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On Sun, Feb 19, 2006 at 03:02:50PM +1100, Matthew Palmer wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 19, 2006 at 02:38:05PM +1100, O Plameras wrote:
> > 
> > For $25,000 stipend (or salary) per year one could continue University 
> > and earn a Ph.D.
> 
> Because that'll get our "clever country" moniker back -- people who aren't
> worth $25,000 a year doing advanced research.

I fully appreciate your sarcasm but the Ph.D. stipend also enjoys a
rather good tax situation (or it did at one stage, things may have changed)
so is is equivalent to a bit more than it looks (but still not equivalent
to having a real job). I don't have a problem with people being underpaid
for research when they get to share in the results of that research. I do
think that it's a bad deal doing a Ph.D. (having tried it and given up)
not because of the pay, but because of the lack of things you can use the
Ph.D. for afterwards... Australia really needs to pull finger when it comes
to getting forward-looking research projects off the ground and I'm not
saying that I have a guaranteed method for achieving that but looking at
the position we are in right now, we just aren't making it happen.

> There aren't anywhere near enough Ph.D scholarships to cover the number of
> IT graduates who aren't worth any more than that on the open market.  On the
> upside, though, at least if they're kept in a postgrad lab, they'll do less
> damage there than out in the real world exercising their "skills".

There's no shortage of: fast-talking executives who landed IT an manager role
by playing a great game of golf; sales droids who promise the moon, collect
their commission then scoot; strategic planners who invent ace buzzwords but
have no concept of system design; empire building department heads who are
brilliant at creating constant crisis to require a budget increase; and 
overstressed workers taking alternate doses of caffeine and alcohol.
I'd go so far as to say that the "real world" can supply all the damage 
anyone is ever going to require and just a bit more besides.


   - Tel
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