An American Did a Machine Learning PhD in Japan While Working at Google
Doing a Machine Learning PhD While Working in Japan
An American on the MEXT scholarship completed a computer science PhD at Tokyo Institute of Technology while working part-time at Google. He explains why Japan's flexible student visa, three-year graduation clock, and growing AI scene made it attractive, but also warns about name recognition abroad, limited graduate courses, and the isolation of doing a doctorate in a foreign country.
Doing a PhD is difficult and isolating, which is exacerbated by being an international student in an unfamiliar country.
- mcyc
I am the author of this. Happy to discuss!
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.
- tkgally
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.
- musicale
> I recently completed my PhD in Computer Science at Tokyo Institute of Technology (now the Institute of Science Tokyo)
They never knew why their collegiate apparel business was so successful...
- kimurakaera
I did my PhD at Titech (Suzukakedai).
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.
- rrr_oh_man
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.
(Watch https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49879250 why it's bad)