* grad school is mostly about taking more classes (because it's called "school" and taking courses is what you do in school)
I really think that most future grad students (including me, when I was in that category) have no idea what grad school is really like. (I mean, we were told, but we had no practical idea of what it meant.) It's not anything like "more school," it's really, as you say, a research apprenticeship.
The thing is, because the only thing most people have been doing up to this point has been school, we expect grad school to be like that, with (a) well-defined problems that have well-defined answers, and (b) continuous oversight and metrics that define progress (e.g., problem sets and exams). *pause for anyone who has actually been to grad school to laugh hysterically* And because we've been trained to do well in a system which has (a) and (b), and not trained at all in a system which lacks either, it's hard to transition.
In this sense I don't know that being a "young professional" is much like grad school at all. I've also been a young professional (transitioned out of academia after grad school) and it's much more structured than grad school; you've got deadlines and specific work that has to be completed for the customer by X time. This was actually one of the reasons I transitioned out of academia; I find that kind of environment a lot more conducive to doing work than the more free-form self-motivation of academia.
(Also, a separate tangential issue is whether the culture of the particular university and research group / advisor is supportive. I think the number one predictor of people I knew as to whether they were happy in grad school was whether they had a good advisor. And also, all my professors, including the good ones, would have been terrible bosses in an industry setting.)
I found out recently about a particular incentive to change: the national security complex. The US government wishes more people with US citizenship would pursue graduate degrees in mathematics and the sciences. And they'd like for the underrepresented genders and ethnicities to be well-represented in that group.
So IDK, I think most of my cohort in college (physics, math) either applied to grad school or ended up doing something completely unrelated to science (business school, law school). At least in my experience, it was more the applied/engineering fields where people were reluctant to go to grad school, and there I agree refiguring what it's called would help a lot.
Re: incentives and names
I really think that most future grad students (including me, when I was in that category) have no idea what grad school is really like. (I mean, we were told, but we had no practical idea of what it meant.) It's not anything like "more school," it's really, as you say, a research apprenticeship.
The thing is, because the only thing most people have been doing up to this point has been school, we expect grad school to be like that, with (a) well-defined problems that have well-defined answers, and (b) continuous oversight and metrics that define progress (e.g., problem sets and exams). *pause for anyone who has actually been to grad school to laugh hysterically* And because we've been trained to do well in a system which has (a) and (b), and not trained at all in a system which lacks either, it's hard to transition.
In this sense I don't know that being a "young professional" is much like grad school at all. I've also been a young professional (transitioned out of academia after grad school) and it's much more structured than grad school; you've got deadlines and specific work that has to be completed for the customer by X time. This was actually one of the reasons I transitioned out of academia; I find that kind of environment a lot more conducive to doing work than the more free-form self-motivation of academia.
(Also, a separate tangential issue is whether the culture of the particular university and research group / advisor is supportive. I think the number one predictor of people I knew as to whether they were happy in grad school was whether they had a good advisor. And also, all my professors, including the good ones, would have been terrible bosses in an industry setting.)
I found out recently about a particular incentive to change: the national security complex. The US government wishes more people with US citizenship would pursue graduate degrees in mathematics and the sciences. And they'd like for the underrepresented genders and ethnicities to be well-represented in that group.
So IDK, I think most of my cohort in college (physics, math) either applied to grad school or ended up doing something completely unrelated to science (business school, law school). At least in my experience, it was more the applied/engineering fields where people were reluctant to go to grad school, and there I agree refiguring what it's called would help a lot.