Timeline for How should a professor feel peace of mind when a student leaves academia? [closed]
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
18 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Feb 23, 2013 at 3:54 | comment | added | Daniel Pomerleano | Why not talk to your students about this point before taking them on to get a sense for how they feel ? Also I think a lot of students and (maybe professors) don't have a grasp on what the job market is like, so I think it might be a good idea to make sure they are educated on this point before you take them on ? | |
| Feb 23, 2013 at 0:01 | comment | added | Henry Cohn | Some very talented people are not certain they want to devote their lives to mathematics, or they think they are but change their minds. Even aside from the benefit of having mathematically trained people in other areas, if we excluded everyone who was unsure we would miss out on a lot of talent. It can be disappointing to help someone try mathematical research if they then decide it isn't for them, but providing this opportunity is still a great service for them and for the profession. | |
| Feb 22, 2013 at 22:11 | comment | added | Gerald Edgar | And when you do post at academia, put a link here so those of us who are interested can easily find it. | |
| Feb 22, 2013 at 21:50 | comment | added | mathprof | Thank you for the kind suggestion, @Federico, I'll do that. Also, thank you very much @Andre, your comment is very helpful and also it's something I hadn't thought of. | |
| Feb 22, 2013 at 21:47 | comment | added | Federico Poloni | I think this question would be welcome at academia.stackexchange.com. Please don't be discouraged by the fact that it was closed here and post it there. | |
| Feb 22, 2013 at 21:38 | comment | added | André Henriques | (I wish I could have posted this as an actual answer) The time and energy that you spend on your students doesn't only benefit them personally. Indirectly, it also benefits all their mathematical friends, who will also get to learn about your field of research. If you organize seminars, then all the participants of the seminar will benefit, not just your graduate students... And if you've created a lively math environment around yourself, then this might attract other good grad students, who might then go on with research. | |
| Feb 22, 2013 at 21:34 | comment | added | Qiaochu Yuan | Given that you can't predict in advance which of your students are going to leave academia, all this entails is that you should adjust downward your estimate of the expected return from a given investment of time into a graduate student, or perhaps that you should spend more time trying to figure out which of your students will leave academia. But barring perfect prediction, you can't do anything other than spend your time on activities according to their expected value. | |
| Feb 22, 2013 at 21:26 | history | closed |
user9072 Michael Renardy Lee Mosher Felipe Voloch Douglas Zare |
off topic | |
| Feb 22, 2013 at 20:44 | answer | added | Tom Goodwillie | timeline score: 7 | |
| Feb 22, 2013 at 20:43 | comment | added | Joseph Van Name | Isn't it better to leave graduate students alone and have them figure out how to do math research themselves. | |
| Feb 22, 2013 at 20:38 | comment | added | Yemon Choi | I am undecided about whether the question belongs better here or on academia.stackexchange.com, but I would just like to comment (for the benefit of the OP) that I share some of his or her feelings. This is just to provide a counterpoint to the existing comments and answers which seem laudable yet a mite idealistic. | |
| Feb 22, 2013 at 20:37 | history | made wiki | Post Made Community Wiki by François G. Dorais | ||
| Feb 22, 2013 at 20:02 | comment | added | Jeff Harvey | Do you have children? | |
| Feb 22, 2013 at 19:57 | comment | added | Steven Landsburg | mathprof: Presumably the things you taught (perhaps implicitly) include such things as "How to form general conjectures from a series of examples" and "How to recognize an interesting problem" and "How to decide when you've wasted too much time on one approach and need to find another". These skills are plenty valuable to Wall Street traders and computer programmers, and you might underestimate how much you're contributing to your students' mastery of these skills. | |
| Feb 22, 2013 at 19:51 | comment | added | user9072 | It seems to me the question is not highly specific to mathematics (though likely somewhat more than certain other questions in this general category we sse). It is thus my opinion, answering the question right at the start, that a more correct forum for this question is academia.stackexchange.com a similar site yet for question on life in academia in general. I think there it would fit very well. | |
| Feb 22, 2013 at 19:49 | comment | added | mathprof | No, I wouldn't feel the same way, since the student would be able to do better mathematics as a result of learning something from me. But if the student goes to Wall Street or computer programming, then I don't think that the things I taught were relevant, and I don't see how to justify sacrificing my research time for this end. | |
| Feb 22, 2013 at 19:44 | comment | added | Steven Landsburg | Would you feel the same way about students who switched from your area of mathematics to another? Or would you recognize that the skills they've learned from you can still be valuable, even if they're not doing exactly the same sort of work that you are? (Posted as a comment, not an answer, because I think the question is off topic here.) | |
| Feb 22, 2013 at 19:36 | history | asked | mathprof | CC BY-SA 3.0 |