Reply to Degree creep- when will it stop?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]For the peeps out there with PhDs and difficulties finding jobs, I'm curious: who paid for your education? did you think about your job prospects and how much it would cost before deciding to pursue the PhD? If you did, did economic circumstance change in the meantime? Or did you just assume that you would be among the lucky few who would not become "underemployed"?[/quote]

I am in the sciences (chemistry) and I was paid by the university or my research advisor as either a teaching assistant or research assistant (tuition paid + stipend for living expenses).  As far as I know, this is standard for the sciences, and common in a number of other fields as well.  At least I have friends who have been in doctoral programs in fields including economics, philosophy, and psychology who had a similar setup.  The cost was more the opportunity cost of living on 22K for six years throughout my 20s. At the time, I thought I was being wise, because unlike my friends who went into medicine, law, whatever I didn't need to take out 200K worth of debt to get a degree.

I did think about how hard the job market (in academia at least) would be, but I was 22 and convinced that I was utterly passionate about what I was doing and that passion would make me the exception to the rule, as many people do when they are 22.  Since the nature of research is that there is a great deal of luck involved, it became clear to me around my third year that becoming a research professor was an unlikely.  However when I started grad school, with all this press about the STEM shortage, and with only professors (who lack non-academic perspectives) mentoring me about my career options, a fall back of a job in industry seemed much less competitive than it is in reality.

Since at least in the US, there are very few terminal masters programs in the hard sciences, most of the masters degrees have a bit of a stigma associated with them (you get them for dropping out of a PhD program).  I have a number of friends who worked in industry prior to entering graduate school, and all of them mentioned that they saw a pretty steep ceiling at least in R&D for people without doctorates in biotech companies.[/quote]

PP, it's good you have the time to answer with all of that, but I couldn't bother bcs the persons asking PhDs like us these questions have no clue what assistanceships and tuition waivers are all about. Can't be bothered explaining.

The fact is that with a PhD you have more options. Whereas persons with just degrees can only hunt industry jobs, PhDs (if they are so minded) can hunt academia, Federal, or industry jobs. So with a PhD it is not a race for good salary as it is a way of pursuing what you love and having options in the end.

Just like everyone else, your competencies determine your prospects with or without a PhD, but the latter makes you an authority in an area that you can be paid well to work in.[/quote]

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