The PhD students tend to get this attitude from the competitive publish an perish environment where they are in. Sometimes suprrvisours are contributing by dismissing students gaining context and the big picture on why their research is important when the research topic is preassigned as it is unproductive. When the productivity is measured in papers not curios PhD graduates who contribute to the society that’s true.
Well, when you have grant money for a project on X most supervisors will not let you do Y. Most students wouldn’t do research on Y if they weren’t going to be funded. I work in a lab where everyone else has to play ball by their grant proposals and you can sense a general lack of genuine curiosity. Which makes sense, they are not really different than a contract employee with a very specific deliverable that was designed before they even showed up. I can’t speak for other fields but especially in biomedical/compsci where your peers are making six figures working for graduate pay for 2 years (MSc) and then another 4-6 (PhD) doesn’t motivate you to engage outside of your exact degree requirements and your project. Add on that “curious” research doesn’t have a guaranteed path to publishing or to success and it suddenly becomes less appealing to gamble your future on such a thing. I would label my own research as “curious” in that I have support from professors at a few universities but on the whole we are facing challenges from academia at large. The only reason I can comfortably pursue something that has a genuine non-zero chance of failing into obscurity is that I am funded by an in-house university scholarship and I have a full time job.
I'll speak for myself as that part really resonated with my experience the first time through college. It was a compounding of a lot things:
1. Material gets crammed down your throat much faster than your digestion rate. It wasn't uncommon that we'd get "behind" only to get loaded on the backend near the final with all missed material. It felt more like a crucible than a learning environment. One, especially, where you are left to largely teach yourself everything (including the tips and tricks you'd expect from an "expert") and are paying for a test.
2. I needed a job. Period. I couldn't "have fun".
3. The cost of school (even 20 years ago) was absurd. This by it's very nature enforces transactionality. I will, if necessary, lie, cheat, and steal in order to get a passing grade in a class. Who can blame students for this? You need a job and school is the expensive gate keeper. It isn't about "learning" when you want to dig a little deeper but you've got a gun to your head.
4. Graduate school is financially untenable for most people. Even achieving a master's degree is extremely difficult with the normal pressures of life on a 20-something.
It was only after getting my first degree and then finding out how much I enjoy learning did I go back to school again with the mindset of "I don't care, I want to learn". Yes, it's expensive, and I'm fortunate to afford it. But I have a job and a house, money isn't a "real" issue, and so the enjoyment of learning can actually be had. The entire education model in America is broken. It will only get worse until administration gets completely gutted and student loans become dischargable via bankruptcy.
topaz0•3mo ago