Hi, I''m Casey. I'm a professor, and this is my first in a series of
videos about applying to PhD programs.
It's that time of year, right? I've actually been running
admissions in our department for our PhD program
in Information Science for about five years, and I have read a lot of
applications, and I have talked to a lot of prospective PhD students
about their questions and concerns about deciding to apply for a PhD. And one of
the first questions that I tend to ask people is:
why do you want a PhD, and are those the right reasons?
Because honestly, in general, a PhD is not a great life choice.
You're going to work really hard. You're going to be broke.
You're going to struggle with things like stress and imposter syndrome.
And actually if you're a current PhD student watching this and you are
struggling with some of these things, you might want to check out my
previous video. Okay. So I want you to take a minute to think
about why you want to get a PhD. I'm actually
going to give you a second to think about it.
[cheerful music]
Okay. so now that you have those reasons in your head,
I'm going to start out with a list of reasons that are not
good ones. If these are your reasons, then you might
want to rethink things. First: you're really good at school, and
you want to keep doing it. You might be thinking, for example, I love
taking classes so much and I just want to keep taking
college classes forever. A PhD program is not about taking
classes. Like, sure you're going to take some but
they're not the most important part. You basically just take classes
to learn the things that you need to learn in order to do your research. Plus
you're going to be done with classes after a couple of years and then the
entire rest of the time you're going to be doing other things.
In a PhD, grades don't really matter when you're even taking those classes.
Like, sure you're a PhD student, so you're going to get A's, but nobody really cares.
But in general, being good at school often means that you're able to get the
right answers. But a PhD is not about getting right
answers. It's much more about asking interesting
questions and then answering them yourself. And
people who are used to just being able to get the right answers actually tend
to really struggle with this. All right. Reason number two that is not
a good reason to pursue a PhD. And perhaps this is the most common one
unfortunately: You don't know what else to do. Here's
the thing. You're going to finish your PhD
eventually. And when you're done you still need to
get a job. And arguably having a PhD actually
limits your job prospects in some ways. Do the jobs that you could get with a
PhD seem way better than the jobs that you could get now.
If that's the case, sure, consider this. But if you could go get a job right
now, maybe you should do that. Unless you have other reasons for wanting to pursue
a PhD. But if it really is just a lack of
knowing what to do next, not a great reason. Being someone smart
who doesn't know what to do next is also not a great reason to go to law school.
All right. Number three that is a bad reason to want to get a PhD:
you want to make a lot of money!
You're going to be so disappointed. So there is
mixed research about the financial benefits of a PhD over a master's degree,
for example. I suspect that this varies by discipline.
However, even when it does help it's not a huge
amount. And in some fields, computer science
being one of them, there are jobs that you can easily get
with a master's degree that actually make way more money than the kinds of
jobs that you would have with a PhD in computer science.
This is especially true in fields where the dominant job
is academia. You definitely are not going to make a lot of money as a professor.
I mean professors, certainly make more money than, say, high school teachers.
But also how much money a professor makes varies
greatly by discipline. And this is market-based.
So, for example ,if you are an English professor you probably make less money
than a computer science professor. However, the reason for that is because a
computer science professor could go work at Google and make way
more money than they're making as a professor.
Also you're putting off saving money for retirement.
I finished my PhD at 33, and that's when I started saving for retirement, so
basically, I'm going to be working forever.
You're also going to be broke while you're in your PhD program.
Now for most PhD programs you're not paying to get your PhD.
And you are getting a stipend because you're working as a teaching assistant
or a research assistant. However, that stipend that you're getting
is not very much money, unfortunately. It's
probably enough to live on, but barely. Now you can definitely make it work. I
did. But it's tough. So if your great plan
is making money, then spending five or six years making no
money is probably not a logical way to do this. All right.
Next reason, not a great reason to get a PhD:
You really just want the prestige. You want letters after your name.
A lot of people feel pressured to have letters after their name because they
want to make sure that everyone knows that they're the smartest person in the
room. You don't need letters after your name
to prove your worth. There are tons of people who don't
have PhDs who have tons of respect for being experts in their area.
I mean, I've got two sets of letters after my name. I have a PhD and a JD and
nobody rolls out the red carpet for me. I did put it in my Twitter bio though.
Okay, finally, and perhaps this is the most important thing:
Not a good reason: you really think that you're going to have more solid job
prospects after you get a PhD. Sadly this is not
inherently true. This is also something that varies
greatly by discipline. But particularly if you're in a field where the dominant
job prospect is academia, make sure that you know what your actual
job prospects are. How many people are getting a PhD every
year versus what does the job market look like?
In some fields there just isn't enough demand
to fill the supply of PhD graduates. It's unfortunate but it's a reality.
Though there are other fields where you have a lot of prospects beyond
academia. So for example in my field, information
science, more on the computer science side,
it gives me some comfort knowing that my PhD students,
even if they do want a job in academia, if they can't get one they can probably
go work at Facebook or Google or something like that.
If you only want to be a professor, make sure you find out what the market is
like, and you need to think hard about your
level of risk aversion, and think about a contingency plan what
would you do if you weren't able to get an academic job.
Would you for example be willing to teach in K-12
if you really really want to be a teacher? Would you be willing to be an
adjunct professor? And would you be willing to consider other things?
But basically consider how much you want it for all of the other reasons that i'm about to explain.
and then weigh that against your job prospects and what might happen
afterwards. Okay so I started on a downer so that I
could end with the happy stuff. What are some really good reasons to
pursue a PhD? First: you want to teach at the
university level. Though there are some teaching positions
at universities for people with master's degrees,
there's certainly more for people who have PhDs.
This is also something where you might want to find out for your particular
discipline how important it is that you have a PhD
for the kind of teaching that you want to do.
But particularly at research universities and for tenure track
professors, you do have to have a PhD. You also need to make sure that you know
what it means to actually be a professor and in your particular field. So i could
probably do a whole video about thi,s but some quick
misconceptions about what it means to be a college professor.
They just teach a few classes and they don't really do that good of a job most
of the time anyway. They get summers off!
It's basically the same job as teaching elementary school but way easier because
you're teaching adults instead of five-year-olds and also you make way more money.
[chuckles]
Okay that said being a professor
is awesome. Especially if you love research, writing, and teaching. So if you
don't love all of those things make sure you know
what a professor in your field tends to be doing. Okay, a
great reason to get a PhD: you love academic writing.
One of my classmates in grad school actually decided to leave the PhD
program with a master's degree because he said he'd rather walk on broken glass
than write another academic research paper.
So if you don't love writing you should probably rethink this.
If you're going to be an academia, it's super important. Publish or perish and all
that. But even if your goal after your PhD is
to, for example, have a research job in industry and you're not going to be
writing more, you still have to spend five or six
years of your life writing a lot. I mean, even if you don't publish that
much you still have to write a dissertation.
A dissertation is basically a book, My dissertation for example was 56,000
words. To put that into perspective, The Great Gatsby was 50,000 words.
The notebook was 52,000 words. And if you're in a field where academics
write books mostly, like in the humanities,
then that should be what you want to do. So if that sounds
awesome, if you're like, let me write all the things,
then, yeah, getting a PhD might be a good choice for you.
I like writing all the things. Okay, next, a great reason to get a PhD is that you
really want to add knowledge to the world about a thing that you are
passionate about. Again, a PhD is not like undergrad where
you're learning things that other people already know. A PhD is about learning
something that no one knows yet. I's about finding
questions, asking them, and then answering them
yourself. And you have to be really passionate because especially near the
end when you're in like dissertation tunnel mode, you are going
to eat, sleep, and breathe that thing. It is super
intellectually rewarding to get a PhD if there is that thing that you're
passionate about. And if you don't know what that thing
is yet, figure it out because you might also not even know what discipline you
want to get your PhD in yet. All right, and finally, and maybe this is
one of the most important reasons to get a PhD: you want
research to be an important part of your career.
Now as a caveat, what research means looks really different in different
disciplines. So for example if you are in a
humanities discipline, that might mean writing books that
contain lots of analysis. If you're in a STEM field or a social
science this means doing original empirical work. I tend to think
of research more in terms of the latter, but you should definitely find out
what it means to do research in your discipline.
and that is something you want to do. Because basically, if you don't enjoy
this you won't enjoy your PhD. So my best advice if you are thinking of
getting a PhD is to do whatever research
looks like in your field, get experience doing it.
Not necessarily to make your applications better, but it'll also help,
but because you want to be sure that it's something you're going to enjoy
doing, if not for the next six years, for the
entire rest of your career. So of course this is not a comprehensive
list of good things or bad things or reasons why you might be considering a
PhD, but I hope that it's given you some
things to think about. If you're watching this and you're a
current PhD student or you already have a PhD,
why did you decide to pursue your PhD? And if you're still thinking about it,
are there any questions you have about what a PhD is all about?
For both of these leave comments down below and I will
do my best to answer. AsI said, this is the first in a series of videos about
applying for PhD programs that i'm trying to get out now while it is
application season and people are making these decisions.
My next video, which will be out next week, is about tips for the PhD
application process, especially with the focus on people who
are applying to STEM PhD programs. So if you want to make
sure you see that, subscribe, hit the bell, whatever. And
there will be more to come. If you have questions about the PhD
application process, make sure you leave those in comments
below so that i can try to answer them or to address them in future videos.
Alright, well, that's all I have for you right now.
I just want to say good luck as you are trying to make this really important
life decision. This is Casey. Thanks for watching.