10 reasons not to do a PhD
Reason 1: Loss of dignity through not being able to financially support oneself throughout your PhD candidature. Hence eventually you will become financially reliant upon either your partner or parents or not finish your PhD. Work in the end of the candidature is a catch 22 situation as you need to be spending that time working on your PhD thesis, not working for hard cold cash which is needed for survival. Even if you are lucky enough to receive a scholarship this will not last long enough. Nor was I told by anyone that I was entitled to take 3 months of holiday leave and 3 months of sick leave during my scholarship, which I would have taken after my mother died. So no-one will tell you what you are entitled to either while doing a PhD.
Reason 2: Loss of at least 3 years to 6 years of your life to a project that does not increase your chances of employment. During this time you will have to put off things like buying a house, having kids and doing any other creative projects.
Reason 3: Dim job prospects. Doing a PhD will not increase your chances of employment in either the broader 'labour market' or at the university. In regards to the broader 'labour market' employers will see you as 'overqualified' or wonder why you took so long to get a bit of paper. In terms of the university the phrase 'it is not what you know, but who you know' is relevant here.
Reason 4: Social isolation. The task of doing a PhD is fundamentally isolating. For instance only you will really understand your research project so only people with very similar research interests will get what you are doing, hence you cannot really talk about what you are doing to many people even friends or close loved ones (who at first feign interest and then eventually don't want to know about it). You also have to spend a lot of time alone researching, reading and writing, which is not conducive to maintaining friendships and relationships. Friendships will fall by the wayside as you do a PhD.
Reason 5: Alienation. While I used to believe that there was something called an 'academic community', sometimes referred to as 'collegiality' by some academics, this does not really exist at university. So if you are looking for intellectual engagement look elsewhere. There is a good chance that you may actually become 'dumber' at the university due to a combination of overspecialization, and lack of regular rigorous argument or theoretical engagement throughout your candidature. Many candidates have been forced to the web and blogging for intellectual engagement. In a way the first statement about alienation is accurate in only a limited sense. Of course there is an "in group" and an "out group" within any school at any university or any workplace for that matter. But perhaps I feel I have become even more alienated after being dumped by the "in group".
Reason 6: You are forced into competition against all. Perhaps this is a tad Hobbesian of me, but what the hell, I'll continue because I'm in that kind of mood today. Every one of your fellow PhD students is, at the end of the day, future competition against you for either full-time jobs or post-doctoral positions. And during your candidature your fellow PhD students are the ones that you have to compete against for casual work. Hence there is no real reason to collaborate with fellow PhD students, which is something that has been quite noticeable during my experience.
Reason 7: Casual work and the accompanying exploitation. While all work is exploitative in a Marxist sense, casual academic work is exploitative in a 'do not get paid for the actual hours that you do' sense. Or another way of looking at it, if you do casual academic work you end up working for free. Sure the figure looks like a lot per hour, but that figure is actually for 6 hours work which reduces what you earn to below the minimum wage. So either you don't do the job properly or you end up working for the university for nothing.
Reason 8: Poor health and bad posture. The life of the mind is unfortunately not necessarily the life of the body. You will spend a lot of time sitting at a computer or reading. Anyone wonder why so many academics are overweight or have fat arses? It is because being an academic is a sedentary activity. In terms of other health concerns, even if you do regular exercise every day the amount of sitting at computer is bad for your back, neck and shoulders, which is where I am getting increasing pain.
Reason 9: Becoming angry. Not too much to say here. Other than my anger at the moment stems from my disappointment at the university and the people there. I want to get off this ride now. I want my life back.
Reason 10: Becoming bitter. Self explanatory really.
8 comments:
Nearly a year later... Is this still true?
Hi Erica, sorry I have taken so long to get back to your question. Only just got internet back a few days ago.
I think still I agree with the overall gist of a lot of what I wrote here. Is this true? Well it was "true" to what I was feeling at the time.
The other day, in casual conversation, I said "I would not wish a PhD on my worst enemy." BUT I also said, "Even if I don't like someone, their personality, their research work, or their politics, I can still respect the fact that they have actually finished a PhD."
I'm desperately hoping that this perspective will change once I have submitted my thesis. Hopefully in January, but every time I think I have a submission date, something else comes up that needs fixing.
Having said all this, I have accepted the fact that I may leave university disappointed, angry and bitter about my overall PhD experience. It is only through acceptance of that this may be the case that I have had any peace of mind.
Sorry if that is not much of an answer.
Funny thing, that. I am wrapping up my MA in Literature and applying for PhD programs in the fall. Still, I have doubts. What do you think contributed most to the sentiments you expressed above? The school? The department? The people? The material? Or should you simply have pursued another career entirely? What would you have done differently?
A PhD in literature and folklore really appeals to me now (benefit of hindsight). I also originally tossed up doing medical anthropology.
The people in the school was one reason I initially opted for the university that I did. I liked them. A year after starting, because of the debt that the university had found itself, 14 (from memory) people within the faculty lost their jobs. Then my first primary supervisor left for another uni. Then my second supervisor left. Then I organized new primary supervision. Then that supervisor left for Dublin, and remains on paper my second supervisor. Then I was without a supervisor and anyone to look after me at uni, which is pretty vital. Then I found a 'caretaker' who I changed for my final supervisor. So my supervision has been very variable. Plus according to the stats the more supervisors you have the more likely you are to drop out.
Then there is the issue of casual tutoring work, which has been both enjoyable, exploitative and disappointing. Leaving specific details aside, I was repeatedly bullied by tenured staff, repeatedly humiliated, and repeatedly infantilized. After I stopped working at the uni where I do my study and then worked for a uni elsewhere I found that work could be much better. In fact I ended up winning the Dean's teaching award outside of my own uni last year.
In terms of the material, I love what I have researched and discovered. But I'm sick to death of trying to relate this to a reader in a PhD thesis form. It is actually quite limited in what you can do. Plus a huge amount of amazing stories that I was told have ended up being cut out of the work. But that is part of the problem of doing life histories.
Anyway, from what you have written I strongly suspect you are in the US (considering doing PhD there), rather than Australia and it is probably quite different in many respects. But perhaps the same in others.
Good luck with the applications!
So true. Most people who start of Phds quit after a year or two. Those that are gullible enough to stay on often find after graduating (as i did) that they are overqualified and therefore unemployable. I usually exclude my phd from my cv and regret having done it in the first place due to the financial debt its caused.
I definitely think a PhD makes you overqualified for a lot of jobs. And paradoxically after doing one you are also usually underqualified for tenured academic jobs.
I think the tricky thing is relating to other people (particularly non-academic types) what you can do because of having done a PhD.
Both me and my partner ended up with massive credit card debts by the end of it, but because I was fortunate enough to have a scholarship and be fee-free I probably do not have anywhere near the same scale of debt as those who do one in the US or elsewhere. Although I do also have over $35,000 (HECS) student debt from undergraduate study.
All I really want of this post is to actually put some of the reasons not to do a PhD out there, because if there is a doubt in a person's mind about doing one then they probably should be informed of some of the cons.
Having said all this there is tremendous enjoyment to be had from doing a PhD by research too and I realize how much of a privilege it was for me now.
I also realize that this post has become the number one post on Google for not doing a PhD. I have 1000s of hits on this one from people typing things into Google like 'don't do a PhD', 'stuck PhD', 'reasons not to do PhD', 'reasons to do a PhD'.
So do what you want. Don't ever let someone tell you not to do something. Sure as hell not me. But make sure you are informed of some of the impacts this major decision will have on your life while you undertake a PhD.
"I also realize that this post has become the number one post on Google for not doing a PhD. I have 1000s of hits on this one from people typing things into Google like 'don't do a PhD', 'stuck PhD', 'reasons not to do PhD', 'reasons to do a PhD'."
Exactly what I just did. I'm in the UK and I find that I'm overqualified for most jobs with my MSc and underqualified for the ones I would love because of lack of experience.
I've turned to PhD applications, truthfully, because after two years of unemployment I don't know what else to do. It's a horrible reason but it's true. I'm scared that if I did get onto a PhD program (I'll here in the next few days) I'll make myself even more unemployable, especially as spending my whole working life as an academic doesn't apeal, and of course because job prospects are crap.
I really just want to improve on my research and critical thinking, problem solving skills etc.. and find an interesting position within the pharma industry.
I definitely think that you have to be selective about including it in your CV or not. But not including it does pose an issue because then there is a gapping black hole for 3+ years on your CV. The other thing is that it is still an achivement worth including as part of who you are and where you have come from.
In terms of overall employability there are a number of questions about getting this as a qualification.
In my opinion after my partner has worked in medical science science for almost 10 years it seems a lot different to social science and there is a bit more of a career path, at least here in Australia:
1. You are taken on by a lab to do an honours year in science.
2. You either then apply for PhD positions or Research Assistant jobs. Very often at the same lab you did honours for.
3. You either start work as an RA and do that for a number of years, and if lucky get your name on number of papers which can then be turned into a masters. Or you start a PhD with scholarship or payment from a lab.
4. If you don't want to do a PhD you pretty much get stuck being an RA, which is less pay with often greater work than post docs. RAs still often go to work for pharma-corps because the key thing is sometimes being able to get experiments to work rather than purely qualifications. RAs also work in hospitals doing more applied test type experiments.
5. You finish PhD then do post-doc work in another lab somewhere. Or turn to do other science related work either in sales or for development by pharmacorps.
This is a bit of a simplification but there is a career path in science, where there is none in social science and the like.
I do think if you are getting nowhere in terms of career and you can apply for a PhD (got the marks and qualifications to do so) then you should consider it.
But there may be other ways of getting to the same point: i.e. doing a RAs position for some years to gain that experience and chance of publications may mean you come out with more money and less stress.
It is a gamble though in terms of gaining employment by doing one. As I said I'm not sure employers get it and it is still the bare minimum for academic jobs and you'll be underqualified for these if that is all you have there. Plus the generational change is still not really happening in Australian universities at least.
You can also put yourself under a lot of financial stress by doing one too and if you already have done a lot of study it may also be a bit of an ask. But if you are uneployed and doing one means scholarship or financial support then you may be better off.
Anyway pros and cons and all that aside, ultimately it is up to you.
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