Why not to go to grad school.

Argentum · April 25, 2007, 8:45pm

While i am new to these forums, i am certainly not new to higher education. I see a lot of good advice on how to apply and where to go and what not to worry about on applications. However, i haven’t really seen any advice on why NOT to go through the process. I thought i would write a little something which is sort of a compliation of all the wrong things i’ve done or i’ve seen friends do on the road that is higher education. I can only speak for the area of Chemistry.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that making wrong/poor/bad decisions will teach you more about life and yourself than anyone else can.

Just because you CAN do something, doesn’t mean you SHOULD do something. In the absence of true knowlege, everyone makes up their own “rules” for “the game”. Time and time again i hear an undergrad saying something like, “i need to get a PhD to…” or “without a masters they won’t let you…” These statements are almost universally false. The ONLY instance that i know about where a specific degree is required is to teach in academia or to be promoted into managment at your company. Everything else is fantasy. If you want to be a patent lawer, go to law school, don’t get your PhD. If you want to work in the lab, do NOT get your PhD.

Do NOT use grad school as an esacpe from real life. A few of my friends did this or are engaged in doing this. There is some weird fear of getting a real job. College is a pretty awesome time to “find yourself”. Please use college to find yourself, figure out what you like to study, do some research and call people in that field (if you figure out which one you like the most) to see what the requirements are. You will almost always find out that is is “BS or BA in whatever field and the ability to wake up at 7am every morning and go to work.” Most of us can accomplish this without going to grad school. When you go to grad school, you are effectively training yourself for a VERY specific area. When you graduate college and you have your BS in chemistry, you can pretty much work in any area in chemistry you could think of. When you get a PhD, all of a sudden you find yourself in the position of “well, my work was in the area of electrocatalysis and the oxygen reduction reaction” Guess where you will work? If you don’t really like it, you are screwed big time.

Do NOT use grad school as a tool to shove anything in anyones face or to prove anything to anyone else. My roommate didn’t like the fact that she was “invisible” in high school. She completed undergrad in three years (a bad idea) and is racing to beat the average time to completion in grad school all because she wants to go to her 10 year highschool reunion and shove it in everyones faces how she is so much smarter than they are and make them sorry for not inviting her to do all the imagined “cool kid” activities in high school. This is probably the WORST idea for grad school. And here is why. No one cares, do not be obnoxious.

On a related note, do not go to college and pick a program because it was your hardest class in high school. This is just stupid but many people do this every year. The people that do this often end up in grad school in a field of their college degree they found hardest just to prove to everyone how smart they are. Don’t be this person.

Don’t go to grad school because you think it will make you rich. This is almost never worth it. Yes, in many fields, including chemistry, you can make a significant amount of extra money by spending 4-5 years in grad school. A BS in chemistry working in Boston gets you around 49k(±)4k to start. You can retire at a little over 100k with your BS degree. A PhD will get you 90k(±)5k to start and you can retire at around 180k. A PhD does NOT mean the difference between lower middle class and upper class lifestyle. A PhD DOES mean the difference between driving a really nice saturn or a nicely equiped ford taurus. Is it really that big of a difference? Getting a PhD will not all of a sudden allow you to buy a house twice as big as you could on a BS salery. It only makes things a little easier in the longrun.

Don’t go for the prestige. People will NOT all of a sudden start saying, “You know, Bob was usally a idiot in college about finances and world politics, but you know, now that he has a PhD in Molecular Biology, i think all of a sudden his ideas make sence now” this is unrealistic on many levels. If you are a tool and you have a habit of opening your mouth and saying really obtuse things, grad school will never fix that. If you make poor financial decisions as an undergrad, you will continue to do so in grad school and in the workforce.

So why oh why, would anyone want to get a PhD after reading this? There are some good reasons for going to graduate school.

If you are curious about nature, by all means, explore away in grad school, there is no better environment for it.

If you love what you studied as an undergrad so much that you want to learn all you can about it, you should go to grad school.

If you feel that you could work for a company, and your ideas would significantly impact part of society, grad school gives you the tools to do that.

If you want to teach on a college level, you pretty much have to go to grad school.

Lastly, you don’t even have to listen to me, what do i know? I’m only a chemist.

iamtheshoshie · April 26, 2007, 9:35am

For whatever reason, I’ve been seeing a lot of stuff like this lately, discouraging people from going to grad school, especially in the sciences. Basically, the arguments boil down to: you won’t make that much more money, you’re wasting your time, just go to law school or business school. But that logic is silly. I don’t want to be a lawyer. I want to be chemist. And I don’t want to polish glassware my whole life or set up test tubes for reactions. I want my own projects. I want to further research. I want to explore how stuff works. From what I’ve seen, people with PhD’s aren’t confined to the very narrow topic of their dissertations. That would make it impossible to work almost anywhere. Yeah, all of the post-docs in my lab are inorganikers. Why else would they choose to work in an inorganic lab? But most of them didn’t do their dissertation research in pincer ligands, which is the focus of my lab.

I dunno, are there really that many people who are, like, “well, I don’t know what I’m gonna do with my life. I guess I’ll dedicate myself to 6 years of intensive study in a subject I despise!” Pretty much everyone I know who’s interested in getting a PhD in anything really just thinks the subject is incredibly cool. There’s one girl in my lab who claims to be in it for the money. But even she gets incredibly excited when she talks about her project.

pearlygate · April 26, 2007, 11:00am

B.S in chemisty is like raw peanuts. Ph.D in chemistry is like peanut butter jelly sandwich. I like peanut butter jelly sandiwich hmmm…

plot93 · April 26, 2007, 2:46pm

It’s not a bad idea to bring this topic up. There probably are some people who go to grad school for the wrong reasons who might feel relieved if the pressure to get grad degree(s) weren’t there.

However, most people, I think, go to grad school because they want to, and because it does seem worthwhile to them, whether it’s because of the interest in the subject, because of the increased job prospects, or whatever. 
Going to grad school is becoming common in our society these days. For many bright people who did well as undergrads and who do have one or more subjects they’re very interested in studying further, it might almost seem like a “why not?” kind of thing. 
A master’s degree usually takes only two years to complete (though some people finish it in less time). And once someone has a degree, he/she has it for the rest of his/her life. In the long run, it might seem like a small sacrifice with big rewards.
A PhD of course takes longer.

I don’t remember having ever discouraged anyone from going to grad school. I’m more likely to wonder why some people don’t want to go. I’ve met people who graduated summa cum laude as undergrads without seeming to have to work all that hard at it who could’ve probably gotten fellowships (or at least GA’s) to study in grad school, yet who chose not to go. I have a friend who pulled a 1360 (V + Q) on the GRE’s without even studying, and a professor tried to convince him to stay to do his master’s degree, but he chose not to. That’s their choice, of course, and they have their reasons, and I try to be understanding.

larationalist · April 26, 2007, 2:59pm

I would categorize those people you mentioned above as people who shouldn’t go to grad school. The difference between grad and undergrad, people-wise, is that grad is entirely populated with people who really, really want to be there. Don’t encourage people to go who don’t want to. They’ll have a better experience if they work for a few years and discover the need/desire for it themselves.

ParaguayIsCool · April 26, 2007, 3:25pm

I actually used to know someone who went into a chemistry program (either Master’s or PhD, I don’t remember which) but quit it to go to law school.

His reason?

His brother was a lawyer, and he wanted to prove to his mother that he could be one, too.

This isn’t my armchair analysis of the situation - he actually told me explicitly that was the reason.

Los · April 26, 2007, 3:31pm

I’m in engineering and a lot of folks who went to work after BS end up having to get a MS for career advancement. 
Pro: their company paid for it. Con: work + study at the same time.

I know a Phd chemist who became a director (dunno about the job details) of a division of a company. Although I don’t know the salary either, the promotion certainly made more than a Saturn->Taurus difference.
What’s it like for your job as a chemist? How much of a difference maker is a graduate degree at your company?

Los · April 26, 2007, 3:46pm

Most of the argument against grad school pertains to those who want tenure in math & the sciences. That plan requires a Phd, years of post-docs, and years of being an assistant professor. In short, you wouldn’t make good money until your 30’s and won’t have job security till you’re around 40. And that’s if you can get tenure.

The vast majority of grad students I know do not want to professors, even those in math/science.

Argentum · April 27, 2007, 3:26am

I am in grad school now i can tell you there are a LOT of people in chemistry programs because they honestly believe it will make them rich and famous. I’ve been told this by the people themselves saying how they cannot wait to be wealthy and powerful. Some people i go to school with are doing it to prove to the world/parents/siblings/former classmates/whomever that they are smarter then everyone. I know of two people in my program who have it in their heads so much that getting their PhD will mean that they will get to work in the lab and come up with brilliant discoveries that will save humanity. I’ve been told by these people that it is their job to SAVE HUMANITY. They tell me things things and all of a sudden i don’t think my PChem professors are as nearly as weird as some of my fellow students.

SOME of my fellow students. There are more people in the program that belong there than those that do not.

There is a problem in the education field where proper information isn’t being presented. In the absence of information, people make up their own rules for “the game” that is life.

If you have a BS in Chemistry and work in the industry, your job isn’t to wash glassware. If you job is washing glassware it is because you aren’t a good chemist and the company doesn’t want you screwing with stuff before you have been properly trained. They might have you washing it the first few weeks just to have you doing stuff, in the lab, getting a feel for where things go before someone can be assigned to get you totally acclimated to your new job. Throwing the dishes in the autoclave during a certain day of the week might be a responsibility shared by all in the lab. But seriously, if your JOB is to wash glassware, leave that lab. I know of only one person who’s job WILL be to wash glassware because he is the biggest screwup i’ve ever met. Most everyone else isn’t like this though.

A BS Chemist is basically told what to do and is a lab technician. Run this reaction, bring it to the analyticals. Or if your an analytical (sometimes called an instrument jockey) your trained how to run the instruments according to the companies protocol and you run the requested analysis for the sample. Does these jobs suck? Maybe. Maybe not. I know plenty of people who are toally happy being told what to do at work, making a good living doing it, and having money to spend on some really neat hobbies/house/car/vacation/etc.

A masters(which is in fact a grad degree, but not what i mean by grad school) is a good option for several chemists because you are in charge of probably a small contingent of BS chemists. Depending on the company maybe you get to try out some of your own ideas, maybe you get to troubleshoot when things go awry. Maybe your job is still like a technician but you just get a much bigger paycheck. Usually you have to help fill out some grant proposals/paperwork.

A PhD spends most of their days researching literature and writting grant proposals. Spends VERY little time in the lab, but is in charge of entire departments. This of course varies with company size. If you work for a HUGE pharma company, much more of their PhDs are in the labs screwing around with stuff. If you work for a smaller biotech firm, much less time is spent in the lab.

How do i know all of this? These people who have these jobs are my friends. I talk to them and know them personally. Yes, every now and then people get a sweet job with a PhD making a lot of money but spending a lot of time in the lab and not really working more than 40 hours a week. Yes, every now and then someone gets shafted with the dishes. One of my friends worked for an analytical company and part of her job was every friday she had to load the dishes into an autoclave in her lab. Her job wasn’t dishes, but it does happen.

So i’ll say it again. I’m only trying to discourage the wrong people from wasting time in a PhD program. Yes, most people i go to school with really want to be there because they love chemistry so much and want to figure out how things work. These people hold no false visions and realize that upon graduation, they will go into the industry, spend 80% of the time filling out paperwork of various incarnations, and 20% of the time making sure the lab is running smoothly/training new hires. It has been said that grad programs are “entirely populated” with people who want to be there. While this may be true from a technial stand point, i don’t know anyone who didn’t want to be in grad school jump through the hoops just to get there. This isn’t true from a reality stand point. A lot of people are in a program they shouldn’t be in because they have unrealistic views.

But there are good reasons NOT to go to grad school and the sad fact is that no one is told this, or figures this out, until they are 2 years into their PhD program and going, “Uhh…maybe i want a masters and be in the lab because the lab is fun and paperwork is bollocks.”

I don’t know of anyone that does it because they despise it, but they go into a program that they are familiar with (in this case chemistry) because they are afraid of the real world. This is a bad reason.

Yes, PhD chemists will be promoted to director positions within companies. Yes, that particular job will make a lot of money you can easily afford the BMW or Porsche or whatever else car you want. By and large, most PhD chemists make more than a Masters Chemist, but not to the point where it is a life altering paycheck that many people assume it is. But that extra money comes with the extra frustration of paperwork, meetings, and comitees.

Many people want to work in a lab coming up with their own ideas and testing out their own theories. To do this, you REALLY should be a professor/faculty/staff scientist at a large research institution where this kind of creativity is rewarded. The reality is that when you work for a company with your PhD it is in the area of your graduate research. Creativity is rewarded, but only to the extent that you can use it to solve the problem you are given, not the problem you think would be fun to solve. It is very hard to say “I know we make cathodes for the oxygen reduction reaction to be used inside a fuel cell. But you know, i really think these photovoltaic materials are pretty neat, i want to work on them now.” One of two things happen. If you are replacible, you are “allowed to pursue other goals” (read:fired) or you are told that your job is to make better electrodes than your competitor and that is what you are going to be doing. It makes the company money and it is why you were hired.

Now, if you want to work in the lab, and not deal with paperwork, get a masters, it is almost always worth it. The two years you spend (or longer if you do it part time if your company pays for it) isn’t a big deal. You get a paycheck that allows you to own a decent car, a house in a nice neighbour hood and to raise kids or travel or save for retirement, more so than if you only had a BS degree. But getting your PhD over an MS isn’t always worth it for many people. That was the point of the original post. Sorry if my advice was construed as saying, “Grad school is a waste of time across all fronts, save yourselves!”

Even I myself am considering leaving with my masters. I’m currently debating how much more money i’d make and comparing it to how much more irritation i have to deal with. I’m easily irritated and would have to be hansomly compensated for spending a lot of time being annoyed. Also, i like being creative and following my own ideas, this weighs in too. My ideal job is for people to give me money and leave me alone while i work. This is never going to happen though. These are things everyone who wants to go to grad school, or who is in grad school should think about.

Ask yourself, “why am i really here” inside your head so no one hears you and thinks you are nuts. And if the answer is truely, “Well, i’m not sure really” you might benefit yourself with a masters instead of a PhD and getting a decent job somewhere.

merper68 · April 27, 2007, 4:07am

What’s wrong with wanting to get a PhD to save the world? O_o

Argentum · April 27, 2007, 9:39am

It is unrealistic. You have a better chance of getting hit by lightning twice in a year, then winning the lottery the next year, than you have of getting your PhD and SAVING the world.

I was told it was easy by one of my friends. “All you have to do,” she says, “is stop global warming by stopping CO2 emissions from vehicles.” Ok, the problem isn’t cars, the problem is 6 billion people breathing on this planet every day+Volcanoes+Cars+Less forrests and a whole host of other things. My friend also gets all of her climate science information from the internet and network news where as i log into SciFinder and read papers from peer reviewed journals. There is deffinately a disconnect between the vocal minority and the majority opinion.

Every issue that people think is real simple to solve that will save the world is so severely complicated that only thing you can really do with your degree is to solve PART of the problem.

Now, if one is the type of person that says, “It would really help society out if i can figure out how to do this one thing, like make an environmentally benign, yet strong material for use in cars” or something is a more realistic goal. If that is your aim, then getting a PhD is likely the only way to do it. But when i hear people telling me they are going to get their PhD and cure cancer the first thought in my head is “you truely don’t understand what you are talking about.”

larationalist · April 27, 2007, 10:45am

You should ask that friend when she’s planning to become a LEED accredited professional. Just the process of studying for the exam will show her that there is SOOOOOOOOOO much more to it.

rigel123 · April 27, 2007, 11:03am

Argentum wrote:
But there are good reasons NOT to go to grad school and the sad fact is that no one is told this, or figures this out, until they are 2 years into their PhD program and going, “Uhh…maybe i want a masters and be in the lab because the lab is fun and paperwork is bollocks.”

Question: Why is this a sad fact? A person two years into their Ph.D. can drop out with a Master’s generally and get on with their life if they decide they don’t want to stay. It isn’t like they are imprisoned until they finish their Ph.D.

Not to get into patent law too much-but I don’t think it is a good idea to generalize that graduate degrees are not necessary. In my experience (especially in biology/biotech patent law) people with just undergraduate degrees just are not prepared as well and are not as capable to get the work done for our clients as people with graduate degrees. I’m not saying that it is absolutely necessary-but in my experience at my firm I know that it helps quite a bit.

merper68 · April 27, 2007, 11:43am

Eh, what’s the difference between any of the options you presented as long as it helps drive you? University labs are one of the few places which give you the tools and time for really radical innovation - if it helps you to believe that your work could really help humanity, and if it doesn’t hurt your work, then why not stick with the idealism? I think more PhDs should be a lot more enthusiastic about their work. I don’t really see the point in getting a PhD if you just see it as another degree to boost your salary, since, as you said, the salary boost really isn’t worth it to many majors. If you come in, with say a goal to fix fuel cells, say by developing a cheap and efficient proton exchange membrane to make the technology commercially viable, then that could have drastic impacts on society. Now it’s probably not something you’re going to accomplish in 4 or 5 years, but as long as you don’t get depressed about it and it doesn’t hamper your work, then there’s no reason not to keep pushing. It’s certainly more than you could have done without going for your PhD. I think you’re being way too judgmental about this. People should have realistic expectations about what they can expect to do with a PhD. Other than that, whatever drives them should drive them. There’s nothing more powerful than someone who’s really into their work.

Also, as for the CO2 example, I don’t think anyone’s trying to get rid of CO2, just reduce the amount that’s coming from cars and factories. Same with cancer, I doubt any PhD student is silly enough to think you can get rid of all cancers in one fell stroke, but certain radical university developed techniques like the gold nanoparticles have been getting quite good results.

Los · April 27, 2007, 12:36pm

Save the cheerleader; save the world :-)

gjanie29 · April 27, 2007, 12:54pm

I’m going to graduate school because I love Science/ Biology. I’m not doing it to get rich and famous, in fact I find this line of thinking unrealistic. Once I finished college, I traveled and lived abroad for some time. Now that I am a bit older and more experienced I feel more confident about doing graduate studies.

sakky · April 28, 2007, 11:27pm

I certainly agree that nobody should ever go into a PhD program expecting to become rich or famous.

However, what I would say is that the science PhD process teaches you how to be entrepreneurial. For example, if your goal is to invent something and then try to commercialize it, either by starting your own company or getting a patent and then licensing it, etc. - studying for a PhD is a very good way to go about getting the training to do that. Heck, you don’t even have to complete the PhD to do it. Just being taught the process of setting up your own experiments, coming up with your own research topics, understanding how to delve through the literature - I think these are valuable life skills. See below.

That’s exactly what I’m talking about. The best thing for you to do is pursue the research topic that YOU are really interested in (as opposed to something that your advisor just hands you, but you don’t care about). If you really are interested in a topic, you would probably be pursuing it anyway, even in your spare time, as a hobby. So if that’s the case, then you might as well get a degree too.

merper68 · April 29, 2007, 12:05am

Not to mention you get access to tools a “hobbyist” couldn’t even dream about. That’s my take on PhD - a chance for me to get paid a liveable income to mess around with really cool toys and see what I can come up with.

inkbottle · April 29, 2007, 9:14am

lol, calm down dude. Come back next year and see if you still have the same perkiness.

UCLAri · April 29, 2007, 9:19am

I think that the point us grad students want to convey to the undergrads is just that you don’t have to go to grad school. That, and you need to have a good reason to go in the first place.

Going just because you didn’t get that awesome job right out of undergrad is not a good reason. Grad school is a HUGE opportunity cost in terms of earnings. What happens if you don’t get a great job right out of the PhD, too? Then you’ve essentially lost 5 or so years of income, and you aren’t earning an income.

Always be realistic about why you want a graduate degree. Don’t do it “just to do it.”

Why not to go to grad school.

CONNECT WITH US