A PhD is a huge waste of time- aibu

[Bluffysummers]

I’d quantify this and say in the humanities.

I did one, worked hard to complete it, stress, time and money. I was totally duped into it, lecturers telling me how good I was and blowing smoke up my arse and implying I’d get a job at the end of it… in my subject there were 3 jobs nationwide when I graduated none full time…and god knows how many candidates.

I left academia and guess what, no one cares if you have a PhD, in fact I think it’s more of a hinderance than an asset. I spent 10 years in education and all it did was delay my industry and career experience, so basically hinder me.

Aibu to say If you’re thinking of doing a humanities PhD don’t.

[quote DeepDown12]@SarahAndQuack there is a distinction. For anything other than flat pass (or pass without corrections) you're given a deadline until which you must make those corrections and resubmit. If those corrections satisfy your committee - then your pass is confirmed. Another option is 'resubmission' where you're invited to re-do a massive part of your PhD, but I think in most cases committee's then suggest degrading the thesis to MPhil. Finally, the worst outcome is flat fail.[/quote]
This is really interesting - I have always been told that minor/major corrections (and resubmissions) are not official grades.

Would you expect to put them on your CV?

FWIW I had minor corrections but I have always simply put my PhD on my CV without any other verbiage around it - and I've never seen an academic CV that mentions a 'flat pass'. Is this in the UK?

Surely it depends why you are doing it?
If the only reason is to get a job with s higher salary then yes it is probably a waste of time. But if you love the subject, want to research an aspect of it ,or if you want to become an academic then no it's not a waste of time

@TunaTastic

I feel that for the purposes of this thread, everyone should be using their titles and referencing their key papers. Dr TunaTastic

This made me so tempted to find the most ridiculous of papers and claim ownership of it Dr Aimee Fowler

Phds are a way of providing cheap labour on research projects. There are far too many of them for it to carry any prestige or be competitive enough to get in. Few jobs require that level of detail.

I know several people who have done them - including biosciences, none have paid off financially. They are worse off due to delaying starting their careers.

I mean, presumably if you get an MPhil you wouldn't write 'PhD (degraded to MPhil)', would you? Because it isn't a PhD. You'd simply put that it was an MPhil, and if your employer cared, they'd probably need to look up whether your institution grants ordinary MPhils or whether this was an indication you'd not got to the finish line with the PhD.

@Bluffysummers academic publishing :) pm for more info :)

@SarahAndQuack yep, UK and no, I wouldn't write details of my pass (flat or minor/major) in a CV unless I was applying for jobs in academia. In my experience, outside of academia the sole use of those details is to indicate quality/strength of thesis as I did in my comment (as in - I was a good student :D)

[quote DeepDown12]@SarahAndQuack yep, UK and no, I wouldn't write details of my pass (flat or minor/major) in a CV unless I was applying for jobs in academia. In my experience, outside of academia the sole use of those details is to indicate quality/strength of thesis as I did in my comment (as in - I was a good student :D)[/quote]
I meant in academia. I've never seen details like that included on an academic CV. I also know different universities use different conventions about corrections, so presumably it wouldn't be all that easy to understand anyway? (Eg., mine did away with the distinction between major and minor at some stage after me).

It seems wrong to call a pass without corrections a 'flat pass' - sounds like a bad thing, which it isn't!

Pass with none, pass with minor, pass with major are NOT grades - they're viva results. If you pass with none, you're done. If you pass with minor/major you have to do the corrections, THEN you get awarded. At no point will your award ever say 'PhD which was passed with no/minor/major corrections'.

Ah, sorry - just realised where the misunderstanding was. It is not officially called 'flat pass'. It is 'outright pass' or 'pass without corrections', if memory serves. Flat pass is just a local vernacular.

I've seen applications/CVs referring to thesis outcome in academic applications here in the UK but not outside of academia.

Whew, @titchy, glad I'm not the only one who thinks this! I've never been asked whether I got corrections in an interview, even the one I had that was post-viva and pre-graduation, when I would have thought the interviewers would have wanted to know if they'd considered these to be grades.

@DeepDown12

Ah, sorry - just realised where the misunderstanding was. It is not officially called 'flat pass'. It is 'outright pass' or 'pass without corrections', if memory serves. Flat pass is just a local vernacular.

I've seen applications/CVs referring to thesis outcome in academic applications here in the UK but not outside of academia.

Well, learn something new every day. I've never heard it officially called any of these things.

@titchy and @SarahAndQuack now I am wondering if it was very Uni specific - the emphasis put on viva outcomes? Granted, my entire PhD (and post-doc) experience is very single-uni centred.

A PhD is not a job-training programme. It is a preparation for a life in either research or university level teaching. If you feel it qualifies you for anything else you are mistaken. You are correct, no-one outside academia gives a sht whether you have one or not, and usually people are disparaging when you give your title as "Dr" unless you are an MD. I have a PhD in humanities. I am glad I did it, but then again ....

For most people it probably is. My FIL has one that he said would add gravitas to him as a self employed business man, and SIL has one she claims she needed to advance her career. In reality both were complete ego-based decisions.

@Blackberrybunnet

A PhD is not a job-training programme. It is a preparation for a life in either research or university level teaching. If you feel it qualifies you for anything else you are mistaken. You are correct, no-one outside academia gives a sht whether you have one or not, and usually people are disparaging when you give your title as "Dr" unless you are an MD. I have a PhD in humanities. I am glad I did it, but then again ....

My FIL (PhD in Business) uses the Dr title all the time especially when booking restaurants/hotels etc. Makes me cringe.

[quote DeepDown12]**@titchy* and @SarahAndQuack* now I am wondering if it was very Uni specific - the emphasis put on viva outcomes? Granted, my entire PhD (and post-doc) experience is very single-uni centred.[/quote]
Could be. I've worked in several institutions (and know colleagues from very many more) and have only ever heard of viva outcomes being those terms, and once the conditions had been fulfilled have never seen them on a CV.

My FIL (PhD in Business) uses the Dr title all the time especially when booking restaurants/hotels etc. Makes me cringe

I use mine in situations where people ask for a title - I didn’t change my name when I got married so I’m not Mrs Husbands-name, I’m too old to be called Miss, and I really dislike Ms. Dr is my title, but I wouldn’t volunteer that information, I only use it is someone asks for a title. And why not! :)

Someone up thread said humanities PhDs are a kind of pyramid scheme. That sums it up.

And for people that say we should "do it for the love of it": that's all well and good. But the result is that the entirety of academia - everyone producing knowledge and defining what knowledge is - is the kind of person that can afford to spend 3+ years paying to do something "for the love of it".

People who are talented, driven and hard working but can't afford to delay a half decent wage for 3 years because they have no cushion/security/rich parents, or can't travel around the country at the drop of a hat every year or two for poorly paid, insecure and often badly managed research jobs, won't break through into academia at all.

British academia will stop being a place of research excellence and will instead be a talking shop for privileged people who exploit the next generation for their own career gains.

Some might say that has already happened.

YABU . As pp have already mentioned, it completely depends on why you're doing a PhD. I loved doing mine (was funded all the way through it so am aware I was one of the lucky ones) and now work in a related field. I don't need the PhD for my job but some of the skills learnt while doing it are helping me at work every day.

I feel slightly nostalgic thinking back of those days as a PhD student. The freedom and sheer joy of getting paid (meagerly, but still) for expanding my mind, going to conferences and meeting likeminded people, the total flexibility and autonomy over working hours...some of the best years of my life!

A PhD is not an apprenticeship or a direct road to an academic job. It's not a means to an end but I suppose if you see it that way it may seem like a waste of time.

ps I should add I was funded through a scholarship, not through having rich parents!

Have not read the entire thread but as a read I steer clear of the PhD novel - the author gets funding to write their novel, but they also have to write an exegesis justifying everything they write and (I imagine, based on what I've read of them) the obligation to shoehorn in a whole heap of theory about surveillance or gender or capitalism or trees or whatever based on whatever their supervisor thinks should be in there.

If and when the novel gets published, critics praise it for being 'challenging', author-supervisors blurb it, and us poor innocent readers who have heard gushing acclaim from all sides go out and buy it, only to find we can't make head or tail of it because it's stone cold dead on the page.

*as a reader that should say

Mine has and hasn't been.

I honestly can't imagine doing anything I love more than working in my area of academia (and it's a subject that doesn't really exist outside of a uni setting, I can't fall back on a PGCE even). I have travelled the world, usually at other people's expense, to share my work with people who are genuinly interested in it (in spite of not being in any way a star, I give good conference abstract)

I've been employed in academia the whole way through, on crap money, but had 3 years out following a redundancy and could not get a foot in the door anywhere else. At all. I applied for every type of job I could physically do.

Now back on another short term academic contract. Still love my subject, working with students, and being paid to think interesting thoughts and talk about things I am really interested in (as well as things I really am not...). Bloody bored of being in my 40s with no permanence, no pension, no kids, and nothing on the horizon though.

(and by crap money, I mean working more than full time hours, but earning about £7k for many years)