Is anyone else doing their PhD (or did their PhD) just because they thought it was a lot of fun and a great way to learn a lot in a short time period? Not that it's the only way to do any of those things, but I've found the lifestyle of a graduate student in CS to be extremely appealing.
My mentor once suggested that a PhD is only worthwhile if you plan on doing research after you graduate. But as he got to know me better, he noticed that I was actually enjoying the act of obtaining a PhD. Isn't that enough?
Well, yes, it can be. During my PhD studies I met a couple people who could be considered "lifers" who were clearly very happy doing graduate-level research work. Maybe you are one of them. Their optimal career path would be a cushy postdoc job so they continue to keep doing what they are doing but without paying tuition fees.
I'm sure you know, but for others reading, there are reasons why most people don't do this.
1. There is a strong psychological toll on doing original research. It's liberating and exciting, but also intensely frustrating and isolating. Writing papers, and their inevitable rejection, is a very disheartening venture that can't be accurately described without doing it.
2. If you're in the sciences, which I assume most people reading here are, you stand to make significantly more in industry research than post-doc research.
3. Research takes over your mind, you can't turn it off. When I was doing my PhD, I was essentially "on" all the time, it can never be a 9 to 5 job. Despite your best efforts, research will always have a toll on your family.
So if these things aren't a problem for you, then it certainly is enough. Research is a uniquely rewarding career path. But your mentor uses that line as a way of helping/warning others. You aren't the stereotypical PhD student, and PhD students are already skewed all the way down the spectrum of "normal". The majority of the population, and most PhD researchers, struggle with these problems. If you're not committed to it for the long-haul, which is what your mentor is alluding to, it's not worth doing it.
EDIT: Now I've done my PhD, people often ask me "Do you think I should do one?" and the unsatisfyingly true answer is "I don't know, I'm not you" (and, perhaps even worse, is that you aren't you when you finish the PhD from when you started, you change and grow a lot, which affects your viewpoint dramatically). That's another reason why your mentor has that saying, it's more easily digestible by those who are unsure.
I think this is a really insightful reply, and I tend to agree with you. But it still doesn't help me be any less taken aback when people assert that PhD's should only be obtained when you want to do original research for your career. If you want to warn people, that's fine, but just do it instead of phrasing it as if you know the One True Reason for doing a PhD. I grant that some people might just be trying to be pithy, but I've seen too many people take it too seriously to just give the benefit of the doubt to everyone.
> Now I've done my PhD, people often ask me "Do you think I should do one?" and the unsatisfyingly true answer is "I don't know, I'm not you"
Of course I can't claim that my personal experience is representative of all people. But you're the first person I hear say that did not feel any psychological effects of doing a PhD.
Every single person I know that did a PhD (including myself) has mentioned feeling frustrated/isolated/depressed/etc at different stages in their PhDs. It is interesting to see that some people are actually not affected that much.
I guess I'll just chime in and say that, going into my fourth year, I've never felt frustrated/isolated/depressed more than I thought was normal. (I mean, does getting frustrated with GHC count? :P)
I'd actually say it's the opposite: the process of getting my PhD has been one of the more wonderful experiences of my life thus far. Although, I tend to believe that at least part of this is due in large part to one particularly awesome professor that I've worked closely with (and isn't my advisor).
MS student here (maybe PhD in the future). This is exactly why I go to school. I enjoy the learning process. It's not about acquiring skills to make money, it's about learning interesting things in an interesting and creative environment where I'm free to explore to a certain extent. I think a reasonable way to describe it is that Google has 20% time, in school I have roughly 80% time to explore my interests.
Sure, I'm not making much money (people always bring this up). But who cares? HN is full of posts about how to live minimally, it's kind of a classic hacker challenge, right? I may need money someday, but right now I don't, so I might as well take advantage of the situation.
In Germany you get around 2000-2500 netto per month for doing a PhD. Its like an entry level engineering salary, but instead of working for someone else, you are working for your self (on your own PhD, which is a lot of fun). Furthermore, you are still a student, so you get all the student benefits available (really cheap transportation, cheaper food, cheaper sports, travels...).
That applies to some of the hard sciences (more precisely: engineering, as well as some branches of physics and chemistry), but not in general. PhD students in biology earn around 1400 after taxes; a philosopher or what have you is lucky to make any money at all.
This depends heavily on the country. In Denmark a PhD student in any discipline will earn a salary of about €2000/month after taxes. However the positions are somewhat more competitive as a result: professors have fewer PhD students at a time than American professors do, usually only one or two, sometimes three. The downside of that is that it's harder to get into grad school. But the upside is that the situation of lower ratios of PhD students to existing professors makes getting academic jobs after graduation easier, because the number of new PhDs graduating is not hugely out of proportion to the number of academic positions opening up.
A short time ago I started with my PhD in mathematics (in Germany, too). IMHO it's rather difficult to get a "Doktorandenstelle" (salary for doing PhD). The reason is that many universities are (in my opinion) underfunded. If you get one - lucky you.
The only other possibility for getting money for doing your PhD is trying to get a scholarship. If you aren't near to either a big religion or a political party (I'm not to any of both), there's virtually only "Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes" (German National Academic Foundation) which has really strict (and many people say: really strange) conditions of admission.
You do not get paid a lot in a PhD program. Where I am the pay is barely enough for one person to live on. There is also the time commitment -- a lot of programs demand 60 or more hours per week from their students. The combination basically means that starting a family is impossible while you are a PhD student, unless you have a spouse who has a comfortable income / family money.
If you do not mind a small adventure, consider moving to another country or continent. PhD positions in some countries (e.g. The Netherlands) are paid quite ok, with few distractions (usually fully focused on research), and a 40-hour work week.
Of course, there is good competition, so it might be harder to get such a position.
In Australia, with a scholarship and a few hours a week TAing during term time, I made enough to buy a half a million dollar apartment with my wife who was on a new-graduate nursing salary. She then got pregnant just as I finished up (good motivation to write fast, that was!)
YMMV but if you're thinking you're being used for cheap slave labour, you're in the wrong university.
I was a PhD student (I stopped to move to SF and work on startups- although now after 2 years I'm thinking of going back), and fwiw I enjoyed TA'ing. Grading papers was the worst part (but with a glass of beer and some motivating music it's not that bad), but I found everything else to be fairly rewarding.
You're right. I would just guess that most people are there there to learn and do research. And TA'ing takes away from that. But plenty of people do from PhD to teaching positions - in which case a TA'ship is perfect and gets your feet in the water.
I wouldn't necessarily agree that TA'ing takes away from teaching and learning. Many of the top researchers are also, in my experience, fantastic teachers.
>>MS student here (maybe PhD in the future). This is exactly why I go to school. I enjoy the learning process. It's not about acquiring skills to make money, it's about learning interesting things in an interesting and creative environment where I'm free to explore to a certain extent.
To me, this process started only after I left the safe and controlled environment that is college. Graduation was like someone lifting the veil: I suddenly started seeing with great clarity and had true freedom in terms of what I wanted to pursue learning (as opposed to only the illusion of freedom given in an academic setting).
I'd say the only advantage academia has is being surrounded by other smart people. Especially now that I live in Southern California, where big biceps are seen as more important than a capable mind, I miss the college environment a lot. But that's the only reason.
I'd say the only advantage academia has is being surrounded by other smart people.
I think you are missing one important advantage: in (good) universities, the environment is set up in such a manner that you can think and experiment all day without being bothered.
This is something I noticed profoundly when I started to work for a company after my PhD: in university there are relatively few distractions - the environment is set up so that you can think and experiment. A company is far more hectic, always has pressing deadlines, etc.
Both have their advantages: in a company there is more frequent gratification and you can leave your work at the door. In academia on the other hand, there is much more time to puzzle until things are really 'right'.
I've been enjoying it: work with smart folks, occasionally speak at conferences, learn whatever you're curious about.. However, the money situation can become tricky (especially in New York). I double my income from summer internships but have still managed to accumulate a lot of credit card debt. I would recommend the lifestyle only if, in addition to having a good advisor/lab and liking open-ended exploration, you (1) are habitually frugal (2) go to school somewhere cheap or (3) have a big pile of savings.
With regard to (2), I think it's more like, "Don't go to school in one of the most expensive places to live on Earth." :P
(I go to school in Boston, and while I live closer to central Massachusetts, plenty of my cohorts who live around Boston don't seem to have any financial issues without doing an internship.)
I started my PhD as a fun learning experience. I didn't (and still don't) care about credentials.
As I've gotten further into the degree, I've realized that academic research is as plagued by corporate-style politics as any other venture. The fun started to die.
As it is, I'm looking for the door (dissertation to be completed while working).
My experience of 6 years in academia is that I thought the politics there was far worse than anything I've found in the years since then. As Wallace Stanley Sayre famously said: "Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low".
> As I've gotten further into the degree, I've realized that academic research is as plagued by corporate-style politics as any other venture. The fun started to die.
I've actually gone through precisely the same realization, but it hasn't ruined the fun for me. Namely, I seem to be an observer while the messy politics are played by the faculty members.
I entered graduate school with the intention to become a professor, but am now leaning more toward taking my chances in industry. But I'm happy with my destination being unknown for the moment. :-)
I decided not to continue with academia after my PhD not because of the internal politics[1], but the external. I failed completely to find external funding, and with NSF only funding 11% of applications, that's typical. And when you going for external funding, you're having to do what they want you to do, not the blue sky research I naively thought I'd get to do when I started my PhD.
If I'm going to have to justify what I'm doing all the time, I'd rather do that in industry, where people have deeper pockets and you're closer to the source of the money.
[1] The internal politics is actually easy to understand. It moves very slowly, and it's based entirely on getting a critical mass of influential people in the department to be on your side. It requires a lot of closed door chats to get things done. But no-one is ever actively looking to bury you as I have heard can happen in law/accounting.
> The internal politics is actually easy to understand. It moves very slowly, and it's based entirely on getting a critical mass of influential people in the department to be on your side. It requires a lot of closed door chats to get things done.
Definitely. I'm entering my fourth year now, and in retrospect, it's completely unsurprising. But when I entered graduate school, I almost immediately realized that I had idealized the notion of academia. Probably because I was a newborn pup as far as academia was concerned and really wanted to believe bullshit didn't get in the way of quality publications. (And I don't even have any sour anonymous review experiences myself.)
But academia is just like everything else: most people seem motivated to publish to advance their career. Only a few good ones are out to publish something to help others. I really thought it'd be the other way around when I entered. Naive, I know.
I did a PhD exactly for that reason. I had an offer from a company, I was sort of bootstrapping a company with a friend, and I had an offer for a PhD position[1].
I decided to do a PhD, since it's much easier to roll in to a PhD right after finishing a Masters than ten or twenty years later, and I thought it would offer the opportunity to deepen my knowledge in a particular field. When I started my PhD I didn't have the ambition to start an academic career.
[1] In the Netherlands being a PhD candidate is a normal employment. You get a decent salary and benefits and you have four years to focus on actual research, with very few teaching responsibilities, or having to follow courses. It's just a researcher position where you also write a thesis.
I didn't cover this at all, but I am very excited about the education and the process.
For most people though some stronger reasoning is necessary and my understanding is that the research is really the point of PhD, the education is there to support that.
Congratulations, I have also been thinking about going back for a PhD sometime when "I'm older and more financially secure", even though I could never do it with a family to support at the same time, both things are already incredibly hard work on their own.
The problem is that you might find yourself at a point where it is just not all that enjoyable anymore. Your adviser stops caring about your research, or you are told that you need to get N papers published by the end of the year to stay in the program, etc. Maybe you find that you are unable to work with your adviser, and there is nobody else who will take you on as a student. I have seen a number of people leave grad school over such things.
That's pretty much why I started mine, I didn't intend to be a tenure-track researcher but was really interested in a couple of areas of NLP and a PhD seemed the logical way to dig in more deeply.
I did a PhD for the fun of it. And the challenges were so special and different and the whole crazy un-inuitiveness of academia (as opposed to the corporate world I was used to) was a complete breath of fresh air. I completed my PhD and went on to become an academic and never looked back. Its not for everyone, but if you like uncertainty, left-field and often unpredictable ways of thinking combined with talking with smart people all the time then it is a great place.
I don't have a PhD, but I hear it depends a lot on the school, the field of study, and most importantly, the mentor they assign you. Your mentor specifically has the ability to make your life hell and completely obstruct your learning.
1. My mentor is not the same person as my advisor. (I use the word "mentor" to describe a professor who is both my friend and someone whose advice I value deeply.)
2. My advisor is not the same person as the advisor I was assigned to when I entered graduate school.
But I agree with your main point: your advisor (and the way you receive your advisor) can play a big role in the level of misery of your graduate student years.
Oh GOD yes. I was assigned my current MSc-thesis advisor from the small selection of experts remotely close to topics I was interested in, by an admissions committee reading my personal statement.
Now that I'm looking at actually doing my MSc thesis (writing the proposal these days) and inshallah going on to a PhD, I'm having to think hard about where to get an advisor and what sort of topics to do.
My mentor once suggested that a PhD is only worthwhile if you plan on doing research after you graduate. But as he got to know me better, he noticed that I was actually enjoying the act of obtaining a PhD. Isn't that enough?