves "doing" a project, writing a document called a thesis, and several people on a committee agree it was worthwhile.
This often happens at the lab, it seems, while it might be true that at least some of the projects and resulting documents are of questionable value or validity, that can be true at the Ph.D. level as well.
Certainly one might imagine by the way, someone without a Ph.D. could do Ph.D. level work, and indeed this must be the case, as all the work that results in a Ph.D. being awarded is usually done by someone without the degree (unless they have one in another field).
I would say at LANL the fraction of Ph.D level kind of work is declining. More and more work seems like 9-5 tech, computer work that someone with a bachelors or masters could easily do. Most of the new hires in my directorate would just need a masters at most and could easily do the job. This has been a gradual shift over the last 10 years. There is also big turnover. They keep reorging hoping it will fix things but the problem is you simply cannot get the people to come here now. The work is not interesting, the pay is not that competitive, and there are many other jobs out there.
2 comments:
Normally a Ph.D. involves "doing" a project, writing a document called a thesis, and several people on a committee agree it was worthwhile.
This often happens at the lab, it seems, while it might be true that at least some of the projects and resulting documents are of questionable value or validity, that can be true at the Ph.D. level as well.
Certainly one might imagine by the way, someone without a Ph.D. could do Ph.D. level work, and indeed this must be the case, as all the work that results in a Ph.D. being awarded is usually done by someone without the degree (unless they have one in another field).
12/22/2023 9:37 AM
I would say at LANL the fraction of Ph.D level kind of work is declining. More and more work seems like 9-5 tech, computer work that someone with a bachelors or masters could easily do. Most of the new hires in my directorate would just need a masters at most and could easily do the job. This has been a gradual shift over the last 10 years. There is also big turnover. They keep reorging hoping it will fix things but the problem is you simply cannot get the people to come here now. The work is not interesting, the pay is not that competitive, and there are many other jobs out there.
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