To go for a PHD or not

Wow! I seem to have struck a nerve for some people with this statement. If some of you would actually read what I actually wrote, I never suggested that getting a PhD is some sort of hobby; re-read my statement hereinabove and perhaps you will realize that what I did was to compare the expenditure upon doctoral tuition with an expenditure upon hobbies. The intent was not that the PhD is a hobby but that, once all of the mandatory items in the budget are covered, if there is anything left for discretionary expenses, doctoral tuition is potentially one amongst an array of possibilities. The overall point was that if you graduate debt-free you're in a better position not to have to think about grad school as a return on investment proposition whereas if you graduate with large amounts of student loan debt, you'd better figure out how to generate the cash flow to repay those loans (which does make ROI a much bigger consideration).

 

dlady:
Wouldn't knowing all "knowable" things lead to insanity? Even Einstein sought math help beyond plane geometry.

 

This is the best advice I've seen for someone considering a Ph.D. I'm definately going to use it for my advisees in the future.

 

I think along the same line as you do but there are some good posts here that are making me really think twice about beginning the journey. Time and money are not an issue with me. Maybe skipping the Nova DBA and just focusing on specific interests may be a better route. Thanks all for the informative opinions!

 

Hey, nothing ventured nothing gained.

You can’t win if you don’t play.

Something is better than nothing.

Penny wise and pound poor.


Trying and failing is better than never having tried at all!!

 

It certainly would explain the current trend…

 

Better then a stick in the eye.

Have my cake and eat it too.

I did not realize how little I had until I had something.

Keep you friends close and enemies closer.

These really have nothing to do with the thread - I just like them.

 

Pursuing a Ph.D. can be fun, can be a hobby, or can be the ultimate spiritual or professional challenge, with or without specific goals.

And you all know that I'm right. Because I have one. So there.

That makes the rest of you all wrong. Each and every one of you.

Thank you. Thank you very much.
____________________________-

P.S. You're also all going to hell. Each and every one of you. I am the only one going to heaven. I have a suite reserved there. Poolside. With cable TV and free continental breakfast. And WiFi.

 

Dave Wagner and I agree on this. It's hard to believe that we actually agree on something! Indeed, it is war and I will finish a doctorate "by any means necessary" and, if I fail, then I'll hold my head in shame for the rest of my life. I might even disappear from this forum if I fail!

 

Okay, call this a bit of nostalgia for the old days, but here's why doing a Ph.D. didn't have to be a war...

I did my Ph.D. at Union (graduated in 1991), when we did not have terms like distance education, online education, etc. We used to call this alternative education or non-traditional education.

If you were to compare Union (and a few other schools at the time) with traditional Ph.D. programs, here are just a few of the differences you would find...

• In a traditional program you would be a graduate assistant, research assistant, or teaching assistant, and would teach someone else's courses. In Union, my internship involved the teaching of courses I developed from soup to nuts. (I did my internship at an RA/ATS graduate school.)
  
• In a traditional program you would do someone else's research - at Union, I did my own, period. And managed to do more comprehensive research because I didn't have to waste my time on someone else's (without getting credit for it, either in terms of academic credit or a byline).
  
• In traditional programs you would participate in the writing of, or even ghost write, someone else's articles. In my program, I was published several times under my own name because the articles were my own.
  
• At Union at the time, the learner (their term) was the chair of his or her committee. Rather than having professors dictate what you were to do or how you were to do it, you wrote your own program and the professors served as a quality check (which is always helpful).
  
• Unlike the canned doctoral courses that one sees today, Union fostered critical thinking and originality. Granted, it sometimes tended to be a lone-ranger experience, but there were still opportunities for community and collegiality and you didn't have the forced relationships of "cohorts" on which many programs focus today.
  
• Most important, unlike the ass-kissing world of traditional programs, everyone on a doctoral committee (learner, two core faculty, two adjunct faculty, and two peers or graduates, for a total of seven) was considered equal. You never had to kiss a professor's ass.

Unfortunately, the old days are gone . . . Union has become like any other proprietary (profit-making) program, even though they remain non-profit at this point. They have now limited their majors, done away with the committee structure I described above, gone to more of a rote/canned program in terms of content, and become just another version of Capella, Walden, etc.

So if anyone wonders why I don't consider getting a Ph.D. "a war" - at least it wasn't in the good ol' days - these are just a few of the reasons. And if anyone wonders why I consider online education to be dumbed-down crap, now y'all understand some of the differences between what we now call distance education compared with its earlier counterparts.

 

Your points are well taken. IMO, completing a dissertation is not a war against the committee members. Committee members are professional colleagues whose valuable opinions are (or should be) sought after and, when found, should be treated as valuable gems. "War" is simply a metaphor to describe the difficulty of successfully completing all of the requirements of a dissertation, rejection-after-rejection (or battle-after-battle). Learners may lose successive battles during a dissertation, but with tenacity, they may overcome identified academic deficiencies and, thus, they may eventually be awarded a doctoral degree and, hence, they may win the metaphorical war.