Anonymous wrote:My college kid talks about post-graduate plans and often mentions wanting to get a PhD, but her statements often point to seeking some external reward (e.g. " so I can go do this afterwards") and the PhD topic also changes from time to time.

I've been telling her that you really need to have a pretty burning desire to explore a narrow topic in depth in order to pursue a PhD, because it's too many years of your life and a lot of grinding work to just do it for some hypothetical reward after you graduate. If you have a PhD, would you agree with this characterization?

I have a PhD and have mentored/supervised 20-odd PhD students and I would agree with your assessment. In many disciplines, the dissertation phase is painful and lonely. It's only a burning desire that keeps you going. Things might be different in fields where dissertation research is done in labs as part of a team.

I have two friends with PhDs in social science disciplines (think: social work) and neither had a burning passion - it was pursued as a means to have more and higher career opportunities in their respective fields. One never practiced in their field and the other works in their field but didn’t need the PhD to do what they do. Neither seemed to work insanely hard for their degrees either- other friends and I were in business and law school, working in investment banking, etc around the same time and we all had much more intense schedules and experiences.

Ph.D= Piled Higher and Deeper. If she is familiar with the career trajectory she wants to do - some its necessary (college professor) and some its not. I think I know more people that started and never finished (all but the dissertation). Almost all got a Masters and where done. My friends that are in academia, STEM and policy research - having one mattered, all else the masters was enough.

Anonymous wrote:My college kid talks about post-graduate plans and often mentions wanting to get a PhD, but her statements often point to seeking some external reward (e.g. " so I can go do this afterwards") and the PhD topic also changes from time to time.

I've been telling her that you really need to have a pretty burning desire to explore a narrow topic in depth in order to pursue a PhD, because it's too many years of your life and a lot of grinding work to just do it for some hypothetical reward after you graduate. If you have a PhD, would you agree with this characterization?

OP: What does your daughter want to do with a PhD ?

In which field of study is she interested ?

The answers may help to generate more meaningful responses.

The field of study really matters for the worth of the degree and future job prospects. For STEM, a MS can be just as good, unless you really want to be a tenure track professor.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's not the narrow field thing that gets you. It's the question if why am I here. You're going to be making a Mac of 40000 when you could be getting at least 80000 in private industry. You'll probably fail an exam, get a paper rejected, ultimately come to this thing of why am I here. And if you can't answer that, you'll probably leave. I have a PhD and I really wanted it. I wanted it in the core of myself. It was hard to imagine me doing what I wanted to do without a PhD.

I found a topic that I could work with enough to get out and got out. But it's not an easy road.

Can you please elaborate on what you wanted to do?

Scientific research in a non academic environment. I was thinking of Bell labs or IBM research or a lot of the trends that we are seeing right now in AI. I wanted to be involved in those areas. Obviously I didn't know Google and other companies would be so dominant but Microsoft was big at the time and this was during the dot com boom where we were seeing a lot of the economic rewards of tech so I was confident there was a possibility of a lucrative career outside of academia.

I have a PhD--I don't know that you need to have a burning passion, but you do need to have a lot of self-discipline/self-regulation to make it through the post-coursework phase. I think you should also find the general learning process-- and more particularly research-- to be intrinsically motivating. I have always loved learning and like to have a community of serious learners around me. My undergraduate was a double major in science and humanities. I went the STEM route for my PhD and have since done post-doctoral study in social sciences--public health policy (which I love even more but didn't study much in undergraduate). The people I knew who didn't finish their PhDs tended to be people who liked taking classes but struggled with finding and pursuing a research agenda in a more self-directed way.

I have a PhD.
I worked as a RN for three years and was tired. The only way to still be a nurse, but not do clinical is pursuing a higher degree. I went to the masters program and there, I fell in love with research and decided to go on to have a PHD. Back then I didn't have a specific narrow interest in anything. I was just interested in studying and studying.
I was a RA and TA so there was no cost. I got multiple job offers before graduating.
My advice is if your kid wants to have a PhD, please encourage her! Life will not go wrong with having a PhD degree

I have a PhD from Johns Hopkins and YES.

When the economy crashed in 2008 I was in school. By the time I graduated in 2012 things very still very bleak. I had a recruiter tell me I had no chance of ever getting a job with them unless I had a connection. I was pretty confident I could get my foot into the door, but then what?

I bailed and went into sales. It was definitely a good move.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You don't get a PhD in the hard sciences for fun. In addition to doing a ton of work, there's hazing. It's pretty miserable, but necessary if you want to work in a lab science. You just have to get through it.

There's tons of attrition, so you really really have to want it to finish, in addition to being good enough and having enough political savvy to navigate the power games that take place between professors. Of the 16 in my grad school class who started, only 5 finished with a PhD. Top 10 school, too. Theses were all really good students. It's just a miserable gauntlet.

I look at this differently. I also know a ton of people who dropped out. I'm a few years out and the dropouts have amazing careers. They were just brave enough to take the risk and change direction.

I don't know anyone who dropped out because they had another plan. They were either being forced out our just decided they were done. They may have landed somewhere great, but they didn't leave for opportunities. In certain hard sciences a PhD is really important, so no one gives up casually. They were miserable, left and then had the bravery to pivot. Not the opposite order.

Anonymous wrote:You don't get a PhD in the hard sciences for fun. In addition to doing a ton of work, there's hazing. It's pretty miserable, but necessary if you want to work in a lab science. You just have to get through it.

There's tons of attrition, so you really really have to want it to finish, in addition to being good enough and having enough political savvy to navigate the power games that take place between professors. Of the 16 in my grad school class who started, only 5 finished with a PhD. Top 10 school, too. Theses were all really good students. It's just a miserable gauntlet.

I look at this differently. I also know a ton of people who dropped out. I'm a few years out and the dropouts have amazing careers. They were just brave enough to take the risk and change direction.

I have a PhD in the humanities and agree. It needs to be part of a career plan.