5 ms·

Can you go a bit more in depth on why PhD is a bad idea? Is it any different for the different fields/disciplines, and what if one already has some money from p

Can you go a bit more in depth on why PhD is a bad idea? Is it any different for the different fields/disciplines, and what if one already has some money from parents?

wanderingmind 5y ago
Except CS, or if you an international Olympiad champion, PhD is a bad idea across the board. Even if someone thinks they want to do a PhD, its better to work for a few years to understand market forces so they can do a thesis that is not fully removed from reality. This medium blog post from economist is a worthy read https://medium.economist.com/why-doing-a-phd-is-often-a-waste-of-time-349206f9addb https://medium.economist.com/why-doing-a-phd-is-often-a-wast...
- urthor 5y ago
  Keep in mind that the system is also slightly different overseas. In many non-European, non American countries, a PhD is three years after your undergraduate (with honors year, 4 year undergraduate instead of the normal three). Very different equation.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
analog31 5y ago
The most familiar argument is that the years spent earning a PhD carry an opportunity cost, compared to getting out into the workforce sooner, earning money, developing skills on the job, and building a career. Of course, the comparison is laden with assumptions about both career paths. I believe there is an even bigger issue, that is not quantified or discussed, which is that PhD programs have extremely high attrition. Things can go wrong, which result in either having to quit or start over. Your advisor could lose finding, change jobs, or die. You could get sick. I know two people who got into serious ethical disagreements with their advisor. One had to lawyer up. At least when you read stories about jobs from hell in industry, you know that the person can at least walk away with the money that they already earned. The non-PhD career path involves assumptions too. Having marketable skills, getting a lucrative job, moving up in the ranks, and putting money away, are all hypotheticals with their own survivor bias issues. Disclosure: Physics PhD.
tsbischof 5y ago
It depends on your relationship to work, relative to your outside life. The PhD in a good institution is essentially semi-supervised playing, where you are given access to resources and people to come up with and answer interesting questions. The probability of the utility and monetary value of the knowledge varies across fields significantly, and so the main point is to learn how to learn and how to identify and answer questions. This style of PhD is a lifestyle choice and a vow of "poverty". For context, at a school like MIT or Berkeley a typical fully-funded stipend is about $30k USD annually (gross), which you will make until you finish (at age 27-30, depending on when you start). Once you run through the cost of living in the area, you start to see that some compromises must be made to your quality of life. If you have independent money these compromises are less necessary, but if you are not careful it can alienate you from peers, in the same way that having money generally means you live in a different world than others. If your goal in a career is to make enough money or have enough stability to support your actual life (family, community, hobbies, etc), doing a PhD is not a particularly reliable path. Having one opens doors in life, but you have to value that over the alternative for the decision to make sense. (I have a chemistry PhD)
- jltsiren 5y ago
  That describes how things work at American universities. The worst part is not even the pay but the idea that people doing PhD are students instead of professionals. (Some places even talk about postdoctoral students.) Your experience can be very different in countries that see junior researchers as professionals. You get a solid middle-class salary, and while you earn less than your friends who went to the industry, your life is not qualitatively different from them. Some travel extensively during their PhD, while others have kids and buy a home. The opportunity cost for doing a PhD is much lower in the latter system.
  - PeterisP 5y ago
    I traveled much more during my PhD than in an industry job before it, simply because the funding for conferences (if I had publishable research) in far-away places was more accessible than vacation money+vacation time during the industry job. Like, a conference isn't a vacation, but I did visit a bunch of beautiful places (e.g. Japan and Iceland) that I likely would not have seen otherwise.

Can you go a bit more in depth on why PhD is a bad idea? Is it any different for the different fields/disciplines, and what if one already has some money from parents?

wanderingmind 5y ago

Except CS, or if you an international Olympiad champion, PhD is a bad idea across the board. Even if someone thinks they want to do a PhD, its better to work for a few years to understand market forces so they can do a thesis that is not fully removed from reality. This medium blog post from economist is a worthy read https://medium.economist.com/why-doing-a-phd-is-often-a-waste-of-time-349206f9addb https://medium.economist.com/why-doing-a-phd-is-often-a-wast...

urthor 5y ago
Keep in mind that the system is also slightly different overseas. In many non-European, non American countries, a PhD is three years after your undergraduate (with honors year, 4 year undergraduate instead of the normal three). Very different equation.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

analog31 5y ago

The most familiar argument is that the years spent earning a PhD carry an opportunity cost, compared to getting out into the workforce sooner, earning money, developing skills on the job, and building a career. Of course, the comparison is laden with assumptions about both career paths. I believe there is an even bigger issue, that is not quantified or discussed, which is that PhD programs have extremely high attrition. Things can go wrong, which result in either having to quit or start over. Your advisor could lose finding, change jobs, or die. You could get sick. I know two people who got into serious ethical disagreements with their advisor. One had to lawyer up. At least when you read stories about jobs from hell in industry, you know that the person can at least walk away with the money that they already earned. The non-PhD career path involves assumptions too. Having marketable skills, getting a lucrative job, moving up in the ranks, and putting money away, are all hypotheticals with their own survivor bias issues. Disclosure: Physics PhD.

tsbischof 5y ago

It depends on your relationship to work, relative to your outside life. The PhD in a good institution is essentially semi-supervised playing, where you are given access to resources and people to come up with and answer interesting questions. The probability of the utility and monetary value of the knowledge varies across fields significantly, and so the main point is to learn how to learn and how to identify and answer questions. This style of PhD is a lifestyle choice and a vow of "poverty". For context, at a school like MIT or Berkeley a typical fully-funded stipend is about $30k USD annually (gross), which you will make until you finish (at age 27-30, depending on when you start). Once you run through the cost of living in the area, you start to see that some compromises must be made to your quality of life. If you have independent money these compromises are less necessary, but if you are not careful it can alienate you from peers, in the same way that having money generally means you live in a different world than others. If your goal in a career is to make enough money or have enough stability to support your actual life (family, community, hobbies, etc), doing a PhD is not a particularly reliable path. Having one opens doors in life, but you have to value that over the alternative for the decision to make sense. (I have a chemistry PhD)

jltsiren 5y ago
That describes how things work at American universities. The worst part is not even the pay but the idea that people doing PhD are students instead of professionals. (Some places even talk about postdoctoral students.) Your experience can be very different in countries that see junior researchers as professionals. You get a solid middle-class salary, and while you earn less than your friends who went to the industry, your life is not qualitatively different from them. Some travel extensively during their PhD, while others have kids and buy a home. The opportunity cost for doing a PhD is much lower in the latter system.
- PeterisP 5y ago
  I traveled much more during my PhD than in an industry job before it, simply because the funding for conferences (if I had publishable research) in far-away places was more accessible than vacation money+vacation time during the industry job. Like, a conference isn't a vacation, but I did visit a bunch of beautiful places (e.g. Japan and Iceland) that I likely would not have seen otherwise.