Anyone Go Back to Grad School to Get Their PhD?

In My Humble Opinion
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A little more than ten years ago I left a PhD program in Economics from a fairly good program, sans PhD, although with a Masters and a co-authored published paper. The reasons a are several but not germane. So over the years I get asked, 'Have you ever thought about trying to finish and get your PhD?" For a while my answer was, “No way!”. But I am starting to lean towards thinking, “That might not be such a bad idea.”

But I am not really sure how one goes about “finishing” such a thing. There are many things that make it complicated: a) atrophy of the mind pertaining to high-level economics as well not having really kept up with the latest research; 2) I don’t live anywhere near where I was originally enrolled, if this even matters; 3) Fully employed, so time constrained.

In my mind all I need to do is write a dissertaion (yep, that’s all…no problem there) ad get some University PhD program to say, “Yes, that counts you are now Dr. Octopus”. But I know that the first half of the equation is not easy (writing the diss) if I don’t have any guidance and I have no idea if the second half even is possible.

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I’m sort of in the place where you would be, although I got my masters specifically as a masters, just with the intention of doing the PhD elsewhere. Not quite what you’re after, but I think I can advise a little because I was out of school for a while, first, too.

Yep, going back to school will be hard up front. As you’ve anticipated correctly, that particular part of your gear train has not been used in a long, long time. After the first little while, though, you’ll be back into it and be ok. You might want to start in before the actual commencement of evaluated educational activities with some reading you assign yourself, just to get the cobwebs out of there.

As far as what will be required of you, the rules in both graduate programs I’ve attended are that a certain portion of your coursework has to be performed at your degree-granting university. In other words, if you’ve already done 60 hours of classes, even if your new program only requires 60 hours total, they’ll have a rule that says you specifically have to complete 20 hours THERE, even if you’ve taken everything that’s required.

This is where you should talk to an advisor up front. A younger guy or new hire probably won’t help you much, but someone who has been at that school for a long time will be able to a) help you pick out 20 hours worth of new classes that are valuable to you instead of a repeat of stuff you already know and b) talk to your department head and get him to waive any specific on-location course requirements if they are old material for you.

As far as the fully employed part, I can’t say how that will go because economics is so different from what I study. In my discipline you could do coursework in the evenings, and I even managed to do my thesis research at night, but it was tough. Give yourself lots of time, and be patient.

Might as well give the local U. a call and see if one of their profs would be willing to talk with you, right? Won’t cost you anything but a couple hours.

Huge good luck to you.

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Most places after 7 or 8 years or so they make you redo all your coursework, to ensure that you are up to date in the field. This counts even if you never left the program but you took too long to finish up