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.

@MiSimit

What kind of job would you ideally like and which industry would you prefer to work in *@Bluffysummers*?

I am fascinated by this thread as I am a huge believer in the more education the better. I have 2X masters degrees and oodles of professional experience. My career path hasn't been a straight one but quite rewarding.

If I think back on my degrees and jobs, it's extremely obvious how much better the top notch RG course I did was in comparison to the post 92 courses. It does make you question the current HE system, so very much is irrelevant to the job market.

You need to be extremely well organised, have genuinely good communication and team work skills and be comfortable working in very diverse teams. I have also worked in HE admin at a high level and the calibre of people working in universities is nothing compared with those who work in the private sector. The UK HE needs a huge overhaul to become relevant again.

What language are you specialised in op? Could you work in the tech sector?

So @MiSimit it’s pretty outing but a global modern European language.

I’ve got to the stage in my life (early 30s) with 2 kids that I don’t have a vocation anymore, and that’s ok, I’ll happily do something that I’m vaguely interested in in a company that doesn’t treat me like shit and pays a good salary with good perks. I guess thanks to my PhD, I can find a lot of things vaguely interesting if I put my mind to it. Except b2b sales, i fucking hate sales.

When you say tech, what do you mean?

I would have enjoyed doing further study in my BA area but I felt worried about money etc so I didn't go on at that point.

Later, working as a teacher, I had the chance to do some funded work towards an M.Ed. Well, the standard of research and scholarship was so utterly dire I felt completely disillusioned from carrying on at all/ There was no rigour, it was standard for people to turn in drafts of their essays to the tutor and get feedback and then resubmit, which I thought was crazy. And then they all got higher marks because it turned out the tutor really just wanted you to say a certain thing in a certain way rather than having any original thoughts. I did OK on it, but it felt like I was doing an A-level rather than Master's level work. Certainly the "research" part was more like a teenager doing an EPQ than anything actually academic.

It really made me question the level of work that actually goes on at PhD level if some of these people went on to further study, because they were really not of high ability at all.

Those I know who have had most success and been happiest are the ones who completed their undergraduate degree, worked for a while and then did the PhD supported by their employer, if only to guarantee they would be able to go back to their current job on completion of the PhD, which in all cases was relevant to their field of work.

Others have gone on to be full-time academics, and of some use to society. Some have become disillusioned with academia and then find it difficult to get a "normal" job. I work with academics, and their world, in general, isn't a normal one.

An Msc / Phd is usually equivalent to 5 years work experience. In the UK, where there is a skills gap, they aren’t always required even in academia. For example several published writers in my field (early years) didn’t even get their phd until after they were lecturing for years.

I have a friend who has a physics PhD and they now work in patents earning a bomb. Obviously not a humanity subject though.

@SarahAndQuack there aren’t many jobs which require education beyond a bachelor’s degree.
So many PhD’s enter the job market in their mid-late twenties. At which point their peers with 3+ years experience have been promoted/switched jobs for £££.
There are also professional qualifications which make your earning potential jump enormously. Peers will have been qualified for a few years while a new PhD is just starting.

Of course it depends on sector. I have worked across tech, finance and policy research. There are people who have gone into a highly paid job commensurate with PhD (economics, politics, computer science, statistics) but most just start at the bottom.
Accounting, tech etc graduate schemes take anybody.

It’s really a logical function of time. If your job needs X skills and someone else has been collecting that for more years they will progress more quickly. If you’re a high achiever PhD holder and progress quickly. Great - but you could’ve done so much more if you’d started earlier!

@Bluffysummers there are loads of opportunities in tech. You don’t need to learn ‘coding’ either and can have a PhD in underwater basket weaving, doesn’t matter.
Projecy management,product management, service management etc.
Of course if you DO want to be technical you can check out something like code first girls but you can earn lots without it anyway. Programming isn’t for everyone.
This isn’t the point of thread so DM me if you want to know more

An Msc / Phd is usually equivalent to 5 years work experience. I beg to differ! Strongly!

I have a friend with a PhD in Biological sciences - now a practicing accountant for a non-scientific institution.

I got my PhD the same year as you @Bluffysummers. Also in humanities. I was one of lucky few and landed a permanent job less than a year on from graduating. But I know I’m unusual and incredibly fortunate. I’ve watched many PhD colleagues do the go-round of postdocs, one-year jobs etc. and many have now given up on academia. The ones who are clinging on tend to have family support, e.g. parents who live in or around a major city so they can live at home, or a husband/wife who has a ‘proper’ job so the academic spouse can take on hourly jobs, or wealthy family so is being funded externally to take on badly-paid jobs and move constantly. It’s no way to live.

When students come to me about PhDs I try to be honest about the situation. Particularly if they will be self-funding. The problem for us academics is that PhD supervision is an important part of promotion requirements, plus you get allocated time away from UG teaching in order supervise, so there are incentives to take on students, leading to far too many. Even if each member of staff in my department had only 1 student at any one time, that would still be 40+ PhDs. Many colleagues have far more than 1 at any given time.

If I had kids of my own (I don’t currently) who were interested in doing a PhD in my subject my advice would probably be:

1. only if fully funded. And that has to be guaranteed for at least 3 years; situations like yours OP where you have to reapply each year are awful.

2. Only Russell Group, but really I’d say only Oxbridge, a handful of the London unis, maybe Durham or St Andrew’s. This is incredibly snobby I know, but it’s the reality I see unfortunately: most of those getting jobs come from those universities, or from the top American colleges.

3. Have a plan A, plan B, plan C. I know you said you had these OP and they didn’t quite work out. It happens and it’s unfortunate. But someone starting now should still be thinking through multiple options.

Yes, a waste of time if you are doing it just to improve your employment prospects, unless you want to be an academic and have a realistic chance at that.

Is your PhD competitively fully funded because you are really good at your subject? Are you also really really committed to academic work?-- If so, you have a reasonable chance. If not, but you are on a studentship deal involving some teaching, perhaps with fees paid, you have some chance, but not much. Otherwise, no real prospects.

Look at the numbers: how few jobs, how many PhDs?

Outside academia, PhD does not really directly help with employment.

But, but , there are other reasons to do a PhD. It might help indirectly with employment, via the self- and time-management skills you pick up ... or the networking opportunities ... or, well, other things too, easy enough to see.

Or you might want to do it for other reasons entirely. Development of yourself as a thinking, rounded person; interest in the subject matter; curiosity; adding to the sum of human knowledge and understanding; avoidance of wage-slavery for a few years; meeting and learning from clever and interesting people; cocking a snook at contemporary money-hungry societal mores; a sense of achievement ... etc., etc.

My own reason? I got interested in a puzzle, tangentially connected to the subject of my first degree, found there was no extant solution no-one knew the answer! and started working on it myself (part-time of course; I am no Andrew Wiles, no-one was going to pay me). Some years later, with much assistance from some really clever people and following various part-time degrees in different places around the world I signed on for a PhD, finally solved the puzzle to my own satisfaction, wrote the thesis, published a few papers on it, wrote the book. (I would like to say, '...retired on the royalties', but no, this is very much a niche topic; your local university library probably has a copy, though very likely unread. It made me a little money, but you need to be super good to live off academic royalties and I am certainly not that.)

Doing a PhD was maybe not the best thing I ever did: that was having my children and enjoying family life. It definitely gets into the top ten, though (along with ... no I really mustn't!)

So, for me, definitely not a waste of time. But, you will realise, this was mainly through good luck.

[quote LegMeChicken]@Bluffysummers there are loads of opportunities in tech. You don’t need to learn ‘coding’ either and can have a PhD in underwater basket weaving, doesn’t matter.
Projecy management,product management, service management etc.
Of course if you DO want to be technical you can check out something like code first girls but you can earn lots without it anyway. Programming isn’t for everyone.
This isn’t the point of thread so DM me if you want to know more[/quote]
@LegMeChicken I will PM you actually, one of the jobs you listed is what I currently do but within the financial services sector, so I’d like to hear a bit more from you :)

@MiSimit I’m also a big believer in education but the meaning of it has changed. I used to think university = education.

However all of things that make one ‘educated’. Learning, exchanging knowledge, improving understanding, inspiring. There’s more of this outside universities these days!

I was very disappointed to find that my course mates at a prestigious university weren’t interested in engaging. They wanted to pass exams, get their 100K jobs. But not interested in how the world worked.

My mentors, collègues etc when I started work exhibited more depth of understanding, curiosity. Some were apprentices, some 20 years in industry with no degree. I’m humbled by all of them and what they’ve thought me.

All a ‘degree’ proves is that, like exams, within a very rigid set of rules you’ve managed to demonstrate knowledge. And a PhD - that you have expertise in a very narrow sphere of knowledge.

Now if said knowledge is required, yes absolutely degree is worth it. I don’t just mean STEM. Obviously for things like diplomacy and international relations we need people who understand the history and context of a region.

We need to move away from this obsessions with paper qualifications and the world is already changing. We do blind interviews, and emphasise understanding.

Knowledge can be taught. But is useless without understanding. I always hire for potential,

I had a few friends that did PhDs and they all seemed to go a bit sort of bitter, like they thought that they were superior but also deeply unhappy with themselves. They've got better since but they all seem slightly damaged somehow, hard to describe exactly.

My PhD was useful in the sense that it gave me a longer time to gather relevant work experience and my experience abroad at a prestigious institution intrigued future employers and opened up some doors.

The idea that someone at 18 knows exactly what they want to do and the type of work experience they need to achieve it without some trial and error is unrealistic in a lot of cases. So some people with the capability can use a PhD to gain more time.

If your PhD is fully funded and you use it to find work experience opportunities you will probably be fine. One thing to note is that I didn't publish much and focused on building up my CV when I wasn't directly working on the PhD. So you do have to sacrifice the academic path fairly early

The idea that someone at 18 knows exactly what they want to do and the type of work experience they need to achieve it without some trial and error is unrealistic in a lot of cases. So some people with the capability can use a PhD to gain more time.

Who starts a PhD at 18?

*potential meaning if the candidate can understand something they’ve never seen before . Better than someone who memorises everything or labours away for ages

OP I mean this kindly and you seem rational so I'll make this observation and hope you don't feel frustrated by it

I am 46. 25 years ago, I thought PhDs were a waste of time and money unless you were already on an academic career path, or if earning wasn't a priority.

Over the years, I have seen so many letters from late 20s with PhDs, wanting work experience. I am surprised that people are still falling for academia, especially with the terrible reputation it has now.

I appreciate you are annoyed at how things have turned out, but "don't believe the hype" is a life lesson that I thought most people learned early. I think extended adolescence really isn't helping and I appreciate that's a cultural shift that you're unlucky to experience.

But there's lots of work around now, warehouse packing etc and frankly that will teach you much more useful life stuff.

You mention an hour commute. That's pretty normal. Even for a shit job.

I could have written your post 20 years ago, OP. I didn't get the promised academic roles despite "groundbreaking" work, and I am so glad that happened. I don't regret it anymore, but for a long time, I did and had the student loans to prove it! This, despite loving and having some personal investment in my subject. I will never match the salaries of uni friends who went straight into work, but I can support my family comfortably and enjoy the creativity my business partners empower me to have. There are roles that value critical thinking, research and writing ability-- which every humanities Ph.D should have. It took a while to figure this out, but stick with the people in your life who value your skills and background. I have done anything and everything, from starting a creative business, moving overseas and starting over, and yes my share of terrible, underpaid jobs of all kinds, sometimes three at once. I can now look at my collection of books with good memories. Build relationships with people who value you and your work. Outrun that negativity. You have done it and there is no changing that.

I don't know anyone who did one. Not sure I even know anyone who did a masters although lots who went to law school, accountancy and a few who did MBA's later on in life. A PHD always seemed like a waste of time to me unless you needed it to become an acdamic.

Oh sorry, I've just seen your later posts
MN keeps crashing or not displaying

So you're not a fresh PhD but have other options for earning, that's cool.

One of my best friends did. Hers was in Classics of all things, and her dissertation was something about the use of art in medieval medicine, or something.

She was only really able to do it because her dad died when she was a teenager, and she received a house and a sizeable inheritance (her parents divorced when she was a little kid). The house was rented out when she was younger, and that income from rent paid for her PhD.

Afterwards she found it really difficult to get a job in the area of her study. She was funded (barely) to go to New York for about 8 weeks for some sort of research project, but that has been it.

Ever since then she's pretty much worked in what amounts to little more than a call centre for her local council, managing the allocation of carers to help people in the community. She's not in any way using her studies, and hasn't made any progression in her career in a decade.

She's only able to do this because she now lives in the ex-dads house, which had the mortgage paid off donkeys years ago, so her living costs are very low.

I don't think she regrets it, because it was no financial cost to her to do so, but it hasn't provided her any long-term benefit.

It really depends what you wish to do.

In my parents' cases - both PhDs led them to Professorships eventually - and they are now close to retiring.

In my case - the PhD led to a Professorship for me at a fairly young age/early stage in an academic career.

In my cousin's case - the PhD has led to many years of struggling to find a job - from post doc to post doc and this may lead to quitting academia.

It really depends on so much including some luck.

PS: when I say a PhD "led to" Professorships for me and my parents in the previous generation - obviously I dont mean PhD immediately led to Professorship but that it started an academic career at Junior Lecturer level which then led to various promotions to eventually making Prof. Just thought my writing was unclear!

@EmmaH2022

OP I mean this kindly and you seem rational so I'll make this observation and hope you don't feel frustrated by it

I am 46. 25 years ago, I thought PhDs were a waste of time and money unless you were already on an academic career path, or if earning wasn't a priority.

Over the years, I have seen so many letters from late 20s with PhDs, wanting work experience. I am surprised that people are still falling for academia, especially with the terrible reputation it has now.

I appreciate you are annoyed at how things have turned out, but "don't believe the hype" is a life lesson that I thought most people learned early. I think extended adolescence really isn't helping and I appreciate that's a cultural shift that you're unlucky to experience.

But there's lots of work around now, warehouse packing etc and frankly that will teach you much more useful life stuff.

You mention an hour commute. That's pretty normal. Even for a shit job.

Yeah it’s not so much the commute of an hour but the fact in that specific role, it was an hr away no traffic so 2 in traffic each way and I’d be teaching 2 hrs a day, parking was hideously expensive and because I wasn’t ft I wasn’t entitled to a parking space. And because it was such a small amount of work, ‘far’ away and spread over the course of a week, it would’ve been pretty hard to get another job part time ‘career’ job at the same time and a lot of the money earned would have been spent in commuting and parking. That was my point, rather than a moan about the commute itself.

I went to a private school and there was 0 emphasis on careers it was just that you had to go to uni. I begged my parents for a gap year but was forced to go, I even had a job a bar one but then I wanted to do experience abroad, it was go to uni or get out of the house, i had no where to go so I went to uni. Looking back, I do wish I had called their bluff. My family were always v paper qualifications matter get them you’ll go far…plus then you add in snr academics saying you could go far here, i did fall for the hype