Love-hate relationship with PhD
Recently, on reddit, there is a huge discussion on the story of a PhD holder in humanities unable to find any job that pays a decent salary. You can see the reddit discussion here. So, as you know, I have dropped out of my PhD program, I just would like to air about how I feel about PhD ,"good" research and the harsh realities.
Why I took up the PhD
As some of you might have known from my introduction, i was researching in the area of disruptive technologies - the design, the business models and the sustainability. I love reading papers and case studies, analyzing data and synthesizing findings. I know it sounds nerdy but i actually find analyzing data very exciting! The process of cleaning the data, trying to understand what the numbers mean and extracting deep insights. When my hypothesis was proven right, I feel that i am the smartest person on earth! I love this process and a sense of achievement and i thought I am doing this for love.
Harsh realities of PhD
The last generation of PhD holders were able to get positions as post-doc for 2 years, and then Assistant Professors and subsequently tenure usually as Associate Professor. But right now, we have been experiencing what we called really a case of too many PhD holders and too little jobs for the Dr. This seems like a world phenomenon. You can read many stories here and here. So then my question is why do universities continue to recruit so many PhD students??? In my opinion, this makes no sense to me.
No Phd = No good research?
I have to talk about my favourite example on why you don’t need to have a PhD but can still do good research. Koichi Tanaka is good example. He is the first person in the world to receive a Nobel award without a masters or PhD degree. He received the Novel award in Chemistry in 2002 when he was with Shidmazhu. Many materials engineers will be very familiar with Shimadzu because this Japanese manufacture X-ray Diffraction (XRD) machines that analyses the crystal structure of materials. This shows that one does not need a PhD to do good research, as long as one is passionate about it. Of course, one can argue that he is just an outlier and the chances of a non-Phd obtaining a Nobel prize is very low. And perhaps a famous example of Stanford Computer Science PhD dropout whom steem community is more familiar with - Larry Page, Google co-founder. He has a great impact in the world in the area of search engine development without a PhD.
Value of PhD
So it sets me thinking about academia and PhD. Is there still any value doing a PhD and if there is, what is the value of doing it for 4 years and sometimes even beyond, say like 5,6,7 years!!? If all the factors above deter people from doing PhD, will quality and quantity of research in the world eventually decline?
Let's discuss...
Just wondering if there are PhD students, dropout or Dr around here? If you are already a Dr, what made you take up the PhD? Are you still in academia, if not, what are you doing in the industry?
I'm getting my PhD in finance and i can see the pros and cons of the process and outcomes for peers and those who have recently gone through the job market and landed positions inside and outside of academia. Academia is, of course, the #1 job market for freshly minted PhDs. The knowledge base, skills, and social training that come with the degree are just about perfectly suited for a research career in academia, but there are certainly spillovers into industry, entrepreneurship, or a variety of other areas of productive life outside of the Ivory Tower.
That said, academia is the dominant market for PhDs and that market could certainly be viewed as a bubble after decades of heavy subsidization from governments and a weird social training that funnels young people through expensive / inefficient liberal arts degree mills; the proximate cost appears cheap to super high discount rate teenagers (read: not-so-forward-thinking) because of all the government subsidies, and there has evolved a social stigma that not going to college somehow means something's wrong with you.
So overall the risk-effort-cost-reward equation for getting a PhD has certainly shifted a bit over the last couple generations. PhDs still earn, on average, higher wages, but that's likely highly sensitive to the subject area, and I don't know of any statistics that normalize for the cost input (including opportunity cost).
What I am doing myself, and what I recommend for those considering a PhD, is to seriously consider the subject area and make sure there are decent spillover skills you'll learn that are valued in industry, or some other area of society than academia. Then make sure that during your 4-6 year tenure as a student and then PhD candidate, you're learning those side skills that you can make use of if you decide not to work in academia, or just find that the market is saturated.
Overall, the decision to get a PhD is not just economic, but lifestyle and preference-based. You should LOVE the subject--weird I have to say that, but I know of far too many people getting PhDs in subjects they don't really care about, but think are prestigious--and you should enjoy research. As the OP said, the research aspect is balls deep in reading (often) boring and highly technical papers, thinking, thinking some more, trying things out, watching those things fail, thinking again, etc. It's not for everyone, but it's extremely rewarding for those who love the material and enjoy the process.
Great advice there. I have friends graduating with PhD in niche fields. SO niche that they are not able to transfer any hard skills over. Quite a waste.
Exactly, sometimes, i felt lonely, lost and isolated in my world. But the world became happy again after i nailed something after some despondent times =)