I find Bob's little outburst ignorant and offensive not only to his colleagues but PhD students everywhere who I generally find work hard and have a good command of their subject. After all, do you really think they would get accepted for a PhD place if they were totally clueless ?
I find Bob's outburst very patronising. But I'll add that over the years it has become obvious how little science they teach in schools thesedays. I've had new PhD students MSc who don't know how to make a 1 Molar solution. That used to be in the GCSE Chemistry "in my day", ditto the "A" Level so everyone took it for granted. Not knowing stuff like that is not the fault of students if they've not been taught it.
....and one last little point from me to Bob. "Knowledge of the real world" gets you knowhere in academia. Believe me, it's an odd world where the blind lead the blind and fools become kings (mixing metaphors). No amount of life experience will get you a grant. Infact, very often, no amount of science will either. Ahhh the ramblings of an embittered academic. Please ignore me, for I jest!
PostgraduateForum Is a trading name of FindAUniversity Ltd
FindAUniversity Ltd, 77 Sidney St, Sheffield, S1 4RG, UK. Tel +44 (0) 114 268 4940 Fax: +44 (0) 114 268 5766
An active and supportive community.
Support and advice from your peers.
Your postgraduate questions answered.
Use your experience to help others.
Enter your email address below to get started with your forum account
Enter your username below to login to your account
An email has been sent to your email account along with instructions on how to reset your password. If you do not recieve your email, or have any futher problems accessing your account, then please contact our customer support.
or continue as guest
To ensure all features on our website work properly, your computer, tablet or mobile needs to accept cookies. Our cookies don’t store your personal information, but provide us with anonymous information about use of the website and help us recognise you so we can offer you services more relevant to you. For more information please read our privacy policy
Agree Agree