Why doing a PhD is often waste of time | Hacker News Reader

Why doing a PhD is often waste of time

economist.com

5 pointsdbecker5 comments

Anecdotal data point (caveat, I'm from France, so maybe this just reflects a difference in culture):

I'm just completing my PhD, I have already written my dissertation and am waiting to defend (end of August). These past 3 years have been awesome, I was lucky enough to have two advisors who basically let me choose what I wanted to work on and were supportive from day 1. The research I have done, and the results I have found have landed me an awesome job 9 months before graduating. And I've travelled to three continents to present my work.

I admit, this is just one data point, but doing a PhD can also be a great time.

Both the value (and the experience) of getting a PhD is very field-specific... Out of curiosity, what field? Are you going into academia?

I enjoyed my PhD (in economics)... but I think that's pretty rare. It was also less useful to me than 5 years of work-experience, since I didn't want to go into teaching.

I guess you are right. I won't be going into academia but will be doing research in the private sector — among other things because I didn't want to go into teaching.

My PhD is originally in computer science but turned out to shift to quantitative sociology and social network analysis — with some heavy amounts of compsci.

PhDs are fundamentally different in the US vs Europe. 4 years after BS is really the bare minimum in the US and 7+ years is fairly common; wikipedia claims that 13% of PhD students in the US decide to keep working on their PhD after 10 years.

The RAND institute came to a similar conclusion about PhD programs in science and engineering...

http://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241.html

While most of the article is spent refuting the notion of a shortage of scientists and engineers, there is a section at the end with some interesting suggestions for how to improve these degree programs. One particularly interesting approach would be to go to the professional doctorate model (JD and MD programs are far more predictable in length with vastly lower attrition rates).

Unfortunately, even the RAND report making these suggestions acknowledges that this is very unlikely. With such a competitive marketplace, I don't see how 3 year PhD students without an extensive dissertation or publication background would compete with 7 year PhD students for academic jobs. Industry might be more interested in these students, but as the economist pointed out, MS degrees seem to be just as competitive in industry in terms of earnings. JD and MD programs confer an exclusive right to practice, something that a EngD or SciD probably wouldn't do. So I don't really see the student demand for this kind of thing either (if you know you're industry bound, why would you do a longer degree when a shorter one will serve you just as well?).

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