One thing to note is that, after I submitted the final draft of this article, the Japanese government ended the MEXT university track or is at least planning to. There was a memo, but the status is not clear.
Anyway, I had a great time doing my PhD this way, and generally I recommend that people work before a PhD and try to work during it (if you are in CS). It gives you a lot of freedom and, at least for me, it is very helpful to have more than one pipeline of work at a time so that when one slows down (as it inevitably does in research), you can draw on the other.
Do you see any path to doing this that doesn't go through working big tech? I'd love to finish a PhD and have at least a few ideas of what I'd do at this stage for it, but few companies are willing to sponsor this kind of thing, and many universities won't even allow you to work while in their program
Congrats! I am surprised that you first chose Korea for PhD. As myself being Korean, I hear a lot of horrendous stories about PhD students in Korea. They tend to spend for more than +8 years. I know a few people who went through their PhDs and certainly it took +8 years for all of them. I did my PhD by the way in France and it took me 4 years.
Did you know that it could take so long when you first started your PhD in Korea? Could this be one of your reasons to move to Japan?
My decision to start my PhD in Korea was under very different circumstances. I was studying a totally different field (automata theory, so closer to mathematics than ML) where longer PhDs were normal, I was used to the US system, I wasn't working or married, etc. I expected it to take ~6 years when I started.
I basically had to choose between living in the Canadian countryside, Helsinki, or Seoul in order to be in a lab studying what I wanted. I was already pretty into Korean culture (I minored in Korean in college, studied abroad there, and was a serious StarCraft player) so that choice was easy!
When I started looking again, I knew I wanted a shorter PhD (especially since I had a masters and industry + industry research experience), so Japan was pretty attractive.
I will admit that I think 3 years is a little short to make substantive progress outside of machine learning, so unless you come in with a lot of research experience and a good idea of what you want to work on, I think a longer PhD would be beneficial, but the opportunity cost is so high that it really doesn't seem like a great option on paper.
FWIW, the "extended" Korean PhD is an artifact of grant projects that need people to do the busy work (usually reports), and it seemed to be uncommon to have foreign students thrown into that pool. Scholarship max durations are also a limiting factor.
One aspect worth calling out as a huge plus of Japanese national institutions which the author didn't disclose is funding for compute is much better than what one would get from a Korean institution (e.g. the author's school runs one of the biggest GPU clusters in Japan).
Excellent article. I have worked for twenty years at another university in Tokyo and taught and supervised many non-Japanese graduate students, but I still learned things from the author's perspective.
One small pushback: The author writes, "the Japanese PhD system pushes you to graduate in three years." This applies in some programs and some fields, but is by no means universal. In the graduate program where I used to teach (I am now emeritus and no longer supervising students), the steps leading up to the Ph.D. and the expectations for the thesis made it practically impossible for students to finish in three years, especially if they continued to work part-time. This created particular challenges for foreign students on MEXT scholarships who had to work out other ways to support themselves and renew their visas while they continued to write their theses.
Thank you! And, re: 3 years, that's good to know, I should have been a bit more precise.
What field were you supervising?
3 years in CS is, imo, a little tight but not bad. But I always wondered how people in other fields (stem and otherwise) did it. CS simply doesn't have to deal with the extraneous factors that come with, e.g., biology or climatology.
I was affiliated with a graduate department in language and information sciences, and the fields of the faculty and students ranged from literature, history, and philosophy to theoretical linguistics and natural language processing. I don’t recall any students doing hardcore CS, but it wouldn’t have been inconceivable, especially if there was an NLP connection. But the academic culture of the department leaned more toward the humanities and social sciences than to science and engineering.
One of the factors making the finish-in-three-years target very difficult to meet is that the thesis committees would include faculty from different fields and backgrounds, often with differing expectations for what a Ph.D. thesis should include. It was not unusual for a committee to ask a student to make a variety of substantial changes and additions to a thesis draft before submitting. That revision process could take six months or longer; because of the schedule for graduate coursework and defenses, that alone would push the student beyond the three-year target.
Add in all of the other stumbling blocks that might come up in graduate school—family issues, financial problems, an advisor who retires or gets ill, etc.—and three years was no longer a realistic goal in that department.
The 3-year limit is not a hard limit. It is common to have an extension. It may also depend on the department. Most foreign students drop after 3 years due to a lack of funding.
Compared to the research culture in the UK/US, I think Japan is much better. Yes, you may be forced to overwork and sleep at the lab, but the guidance and supervision are good.
The only thing I hated was that COVID hit right before the graduation ceremony. All we had was an online ceremony.
Yeah, it is definitely a harder limit for international students for the reason you stated (but this article is geared towards foreigners after all).
What field were you in? I am surprised to hear that you think Japan's lab culture is much better than the US. I do think it varies a lot by lab, but overall the internal collaboration and guidance (if not from the PI, from senior members) was much better in American labs than in Japanese labs in my experience.
> Yes, you may be forced to overwork and sleep at the lab, but the guidance and supervision are good.
I think this is very much YMMV. Yes it's helpful if you are doing research in a narrow domain that benefits from hands-on guidance. But if you have your own ideas, a laissez-faire laboratory head and a shit ton of funding goes a lot further than riding on your professor's coat tails.
This sounds SO.MUCH. like the type of hedging academic writing I despise
Doing a PhD is difficult and isolating, which is exacerbated by being an international student in an unfamiliar country. And so, while I overall very much enjoyed my time there and have freely recommended it to many people, the decision to pursue a PhD in Japan should always be considered carefully.
"And so, while I overall very much enjoyed my time there and have freely recommended it to many people, the decision to pursue a PhD in Japan should always be considered carefully."
literally sounds like "as an AI model..." type of disclaimer or padding
like, who isn't going to carefully consider on how/where to do their PhD?
But that does not seem to be related to academics, as GP called it.
Perhaps it is the contrast of "freely recommending" and "always should be considered carefully"?
Or taking a larger leap: the awkwardness of saying how hard (isolating) it is to do a PhD in an unfamiliar country, then saying that you enjoyed it, but others should consider it carefully?
No, you don’t get it. The until now completely un-recursive not-self-improving training runs will automate themselves away any day now, and ML PhD’s will become worthless!!
While I would certainly consider jobs abroad, I think that not getting your PhD in the US is a huge risk, especially as an American who might eventually want to return to the States. American PhDs basically trade a substantial premium and are employable in academia worldwide, while the converse is exceedingly rare. Most foreign academics working in the US got their PhDs here.
One thing to note is that, after I submitted the final draft of this article, the Japanese government ended the MEXT university track or is at least planning to. There was a memo, but the status is not clear.
Anyway, I had a great time doing my PhD this way, and generally I recommend that people work before a PhD and try to work during it (if you are in CS). It gives you a lot of freedom and, at least for me, it is very helpful to have more than one pipeline of work at a time so that when one slows down (as it inevitably does in research), you can draw on the other.
Did you know that it could take so long when you first started your PhD in Korea? Could this be one of your reasons to move to Japan?
My decision to start my PhD in Korea was under very different circumstances. I was studying a totally different field (automata theory, so closer to mathematics than ML) where longer PhDs were normal, I was used to the US system, I wasn't working or married, etc. I expected it to take ~6 years when I started.
I basically had to choose between living in the Canadian countryside, Helsinki, or Seoul in order to be in a lab studying what I wanted. I was already pretty into Korean culture (I minored in Korean in college, studied abroad there, and was a serious StarCraft player) so that choice was easy!
When I started looking again, I knew I wanted a shorter PhD (especially since I had a masters and industry + industry research experience), so Japan was pretty attractive.
I will admit that I think 3 years is a little short to make substantive progress outside of machine learning, so unless you come in with a lot of research experience and a good idea of what you want to work on, I think a longer PhD would be beneficial, but the opportunity cost is so high that it really doesn't seem like a great option on paper.
One aspect worth calling out as a huge plus of Japanese national institutions which the author didn't disclose is funding for compute is much better than what one would get from a Korean institution (e.g. the author's school runs one of the biggest GPU clusters in Japan).
They never knew why their collegiate apparel business was so successful...
One small pushback: The author writes, "the Japanese PhD system pushes you to graduate in three years." This applies in some programs and some fields, but is by no means universal. In the graduate program where I used to teach (I am now emeritus and no longer supervising students), the steps leading up to the Ph.D. and the expectations for the thesis made it practically impossible for students to finish in three years, especially if they continued to work part-time. This created particular challenges for foreign students on MEXT scholarships who had to work out other ways to support themselves and renew their visas while they continued to write their theses.
What field were you supervising?
3 years in CS is, imo, a little tight but not bad. But I always wondered how people in other fields (stem and otherwise) did it. CS simply doesn't have to deal with the extraneous factors that come with, e.g., biology or climatology.
One of the factors making the finish-in-three-years target very difficult to meet is that the thesis committees would include faculty from different fields and backgrounds, often with differing expectations for what a Ph.D. thesis should include. It was not unusual for a committee to ask a student to make a variety of substantial changes and additions to a thesis draft before submitting. That revision process could take six months or longer; because of the schedule for graduate coursework and defenses, that alone would push the student beyond the three-year target.
Add in all of the other stumbling blocks that might come up in graduate school—family issues, financial problems, an advisor who retires or gets ill, etc.—and three years was no longer a realistic goal in that department.
The 3-year limit is not a hard limit. It is common to have an extension. It may also depend on the department. Most foreign students drop after 3 years due to a lack of funding.
Compared to the research culture in the UK/US, I think Japan is much better. Yes, you may be forced to overwork and sleep at the lab, but the guidance and supervision are good.
The only thing I hated was that COVID hit right before the graduation ceremony. All we had was an online ceremony.
What field were you in? I am surprised to hear that you think Japan's lab culture is much better than the US. I do think it varies a lot by lab, but overall the internal collaboration and guidance (if not from the PI, from senior members) was much better in American labs than in Japanese labs in my experience.
I think this is very much YMMV. Yes it's helpful if you are doing research in a narrow domain that benefits from hands-on guidance. But if you have your own ideas, a laissez-faire laboratory head and a shit ton of funding goes a lot further than riding on your professor's coat tails.
"And so, while I overall very much enjoyed my time there and have freely recommended it to many people, the decision to pursue a PhD in Japan should always be considered carefully."
literally sounds like "as an AI model..." type of disclaimer or padding
like, who isn't going to carefully consider on how/where to do their PhD?
Perhaps it is the contrast of "freely recommending" and "always should be considered carefully"?
Or taking a larger leap: the awkwardness of saying how hard (isolating) it is to do a PhD in an unfamiliar country, then saying that you enjoyed it, but others should consider it carefully?