Is a PhD Degree Really Worth It?

According to the U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS, advanced education is associated with a higher income. On average, obtaining a Master’s degree has the potential to increase income by 16% to 44%!

An increasing number of professional workers have obtained or are pursuing an advanced degree after a Bachelor’s. Nowadays, it is getting harder to stand out in the job market without an advanced or terminal degree. However, a longer time spent in school also means a heavier financial burden and less experience in the industry. So, is it worth it to pursue a doctorate degree?

Doctorate degrees usually means highly SPECIALIZED skills, which is a coin with two sides.

What You Gain with a PhD Degree?

Why should you get a PhD? Here are some of the important transferable skills I acquired during my PhD studies. These skills are not new to PhD, but my PhD experience completely transformed me in these skills.

Research Skills

In bachelor’s programs, we mainly learn from professors and textbooks. In Master’s programs, we learn to consume research and even get to try our own thesis projects. Overall. for Bachelor's and Master’s, the goal of studies is to pass the courses and apply the knowledge to practice.

However, the focus of PhD studies is no longer limited to learning and application, but to conduct research inquiries and become an expert in a specific field of interest.

Research is defined as a systematic inquiry of a particular phenomenon. Many people quote the word “research” in our daily lives. When we have a question, we “research” about it. But is your research systematic and follows a procedure that can be replicated by others?

From a broad perspective, there are two main types of research — literature review and empirical studies — conducting a comprehensive review with the existing literature to learn about something, and conducting experiments or surveys to understand something. Whichever type of research we do, we need to follow a systematic procedure, and it has to be highly replicate-able.

In fact, outside of the academic world, we can apply such outstanding research skills to succeed in our lives. We can pretty much learn about anything with research, and we can conduct a systematic experiments of our own. I can quickly search and consume research articles in other fields to use them for my own benefit. The most important part is, we can understand the biases and limitations when consuming any information, because we have been there, as researchers.

Writing Skills

Publications are the most weighted indicator for career success in academia. Unlike Bachelor’s and Master’s programs, GPA does not mean much in PhD studies. The key to success is to conduct high-quality research and produce highly cited academic research articles in peer-reviewed journals. As doctoral students, we are reviewed annually in terms of how many academic articles we produced and published. EVERY DAY IS A WRITING DAY, if not doing labs/experiment/data analysis/teaching. Without good writing skills, regardless of how good the research design is, the paper will not sell well in academic journals. As a PhD student, I used to write 4–6 hours a day just to write and rewrite papers to publish.

Writing skills are so useful for almost any job in any career, and of course, for writing this story. My PhD studies have taught me to write clear, concise, logical, structured articles, reports, Emails, and even memos at work. Yes, it takes a long time to develop writing skills; and it takes a lot of critiques, feedback, and tears for me to learn. But it is very beneficial for my career and life.

Presentation and Public Speaking Skills

Attending academic conferences was one of my favorite experiences during my PhD studies. We get to travel to different cities and meet people from all over the country and even the world. At these conferences, we usually present and share our own research while attending other sessions to learn about the on-going topics in the field, the new research techniques, and network with other scholars.

Presenting a research study is like telling a story. Actually, any type of public speaking is a type of storytelling. It took me a while to come to this realization — the art of speech is essential the ability to tell a story that is relate-able to the audience.

OK… I am still working on that. It took me about 30 presentations to learn how to grasp the attention of my audience instead of encouraging them to sleep. It is even more challenging to practice public speaking with dry academic speech and lecture, but this skill can be transferred to all kinds of careers later in life.

BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY, OTHER SOFT SKILLS!

Other than the technical skills, I also developed many important soft skills that are important to surviving my PhD programs, which in turn, helps me later in life.

Networking Skills

Because doctorate programs mean highly specialized skills, there are not that many individuals possess the same skill. This means, you are socializing within a very small circle of network. It is very important to maintain a good reputation while networking with people with the same interest for collaborations. As an introvert, it was hard for me to step out of my comfort zone and talk to people. But we all have to eventually step out of our caves. Networking and developing professional relationships are essential in any career path, and academia provides a relatively safer and less cut-throat environment to practice these skills.

Collaboration Skills

We all love to share our responsibilities and tasks with someone else. The more people work on the same thing, the less work each person has to do, right? Well… Not necessarily. Let us borrow the Activity Theory from Vygotsky to explain this. If individuals in the same activity system joined with different motives, various goals, and were accustomed to different tools, the conflicts in the activity system would not motivate development of the system or progress in the activity, but result in chaos and missed goals.

Ok… I am getting nerdy here… But my point is, collaboration is not as always as easy and helpful if not organized effectively. It is a skill to communicate effectively and respectfully with teammates, to resolve team conflicts, and establish rules and goals to accomplish the tasks. I struggled a lot first in my communication with others. I was too blunt and straightforward, and it was difficult for others to take in my opinions. Sometimes, we would also spend hours meeting without generating an action. But I am glad I could learn these hard lessons being a student instead of in my actual workplace.

Productive Habits

There are so many things going on during my years of completing PhD. It is a marathon, not a sprint. To survive, I needed to develop consistent habits to be productive and be persistent in achieving my goals. These habits are carried on after graduation to my adult life. Now, even with a full-time job, I still work out regularly, maintain YouTube channels, write this blog, take care of my cat, and enjoy my life.

Growth Mindset

During my studies, I came across this theory of growth mindset vs. fixed mindset by Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck. Essentially, rather than viewing my abilities as static, I now see myself with potentials to grow. There are only things that I can’t imagine, but if I can visualize it, I can do do it.

My mother never went to college. As a result, I was never expected to even attempt graduate schools. I have always only been a “good enough” student who can do “average things” in life. I used to think, I can’t do because I am not smart enough, my family not rich enough, I am not hardworking enough. Completing a PhD degree is definitely something my family never expected, and it definitely is a huge milestone in my life.

My experience doing PhD studies completely changed my mindset. I used to say no to things. I believed I can’t. Because that is all I hear from my family. But my mentors in graduate school have been encouraging me from day one. From the timid girl who always said “I can’t”, to the confident woman who says “I can”. This seems to be a minor change, but it has a great impact on my life. This mindset has built momentum for me to try new things, to pursue more knowledge, to learn more skills, to not to be afraid of failure.

But What Are on the Opposite Side of the Coin?

~A PhD degree may seem glorious, but it is not always that perfect.~

A Narrower Career Choice

As we progress in our academic careers, we narrow the focus of our studies to be the expert in a very specific area. In other words, we claim our niche. But this also means that when we are on the job market, our career choices are more limited.

Most likely, we want to go for jobs in academia, such as tenure-track positions at universities. Alternatively, research institutions, non-profit or for-profit institutions, such as labs, can also be good options. However, there is only a limit number of openings for tenure-track positions each year, and one needs to be able to search jobs nationally or even internationally to land a “dream job”. This is particularly hard for scholars with families who need to stay in a specific city for family reasons. Couples often need to compromise their careers to support one’s academia job trajectories. These tenure-track jobs are also very competitive. Last year, for one job opening, over 140 scholars with PhD degrees applied for the same job.

Alternatively, there are many openings for non-tenure-track lecturer jobs in both four-year institutions and community colleges. But the salary is paid by the number of courses you teach. It could range from $2,000 to $4,000 per course, and each course lasts 4 months (one typical academic semester). As a result, you may only make $2,500 per month before tax teaching full time as a non-tenure track lecturer. With the amount of time and monetary investment on the advanced degrees, this monetary return is really low.

PhD Does NOT Mean SIGNIFICANT Salary Increase

So I landed a job in the industry with my PhD degree. Having a higher degree than the requirement for this position means I get compensation in my annual salary. YESS!!

How much is this compensation, though?

$1,500 per year!

My four years of PhD studies with all my research experience, publications, competitive grant awards landed me an increase of $1,500 in my annual salary.

Honestly, money is money. I can buy a lot of things with $1,500. I can purchase the flight to an exotic destination for my vacation with this money. However, I also noticed that there is an annual salary increase for the staff working in the same position. The increase is roughly $1,000 per year for the first several years at this professional position. So my coworker with a Master’s degree makes $2,000 more than me annually at the same position, only because he has 3 more years of experience than me.

This just leads me to a cruel truth — PhD does NOT mean a significant salary increase in the industry.

Less Experience in the Industry

I entered the industry at the age of 30.

Yes, I have to admit that I have spent so much time in graduate schools. But I did not just study during my PhD years. I was actively involved in many research projects, I taught college courses and graduate courses in my institution as part of the fellowship. I was actively working, just not full-time.

But, it did NOT count as professional work experience in the industry.

I asked around my friends in the other fields. They got the same answers from HR. The harsh truth is — longer full-time experience in the Industry means MORE than a higher degree, especially when it comes to monetary return.

The Sacrifice in Other Aspects of Life

I am on the older side of the millennial. Most of my friends from college have already had their second child. But I just graduated and have barely enjoyed my life yet.

A PhD degree is very different from a Master’s. It is very demanding because you are not just worried about your course grades, but to lay out your career path as a scholar. I have to initiate, collaborate, participate in many research projects, to write and re-write to publish, and to actively network online and in many academic events. The coursework itself is demanding too. In social science, you may have to read 100+ pages per day and write three essays per week just to catch up. In science, many graduate students live in their labs just to make progress in their research.

Often times, we have to sacrifice a lot of things such as family planning, vacation, and social activities. We have to learn to say no to a lot of immediate gratification for the unknown potential future gains. It takes a lot of discipline to be a good researcher and scholar, and it takes a lot of caring to be a good professor. Many times, I have to turn my back on things I wanted to do, experiences I wanted to have, and people I wanted to hang out with. As an old Chinese saying goes, you have to let go of things in order to gain.

If I can choose again…

If I could go back to five years ago, I would apply again.

Life may have been different if I did not go for the PhD experience. I may have had children, a different job, and a different mindset.

But, sometimes, I just have to let go of some immediate monetary gains for the transforming experience to develop my mindset, habits, and discipline that may lead to long term success.

References

Elka Torpey and Dalton Terrell, “Should I get a master’s degree?,” Career Outlook, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, September 2015.

Hasan, Helen, and Alanah Kazlauskas. “Activity theory: Who is doing what, why and how.” (2014): 9.