To go for a PHD or not

I think that actually this is the way it should be, higher completion rates in this case just leads to a glut of PhDs in the market. If you make it too easy, you just get bad quality product at the end.

Many students give up because they cannot meet the publication requirements, some of them cannot put together a good dissertation defense. Most give up at the proposal defense since they cannot convince the faculty that their work is worth a PhD. Why would you want all these people in the market if they don't have what it takes to become a reseacher?

 

re: to PhD or not to PhD

Dave, I thought this query was different enough to warrant its own thread. So I started one with some research I found on the web.

Thanks

 

And why not?

 

Good question!

First, the decision is more complicated than $ and cents. It includes not only quantitative factors such as used in ROI but qualitative which have been discussed here.

For me the degree increased my adjunct pay rate per hour for the Uni I teach for and it may open future opportunities. However,this increase will take years to offset the tuition and time involved.

Example: This is a very quick and dirty example and probably incomplete but it illustrates from a financial perspective.

Sample Tuition for Program over 5 years: $30,000 (this may be low)
Other costs (travel, copy, etc) 2,500
Opportunity costs (possible lost income)** $56,250
due to time spent studying instead of
teaching, working or whatever. (see below) =======
Total potential cost $88,750

If the doctorate increased income by 10k a year it would take a minimum of almost 9 years for payback.


**Convervatively (15 hrs per week x 50 wks a year x 5 years = 3,750 hours )time devoted to doctorate. If you could assume you make just $15 per hour for the lost hours you would have a potential loss of potential income of ($56,250)

BH

 

Coursework is kids stuff, but the dissertation is where the rubber meets the road

My brother is a B&M professor at a traditional state university that has stringent entry-level requirements for their doctoral programs i.e. GRE/GMAT, GPA of 3.8 or higher, etc. Nonetheless, the attrition rate remains about 50% at the dissertation stage. The issue isn't the selection criteria for entrance into the program, according to my brother, but rather, it's the difficulty of the dissertation that shocks most doctoral students and that's why many simply "walk away" after completing all the coursework and comps. Let's face it: Coursework and comps is kids stuff because anybody with half a brain who can follow a syllabus can do it and that's why there's such a low attrition rate during that phase. The dissertation is where the rubber meets the road and the wheat is separated from the chaff. It's not for everyone.

 

In the cloud 9 world of philosophers, I'm sure that's true. However, in the real world, there are three possibilities (that I can readily think of).

Option A: Some people, those who are still relatively young and come from affluent families, can simply ask for (and probably even get) a generous helping of daddy's money. In that case, ROI may not be too terribly important to sonny boy, at least not just yet, because he doesn't have the pressing need to pay off all those student loan debts.

Option B: Some people, those who have considerable cash flow of their own, can simply treat the expense of a PhD as any other expenditure upon hobbies.

Option C: Some people, those who don't have rich daddies or who are too old to ask rich daddy and who have not yet built up large amounts of assets of their own, are left looking at most likely large amounts of student loans and those people would be wise to look at the likelihood of being able to pay off all those student loans.

In conclusion, grad school certainly can and, in some cases, should be measured in a context of return on investment. Measuring a degree in terms of ROI does not make one any more debased or morally unworthy than the cloud 9 philosophers.

 

Oh Dave Wagner, let it go.

Thank you sir!

 

Ted,

I agree with you, but one of the things I find disturbing on this site is the number of posts by individuals that are contemplating Ph.D.s for the money they'll think they'll earn.

In my humble opinion, with most B&M programs outside of education, it is highly unlikely that the ROI will provide sufficient motivation to make it through the trials and challenges of a Ph.D. program. Likewise, in the circles I have traveled, I have never met a doctoral student that got past the coursework phase pursuing a Ph.D. as a hobby.

 

Exactly. Pursuing a Ph.D. for a hobby or personal satisfaction doesn't seem like sufficient motivation to complete the entire process.

Dave

 

You may have missed the point: Don't lower doctoral standards but do your best to admit qualified students in the beginning and then work hard to make them successful at the end.

If you are losing 50% to 80% of anything in a process, you're incompetent in handling the inputs or the outputs, and if you are not being held accountable for your incompetence, then shame on you...

Disclaimer: Of course, I'm not referring to any particular school, service provider, or manufacturer; any resemblance to any organization is purely coincidental.

Dave

 

You'll find that most schools feel that there is a shortage of qualified students, at least in business and the sciences. The lack of qualified and interested domestic students is the reason for the disproportionate numbers of international students in US Ph.D prorams in recent years.

The visa delays after 9/11 created huge problems for US graduate programs - there weren't enough qualified students to go around for quite awhile.

 

Dave,

You made good points. In one of the schools that I work for, admission into a PhD program is highly competitive. Only few students in a given area are offered admission and normally a minimum GMAT of 600 and a GPA of 3.5 or above is required. The quality of students you get is high but you still lose about 50% of them. I have personally met few students that drop and at least these students gave me financial reasons, the reality is that academic work is not easy to find and many of them are disappointed that many had to move to remote areas or have to take jobs below their academic abilities. It is not uncommon to see many of them end teaching at the community college level. My sister was about to quit for the same reason, she is in medical sciences and she was disappointed that many of her peers had to go for post doc positions for many years before landing a full time position. At the end of the line you have jobs that pay below industry average with very high competition. You also see some graduates that make it to the PhD but unable to meet the tenure standards due to their lack publishing capabilities and end with nothing, who will hire them after once they were not able to meet the tenure track conditions?.

 

Well, I’ll be a good case study, because I am pursuing the DBA for personal satisfaction and as a hobby.

 

Bingo on option B, although the term ‘considerable’ could be argued down to deletion from the statement….

 

Dave, I hope you haven't been misled. Earning a doctorate definitely is not a hobby...

If someone has told you it is a hobby, then may a pox be upon them to the fourth generation. Ha, just kidding!

Seriously though, to tell someone that a doctorate is a hobby, is to send them on a fool's errand.

Dude, it's war, and you have to have that mindset to finish.

Dave

 

Fair enough, but I personally take my hobbies very seriously. Heck, I joined the Army because I was bored, learned to play the piano to impress a girl I liked, I even ran a mini-marathon, with no prep, literally because I had nothing else to do one Saturday in NJ..

A smart creative person who finds the pursuit of learning interesting doesn’t have to want to teach for 1/4 their current pay to want to go down this path.. that is my only addition..

Also, as far as I can tell, starting down the path and then deciding it isn’t for you is not the end of the world, look at the Queen Brian May guy, 30 years later…

 

I don't think that doctoral programs should be thought of as hobbies exactly. Nor should they be seen purely as means to ends.

From what I've seen, doing a Ph.D. is a calling. It's like the decision to join a monastery. That's not something that one does lightly, and it's not not something that one does for the advancement possibilities.

Many people do doctorates in art history, comparative literature, religious studies, ancient history, Egyptology or philosophy. While most of these students doubtless dream of finding a cushy tenured teaching position, that's not really why they are there in graduate school.

So, why do they do it? They do it because they have a burning passion for philosophy, literature or whatever it is. That's why. To these students, the idea of spending years in graduate school, living hand-to-mouth from fellowships and assistantships, isn't a terrible burden at all. It's their wonderful opportunity to do something that they love.

If somebody is only in it to acquire a quasi-aristocratic title and unquestioning respect ("Yes Doctor!"), or is anticipating the big-bucks, then there's going to be disillusionment. There are better ways that the time could be spent. Even those who do have a true calling are going to experience their own dark nights of doubt and dispair. So do priests, I'm sure.

 

Queen Guitarist, Under Pressure No More, Finally Earns Academic Crown

Here's a guy that took 27 years on his PhD.

http://chronicle.com/news/index.php?id=2910

 

I see a PhD as something to spend my time doing and stay out of trouble! It really is a hobby - education is a lifelong hobby for me. I am enjoying it so far and if there comes a time that I am not enjoying it, I will stop.

I see it as a basic question of: What do you want to spend your time doing? I spend it on education because it is free (tuition assistance) and it will pay me back. Some choose to waste there time watching sports and I choose to waste it on education.

 

We’re in general agreement here. My end goal is to know all knowable things. While I understand that I may not achieve that goal, it seems crazy to me to not constantly be engaged in learning new things.

Life isn’t a destination it is a journey. I also don’t seem to share a fear of failure. If it truly becomes so monumentally hard that I can’t keep myself motivated, and I ‘drop out’, then so what? I’ll have learned something about the topic and myself along the way. I personally think anyone able to afford it in either time or money or both should try.