Azhir Mahmood  🚀 🤖 🧬 🧠 🪐

Has there ever been an attempt to look into improving diversity? I.e do most applicants come from similar socioeconomics backgrounds, is there much contextual applications? A lot of grads I meet seem to be a product of privilege. Are there attempt to remedy this?

Yes, this is a frequent topic of conversation within recruiting contexts. There are also (often) funds set aside to make it easier for people from diverse backgrounds to attend recruiting events. So yes, many attempts to remedy this. Are they enough? clearly not yet. >

Most of whom I studied with, at Cambridge, that continued into a PhD at Oxford had been privately educated and were part of the gentry. It’s always something I found a bit confusing.

Why not have a system of internal and external referrals? Candidates are referred to supervisors or positions that they haven’t applied for, but where they may be a strong fit? Distributing across labs and universities. Reducing competition and optimising how we allocation.

We try to build such a system every day. It's just not easy.

Part of the problem in UK is we don’t pay students properly so PhDs are not attractive unless you have an independent source of money. There are many other problems too, of course.

The word "properly" makes me slightly uncomfortable. PhD stipend is equiv to a salary that is higher than the household income of about half of the country (although lower in London, and Oxford too I imagine). Problem is most candidates could go directly into top 10% instead.

Don't know what stipend your students get but mine was below median UK income - even worse it was halved for the first year so I had to work while studying. In any case when you work out the hourly rate based on time worked it is far far below minimum wage.