Grad School and Public Health
I wonder if there&#x27;s a good way to think about the relevant counterfactual: how happy would PhD students if they did not pursue a PhD? The post assumes that depression and anxiety rates would be very different absent the PhD, but I&#x27;m not so sure.<p>It would be interesting to see response data for the same people during both their undergraduate and PhD programs. But even this is compounded by the quarter-life-crisis issues that are common at PhD ages anyway. Plus, the pool of PhD students consists entirely of people who said &quot;yes, working in relative isolation, for years, with little pay, on a topic most people don&#x27;t care about, sign me up!&quot;. As one of the people in that pool, I&#x27;m not so sure we&#x27;d be way happier in the other pool. There is a consumption value to doing a PhD and taking the path that interested you. And there is consumption value to not having a normal office job.<p>To be clear: I think we (professors and current graduate students) should make sure applicants understand what a PhD is like and best practices for minimizing the probability of a bad PhD. Even after controlling for intelligence and ability to work hard, it is definitely not for everybody. But likening it to a public health crisis on par with HIV, acknowledged clickbait or not, is a bit much.