Once upon a time not many people had a PhD. That rarity invoked genuine value. Now many more people have PhDs, but the demand hasn’t risen to the same extent… the value has reduced.

Graph from http://leastthing.blogspot.com/2015/06/so-you-want-to-go-pro-ncaa-basketball.html

Did the PhD actually hold more value in the past? When, for whom, and where?

I don’t get the sense that a PhD, even from an elite U.S. institution, was more valuable in the U.S. several decades ago. Not from the people I met who had PhDs that were decades older than me, who grew up in a very different societal environment. Certainly it was less important than the color of your skin for most of the 20th century. I was lectured a lot by non whites on how “things are different now,” and ”you have more opportunity, so appreciate it and use it.”

In engineering and computer science, I would say the PhD might be more valuable now, and that’s reflected by the salaries that are offered for people in certain areas, such as machine learning. I don’t know if I would have pursued a PhD otherwise. Money talks.

En route on the Piled Higher & Deeper track, I unfortunately learned:

1. The emperor has no clothes.
2. It takes a specific type of of myopic mind to willingly live inside a glass house.
3. Academia is a glass house.
4. Teacher’s gotta eat, but it’s often at the expense of cannibalizing the wrong students.
5. It’s all driven by funding, not merit.
6. PhD stands for Piled Higher and Deeper. MS stands for Masters of Sh’t.

My graduate school experiences were academic extortion and insurance fraud rackets. What a sick fcking joke.

When I attended, the main admins/faculty were:
(PhD in Psych) Wright State - Valerie Shalin, Deb Steele-Johnson, Kevin Bennett, Gary Burns, Martin Gooden/Bob Gordon
(MS in Psych) Fordham - Andrew Rasmussen, Donna Heald, Eva Badowksa, Monika McDermott

These ppl should be outed and fired. Tenure DENIED.

Everything that happened after that made me realize what waste of my time/energy/resources that the “Piled Higher & Deeper” endeavor was. Working in actual jobs (although the time spent in PhD set me back several yrs so I essentially had to “start over”) reiterated just how useless the so-called coursework at the program(s) were. I didn’t ever need to attend grad school to have the career I have now—it only caused me to lose valuable assets.

I ended up getting a grad degree from Fordham GSAS, but it wasn’t worth it. In fact, when the program attempted to pull shady extortion techniques on me again, I revealed that I had been recording all the communications in the program, incl. the meeting where Andrew Rasmussen & Eva Badowksa discussed my candidacy. I informed them that I would sue them if they tried to expel me from the program. They then sighed in exasperation and asked me what I thought was a reasonable amount to pay in order to be allowed to graduate.

I learned that the PhD structure is a bad job system, where your job options are linked to your status in the program. The school will verify what jobs you can have and that impacts how you will be able to finish the program. Since the schools are glass house businesses, they have vested interests is delaying your graduation and bilking money from you. In some cases I observed, the student is is deliberately failed or downgraded so they need to find sponsors for their remaining credits. The only jobs available and approved that will fulfill schedule for the remaining credits is underpaid, menial work. On the job, the student may/may not go through the same bs that the program engaged in, which further delays their program & job performance. The PhD program I attended had Phd students in their 7th yr with no end in sight. There was another shunned Phd student who was in their 10+ yr in the program and the school made a big deal of acting like they were doing him a favor by letting him stay when the reality is that he was deliberately stuck in the swirling toiletbowl.

In my case, my PhD program was an unaccredited charter school that was funded by a number of sources, including funding agencies for mentally and physically disabled ppl, which is why the school was staffed and enrolled by a majority of those who were mentally and physically disabled. (They didn’t reveal that to their prospective student-employees though). The school had to cater to their funding sources in order to continue getting money, but it was done in a cannibalistic, distorted way that was the definition of academic extortion.

The management was terrible and deliberately incompetent. The faculty thought it was better to lie about grad student performance in order to retard their progress, continue to claim funding from affiliated agencies, and prevent the grad student from actually accessing information and opportunities that they were actually qualified for.

I had the unforgettable terrible displeasure of interacting with at Fordham (MS in Psych) and Wright State (PhD in Psych). The shtty faculty engaged in multiple offenses that resulted in my loss of tens of thousands of dollars, in addition to my time, energy, and opportunities. Manipulating an out-of state employee by lying about what opportunities are available, denying them of resources they qualify for, and being a slimy, greasy good ‘ol boy is a terrible idea.

My 2 fake advisors come to mind—Kevin Bennett (Wright State) and Andrew Rasmussen (Fordham).

PHD program: The one signing off on my paycheck was my “advisor” Kevin Bennett, who said during one of the few group mtgs I had with him—“There’a sucker born every minute, and if you don’t know who it is, it’s you.” I thought it was a pessimistic and bizarre thing to say but as I became more entrenched in the glass house extortion racket, I learned what he meant by it.

Grad programs are ways to funnel money into the school, sometimes through funny money from various agencies. In my case, It was funded by a number of sources, including funding agencies for for mentally and physically disabled individuals, which is why the school was staffed and enrolled by a majority of those who were mentally and physically disabled.

I was told “not to appear so competent” by other cohort (Rebecca Riffle) bc I “was supposed to be disabled.” During the school yr, when I inquired with faculty in the hallways about why the grades I submitted kept changing after the fact, I was told to “keep my voice down” and asked if if I “wanted to get everybody in trouble.”

Later in the summer, when I spoke with a coworker (Danyell Lewis) who was friends with some of the students I had TA’ed during the school yr, I was told that my former advisor had instructed folks to ignore any of the comments I had made bc I was supposedly disabled and had just naturally f*cked up.

When I informed a former Head of TAs (Steve Khazon) that I was leaving the program early, he snapped at me to not say anything about what had happened as I was supppsedly “crazy and that no one would believe me.”

I mean, if you’re going to attempt to conduct a scam, you shouldn’t piss off your main stakeholders aka “marks” or the ones who are supposedly the reason why you’re extorting $ in the first place.

When I mentioned that I had prior involvement with the banking industry, Bennett told me:
“Show me money! I need the money! Give me money!” This idiot frequently misquoted many books and movies in attempts to be relevant or sound witty, but was often ignorant of their true context. He misused his funds and would expect the students he claimed to advise to fund the rest—but he didn’t do anything. No mtgs were held, he would blatantly pass of my work as his own and demand that I continue to produce work or he would kick me out of his (non-existent) lab. This slimy sht tried to run from issues in his home life by bringing it to the glass house of academia and supporting his male students (ex. Christopher Edelman, Jerred Holt) who he tried to live vicariously through and ignoring/hindering his female students (ex. Tiffany Saffell, Elizabeth McGregor) in true greasy good ol’ boy fashion.

The school would scapegoat selected students in true “Slumdog Millionaire” style—there’s a scene in the movie where the antagonist Maman pours hot oil in a boy's eyes so that the blinded boy can earn more for Maman as a blind beggar. (Or like clipping a blk swan’s wings so they can never fly normally or far).

By hindering their success, crippling their student-employees & manipulating info so that they would be dependent on the dept for stipend, job opps, the student-employees are forced into a never-ending period of “indentured servitude” (as Bennett referred to it). I was a paid $1200 monthly that was slowly reduced over the course of a year.

My grad school experience(s) turned out to be a extortion racket run in a welfare state. All the money, resources, time, and energy taken from me…I would have actually been better off literally being unemployed and collecting unemployment. What a sick fcking joke.

See details below:

Sue Donem's answer to What are some of the biggest problems of Education industry?

Sue Donem's answer to What should I know about doing a master's degree after some years of professional experience?

As always, academia is local, so this is a US perspective.

Ignore anything about academia being a cult of personality; that’s true at a handful of institutions and in a handful of fields, but it can’t remotely explain why the majority of PhDs will never hold a full-time academic position. Arthur Dirks is close, but in the US, a doctorate holds more professional cachet than before, largely because of the number of CS PhDs who are driving a lot of tech development, often for high-profile employers; when I was in development, it was hard for a PhD to get a job.

Dirks is correct that the job market is the issue, but the only meaningful job markets for PhDs are research institutions and colleges/universities. PhD programs used to be scarce, so as higher ed was ramping up after WWII, demand exceeded supply. Many people without PhDs (or other terminal degrees) were able to get permanent positions, and even earn tenure. There was a belief that, when boomers began retiring in the 1980s, demand would surge again, but for reasons I won’t get into here, that didn’t happen. Because of the (incorrect) belief, new PhD programs ramped up, but the jobs never materialized.

Whether the social cachet of the PhD has changed or not, I can’t say. No one has ever seemed particularly impressed that I have a PhD, not that I would expect them to be.

For me, yes. It is definitely not worth it.

Work very hard just to be allowed to maybe if you are lucky be hired into positions in which you have to spend most of your time doing tasks which distract you away from research. If I could do research it could be worth it, but from what I have gathered in academia… professors simply don’t have any time to do research.

They have to

• create courses and organize teaching
• teach
• apply for grants
• supervise students
• try and push articles through peer review
• attend conferences
• do administrative duties
• be boss of a research group

And then these were just on the top of my head.

How much time is left to do actual research do you think?

And the situation in industry is often even worse. PhD:s are hired to become bosses and managers just because of the higher degree they managed to get from academia. Almost never specialists.

How so? And in what fields? Whenever I see very vague or generalized questions on PhDs on Quora, I have to wonder: what fields are they thinking about?

If you want to become a professor of history, in example, a PhD is pretty imperative. Same with many academic fields. You can ask “is it ‘worth it’ to enter academia as a career?” if you wish, but as to whether it is “worth it” to get the degree—well, if you decide you want an academic career, you pretty much need a PhD for a lot of disciplines of study.

Beyond this, it is a very personal decision predicated on the goals and ambitions you have and the return on investment you expect from your education.

I just finished my PhD a few months ago, so the whole experience is still very fresh for me. Here is what I learned.

1. Research takes a lot of time.
1. Expect to spend months, if not years, on a single project.
2. Expect to work on multiple projects beyond your dissertation work.
3. Expect to spend 4–8 years doing the PhD.
2. Don’t do a PhD to check off the box that you got all your “degrees”.
1. A PhD is nothing like a bachelor or masters. It is not about taking courses.
2. It’s about proving to yourself, and to the world, you can do cutting edge novel research.
3. Pick the right advisor. This is far more important then picking a good school.
1. Your advisor is the one that will guide all your work. They should be as knowledgeable, approachable, and helpful as possible.
2. Some advisors are slave drivers, having meetings almost on a daily basis and piling more and more work on your desk. Others are ghosts, where you rarely ever see them.
3. Some advisors know nothing about your research interests, while others are the leading authorities on it.
4. It is up to you to find the best advisor. They should equally impress you as you do them!
4. You will experience different types of failure and frustrations, learn from them and move on fast.
1. These include paper rejections, lack of research ideas, failed experiments, criticism about your work, self doubt, etc.
2. You will experience far more lows then highs in the PhD. What will set you apart from others to succeed and graduate one day is how you dealt with those lows to move forward.
5. Expect to work very independently.
1. You must define your own research agenda and goals.
2. This comes as a surprise to a LOT of new students who expect that their advisors will layout work schedules for them, defining every detail of what they should do. Most advisors don’t do this, it’s your responsibility.
3. Your advisor is there to mentor, not baby sit, you.
6. Do not expect that getting a PhD will make you financially rich.
1. The #1 question I get asked by new students is how much money could they make if they get a PhD. In some cases, it can be a big salary boost.
2. But in most cases you will make more money by working in industry for the time it takes you to get the PhD.
3. If your goal is to get rich, then the PhD is not for you.
7. In general, the PhD is not for most people, and that’s okay.
1. Doing a PhD is about a passion for science and research. It’s about sacrificing many years to pursue that passion. Most people don’t have that drive, and that’s okay!
2. For 99% of jobs in industry, you don’t need a PhD.
3. The main job prospects after graduating are becoming a professor or working in a research lab. These jobs are not for everyone, it’s about what you love doing.
4. You will at times work 7 days a week, 10–14 hours a day. I have even slept in my lab space over night several times. A PhD is demanding intellectually as well as emotionally and physically.
5. A PhD is a lot of work for very little pay. If you have family depending on you financially, this becomes a challenge.
8. You will suffer from imposter syndrome, but the truth is you don’t need to be a genius to do a PhD.
1. A lot of people think the PhD is only for very “intelligent” individuals. But almost anyone can do a PhD. It just requires an immense dedication.
2. Many students, when they start a PhD, will suffer from imposter syndrome. I did, and many of my friends did too! At first you will be scared, feeling completely lost at times.
3. This is natural, no one expects new students to really know much. Don’t be afraid to admit what you don’t know. Learn how to be a good learner: reach out to others, ask as many questions as you can!
9. Do not get bogged down in the academic race to outdo others.
1. As you progress your PhD, you will start feeling pressure to produce more quantity than quality. A lot of people start thinking they need to publish more and more to look better.
2. Focus on doing 1 high quality publication instead of 4 low quality ones.
3. Some students also start feeling competitive with other researchers in their field. Some competition is healthy, but it can quickly become a distraction.
4. Don’t focus on being better than others. Focus on being better than your past self. Improve your own work rather than outdoing someone else’s.
10. And finally, don’t forget to have a life outside your PhD!
1. A lot students get sucked so much into their work they forget their own health or that there’s an outside world.
2. Eat healthy, exercise, do yoga, meditate, whatever gives you a healthy mindset and body.
3. Have an active social life: volunteer for charity, go to community events, go on dates or spend time with your partner, visit family and friends. Surround your self with people who love you. They are the ones who are there to pick you up if you ever fall.

PhDs are a tool of authoritarianism rather than any true scientific competency. PhD is about excelling in academia, NOT in natural science. There are countless numbers of inventors/researchers with even no formal education. One of the best example is Faraday, who had no formal degree, so forget PhD. But he was one of the greatest natural philosopher ever lived. Such people are rejected and ridiculed by the gatekeepers of so-called science with zero understanding of nature.

Invention needs out-of-the box thinking. Academicians lock themselves in their box of doctrines and maintains a list of impossibilities. So in this case its nearly impossible to drop those dogmas and think out side the expertise. It can end your career also if any invention doesn't align with academic belief, even though it can be experimentally demonstrated. They are locked into what they learned and will not deviate from it, leastwise not very far.

So academic excellence is about being gatekeeper of business science. They lock themselves in their paper bag.

Being and electronics engineer, I am not a fan of academia as they don’t teach the reality of electricity as deviced by the pioneers (Faraday, Maxwell, Heaviside, Steinmetz, Tesla, J J Thomson). It’s hijacked by the armchair theorist/physicists who made zero contribution to the field of electricity except messing it up. No PhD physicists can explain how Radiant Energy transmission works:
Partha Sarathi Mishra (ପାର୍ଥ ସାରଥୀ ମିଶ୍ର)'s answer to How is wireless electricity possible? What does the idea of wireless electricity mean for the future of devices and appliances?

Rather they will be the first one to criticize it as Woo science. But they can support super illogical theories like relativity to death even though it full of woo mathematics which can be debunked by a 10th grader too. For them repetition of memories gives wisdom.

Cathode Ray tubes (CRT) were already advanced to a larger extend by William Crookes. Did any PhD physicists came up with an idea of it’s possible usage as a television system? Why not? Reason is same. Dogmatic mind cannot think beyond his/her conditioning.

“in college they teach you why things can't be done. I never went to college, so I do it.”
—Charles Proteus Steinmetz

They criticize and stub out everyone who build something useful. So invention and PhDs are polar opposite. One is for fame and another is for wisdom.

No significant invention happened in the past 100 years. All our modern technologies are miniaturized version of technologies invented upto 19th century Victorian science.

If you are into the invention, do your own research without bothering about it’s approval by academia, instead of expecting PhDs to do for you.

Sometimes I ridicule PhDs as Permanent Head Damage.

Before answering completely, I will give the simple, ambiguous, inescapable piece of advice that must always accompany any answer to a question of such scope:

It depends… on you, and so many things you cannot hope to control.

Now on to the longer answer. (This is geared towards hard science disciplines, but has applicability for social sciences and other non-STEM fields as well).

The first thing to consider is what you want to do in life (and thus what you should do to prepare):

• Do you want to make money?
• (Go to professional school [medical/law/pharmacy/etc.]. You will almost certainly need to take on loans and live frugally for a while. You will need to interface with some ugly parts of society, and when done with school, you may need to move to find those opportunities (many cities are saturated with professionals). However, you can make a lot of money, pay off those loans, and likely live quite comfortably thereafter).
• Do you want to have flexibility to go/do what you want (and when you want) with your career and life?
• (Get a technical Master’s (not an MBA), find a company, learn new skills to keep yourself competitive, and be ready to move within or between companies when new opportunities arise. Not as much money as some professionals, but you are more economically durable if you ever decide you want a change - or if circumstances change on you).
• Do you want to be in charge? Have authority?
• (Get a Bachelor’s-level job (or a few) in a particular industry for several years, learn how your industry works at all levels, and when you feel ready to ‘manage’ go get an MBA and move into management WITHIN that industry).
… DO NOT get an MBA right after college and assume you can get just get a job managing any kind of group. People mistakenly believe that management is agnostic, and that any group (i.e. software code developers vs. aerospace engineers) can be managed the same way. PEOPLE WHO BELIEVE AND PRACTICE THAT VIEW WILL FAIL.
• Do you want a family?
• Either of the above paths still allows for you to fit one into your life without too much difficulty.
• Do you want it easy?
• (…well if you did, then you would probably not be considering a Ph.D in the first place).

However, if none of those are your priority, and you are interested in pursuing deep questions, and trying to answer hard problems, then (AND ONLY THEN) should you even consider a Ph.D.

You have to understand that a Ph.D is not a means to any kind of financial stability, or general career success… and by itself it is certainly not the road to the vague feeling of happiness many of us seek in life. A Ph.D is what we pursue as a necessary step on the path to certain career options that are not available otherwise. It is rigorous, demoralizing, and exhausting.

We go for a Ph.D because we are compelled, we are obsessive, and we are not satisfied with what the world is currently capable of explaining, demonstrating or proving. Usually, we who pursue Ph.Ds want to be the ones to solve those issues and foster new and innovative ideas and expand knowledge or technical capability by great leaps and bounds.

People with Ph.Ds are obsessive, cerebral people who live more in their imaginations than in the real world, and make it their business to drag their ideas into the light of day through exhaustive study and verification… sometimes without success, despite Herculean efforts. Compared with most people, successful Ph.Ds are very strange in their mannerisms and would almost fit in with patients of a psych ward because their attentions and thoughts are obsessively on arcane topics that seem crazy to most people. (I have known some Ph.Ds who even brag and compete with one another over who has a more unusual mental state).

If you are still reading at this point, I will assume that you share some of these compulsions and are still interested in the idea of a Ph.D despite the fact that this path does not insure that you will achieve any of the things (above) that most normal people would consider important.

Now I will tell you a bit about my experiences, and my knowledge of others that also went down this path:

In graduate school I joined a Biology Ph.D program, but I worked across disciplines in computational physics and chemistry. My mentor’s view was that regardless of department or background we were all doing science - meaning we sought answers to problems, using whatever tools necessary (even if we had to build the tools ourselves), and we had to pursue new lines of inquiry if promising paths appeared.

Most of my colleagues, including those doing work similar to mine, went on to industry, and after a few years several of them are now team leaders and seem to be doing well. Most of our undergraduate students went straight to jobs after college, working just under those industry Ph.Ds, and those kids may end up with equivalent positions and pay in those companies after a few more years. Importantly, those kids did not need to endure the rigors and pains of graduate school - or the years spent not making money (yes, graduate school pays enough for you to live [frugally], but not enough to build a life or a future - your education and opportunities that come after grad school are supposed to do that, but that is not guaranteed).

In contrast to that path, some Ph.Ds I know went on to postdoctoral appointments at universities and are still in a kind of limbo until a more permanent job opens (postdocs by definition are impermanent). Most will likely end up in industry anyway, while a ‘lucky’(?) few might get a chance to become professors in small universities: their chances are VERY low, competition is FIERCE, and the pay is not very attractive… but again, we are obsessed, and we do this work because we love this work - even if we do not love the pay.

My path lead to a postdoc in a government laboratory where I was involved in many different projects, learned a lot of new skills, and transitioned between groups a few times - and I got paid more than probably any academic postdoc. Mind you, these kinds of postdocs are competitive, may involve work that cannot be shared with future recruiters if we leave for industry, and most of these positions are offered to people who already know someone at these labs. I got mine because I knew good people in the lab who vouched for me, and because I was onsite as a graduate student - right place, right time, and I was a known and demonstrated quantity.

Eventually I did have to leave when opportunities for advancement at the lab dried up, and I took a job in industry, but one that suits me quite well.

The path has been tortuous and uncertain, and I am the only one in my family to get a Ph.D. My father has a B.S. in engineering, works in the private sector and enjoys working on a plethora of different problems. My mother is a Physician’s Assistant and despite nearing retirement is planning on new ways to do more. Several of my cousins got Master’s or professional degrees (some M.D.s) and many have children and stable jobs. My brothers got Master’s degrees and now work and live in major cities at fairly stable jobs that almost certainly pay more than mine. My ex-wife has a Pharm.D and made a lot more money than I did before my transition to industry.

Despite all of their greater financial and career stability, I would not trade places with any of them. I love what I do, and in spite of all the uncertainties and frustrations - and ultimately the need to move from government to private industry - this is about as close to my dream job as I could hope for. Despite leaving for industry, many of my colleagues want me to remain involved, but there are so many moving parts that it is hard to do. Keeping a position as a Ph.D. is almost never a guarantee, and as fields change, we need to change with them.

I do not have children, and colleagues of mine who have kids are still good and attentive parents, but they have trouble juggling family life because our work is so demanding and taxes us from the stem of our brains to the ends of our fingertips. Most of my colleagues look fried most of the time.

Understand, if you go down the Ph.D path, your situation will likely remain unstable. You need to find the love in what you do, because it will need to outweigh a lot of other difficulties and uncertainties in your life.

To give you an example: after one of my colleagues defended his dissertation (stood up, said what he had been doing for five years, and got four or five professors to collectively agree to call him ‘Doctor’) we had a party to celebrate, and one of the professors told him “It’s all downhill from here”. That professor had been in this gig for more than twenty years, and she clearly loves what she does, but she was being honest that after getting the Ph.D, life would only get harder - and grad school was already quite hard.

From what I have seen and experienced, she was not wrong. I have many colleagues who are between 30 and 60, and most look super burnt out and some sound like they are waiting for retirement to get a temporary reprieve from the rigor of this life. However, I have seen colleagues in their 60s who have been through all of that, have earned a break and are ‘retired’, and still they come into work because they want to keep answering questions. I have even seen a man who was born in 1922 (think about that, he has been around for roughly a century); he can barely walk, can barely hear, his wife is beginning to suffer dementia, they have round-the-clock caretakers at their home, and STILL he wants to go back to the lab and keep working, because he has come up with questions that have stumped world experts, and he is unsatisfied with that - an answer must be sought, and he will do it even in his current state.

I think you would agree that people such as this are not normal, and frankly if we were not productive in what we do - and if what we worked on was not useful to the world - we would rightly belong in mental health institutions. However, despite our uncertain paths and existence, despite the arcane nature of what we do, despite all of that, I have yet to meet someone doing Ph.D-level science who would do anything else - the compulsion in us is that strong.

So I would encourage you, whoever reads and ponders this question, to consider what you really want.

The Ph.D is only the first step on the path to a lifetime of uncertainties and difficulties that (quite honestly) never gets easier. I learned this about paleontology when I was 15 and decided I did not want to do that for a career and thought I might become a teacher instead. Then, while in college, and later while at my first teaching job overseas, I discovered an even broader concept in origins-of-life and theoretical biophysical chemistry, and I found myself hooked again - it was, is, and seemingly will always be, a compulsion. I have pursued other kinds of work, excelled in martial arts, traveled the world, and though I find enjoyment in many things, they provide only fleeting satisfaction.

My work as a scientist gratifies me constantly and in ways nothing else has. I cannot imagine doing anything else and loving it so much.

If you have something that compels you in the way I described, then ‘yes’, a Ph.D is worth it.

Otherwise… (see the beginning and find a better path for yourself).

To borrow from Professor Farnsworth, “Oh my word, no.”

The experience is still valuable as experience. You will still learn to conduct an independent research project, and you will still work that project to completion.

Professionally and financially, a PhD used to be a worthwhile endeavor for most students who completed. They got jobs, and the jobs paid decently and had high stability and good benefits. In the 1970s & 80s, there was a fear that we would need a huge new generation of PhDs to fill academic positions vacated by retiring Greatest & Silent Generation people, so new PhD programs were spun up and existing PhD programs expanded.

Those jobs never materialized. The would-be retirees didn’t retire, due to the economic disaster that was the 1980s (for most individuals), improved longevity, and the end of forced retirement. Large classes became the norm. The flood of PhDs created a willing pool of permanent adjuncts, who took over lots of classes.

Also, as healthcare costs spiraled for decade after decade, benefits were eroded, and still continue to be eroded. Pay for the professoriate stagnated (both adjunct and full-time faculty) because of expanding staff and administration payrolls.

So, the odds are that (outside of a handful of fields) you won’t get the job you want, and even if you get it, it won’t pay very well. Some thin slice of college professors make a good deal of money. PhDs in STEM disciplines who have gone into computing research or financial technology have sometimes earned millions in intellectually rewarding work, but again, this is a thin slice.

The one line answer is: a PhD is worth it when being employed to work on something you don’t care about would drive you nuts.

I’m a computer engineer with some background in computer science, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and mathematics — so here’s my full explanation with an engineering bias.

In engineering, a BS degree pretty much ensures you’ll get a job that pays well. However, if you’re a computer engineering BS interested in cache memory architecture, odds are nearly as good you’ll be offered a job designing power supplies as to do what you want — BS degrees are taken to mean general competence in a broad area.

With the same interests and an MS degree, you’re much more likely to be offered a job that has something to do with computer architecture, if not caches. It also will be a little harder to get a job, because they probably will not hire you unless a computer architect is what they want. You’ll have a higher starting salary… but it probably took you two more years to earn the MS, during which time you could have been earning money and seniority in a job with your BS. Financially, you’ll end-up ahead with an MS, but it might take 5 years before you’ve broken-even with getting a job as a BS.

A PhD is special: a PhD is earned by making a new and significant contribution to the state of the art in the topic of your choice, so the PhD credential suggests that you should be allowed to work on whatever topic you want within your general area (not necessarily what you did for your PhD dissertation). In other words, after a computer engineering PhD advancing cache architecture, if you say you want to work developing memory-access optimizations in compilers, that’s what people will want to hire you to do: you get to change your mind about what you want to work on and have people respect that. Of course, they will not hire you unless what you want to do is what they want done, so there are fewer job openings — a large fraction of which will be in academia or in research and development. You’ll be offered a good salary, but in academia, your engineering BS graduates might have a higher starting salary than you do. Even with a higher-than-MS starting salary in industry, the years it took to do your PhD (without getting a big salary) mean it will take a long time to come out financially ahead of getting a job with an MS.

In sum, the reason to do a PhD is because you place a much higher value on being able to work on what you care about than on making more money, having an easier time finding a job, etc. If you work to live, stop at a BS; if you live to work, seriously consider going all the way to a PhD. My dad was able to do what he wanted without having a college degree… and that does still happen, but it’s increasingly rare and not a great thing to bet your career on.

Incidentally, earning a PhD doesn’t require more intelligence than earning a BS or MS. The real difference is in intensity: higher degrees require more focused energy and longer-term commitment. Graduate school is harder than undergrad, but for most people who belong there it feels easier because an increasing fraction of the material is closely related to what you care about.