<p>Well, you could ask the same question about any such sponsorship programs run by any companies. Plenty of companies sponsor people to get their full-time MBA’s, and you could easily ask why. Heck, I know quite a few people who are right now getting fully sponsored (with full tuition, living costs, and salary) to get their MBA’s from Harvard and MITSloan, and one could wonder why their companies would do that. It’s a really really sweet deal if you know you want to go back to the company. </p>
<p>I only know how the Merck program used to be run in the old days, I don’t know if it’s still run that way (or even if it’s being run at all anymore). The way it was run, as far as I can recall, is that Merck and certain participating schools have a pre-existing understanding where the school will get paid for every student that Merck sends them. These students are given up to 4 years of Merck stipend and partial salary (I think something like 75% of their normal salary), and Merck also pays the school for tuition and the like. Because of that, the students are freed from any TA/RA responsibilities, because the school is already getting paid by Merck, so the school doesn’t have to extract any compensatory cheap labor from the student directly. And as we both know, it is the TA/RA responsibilities that tend to soak up a whole lot of time on a doctoral student’s calendar. </p>
<p>Generally, the Merck work responsibilities tend to be quite light - like maybe one day every couple of weeks or every month you would be expected to show up to the Rahway office for meetings. You might be expected to be “on-call” to answer questions about your research if it pertains to anything that Merck is interested in. But generally, it’s a whole lot less onerous than the standard RA/TA responsibilities that normal doctoral students have to undertake. Hence, for the most part, the student can dedicate himself to the basic blocking&tackling of the doctoral process - meaning coursework, quals, and thesis, without having to worry about a lot of extraneous stuff. </p>
<p>As far as getting locked up at a below-market salary after graduation, yeah, I think that probably happens. However, I think when you weigh that below-market salary against the fact that you are still getting a near-full salary during those years that you’re getting your doctorate, I think you can’t help but conclude that you are coming out ahead overall financially. You will get a salary bump after graduation. You may not get the kind of salary that some unsponsored “free agent” would be getting, true. But it’s still good enough that I think you can’t help but come out ahead financially. </p>
<p>Come on, these Merck employees aren’t stupid. If they knew they weren’t coming out ahead financially, I’m fairly certain they wouldn’t go through with the program. It’s an optional program, you know. You are perfectly free to take a leave-of-absence from Merck to get your PhD sans sponsorship, and then return to Merck as an unsponsored free agent. The fact that a lot of employees would rather get sponsored means to me that either those employees calculate that they come out ahead by doing so, or else they’re stupid. I don’t think they’re stupid.</p>
<p>As far as what Merck will get out of it, obviously the biggest thing they get is that they get to lock up strong talent. It’s the same reason why companies offer perks like company gyms or company cars or pay for people to get their MBA’s - it’s a way to retain talent. I don’t believe that everybody in Merck is eligible for the sponsorship, only certain people identified as top talent, and it’s a way to keep this top talent from bolting to Pfizer or Glaxo or Amgen. It is through programs like this that companies can burnish their reputations as top-choice employers and hence get top people. </p>
<p>You ask why doesn’t Merck just hire fresh PhD’s from other schools, and of course they do. Plenty of them. But the sponsorship program gives them some certainty about what employees they have. Merck can make all these job offers to free agents, and have them all spurned. Yet through the sponsorship program, they get a guarantee that they are going to at least have some new PhDs coming into the company. Hence, you can see it as a “human capital risk arbitrage” maneuver. Merck pays upfront money to get some certainty about their future research staffing. </p>
<p>And I believe Merck also has a strong intellectual property covenant with the participating universities, such that Merck owns any and all rights to the research that the students produce. I think that’s perfectly fair, after all, you generated that research while you were an employee at Merck, getting paid an almost-full salary to go to school to do that research, so I think it’s fair that Merck would own that research. It may also be the case that Merck won’t agree to sponsor you unless they think you are going to research a topic that will be of commercial value to Merck. I don’t think Merck would sponsor somebody to get their doctorate in Art History. </p>
<p>The point is, I see it as a complete win-win on both sides, provided that certain conditions are true, in particular, the condition that you want to work for Merck for awhile after graduation. The way I see it is, if you know you want to work for them anyway, why wouldn’t you take this deal? For those people, you gotta admit, it’s an amazing deal. </p>
<p>Nor do I think that Merck is alone in doing this. I heard that Eastman Kodak used to have a similar deal where employees would complete doctorates at the University of Rochester, although the deal no longer exists today. Yet it’s not dissimilar to those companies who sponsor employees to get their MBA’s.</p>
<p>The reason I brought this point up is that getting your doctorate does not necessarily have to be a losing financial proposition. There are ways for you to complete your doctorate and still come out ahead financially. Obviously you would need to compromise in other areas, in particular, giving up your chances of entering academia. But if you don’t care about that anyway, then there is no loss in giving it up.</p>