This made me laugh. In my experience, academics do tend to lack good social skills. But only tenured faculty can let a horrible personality shine through. Adjuncts are too vulnerable. And think of the poor students!
In Computer Science, having a PhD is considered a bit of a downgrade from having a MS in many business settings. (Never mind that you get an MS or equivalent along the way most of the time. If I paid my school $50 I could have gotten a MS in CS diploma, suitable for framing. But money was short at the time.)
There are some places in some companies where it is either a benefit or even necessary. Some companies have research or similar labs and they look for PhDs. I’ve known a lot of people that have worked in such places. E.g., one person I went thru quals with later became the head of research divisions at two Really Famous companies. It became increasingly common over the years tp see people in CS to drift out of academia into industry due to higher pay and other perks.
CS has a wide range of fields. Some people with graphics PhDs end up in animation, video production and effects studios. AI people end up working on voice recognition/language stuff. Etc.
Waaay back when, it was said that IBM (that was how long ago it was), could hire 400 CS PhDs a year, when total production was 200. I don’t think any company comes close to that demand now, but there are places that hire dozens per year.
There’s a demand for PhDs in the biotech, pharmaceutical, and medical industries.
Though not enough of one…
I’ve got one in CS, and I hire lots in EE. First, they make a lot more money starting out. Second, if you hire good PhDs they can do independent work from the beginning, and have a lot more depth than most MS students, especially those who have gone through a 2 year plan of classes some with projects. It helps to hire PhDs with good advisers also.
Ed.Ds though - not sure about the worth of them.
I know people who have gotten degrees in other topics. Usual law or business.
You learn stuff. It’s not the only way to learn stuff, but it’s one way. Is it cost effective? Depends. It can be a place for you to scratch that itch if you’re curious about something. Sadly, it has become another credential in too many areas, kinda like getting a certificate that says you’re sane. Should taxpayers’ money be used to train PhDs? Personally, I think everyone should be able to get as much education as they want for free and be paid a decent wage/salary whatever their job is. And should work 20 hours a week, max, leaving some time for all that education. Which we could do, if wages/salaries had kept pace with productivity increases over the last 50 years. But who asks me?
With the license it qualifies me for, I can practice in my field and bill insurance.
I have a Juris Doctor degree, and it covers an otherwise blank area of my bedroom wall. All it was ever good for was to qualify me to sit for a bar exam, which I did twice, unsuccessfully. I have never found another use for it, and I can’t recall anyone looking at it and saying, “Oooh, a law degree! That is soooo cool!” That includes my two ex-wives.
Recent posts should remind the OP that certain professional training programs award their graduates “doctorates.”
My fiancée work in private industry and in her field, statistics, a Ph.D. is quite important for getting you ahead. You’ll advance further and faster.
If you’d gone that way I know where you could find a job. The demand for qualified statisticians is considerable.
Yes, postdoc. I did one of those. It’s a job rather than a degree, though.
Like someone else said, you *could *go back for different postdoc degrees. Happily I’ve never felt the desire.
PhDs are highly useful in the field of medical and science quackery.
Get yourself a doctorate and the marks will be impressed. You can use it to sell books, gadgets, pills, treatments, any sort of bullshit. it doesn’t have to be in the field you’re selling yourself as an expert in - it doesn’t even have to be in the realm of science. Dr. Ralph Moss, for instance, sells $299 “Moss Reports” on various medical topics, is quoted frequently by numbskulls, and his degree is in the classics.
You don’t even necessarily have to expend much energy to get the word “Dr.” in front of your name. Pick an online/correspondence school, pay the fee and hey presto, you’re a PhD.
http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2006/09/quack-word-3-doctor.html
Jackmannii (who has a Masters degree in Science).
I have a PhD in engineering, and mostly work in academia. But it is *quite *useful in my occasional forays into consulting. I don’t know more than my clients, and they know that I don’t know more than they do, but a report from me, with that PhD on the title page, helps them sell their own ideas up their own corporate chain of command. And they pay me big bucks for the very little work it takes to write that report.
There is a homeopathic advocate and practitioner that is well known for flaunting his “MPH” degree anywhere and everywhere on his literature, despite the fact that an MPH (Master of Public Health) is not a clinical healthcare degree, but a management and policy degree.
The chief benefit of having my PhD ( Geophysics ) is that adds a few extra bucks to my salary. For my bosses, it tells our partners and government officials in the Ministry of Petroleum that the technical work done to characterize and develop their reservoirs is of the highest quality. Having me to work with and mentor the national workforce is a requirement and MinPet - and my bosses - want to get their moneys worth.
Indeed. This is where I ended up after my PhD. If we open a position for a scientist, we’ll get hundreds of applications from academics.
Not sure how politicians keep saying we need more STEM. We need way, way, way fewer scientists in most areas. We’re not employing the scientists that we have now.
Correct. A JD is not the equivalent of a Ph.D. It’s the first level legal degree, followed by the Master of Laws (LL.M.), and then the Doctor of Juridical Science (commonly called an SJD or JSD), which is the equivalent of a Ph.D.
I and several of my friends from grad school hold doctorates in mechanical engineering. I don’t think any of us is in academia; it seems most of us ended up doing esoteric research in national labs (Argonne, Fermi, Sandia, Livermore, etc.). A few others went to do similar research for big companies like Ford or GM. The one odd exception I’m aware of is a guy who finished his doctorate in ME and then decided that what he really wanted to do was be a doctor. You know, the kind that sees patients. So he signed on for medical school. I think it was only a few years ago (in his late 30s) when he finally established a positive cash flow.
My wife has a Ph.D. in extractive metallurgy. She went straight to industry since she has no real iinterest in academics. Her degree allows here to have deeper knowledge then the guy she’s supervising with 5 years experience but less then her boss with 20. Being a certified expert does allow her opinion to carry more weight. The downside is now she’s looking to change careers and is running into how narrow her education is. She is qualified to do two things and academia is one of them so picking a subject that has a nice career arc is important to choosing your subject or at least choosing something that can allow you to switch industries.
I’ve got an engineering degree and an MBA and im interested in going back to get my Ph.D. in resource econ. For me it’s about advancing my career and about wanting to do econ research. I’m currently switching my career in resource policy and after I get about ten year experienced I want to get the degree so I can do policy consulting while doing research and teaching. The research portion is what interests me in the Ph.D. and what my wife lacks.
There are quite a few folks in engineering companies I’ve worked at who have Ph.D.'s. At least one is working in a field that he doesn’t have a doctorate in – he’s a Chemical Engineer doing programming.
For my part, the doctorate has been useful in getting some positions (people view it as proof that you can stick to a difficult project and get it accomplished). It was also useful in getting me into a library that was pretty restrictive. Having the doctorate opened a door that a bachelor’s wouldn’t have.