3. Then, start an implementation project. Get the students working on pieces. The goal of each project is a robust, distributable prototype, not something that can be carried intact to commercialization.
4. Allow students to identify their own aspect of the broader problem area on whose difficulties they will focus. Students develop their own ideas, which form the core of their thesis, and are able to validate the ideas by installing them in the larger system.
It is sad that many research-funding agencies, such as DARPA, have become so “mission-oriented” recently. While it may be possible to support a Ph.D. student doing part of a project implementation, Step 4 is left out; there is no room on the project for a student to explore original work outside the boundaries of the project. For example, I have heard from several independent sources that while the European Union has been supporting “research” generously, the support is sufficiently constrained by concrete deliverables that there is no way to support Step 4 on the projects. In countries where Ph.D. support comes from a state source, this arrangement presents no serious impediment. However, in countries where Ph.D. students are dependent on project support, it becomes hard to train first-rate researchers.
a few years, and can resume work on a doctorate if they wish.
Sergey Brin never asked me whether or not he should quit the Ph.D. program and found Google, but I would have told him to do so had he asked. Another student, Anand Rajaraman, did ask my advice on this matter when he was about half a year from finishing. I told him to leave and be a founder of Junglee. The venture was quite successful. A few years later he returned to Stanford, started an entirely new thesis topic that abstracted some of what he had learned at Junglee, and is now Dr. Rajaraman.
You don’t have to be in Silicon Valley to think about startups. Great ideas can develop anywhere, and a responsible advisor will, when appropriate, present to their students the option that their work might form the basis of a commercial venture. I recall an email message from a student at another school asking the question: “can a piece of work be both a thesis and useful?” When I replied in the affirmative, I was then asked to explain this point to their advisor. That advisor was serving the student poorly, although their attitude seems fairly common. Even in the course of reviewing this Viewpoint, I encountered the view that a piece of technical work is more to be admired if it cannot be commercialized.
Of the various things I’ve done in my career, I am most proud of my 53 Ph.D. students and their academic descendants (see infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/ pub/jdutree.txt; also see the photo appearing on the first page of this Viewpoint). Many have done things I could never do myself, and done so remarkably well. Each has brought unique talents to their work, and it has, for me, been an education just to watch them. I’d like to imagine that I contributed to their success, although I’m pretty sure that the only thing I really did was stay out of their way so they could realize their own potential.
Jeffrey D. Ullman ( ullman@cs.stanford.edu) is the stanford W. ascherman Professor of computer science (emeritus) at stanford university.
for this Viewpoint, i have repurposed some of the ideas of hector garcia-molina, John mitchell, Jennifer Widom, and gio Wiederhold, for which i thank them. additional thanks go to mark hill for suggesting developing this Viewpoint about Ph.d. advising.