On a side note, is the Finance department as desperately as your department looking for strong candidates to join in next year? Thanks in advance!
-- by 会员 shaorubing (2010/12/12 9:51:51)
I despise programs like that. You could say that such programs are tough and because they are tough they are the top programs. The truth is that either they are not serious enough when recruiting the students, or they are not working hard to help students succeed.
Most mediocre programs in the US consider doctoral students as workers, not as pupils. They free ride on the students' productivity without taking time to educate them with independent thinking capabilities. Avoid such programs when possible.
The truly best schools, such as MIT, Chicago, Berkeley, treat students quite differently. And they never have to post advertisements to attract students (cheap labors) and drive them hard and then kick them out once they found that the slaves are not in handy.
-- by 会员 benxu (2011/1/16 23:14:38)
You are right. The students are different. But it is an irrelevant issue. We are talking about how those programs should treat doctoral students, and whether one should apply to those programs at all. If the program finds the students incompetent, it is its own fault of admitting them in the first place.
The spirit of education, I believe, is not blaming on students, not driving them, threatening them and kicking them out for a better statistics or so called "placement record," but helping them succeed in the careers that fit. Those doctoral programs that ignore the basic purpose of education should be known publicly for what they normally are: slave factory.
Slave factories are very common in China, and sadly, begin to spread out in the mediocre U.S. public universities, especially those programs with few faculty and dominating Chinese/Indian culture.
What a huge waste of time and energy to go with a horrible program! Guys, be alert.
-- by 会员 benxu (2011/1/17 9:32:27)