Most likely ... YES! A PhD is an apprenticeship to become an academic. Your thesis is but the price of admission to the race to find an academic job. The cha

Most likely ... YES! A PhD is an apprenticeship to become an academic. Your thesis is but the price of admission to the race to find an academic job. The chances, even in CS, are about 1:7. It is rare to succeed in doing a PhD part time. If you do it full time then you might have trouble living a life on ramen noodles and constantly re-writing papers. You can do research without going to uni and slogging through a PhD.