Mestroyer comments on Grad Student Advice Repository - Less Wrong

10 Post author: Stabilizer 14 April 2013 09:28AM

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Comment author: JoshuaFox 14 April 2013 01:09:06PM *  7 points [-]

Only do a PhD if

  1. You enjoy doing the PhD. This includes enjoying the subject, and having a very good adviser.
  2. You see that you won't get stuck; that you'll finish relatively fast.
  3. You have a full fellowship. No using loans or savings, at all. Nor should you fund tuition from work income, though it's OK to work as a teaching assistant and it's OK to make a little spending money on the side in a minor part-time job.
  4. You have other career options available.

If all these are true, go for it! You can live the student life and have fun becoming the best in the world in something.

Background: I did a PhD in Harvard and am now working in something else. All four conditions are true for me. As far as I can, I would have done no worse or better in this career if I had gone straight into it from my BA.

Comment author: Mestroyer 14 April 2013 01:31:19PM 6 points [-]

All of these are true for me (or could be true if I applied to grad school again, and this time accepted offers like ones I rejected this time), but I am not going to get a PhD, because an MS in my field (computer engineering) is sufficient to get the high paying jobs I want, so I can start making lots of money for effective altruism sooner.

Comment author: roystgnr 15 April 2013 02:41:46PM 3 points [-]

Your experience isn't just true "for me", it's true statistically. A Master's degree in most STEM fields (IIRC) is an investment, and a better investment than you can find in the market if you're smart enough. A doctorate in most (all?) fields is partly a consumable - it leads to higher expected starting salaries, and even higher salaries than one would have had by spending those PhD years accumulating job experience, but not enough higher to make up for the lost income during those years.

Of course, a PhD is valuable in more ways than just income, and I don't regret mine despite some delays which make the above economics worse. But everyone should know what they're getting into.

Comment author: JoshuaFox 15 April 2013 09:52:58AM 2 points [-]

Sure, the PhD is on the whole an income-reducer, whether because of the opportunity cost for those years, or because of the reduced income afterwards.

It's only worthwhile if you enjoy it enough that the reduced income doesn't bother you.

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