Completing a PHD is usually a very hard task and involves a lot of sacrifice. Moreover, most of the time it is not useful in your career (unless it is a pre-requisite of your job, i.e. research scientist). So what is the dark side of completing a PHD ?
1) risk of developing health issues (physical and mental) especially stress related to the culture of "publish or perish" (see nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01751-z)
2) risk of destroying one social and marital life (who can enjoy a stressed partner working 60-70 hours a week and constantly talking about its thesis subject ?)
3) risk of developing a tunnel vision oriented towards the thesis subject (PHD students are trained to become experts in their own field) and often the interdisciplinarity is overlooked which limits their capacity to solve real complex problems (which often needs a multidisciplinary approach)
4) risk of become overcritical (using as a pretext the scientific method and fair criticism to the point of destroying colleagues)
5) Become heavily biased (tunnel vision, school of thought, vision inherited from colleagues or supervisors, etc.)
6) Missing opportunity of life (developing other skills such as music, sports, etc.)
Despite an obvious dark side, I think it is worth to complete PHD, however, one has to be very careful in not falling into the traps described above.
If anyone feels to add up on this discussion, please do so.
One thing to add:
(7) having fewer job choices and likely lower-than-expected salaries
People do PhD because they need it, or because they love to have it. I have done it because I decided to become a professor; so, I was compelled to do PhD. I would have not done it without a clear purpose.
I did a PhD in philosophy because there were certain topics and issues that interested me and I saw that they could be best pursued within the structure of a PhD program. Of course I also hoped that I might eventually end up with a university position, but I did not see that as my only option. A side benefit turned out to be an improved social life with peers and confrères within the academic milieu.
Salah
Your point is quite valid. In period of pandemia, things are very complicated for PHD student. Thanks for sharing this point of view.
- Nowadays, the context of doing PHD has changed. Think about it:
- You will lose 3–6 of years of employment where your salary will be much higher than your stipend. There is no guarantee you will ever catch up.
- You will be under a lot a stress - some of graduate students develop mental problems
- There is no garantee that you find any sort of decent employment
- At some point in your career you may be considered overqualified.
- If your dream is an academic career, it may never happen especially today but so much competition
- I do not regret my PHD studies but in retrospective I have left other talents on the side I could have developed.
One risk is that with a PhD you can be regarded as overqualified, and not only outside academia either. Some institutions prefer to hire applicants without a PhD for part-time teaching positions because they can get away with paying them less.
Why not cancel PhD? Getting this degree is a waste of time and effort. Make no sense, do research, why get another PhD? waste one's life!
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