Is Getting a Ph.D. Degree Worth It?
So...you have been a postdoc for five years and it is time to get a job. Trouble is...you cannot find one. You begin to wonder whether getting that Ph.D. degree was really worth all the trouble. Maybe, business or law school would have been a better idea?
The point that I am trying to make is that Ph.D. is not a ticket nor a guarantee for employment. As far as I can recall (it has been many years) nobody during the course of my graduate education ever said that my Ph.D. degree would insure that I would be able to gain meaningful employment. In fact, I will never forget what my major professor or "boss" said to me one day during one of his more enlightened moments (usually he would want me to put on a pair of boxing gloves and step into the ring with him)...."Getting a Ph.D. is like getting a union card. Just because you are in the union, and have paid your dues, does not mean that you are entitled to anything. It is up to you make something of yourself not the union."
Over the course of a long career, the only thing that I have found that Ph.D. training prepares you for is problem solving. Nothing more, nothing less. If all you wanted at the end of your training was a job, perhaps you should have gone to medical or law school!
Well said. I'm currently doing my Ph.D. degree and while it doesn't guarantee me a job, I am mostly happy because I'm interested in science, not money. I'm an evolutionary biologist myself and believe that I will conquer my own niche through specialization. My situation is of course easier than yours because I don't need costly equipment. Still, biology is a very wide branch, there is much to research. I hope that all greedy people read your blog and go to medical and law school!
Do you really think that all that Ph.D. training has given you is a boost to your problem solving skill? I cannot believe that. Doing research is more than problem solving or mechanical laboratory work. Here is what I have to do in a scientific project: read zillions of articles, discover the most important questions and hypotheses, design your study system, write the research plan, write grant applications, carry out your study, store your data and, analyze and interpret your data, write the manuscript, send the manuscript to journals, answer the referees' stupid comments. After that, I start the cycle again.
You may be right. But I feel that compared to graduates and post graduates, Ph. D's find it a little easier to get a job.
No, it doesn't make it any easier to find a job. After my PhD I had an anxious 3 months before taking the first postdoc position that came along, which was one no-one else wanted. After that I did a year of night shifts working in a homeless hostel for minimum wage. Then, in desperation, I went back to university and got a teaching qualification. As an hourly-paid tutor I earn a third what I would be earning if I were a school teacher.
It's a damn good thing I did my PhD for the intellectual challenge of it, because it has been worth damn all to me in terms of improving my career prospects.
"No, it doesn't make it any easier to find a job..."
"first postdoc position that came along, which was one no-one else wanted"
Maybe without a PhD it would have been more difficult.
NO!
PhD's find it harder to get a job.
Anonymous, Ph.D.