Hi,
For the past 5 years during my career I have worked with a few colleagues and friends who happened to be young PhDs from famous local universities. Unfortunately many of them disappointed me to a great extent. Sometimes I wonder what those degrees are for or what those people really learned at school. I am posting this to seek some opinions from other members who may have similar experience.
Let me list down some of the incidents which are still on my mind:
1. Someone who has a PhD degree in electronics insisted that his LCD monitor must use an HDMI cable even though the existing VGA connection worked just fine. According to him, VGA is analog, subject to noises and will eventually damage the computer.
2. Another young PhD in computing whose research focuses on software development methodology - whatever that means - was employed as a software engineer in my company. One month into his stay, we learned that he did not even know what HTTP, XML, HTML, and many other common terms are. Every day he would study the existing Java source codes and insist that variables must be named according to some strict standards which he learned at school. Yet he requested to be promoted to the lead of our web development team...
3. Another friend of mine, who was in his final PhD year at a local school at the time, was thinking of upgrading his Macbook. He sent me a message asking if a certain price for what he called a "Macbook Pro 2012 mid 111" was reasonable. I told him there was no such thing, to which he angrily replied with a link to some unknown website having a reference to that name. If those people were really familiar with doing research, wouldn't they have referred to Apple or other well-known websites for models and price list?
I also question the English proficiency of many of those people. Despite having a high IELTS/TOEFL score (required by most local schools in order to pursue postgraduate programmes if you come from a non-English speaking country), many of them can't even write a simple report that is free of spelling or grammar errors. Some of them have problems communicating at our office.
So what do you all think? Please share similar experiences or your opinions here. I am not against anyone pursuing postgraduate programmes. In fact I do respect many of them and do know many other PhDs who are knowledgeable and have chosen to commit to a research career. I just wonder if the cases I encountered are isolated. Or have higher education and even well-known international English tests become nothing more than a business for those organizations and quality control is no longer a concern as long as the tuition fees or exam fees are paid?
For the past 5 years during my career I have worked with a few colleagues and friends who happened to be young PhDs from famous local universities. Unfortunately many of them disappointed me to a great extent. Sometimes I wonder what those degrees are for or what those people really learned at school. I am posting this to seek some opinions from other members who may have similar experience.
Let me list down some of the incidents which are still on my mind:
1. Someone who has a PhD degree in electronics insisted that his LCD monitor must use an HDMI cable even though the existing VGA connection worked just fine. According to him, VGA is analog, subject to noises and will eventually damage the computer.
2. Another young PhD in computing whose research focuses on software development methodology - whatever that means - was employed as a software engineer in my company. One month into his stay, we learned that he did not even know what HTTP, XML, HTML, and many other common terms are. Every day he would study the existing Java source codes and insist that variables must be named according to some strict standards which he learned at school. Yet he requested to be promoted to the lead of our web development team...
3. Another friend of mine, who was in his final PhD year at a local school at the time, was thinking of upgrading his Macbook. He sent me a message asking if a certain price for what he called a "Macbook Pro 2012 mid 111" was reasonable. I told him there was no such thing, to which he angrily replied with a link to some unknown website having a reference to that name. If those people were really familiar with doing research, wouldn't they have referred to Apple or other well-known websites for models and price list?
I also question the English proficiency of many of those people. Despite having a high IELTS/TOEFL score (required by most local schools in order to pursue postgraduate programmes if you come from a non-English speaking country), many of them can't even write a simple report that is free of spelling or grammar errors. Some of them have problems communicating at our office.
So what do you all think? Please share similar experiences or your opinions here. I am not against anyone pursuing postgraduate programmes. In fact I do respect many of them and do know many other PhDs who are knowledgeable and have chosen to commit to a research career. I just wonder if the cases I encountered are isolated. Or have higher education and even well-known international English tests become nothing more than a business for those organizations and quality control is no longer a concern as long as the tuition fees or exam fees are paid?
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