That sounds really weird to a european. A manager at my job in his 50's I know is doing is PhD studies along side his quite demanding workload. To my knowledge

That sounds really weird to a european. A manager at my job in his 50's I know is doing is PhD studies along side his quite demanding workload. To my knowledge as he described the process it was no problem to the department to work on his courses and thesis "only part time". This is CS so domains may differ.