Timeline for How important is the "major" of the PhD?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
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| Feb 7, 2015 at 3:57 | comment | added | Roger Fan | @WetLabStudent Ah, I should have made it more clear that I was agreeing with you. I was talking about a general "hard" to "soft", or "mathy" to "less mathy". For instance, Mathematicians can often get placements in Econ departments, but rarely vice versa. The same goes for Econ getting placements in Public Policy schools. | |
| Feb 6, 2015 at 23:22 | comment | added | WetlabStudent | @rhombidodecahedron this is true, which is why culture is #1 and teaching is #2. I think teaching tends to me more of a rationalization rather than the real reason. I deleted my unfounded hypotheses from the answer based on your suggestion. | |
| Feb 6, 2015 at 23:20 | history | edited | WetlabStudent | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Feb 6, 2015 at 23:18 | comment | added | rhombidodecahedron | It would seem to me that a person who did their undergraduate and master's degree in field X but their PhD in field Y would be better at teaching field X than Y except for the part of Y where they did their thesis. Do you disagree? For example, in the case of math: if a person did math until PhD and then did, say, economics, they could possibly teach many areas of math but only the area of economics where they focused. In contrast, if a person went through in economics and a PhD in some subsubfield of math, then presumably they would be better at teaching undergraduate economics. | |
| Feb 6, 2015 at 23:09 | history | edited | WetlabStudent | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Feb 6, 2015 at 23:06 | comment | added | WetlabStudent | @RogerFan I don't understand your comment, what spectrum are you talking about? I'm talking about a good mathematician who has a degree in a field other than math, there is no "downward" movement in my post. | |
| Feb 6, 2015 at 23:03 | comment | added | Roger Fan | In general I think it's easier to move "down" the spectrum than up it. Of course that's just a heuristic, most things don't really fit on a nice single dimensions like that. | |
| Feb 6, 2015 at 22:47 | history | answered | WetlabStudent | CC BY-SA 3.0 |