Procrastination with Coursera

Coursera is a place where you can take online courses from some of the best universities of the world (EPFL, Duke University...) and more universities are joining every month. You just have to register for the course and follow it weekly (on your own schedule). You might have assignments and everything. This is all completely free. There are so many courses that I think I didn't look at them all. Nevertheless, I point you to some that are interesting:

Medical Neuroscience
Healthcare Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Writing in the Sciences
Image and Video Processing
Digital Image Processing
Computational Methods for Data Analysis
High Performance Scientific Computing
Introduction to Data Science

PhD: to do or not to do?

Following yesterday's post about post-docs, today I talk about PhDs. Most people finish their Master and want to land their first job, other think there is more than finding a job and feel that they have to learn more. These ones end up doing a PhD. If you should do or not, depends on the professional career you want to have. I have not regret at any moment to do a PhD, but maybe that is just me:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=180743

http://www.urch.com/forums/phd-economics/130858-top-5-reasons-do-not-do-phd.html

http://www.findaphd.com/student/study/study-16.asp

http://www.guardian.co.uk/higher-education-network/blog/2012/may/03/phd-doctorate-higher-education-love-money

Do you think a PhD is a must or a over-qualification for your career?

Post-doc: industrial or academic?

After doing a PhD, it is time to start thinking what to do next. You can leave research, but if you decide that research is what you want to do, a post-doc is the natural path. You have to think about doing an industrial or an academic post-doc. Both options have advantages and disadvantages and one has to take into account that Europeans and Americans have different views.

I found some interesting articles about this topic, which can be read here:
http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/science/articles/10.1038/nj6989-324a
http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php/board,28.0.html
http://blog.1degreebio.org/?bid=54
http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2008_06_13/science.opms.r0800055
http://scienceadvocacy.org/Blog/2011/01/06/academia-vs-industry-a-former-postdoc%E2%80%99s-perspective/

What do you think? Do you know people which have taken different paths?