PhD : A calamity

by phdscam

And you don’t have to spend 6+ years to know it. And, you can fight to have a career, if you choose so. The sad state of careers for science PhDs are stated in many places, eg. http://mashable.com/2013/09/20/why-you-dont-love-science/.

Those writing thesis must know by now that satisfying a professor isn’t easy with your logic. Shouldn’t it be the case PhD students take their professor’s words with extreme cynicism? So, how does a PhD help your career, after all, it’s a very long commitment, 6+ years. There’s no money, again, will you have a job that you possibly want to do? Does a non-permanent postdoc salary with meaningless research satisfy you? Would it be possible for you get a “real world” job? Would it be easy for you to switch from academia to real-world job? If you ask former PhDs, they will readily tell you that it’s fairly difficult to be reasonably satisfied with “after PhD” career. There is a pathetic and ridiculous glut of postdocs in the market and this situation isn’t going to change anytime soon.

Real world isn’t the dream world you might have imagined in the cocoon of academic world, spun up by delusional logic of your professor. It doesn’t take an Einstein to get a real world job, however, wasting time in academia would give you a hard time when you try to convince your soon-to-be-boss why you want to leave academia.

Every PhD seems to have enough ‘anecdotal’ evidence that PhDs aren’t happy, yet – the professors will never agree on record and will actively imply the opposite.

Tenacity, although a good thing occasionally, trying to finish a PhD (with no matter how much time it takes attitude), is in general a career suicide. PhDs are extremely tired after finishing and without a suitable career path, you may end up in post-doc vacation. Doing multiple postdocs will take you to the edge of retirement. Is that a ‘happy career ending’?