To go back to university to do a Masters/PhD

[purpleangel17]

I am a single mum to two girls aged 8 and 9. I currently work full time and earn a decent wage, not a huge one but above the national average. I do not like my job. I find it boring as anything. I had a job I enjoyed before for 5 years but I left it because I hit an earnings ceiling I couldn't crack without retraining and I didn’t want to retrain in that area. After that I did a job for a year then quit to relocate and I have been doing my new job a year.
I am thinking about going back to do a Masters and then PhD and try to get into an academic career path. I think I'd be good at it. I know it's hard work but ultimately it feels more 'me' than any of the other jobs I have done.
It will be an earnings drop while studying but if my calculations are right, not a huge one if I work part time and top up with universal credit. After a PhD my salary should be higher than now.
My mum thinks I am irresponsible to take a pay cut to do something I would enjoy when I have a well paid job now. She says it isn't fair on the kids and I shouldn't keep 'reinventing myself' which is how she sees my life ever since I left my 5 year job 2 years ago.
Am I being crazy here?

One of the reasons for doing a Masters year first is to dip my toe in the water and see if I really enjoy the research as much as I think I will.
I think I have a good research proposal (though I'm sure everyone does) and I have taken advice from my old tutor who is now a senior lecturer at the university.
I guess my Plan B if no job prospects posy doctorate would be to do a PGCE and return to education with QTS, the holy grail that caused me to hit the earnings ceiling last time. But I would rather make an academic or research job work if I can.

My dh is in an academic role in an RG uni but says that it has changed so much in the last ten years. Permanent roles are a rarity, a lot more is expected of you in terms of publications; there is so much competition for contracts that you have to constantly prove your worth. DH has 12 teaching hours per week but works at least 60 hours, often going in at weekends and staying up during the night to mark work.

YANBU to want to retrain but just make sure that there are available jobs at the e

I've recently quit my job to start on the masters and phd route...All being well i'll finish age 35/6...I feel like I should start necking gin or something

If it helps my ideas for plan B jobs (similar field) are doing policy and research for a charity, working for a think tank or for the ONS...any of those sound like they might be up your street?

Do whatever study you like if its a personal goal, but dont expect too much from it.

Equally, the way eduxation is at the moment I wouldnt advise anyone go into teaching as a backup. What would your subject be if your phd seems to be politics related.

I worked for the LEA for 5 years as an SEN Officer so I would probably either aim for a SENCo role fairly quickly or an LEA based role which mostly require QTS. I still do SEN work casually ad hoc and will probably continue to do so.
And actually my research proposal kind of combines politics and SEN so would be relevant.
But yes, policy or research work also a possible back up.
My current job I hoped would be 50% policy and 50% data work but it has turned out to be 90% meaningless numerical data and I am dying a slow death of boredom...

Agree with others that the difficulty is not writing the PhD, but the uncertainty of early-years academic employment. Also the fact that academics at any stage of their career are working very long hours these days. And I mean seriously long hours.

I was recently speaking to a UK colleague who thinks the number of academic posts is only going to drop due to brexit (she works in a highly ranked university). The number of foreign students has plummeted in her university and EU research funding will disappear.

Given your age, you'll be in your 40's by the time you finish so really a bit on the old side to be starting out in academia given the long hard slog. I agree with previous posters who suggest a plan B.

A plan B is of course a good idea and there are many sectors where a PhD will be looked on favourably.

However, I would stress that 99% of the time a PhD is not necessary for non academic careers and there will always be cheaper, easier ways to qualify and make your cv stand out.

Another way of saying, don't walk into this blindly optimistic. A PhD is an enormous amount of work, for very little (if any) financial or career gain. It takes its toll on every aspect of your life, particularly family, who go through it with you.

If I had my time again I wouldn't do it. It wasn't fair on my partner at the time (now my dh) who had to carry a financial and emotional burden that he didn't ask for. And that was before we had dc.

academic pay is really poor. what do you do in education?

Sorry just seen. Get QTS- you will earn much more and much more quickly than working for a university where pay is really shockingly poor.

If you push hard then you could be on £60k as a primary head in 6 years with the right attitude and personality- in a university post- after retraining- no income for years and possibly reliant on grants- just over half that.

Do you have a 1st from a RG uni as a starting point (possibly 2.1 if you have a strong personality)? Politics is for the bright young things.

A PHD doesn't automatically add anything to a salary, especially in arts.

So any further study would need to be RG.

I have a First from a university respected in the area I'm interested in but not a Russell Group uni.

I finished a PhD two years ago (at age 39). I did it part time, whilst working part-time, and it took me seven years. I don't have kids either. It was one of the hardest things I ever did. The writing up stage was awful.
In that time there was one lecturer level job advertised in my field. One. The others were professor level, and only two or three of those. It is a small field, admittedly, and I knew that when I started my studies. I had done some part-time undergrad teaching for a couple of years after my MA, but didn't get the opportunity to any while doing my PhD, so my teaching experience is fairly limited. Being part time (and self funded) meant that going to conferences was out of the question, as I couldn't afford it on top of research trips, and therefore I have virtually no experience of giving academic papers. Even junior lecturers and post-docs these days have to have teaching experience, several papers written / given and published, a book in the pipeline, conference attendance, etc., - all hard enough to get doing a full time PhD, but even harder when there's family involved, or you're part time and/or self funded.
My partner is an academic, and has been for about 15 years, and says that academia is a lot more demanding and competitive now; she reckons she wouldn't get hired if she were starting out now, and she's very good at what she does. She is at an RG uni; it may well be different elsewhere and in different subjects though.
I don't regret dong my PhD one bit, though I made the decision about 3/4 of the way through not to go into academia. I had quite bad mental health issues during it and for my own sanity I've had to admit I wouldn't be able to cope with an academic job. I work in a completely different job, where I do use the skills I acquired during my PhD, but it's not a pre-requisite of the job.
If you don't end up in an academic job, you can always write academic articles on a 'freelance' basis, which would enable you to stay engaged with your subject if not working in it.

I'm all for people going for their dreams but top up with universal credit why should a benefit that's meant to aid those in need fund this?

I did my PhD in Economics, finished a year ago from a RG Uni. Although my experience is slightly different than the humanities and arts phds, i.e. I will never be out of work, its still a bit insecure and highly stressful. I finished my PhD at 30, married about a month before finishing my PhD. I'm now on maternity leave from my first academic post. The professor I work with, a tenured well established well respected professor, explicitly told me that I was stunting my career by having a child. I don't plan on returning to academia when I finish maternity leave. I have a few choices, policy institutes, lecturing/teaching at Colleges, or studying for a GSCE in maths. I don't regret the PhD but University academia has really fallen off track in the last 10 years. It's unnecessarily stressful and I think a lot of good/excellent academics are turned off by how ridiculous funding/grants/contracts are now.

The University I work for (Manchester) just laid off lots of senior academics because they said they need to save the money due to Brexit. It's a lie, they know they can hire loads of new PhDs, pay them a quarter of a senior academics salary, on a temporary or short term contract, and give them three times the work. While pressuring them to find funding/grants, do research, and take on a full teaching load. They're not doing this due to Brexit, they're just cutting salaries and their costs, while increasing the pay for the senior administration. Academia has become a corporation, with very little creativity in research. It's disgusting and I can't wait to get out.

For context- i left academia because the pay and working conditions were better in the NHS....

I started my PhD when I was 40, when my youngest was 4. It's certainly possible and not necessarily 'too late'. I'm now working for a university - but on a temporary contract. Permanent jobs are few and far between and very competitive. There are far too many PhDs and not enough jobs... But, having said that, if it's what you really want, go for it. I've never regretted it and I really enjoyed doing the PhD. Good luck! :)

You will probably find your real life experience a massive help if you are studying anything vaguely related. It depends if you can manage on a PhD stipend plus whatever you can earn part time. I don't think a PhD is any harder than any moderately stressful job - it just seems that way to 20 somethings who've never actually had a full time job. The writing up part is a bit all encompassing but the first 3 years were relaxing and fun compared to my previous job.

The problem is as others have said after you get the PhD, job insecurity, having to move around, be unemployed for periods, it gets a bit wearing if you are older and if you have other commitments. A 3 year contract starts to look extremely good!

I have no idea what it's like in politics as I'm in science, where I suspect there is a lot more post doc funding. Everyone I know who wanted a post doc job has got one and most have got one in a location of their choosing through people they already know, so it's not all doom and gloom, but this does depend on getting along with your supervisor etc as it's all about who you know.

I know a lot of people who decided not to stay in academia because of the insecurity but no one who actually failed to get a job after trying.