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The funny thing is that while it is possible to get a PhD at an advanced age, it is probably impossible to land a scientific job at that age. Sometimes I think
by captainmuon 5y ago
The funny thing is that while it is possible to get a PhD at an advanced age, it is probably impossible to land a scientific job at that age.
Sometimes I think when the kids are grown up and I've saved enough for retirement, I'd like to go into science again. Just for fun. I would probably be happy to move to some crazy place and get an intern's salary if the project was interesting and meaningful. Alas, that doesn't seem possible in the academic system.
- riedel 5y agoActually it gets harder and harder to pursue an academic 'career' if you actually obtain your PhD inside the traditional system later than the age of 30 (e.g. in Germany), if you are not willing to change the academic system to circumvent recent rules of 'academic age' associated with a lot of newly created tenure positions. Funnily it will actually be quite easy to get a professorship at one of our universities of applied sciences if you come from industry with a track record and have a PhD (even obtained at 60). At the same time salary of a professor (at least for his work at the uni) will be more comparable to junior staff in other parts of the industry/world. The academic job market is very strange. General recommendation: don't do your PhD if you care mostly about this part and do not want to take a huge risk.
- Handytinge 5y agoThis bizare notion that university exists for the purpose of getting jobs is fairly recent throughout most of the world, and should be stomped. Outside of a few specialised fields (medicine, law, etc), the purpose of university was to learn, challenge and grow. This crazy concept that everyone should go there to get a degree for their career is just degrading the institutions and fleecing students of their money.