Why I'm Getting a PhD
johnbender.us
johnbender.us
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?
(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.)
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.
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.
That's partly why many people see a Phd as a luxury or as something not entirely useful or necessary. Many people NEED to make money RIGHT NOW.
Of course, there is good competition, so it might be harder to get such a position.
YMMV but if you're thinking you're being used for cheap slave labour, you're in the wrong university.
I like to refer to Feynman's writings on this matter: http://www.pitt.edu/~druzdzel/feynman.html
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.
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 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'.
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.
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.
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).
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. :-)
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.
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.
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.
(3) can apply to any interesting job, if you let it.
only (2) is an impartial criticism of research.
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'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).
> 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"
I wholeheartedly agree.
I certainly didn't mean to imply that everyone's experience should be rosy...
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'm currently completing a PhD, and that was one of my primary concerns prior to starting. However I've eventually become more at ease with it. For one, I see a new appreciation for PhD level knowledge thanks to Google et. al, who have repopularised the value of having a PhD with their hiring practises. The advent of machine learning has made higher level CS knowledge more valuable again where for a while it was even actively spurned by much of the software industry. At the same time the basic bachelor CS degree is becoming commoditized and its value is decreasing. Partly because of outsourcing, partly because of MOOCs, and partly because it is becoming evident to employers that people without college / university training can be as effective as people with that training.
All up, I'm a lot less worried about this point than I was before I started.
This is due to my view of the cost of college, and my success in IT without higher learning credentials. That said, I would definitely give advice to young adults now that if they are going to college, they should either go for their masters/doctorate, or an advanced bachelors like nursing, law, or engineering. Anything else is just a waste of money. Everything you said about bachelor degrees is spot on.
...now back to that problem set...
Regarding the PhD experience, choose your advisor and group very carefully. You'll spend a lot of time with them. Also, during almost 2 years I was working with a really bad crazy advisor, that was pushing me to the limit for his interest. I was almost quitting but decided to change advisor and I'm really enjoying this now.
And here's another, with much more objective tone: http://www.pgbovine.net/PhD-memoir.htm
My take on the subject matter is that:
- When getting into the PhD. track, one should be aware of what he/she is getting into, and be prepared for the resulting lifestyle.
- One should have an extraordinary drive (even to the point of personal obsession) to search for answers towards the unsolved problems in his/her field of study despite knowing the consequences that will be imposed onto his/her life by this intellectual journey.
- One should find a PI whose personality clicks with his/hers, and whose research he/she is motivated to work on. It is pretty rare to match these two parameters perfectly, but one can weigh trade-offs, and work with the best available while still maintaining his/her aspirations.
- One should realize that, regardless of popular belief, academia is business with its own business model: understanding the intricate business logic behind the model will facilitate one greatly in his/her quest.
- One should realize that like every human society, academia has its own fair share of personalities and egos, and intrapersonal skills matter, a lot.
You do it because you want to. Because you like getting to delve into a wide array of things. Because you want to focus more on interesting problems than interesting solutions. (Obviously, those two aren't mutually exclusive.)
If you're doing it with a career focus, it's not worth it. A PhD can be a hindrance in the corporate world, and jobs in academia are difficult to get.
Do it because you want a chance to do what you find most interesting for 5-8 years. (CS is probably shorter... In the geosciences, a M.S. is 2-3 years, and a PhD is an additional 4-6. Typically, you switch institutions between an MS and PhD, as well.)
Also, from what I've seen, people who come back to graduate work after working for awhile are generally more successful than folks straight out of undergrad.
On the other hand, a PhD can close more doors than it opens in the corporate world, at least in my limited experience. For reasons I don't understand, most people view a PhD as meaning specialization. You'll be seen as "too specialized", regardless of your actual experience and skillset. At least for me, the opposite is true. My graduate work required me to be a generalist. Everyone I know of came out of undergrad much more specialized and became more of a generalist over time.
That's true. I think it's telling, however, that the writer doesn't mention getting an academic job, or tenure. I hope his PhD works out for him and his family, who are implicitly along for the ride.
I also hope that, in three to four years, the OP writes an essay about what he thinks after he's gone through the academic grinder.
For an alternate perspective on academia, see Philip Greenspun's "Women in Science" (http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science).
One thing - you just can't say "why I'm getting a PhD", even from an elite school, the way you'd say "why I'm getting a law, medical, or business degree". Even if you've been admitted to an elite program, you can really only say "why I'm rolling the dice on the possibility of getting a PhD".
At elite programs, there is essentially no involuntary attrition in JD, MD, or MBA degrees. Yale law school has no 1L attrition. Columbia's JD 1L attrition is 0.3%. Attrition rates at elite med school is typically well below 1%.
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2008/04/law-school-r...
(I'll stop with the googling of links here...)
Attrition rates for engineering PhD students appear to be about 33%. This (to me, atrocious number) is way better than science or humanities.
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/12/07/doctoral
Unlike JD, MD, MBA programs, I don't believe that the numbers are better at elite schools.
http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~wicse/index.php/papers/li...
I dunno, maybe Berkeley is a risky program, it is a notoriously harsh school.
In spite of all I've said, I'm always hesitant to give anyone advice. There are still remarkable careers to be had in academics. Good luck.
Perhaps this is because an engineering Ph.D. student is far better positioned to get a high-paying job than their 1L or med school counterparts. The engineering candidate doesn't need to be there to get a job.
That said... then why is the engineering PhD attrition rate lower than in science, which is in turn lower than humanities?
When my advisor quit, I left my PhD without thinking twice, because I got a job at a much higher pay than my PhD stipend, and leaving my PhD didn't present the kind of financial burden that it would have were I in a humanities field.
Now I'd like to complete it again, but I'd want to do it part-time, and I have a much better idea of what I'd like to do. As engineers, we are pretty lucky to be in that position, even when things don't quite work out as planned, we still end up pretty well off. So there's not quite the same determination to make a particular course of action work.
I enrolled in Brown's Ph.D. CS computer program immediately after undergrad. In retrospect, I was too green to do proper due diligence to find the right fit with advisor and research area. The advisor relationship is extremely important. Within the first year I realized two things: 1) there was no way I'd be happy going deep with this particular research area and advisor for another 5-6 years, 2) I would complete my masters in the first year, fully paid for (with a research assistant "salary" on top) by being on the PhD track. I returned full-time to the company I co-founded while in undergrad after that first year.
No two PhD paths are the same, unlike with JD/MBA. Some folks come in and earn a master's along the way. Some come in with a master's. Some don't pass the (widely different depending on school) bars to advance to the Ph.D. candidate stage (I imagine there's a good bit of attrition here). Some don't find an advisor who can fund them. The requirement of contributing something novel to the body of research, no matter how long it takes, is a higher bar than completing coursework and projects. 6,7,8 years is a lot longer than 2-3.
...
Unfortunately, the problems I gravitate towards are not normally assigned to engineers and attempts to marry my interests with my domain of expertise [1,2] have met with understandably tepid responses. ,,, All of that makes perfect sense but it means I can't focus on the problems that I'm interested in.
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What Interests Me
The things that keep me up past midnight working and learning are technical. Problems both large and small that remain unsolved or problems where the solution seems unsatisfactory to me. A short and incomplete list in no particular order:
...
A few of these might align with a job posting somewhere but most don't. More importantly, I'm not as interested in the implementation as I am in conceiving a solution and understanding its value. ...
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I guess you could say I'm taking The Fourth Path™.
While I may be new to the academic environment, I have taken efforts to ensure that my impressions are not naive.
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I think what is Naive here is that even with a phd you will be working for someone. to do something. So, not having a functional goal for your work is Naive. Even if its research it has a "market". There are people who value it or they don't. The trade may be "in kind", be it social favours or prestige/ego polishing, if not in discrete financial incentives (grants, etc).
Its illusory to think your "career" is independent. At best, you are captive to customer if nor directly to your employer.
This all might be formalistic oversights for a blog post, but still...your a mid-career executive...this stuff shouldn't be off the radar entirely.
Good luck.
As a sidenote, I found your sporadic quoting of his post to be annoying and completely worthless.
The other thing is it will be very hard to do this at 30 with kids. Best of luck with this!
As a PhD student, I can tell you firsthand that that is not true for all professors.
I was naturally very skeptical of the academic-governmental complex, but it turns out that academia can come fairly close to the idealized image people have of it. The professor I work for spend around 10% of his time on grant funding, and gets plenty.
In the end I believe the most important focus of a PhD is to publish three papers at great venues in something that amount to a thesis topic. And don't distract yourself with something "fun" until this is done, because it is extremely common that the research topic will stop being fun at some point during your 5-7 year journey. People, including your advisor, will ask you to work on problems unrelated to your thesis when it fits their interests so it is up to you to manage your time. Since a PhD labour is cheap skilled labor you can not expect anyone else to take the high-road and manage your time.
If those directions happen to overlap at the right time and place, you can have a great time getting a PhD; if they stop overlapping (possibly suddenly), then the choices aren't that nice.
I would assume that this is exactly how most businesses operate; you have to not only serve your current customers but line up new ones as well.
But this is not how most businesses operate, academic funding is a very different mindset. Well, perhaps defense contractor companies need to plan about their funding in similar terms.
http://matt-welsh.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-im-leaving-harvar...
Shorter version of both posts: "Working at (university/big tech co.) frees me from all the distractions of working at (big tech co./university) so I can spend all my time hacking on the problems I find most interesting."
When you're working at Google/Facebook/Microsoft you're working on problems that are new to you, even if they aren't new to the rest of the company. You're learning, which is the fun bit of research. Many of the products you will work on may never have been attempted at the size/scale you are going for, and so that's research.
Industry has a lot of the R of R&D, you just need to recognize it when it's happening.
Disclaimer: I don't have a PhD :)
I went into my PhD with totally the wrong reasoning and eventually left after 3 years. All I can say is: the PhD is about the process not the end results; and it's a qualification to conduct research and nothing more
This was my collected rant: http://jamie.ideasasylum.com/2008/07/things-i-learnt-during-...
I think the most unexpected part of my PhD experience was the sheer mind-numbing slog that research can become, either your own project or assisting your supervisor. Writing a pretty easy script and then running it 1000 times with different variables on different datasets. Reviewing a metric ton of papers for a forced lit review. etc.
I loved the freedom of thought, and learned a lot about what I was interested in and motivated by. I loved the structure of academia, the familiar support networks, and I found I really enjoyed teaching. I particularly liked thinking up bizarre ideas and having the skills and tools at my disposal to see if anyone had done it before and quickly knock up a messy but functional way to test it out.
For me, it boiled down to wanting to do work on messy, imperfect data that came from the real world, which was at odds with the highly curated and neat datasets that can get you nice, repeatable results suitable for a PhD. Would I have stuck it out if I could have done the research I really wanted? Having seen friends go through the writing up stage and break under the pressure, I'm not sure. I'm not intending to go back and finish it, that's for sure.
Side note: the font size for your Joel on Software quote is insanely large (Chrome/Windows).
> I’m not as interested in the implementation as I am in conceiving a solution and understanding its value. I'm sure that will sound like laziness to some…
Not at all. People like you are the reason that people like me have so many great papers to work from. The world needs people on both sides of that divide.
I'm an applied math-type, but your list of topics looks like a great start. My most successful peers knew exactly the things they wanted to work on and have nailed it.
Cheers!
Look, I'm not saying the author shouldn't do it, I'm in a grad program now.
But things usually change and feelings usually get a lot more complicated before they get clearer.
http://www.pgbovine.net/PhD-memoir.htm
http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Your-PhD-Survival-Doctoral/d...
The author's reasons are valid. I hope he looks into doing research in live programming, which seems to be within his interests.
It's probably more accurate to say "unless you want to be an academic" as opposed to "unless you want to be a professor", but since becoming a professor is usually the goal of an academic career, it's a fair statement to make.
http://thinkinghard.com/blog/AmateurTheoreticalScience.html
>In recent times, science has become very professionalised. Many of the steps in the list above serve specifically to maintain high professional standards. For example, step 5 – complete a Ph.D. – is a way of measuring an individual's likelihood of making significant contributions to scientific knowledge.
If your contributions become noteworthy in the field, then along with the relationships that you've generated with your DARPA/NSF/? partner, you will eventually be able to be a prime.
To reiterate some of the other comments here, you may not be able to pick the 'basic research' that you want to work on in the above scenarios... usually the grant sponsors decide that.
I'm sorry that it didn't work out for you, and that you feel you wasted your time, but don't presume to speak for everyone.
You don't speak for me.
Was that part really necessary?
But perhaps you can find a more diplomatic way to say the same thing. When someone says something that's clearly an opinion, and wrong in my experience, and follows it with "Trust me," it's a guarantee that I will regard everything they say with suspicion.
Should that not be the case? How else should I point out the consequences of their utterance? Or should I let it pass, and not try to help them see the consequences?
I'd be interested in your thoughts on that.
WRT "utterance", it's probably a hangover from my lojban days. Different cultures use language differently. In my context, "utterance" is a common term, whereas "Trust me" is taken more sriously than you imply. Awareness of such issues is valuable - I'll look out for my usages of "utterance" in the future.
Thank you.
If you value the end goal of becoming a professor, you'd agree the Phd is "worth it"; perhaps this provides a career-oriented perspective.
But consider the other values:
If you want to explore a novel, foundational (perhaps theoretical) area of the field, academia represents a good venue. The journey is what is "worth it" to the value of intellectual curiosity.
Similarly, if you value gaining extreme depth in a narrow topic area to the end of advancing that topic area, academia enables an appropriate level of focus for that.
Blanket statements of what academia is useful for are biased by individual values, and are thus generally unhelpful. Not everyone pursues a path for its ends or career utility.
There are a lot of sacrifices to be made, it's really not for everyone, and timing is pretty important, but...
Though I'm not sold on becoming a professor, getting my PhD was a great experience, and really has set me up for a lot that I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise. Especially in the US system, where most students are required to do some teaching and a good amount of coursework in addition to rigorous research projects, there is a lot of personal/intellectual/character development that comes from not only balancing these responsibilities but being able to intellectually parse, synthesize, improve, and communicate the content. Granted, there are other ways to get some of these experiences, and a lot is missing, but there is some serious Gestalt here. Qualifying exams, as fear-inducing and social-life-destroying as they may be during preparation, really do whip you into intellectual shape.
And if you are really interested in your research, and your methods of inquiry are sufficiently compatible with the 'establishment' to keep you out of too much trouble, the opportunity to immerse yourself in your interests is rare elsewhere, especially if there isn't a lot of immediate monetary incentive to study the subject.
I do industry consulting as well as academic research now, and the industry stuff is still considered 'research'. Neither position would be available to me without a PhD, and I like both jobs much more than the work I see people with BS/MS degrees doing (or what I see most faculty doing), even though I am currently a bit underpaid.
So I would say that it's not always bad practical choice, even for those who aren't interested in professorships. Again, not for everybody, but it seems like the OP knows what he's getting into.
You're devoting the next 5+ years of your life to a single task. You're forgoing your programmer salary for the next 5+ years, which could easily add up to $300k - $500k in opportunity cost. Your forcing your wife and kids to come along for the ride. You're going to end up a world expert in a tiny niche that, quite possibly, nobody outside of academia cares about. You should have a pretty good idea where you want this all to lead.
There are practical reasons for having a goal in mind:
* If you want to land an academic job, you should be planning for that from day one. Academic positions are extremely competitive, and you need to make yourself an extremely competitive candidate. That means you must present and publish your work aggressively often, networking extensively, and choose a popular topic of research that will garner you many citations, etc.
* You have to make many important decisions right from the start of grad school (who to choose as an advisor, what topic to research, etc.). Choosing poorly will have ramifications for many years to come. Having relevant criteria (such as some long-term goal) can help you with these decisions.
* It's not entirely unusual for candidates to languish for 7+ years in their program, often due to lack of direction or because they expected their advisor to motivate them and keep them on track. You need to motivate yourself. Having some direction from the start can help with this motivation, and also help you from getting swallowed up by all the time-sinks that will eat away at your productivity.
If a goal of yours is to learn, then a PhD is a great opportunity for this. The value of the PhD is not even gaining expert knowledge in a small area. It's learning how to learn. It's learning how to focus so hard on one thing so as to surpass or build on what the best of those who've come before you have done. It teaches you do deal with the fear of not knowing and having nobody to tell you the answer.
On the other hand, even if you end up coming to be concerned about money, it's still not a big deal. Sure, you don't go into a PhD for money. But wether you go into industry or succeed in academia afterwards, you won't be wanting for money. Hell, you can even leave part way through and get a well paying job!
Besides, your counterparts who ran the corporate treadmill will only be incrementally richer than you anyways. If you really want to be rich, you need to take on big risks such as starting a company or the like. Talking about putting your wife and kids in a tough spot! That said, I hope you put something in life above money.
Edit:
Regarding your edits, those are concerns that you do need to consider. Though it's really not the end of the world if you don't. Simply always trying hard goes a long way to doing alright in most scenarios and there are always great fallback options.
I've found that if people want to learn, then they will learn. You don't need a PhD for that, and the process of going through a PhD doesn't really teach you anything more than you couldn’t have gotten yourself. Passion drives someone to learn, not getting accepted into a PhD program.
Of course, the open courses being put out for CS and Math is certainly is changing the picture for these fields. I think they are great.
The point is, learning in a bubble is not nearly as useful as learning from peers and those more experienced as yourself. It's also the case that few people have the discipline to go through the important but sometimes dreary exercises required to learn these topics. Having structured learning programs helps with this too.
They exist, but they're uncommon, and many of the people doing that kind of work are in sort of para-academic jobs, like long-time librarian at a big research library, or senior staff member at a (government or corporate) research lab. Even in an environment like Google, the majority of the papers and paper-like writeups seem to come from either people with PhDs, or people with long track records in a quasi-academic environment, like Google's sizable stable of ex-Bell-Labs researchers.
I don't really say that out of any particular love for institutionally tied research, but more out of the opposite, a frustration that it's so rare to find DIY research that really contributes to a research field. Some of that, I assume, is just incentives: if what you earn money on involves getting something to work, all that really matters is that you come up with a technique that works. Understanding how your technique relates to existing techniques, explaining whether it's completely novel or a variant of an established one, and doing the detailed analysis to figure out why precisely it outperforms existing techniques (e.g. is there one particular tweak that's critical, and if so, why is it critical?), is not always something incentivized in that context, but is important to advancing the state of knowledge in a field.
“In theory I agree, but I very rarely run into people who actually do so on their own” This board is full of people who actually learn on their own:) People learned to code, people learned how to run businesses and people have learned how to build purely based on their passion to learn/build and contribute to the world. The reason why this is less so in science is that the resources are behind a paywall. I recently left my academic life to start a business and as such, I don’t have access to scientific papers anymore….this limits my ability. This is also the major motivation for my startup which will bring raw academic scientific data to the public…but I digress. The fact is that you are surrounded by those people, but they aren’t bringing their ideas to science because the process by which science is done doesn’t allow for it…and that is a problem.
Re: peer-review papers/quality: ahha, I’m not sure I agree. Peer review in theory is great, in practice it’s BS/politics/$$$$. Also, in my experience (YMMV), a lot of references in intros/discussions are “oh shit, you have to reference Joe Schmoe’s 2008 paper here because he is on the editorial board.” Not to discredit your point, I agree that peer review papers, citations and the like are important, but they are being abused now (at least in bio).
This is long winded, but my point is that we don’t see a lot of people contributing to science because they don’t have the resources to do so. I think that needs to change soon and I’m working to make that happen.
That's true, just as you're telling us what you value in life (e.g., the opportunity to learn to learn).
However, I'm suggesting that it's be beneficial to enter into a PhD program with a long-term perspective. You seem to be actually discouraging that, or at the very least, claiming it's irrelevant.
I can't really see a scenario where that's good advice.
In fact, that's exactly how I entered a PhD program fresh out of college: without much direction or a long-term goal in mind, except to learn as much as I could and enjoy the experience. I enjoyed the experience, but I would have benefitted (during the program and after graduation) by aligning the program with my long term goals.
Besides, your counterparts who ran the corporate treadmill will only be incrementally richer than you anyways.
Of course, money isn't everything. But to be honest, that's definitely not the case. I have several friends who hustled after college or enrolled in professional degree programs. They now make multiples of what I can ever hope to earn as a "research engineer." Other friends saved up during those years and now own a house. Realistically, I'm still several years from owning a condo.
If you really want to be rich, you need to take on big risks such as starting a company or the like. Talking about putting your wife and kids in a tough spot!
And we've circled around to yet another example of the opportunity cost of spending 5+ years (perhaps before the wife and kids) in graduate school.
(As an aside, I've heard that grad school is about "learning to learn" before, and I'm not convinced. Yes, I worked on problems to which nobody knew the answer. From my perspective, that's not significantly different from working on a problem whose answer is at the back of the textbook. The internal process is the same. Most successful graduate students I knew were reasonably smart, and worked very hard, and eventually made progress. Did I need to spend an additional five years after college to tell me that "intelligence + effort = progress"?)
You seem to really value "learning for the sake of learning." If so, you already have it figured out that you want to spend 5+ years learning and that you don't care about planning ahead for your life after that. You already have a tentative life plan (though part of it is the default "null plan").
People who think they have a life plan figured out without going through a long, careful process of figuring it out, should still do so, just to make sure their assumptions are valid.
Also, PhD studies and the academic life at a research institution are emotionally stressful and extremely time consuming. You have to consider the negative impact of that on your family, regardless of how supportive they are.
I think the Internet brought us back from the brink -- except now it's not large institutions sponsoring R&D, but rather small companies and individuals. Pure science suffers in comparison to small tech (like apps and web stuff) because it's expensive, but I think that could change as we perfect crowd-funding mechanisms and as enough people accumulate enough resources to start privately funding pure science research.
I don't think traditional higher ed institutes are safe by any means -- but a PhD itself is still a worthwhile use of time, whether used for its intended purpose or as a pivot.
I do think it would be an interesting way to re-structure my time, though.
Best of luck to you.
I'm going to be applying for engineering PhD programmes by this coming January and I'm in a similar position to you: 28, wife, 2 year old kid, trying for another, etc.
Best of luck to you, sir! I hope it's fulfilling, but never to the point of satisfaction! :)
My weekend project to keep me motivated during my PhD: http://bohrresearch.com
Sounds like Ruby! I mean that in a good way.
Although, I think a college degree is overrated. I truly believe a determined individual can use the Internet as a substitute for a college degree, especially Programmers. When I went to school I thought General Education requirements were a waste of time, but as I aged, I'm glad I was exposed to philophy, and psychology courses. I'm amazed how many people go through life not knowing what the Placebo Effect is.(yes--Strunk would be mad, but tired.).
In retrospect, it would have been great to have majored in something that, perhaps, may have been more difficult but more rewarding in the long run.
Therefore I suggest that, if you have the opportunity to do so, pursue your PhD. You never know when older age will sneak up on you and you will no longer have enough time to do so :)