Quote From Barramack:
The purpose of a PhD is not to teach technical skills. It is assumed that a student is already technically proficient in a particular field before starting a PhD. You would be better off spending those 3-4 years working (e.g. in private industry) if you have aspirations to be paid well as a technical specialist, rather than be a researcher.
I disagree. That's exactly what a PhD is for: training. Whether this is training technical skills, time management skills, people skills or writing skills etc etc. There are very few students who begin a PhD and are proficient in every area. I had zero technical skills when I started and my supervisors were aware of this, but took me on because I demonstrated abilities in these other areas. In their opinion, it is easier and faster to develop technical competence than it is to develop competence in other areas.
PS I have absolutely no desire to be a technician of any kind. I don't fancy being a dogsbody doing the boring repetitive stuff for the rest of my life. I prefer teaching, tutoring, mentoring and management.
My original point was, they are hiring PhD students to do research on the cheap. If they want better, faster results to get more publications and continue their careers, they should stop 'training' PhD students and start 'telling' them, to save themselves time in the long run. It used to be beneficial to train PhD students, because they would stay in academia and produce good research in the same field, resulting in collaborations etc. This is no longer the case, so there isn't much point in investing time in training a PhD student to be an academic.
