I supervise a couple Ph.D. students working full-time jobs. It's definitely a challenge for them, and it requires immense self-discipline. Coincidentally, I j

I supervise a couple Ph.D. students working full-time jobs. It's definitely a challenge for them, and it requires immense self-discipline. Coincidentally, I just posted this morning about the three qualities of successful Ph.D. students--perseverance, tenacity and cogency: http://matt.might.net/articles/successful-phd-students/ http://matt.might.net/articles/successful-phd-students/ The middle part of grad school is generally depressing: you're failing constantly, your work is getting rejected everywhere, and you get consumed with self-doubt. It's tough to get a Ph.D. part-time because to do it right, it must consume you. Exceptions are rare. Also, if you're hoping that what you have at the end of a Ph.D. will be ready for end users, you might want to consider that the benchmark for software in academia is "proof of concept." Most academic code is a disaster in terms of usability and maintainability. The code is so awful that I even drafted a special open source license to encourage academics to release it--the CRAPL: http://matt.might.net/articles/crapl/ http://matt.might.net/articles/crapl/