Graduate student violence is more common that it should be. For example, you hear about suicides every year.
I can't help but suspect that sometimes it may be related to graduate school itself, which can be stressful and unforgiving, with minimal support, and where supervisors often hold both academic power over their students' futures and financial power over their livelihoods. (And switching supervisors, even at the same institution, typically requires restarting research from scratch.) It can't be good when, after a lifetime of top-tier success, you are facing failure for the first time, with no preparation for handling it and no obvious path forward.
Sadly so, students often associate their self-worth with research and academic achievement, so if things go south, for whatever reason, they are in crisis.
>Sadly so, students often associate their self-worth with research and academic achievement, so if things go south, for whatever reason, they are in crisis.
A lot of people also are doing research they think will benefit the world, so it's not just about failing in a personal quest -- you feel you are letting down all of humanity if you do not achieve your goals.
>I can't help but suspect that sometimes it may be related to graduate school itself, which can be stressful and unforgiving, with minimal support, and where supervisors often hold both academic power over their students' futures and financial power over their livelihoods.
I dropped out of a PhD -- took the master's I earned for coursework, did my quals so it would be clear I chose to leave, then took an "academic-ish" job that paid very poorly. I'd hoped to do that a bit then get hired by a big tech company, but I found out that you have less free time in a job than grad school, and my tech skills began to erode, further sending me down a path I did not want.
What caused me immense, IMMENSE distress is that I felt, for lack of a better term "involuntarily destitute" -- my adviser in grad school had told me that she'd ONLY give me a positive reference for "research" jobs, and that trying to leave for industry was evidence I had lied my way into the program, and thus she could not give me a positive reference for any roles without a research component.
I feel that she purposefully tried to "trap" me with her -- she was having trouble recruiting new students as word of her behaviors and convictions spread (she'd racked up a DUI during the liminal period between my acceptance and starting school, among other gems).
I currently work in a job that has nothing to do with my field -- I had many, many years of strife because when I was fresh out of college, I looked around my hometown and found I couldn't even get a helpdesk job because my skillset was that of an open source nerd, and they wanted people who could answer questions about the UI of Windows like "How do I enable this printer" that, having not used it for years, I couldn't answer off the top of my head -- and it's not sustainable to "just Google it" on calls over and over, people will get frustrated with the wait times.
(That was the way people generally broke into infosec back then -- get a help desk job at a bank, hospital or university, study during downtime, maybe do some certs or try to do an interesting project to present at a conference, move up to sysadmin, and eventually security analyst/engineer)
I thought I'd found a third way -- I could do this PhD, and at worst leave with a master's, and sidestep the tedium of the help desk and the uncertainty of if I'd move up. (I knew people who got worked many hours, struggled to study up, and got trapped).
Anyways, academia can be incredibly abusive and downright medieval. That's not an excuse for violence, but it is an explanation.
Grad school students are often required to work ridiculous amounts of unpaid hours for their supervising faculty (well over 40 hrs/week, sometimes meaning 7 days a week). Their eventual graduation is implicitly or explicitly tied to the approval of these monstrous bosses. Source: some of my fellow, less fortunate grad students.
Perhaps I should have said something like intentional harm leading to death to make it clearer. But the person isn't any more alive even if they were somehow killed by some gentle, peaceful method.
Academic success perhaps. The killer and Nuno Loureiro, the MIT professor he killed, were in the same class at Instituto Superior Técnico (Portugal's leading engineering school). Loureiro had a distinguished career at MIT while the killer was homeless.
Maybe he had some idea that his buddy ran away with and he attributed his success to his idea, while he was homeless? There was a whole TV show around a similar idea (Breaking Bad).
I don't know much about the suspect, but I do know that people have been saying for years that they go into deep debt to get degrees, even in things that are supposed to be respected or in demand, and then it turns out there is actually no job market or success path for that degree. I assume the implication is it had something to do with this kind of frustration. (Though the suspect went to school two decades ago and did not receive a degree)
Since this site has a lot of people who have successful tech careers, many of us are isolated from these stresses.
But honestly, this guy's turn to violence makes me suspect he had some serious issues driving him, possibly in the mental health realm. Most people, even economically distressed people, won't turn to murder.
I think there’s a lot of projecting going on in these comments. The truth is we don’t know the motivation. Guessing at student debt seems unlikely given that he didn’t finish the degree, left the country, and made vague posts about deception on physics message boards around the time.
You misread me. I said "with this kind of frustration", meaning a broad category of frustration with the system of academia and education. That is not that 100% of the problem is student debt. It's that aspiring academics and scientists can have a hard time supporting themselves.
I haven't heard any clear motives yet. Some people are saying it's simply a case of someone who was a genius that ended up in a mediocre place in life, leading to to killing. Still that story is so common in America I don't see how it leads to killing innocent children at your alma mater? It makes no sense to me.
But as with many of these situations the truth might not make sense-- sometimes it's simply irrational thinking by someone mentally unwell. It reminds me a bit of the Reiner killings as well, considering there too there's no clear motive except maybe a hypothetical mental break. Truthfully, we might just never have a satisfying answer as to why this tragedy happened.
Not at all obvious. I'm not sure why HN comments are overlooking that the killer was the same age, from the same country, and studied at the same undergrad university as the MIT professor while starting a graduate degree in the same field. We don't know the exact nature, but it is difficult to believe that these points are not highly involved with the motive.
At least when I was in school 15 years ago (math/engineering), a non- or partially-funded (including living stipend) grad school "acceptance" in the US was understood by all of my peers to be a rejection. I saw a post on reddit a few years ago saying that's still true and is in fact also true in the humanities (with an assumed TA role). Is that not accurate? Why are people going into debt for grad school? Did no one tell them you're not supposed to pay for it? Are they just unwilling to accept they were rejected?
I actually have tons of experience with people who suffer mental health issues, including psychotic illness. One thing that experience gives me is to be cautious about making armchair diagnosis from afar.
When we define criminality as evidence of mental illness, all we’ve done is medicalize criminality — which if anything hinders our ability to recognize abnormalities of the mind which may or may not lead to criminality.
Graduate student violence is more common that it should be. For example, you hear about suicides every year.
I can't help but suspect that sometimes it may be related to graduate school itself, which can be stressful and unforgiving, with minimal support, and where supervisors often hold both academic power over their students' futures and financial power over their livelihoods. (And switching supervisors, even at the same institution, typically requires restarting research from scratch.) It can't be good when, after a lifetime of top-tier success, you are facing failure for the first time, with no preparation for handling it and no obvious path forward.
Sadly so, students often associate their self-worth with research and academic achievement, so if things go south, for whatever reason, they are in crisis.
>Sadly so, students often associate their self-worth with research and academic achievement, so if things go south, for whatever reason, they are in crisis.
A lot of people also are doing research they think will benefit the world, so it's not just about failing in a personal quest -- you feel you are letting down all of humanity if you do not achieve your goals.
>I can't help but suspect that sometimes it may be related to graduate school itself, which can be stressful and unforgiving, with minimal support, and where supervisors often hold both academic power over their students' futures and financial power over their livelihoods.
I dropped out of a PhD -- took the master's I earned for coursework, did my quals so it would be clear I chose to leave, then took an "academic-ish" job that paid very poorly. I'd hoped to do that a bit then get hired by a big tech company, but I found out that you have less free time in a job than grad school, and my tech skills began to erode, further sending me down a path I did not want.
What caused me immense, IMMENSE distress is that I felt, for lack of a better term "involuntarily destitute" -- my adviser in grad school had told me that she'd ONLY give me a positive reference for "research" jobs, and that trying to leave for industry was evidence I had lied my way into the program, and thus she could not give me a positive reference for any roles without a research component.
I feel that she purposefully tried to "trap" me with her -- she was having trouble recruiting new students as word of her behaviors and convictions spread (she'd racked up a DUI during the liminal period between my acceptance and starting school, among other gems).
I currently work in a job that has nothing to do with my field -- I had many, many years of strife because when I was fresh out of college, I looked around my hometown and found I couldn't even get a helpdesk job because my skillset was that of an open source nerd, and they wanted people who could answer questions about the UI of Windows like "How do I enable this printer" that, having not used it for years, I couldn't answer off the top of my head -- and it's not sustainable to "just Google it" on calls over and over, people will get frustrated with the wait times.
(That was the way people generally broke into infosec back then -- get a help desk job at a bank, hospital or university, study during downtime, maybe do some certs or try to do an interesting project to present at a conference, move up to sysadmin, and eventually security analyst/engineer)
I thought I'd found a third way -- I could do this PhD, and at worst leave with a master's, and sidestep the tedium of the help desk and the uncertainty of if I'd move up. (I knew people who got worked many hours, struggled to study up, and got trapped).
Anyways, academia can be incredibly abusive and downright medieval. That's not an excuse for violence, but it is an explanation.
Graduate school violence == suicide?
Grad school students are often required to work ridiculous amounts of unpaid hours for their supervising faculty (well over 40 hrs/week, sometimes meaning 7 days a week). Their eventual graduation is implicitly or explicitly tied to the approval of these monstrous bosses. Source: some of my fellow, less fortunate grad students.
Perhaps I should have said something like intentional harm leading to death to make it clearer. But the person isn't any more alive even if they were somehow killed by some gentle, peaceful method.
That has a clear definition which I doubt is what is occurring?
Or are you asserting that these folks are getting locked up and tortured until they kill themselves?
Academic success perhaps. The killer and Nuno Loureiro, the MIT professor he killed, were in the same class at Instituto Superior Técnico (Portugal's leading engineering school). Loureiro had a distinguished career at MIT while the killer was homeless.
Maybe he had some idea that his buddy ran away with and he attributed his success to his idea, while he was homeless? There was a whole TV show around a similar idea (Breaking Bad).
Im pretty certain that of plagiate software would include rejected students works whole swaths of the academic successful would be let go.
What were you actually trying to type? I can't figure it out.
Jealousy is really the sickest of sins…
The medieval RC Church (proudly) taught that "Superbia mater malem est", "Pride is the mother of evil".
This article was helpful:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/us/mit-professor-shooting...
https://archive.is/qypoz
That definitely doesn't explain things. It appears the motive is still unknown
(But I did find this article better than the WaPo one)
I don't know much about the suspect, but I do know that people have been saying for years that they go into deep debt to get degrees, even in things that are supposed to be respected or in demand, and then it turns out there is actually no job market or success path for that degree. I assume the implication is it had something to do with this kind of frustration. (Though the suspect went to school two decades ago and did not receive a degree)
Since this site has a lot of people who have successful tech careers, many of us are isolated from these stresses.
But honestly, this guy's turn to violence makes me suspect he had some serious issues driving him, possibly in the mental health realm. Most people, even economically distressed people, won't turn to murder.
I think there’s a lot of projecting going on in these comments. The truth is we don’t know the motivation. Guessing at student debt seems unlikely given that he didn’t finish the degree, left the country, and made vague posts about deception on physics message boards around the time.
You misread me. I said "with this kind of frustration", meaning a broad category of frustration with the system of academia and education. That is not that 100% of the problem is student debt. It's that aspiring academics and scientists can have a hard time supporting themselves.
No I understood. Your guess that it was related to finances is just a guess.
I haven't heard any clear motives yet. Some people are saying it's simply a case of someone who was a genius that ended up in a mediocre place in life, leading to to killing. Still that story is so common in America I don't see how it leads to killing innocent children at your alma mater? It makes no sense to me.
But as with many of these situations the truth might not make sense-- sometimes it's simply irrational thinking by someone mentally unwell. It reminds me a bit of the Reiner killings as well, considering there too there's no clear motive except maybe a hypothetical mental break. Truthfully, we might just never have a satisfying answer as to why this tragedy happened.
The most obvious motive seems to be a vendetta against higher education.
Not at all obvious. I'm not sure why HN comments are overlooking that the killer was the same age, from the same country, and studied at the same undergrad university as the MIT professor while starting a graduate degree in the same field. We don't know the exact nature, but it is difficult to believe that these points are not highly involved with the motive.
At least when I was in school 15 years ago (math/engineering), a non- or partially-funded (including living stipend) grad school "acceptance" in the US was understood by all of my peers to be a rejection. I saw a post on reddit a few years ago saying that's still true and is in fact also true in the humanities (with an assumed TA role). Is that not accurate? Why are people going into debt for grad school? Did no one tell them you're not supposed to pay for it? Are they just unwilling to accept they were rejected?
"this guy's turn to violence makes me suspect he had some serious issues driving him, possibly in the mental health realm"
You "suspect possible mental health issues"? Amigo, what further evidence could possibly be required?
I actually have tons of experience with people who suffer mental health issues, including psychotic illness. One thing that experience gives me is to be cautious about making armchair diagnosis from afar.
If someone else had posted exactly the same thing you just did, I would have assumed it was supposed to be funny…
When we define criminality as evidence of mental illness, all we’ve done is medicalize criminality — which if anything hinders our ability to recognize abnormalities of the mind which may or may not lead to criminality.
This whole post is filled with a ridiculous amount of unfounded assumptions.