> will math academia be big enough and accessible enough for anyone with sheer passion (despite not being the brightest mind in the field) to pursue a career in, or will it inevitably shrink such that it will only really be accessible to the brightest minds?
Could someone with a recent math PhD experience tell me if it this hasn't been so for years? Competition is incredibly high because people have to compete with every "brightest mind" from all around the world. PhDs are overproduced relative to the number of permanent positions. It's not a question that you only start to think about after you've seen LLMs do mathematics, and if that's the case the student should be made fully aware of what he's getting into. I don't want to call the original post "dishonest" but I wish this was addressed here without the LLM angle. However, it was written by a tenured professor, so he did say the only thing he realistically could.
> will math academia be big enough and accessible enough for anyone with sheer passion (despite not being the brightest mind in the field) to pursue a career in, or will it inevitably shrink such that it will only really be accessible to the brightest minds?
Could someone with a recent math PhD experience tell me if it this hasn't been so for years? Competition is incredibly high because people have to compete with every "brightest mind" from all around the world. PhDs are overproduced relative to the number of permanent positions. It's not a question that you only start to think about after you've seen LLMs do mathematics, and if that's the case the student should be made fully aware of what he's getting into. I don't want to call the original post "dishonest" but I wish this was addressed here without the LLM angle. However, it was written by a tenured professor, so he did say the only thing he realistically could.