Is a PhD in Engineering worth it?

College Majors Engineering Majors
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<p>I'm wondering if there are any real benefits to getting a PhD in Engineering. Obviously, a lot of work and time goes into getting a PhD. Pursuing a PhD would make sense for fields like English, where career options in the private sector are highly limited and therefore the PhD a much better option. </p>

<p>However, for engineering, there is a relatively large amount of high paying jobs available outside of academia. My older brother had a starting salary of $60,000 with only a B.S. in ME from a mediocre college. He now makes 6 figures and just turned 30. Pretty good by anyone's standards. </p>

<p>This makes me wonder if obtaining a PhD is a waste of time, spending many more years on theoretical subjects that are rarely used in industry. Furthermore, I worry that I'd be limiting my career by getting a PhD. By that I mean, limiting my career so that I could only be a professor and a university or a research scientist for a company. </p>

<p>I always believed that the engineers that ultimately make the most money are the design engineers that work in the private sector and move up to engineering managers and ultimately become more involved in the financial operations and contracts of the company. In this path, a PhD seems useless, and even destructive as it could prevent you from getting the jobs that allow this vertical movement. </p>

<p>I'm wondering this because I find engineering curriculum very enjoyable and I've been pretty successful with it. What are the benefits of a PhD? Does a PhD help your career? Does it limit your career?</p>

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<p>It all depends on your career goals. Anyone who does a Ph.D. in engineering for the money clearly doesn’t know what he/she is doing, as it won’t typically net you any major monetary advantage over an M.S.</p>

<p>A Ph.D. both helps and limits your career. If you want to get into research, it is absolutely essential. If you aren’t interested in staying on a technical career path, it is useless. What it all comes down to is this: what do you want to do with your career?</p>

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<p>In general, if one is interested in doing research, it is worthwhile to pursue a PhD.</p>

<p>@TechGuy342, you should go to phds.org and read the material there. It will give you a variety of perspectives on obtaining a PhD.</p>

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<p>Most people who argue that a Phd is not necessary or is a foolish idea are just bitter that they themselves don’t have one. Google “cognitive dissonance”.</p>

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<p>@JamesMadison</p>

<p>Or maybe they came to the realization they don’t need to go tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt for diminishing returns on a degree they won’t use and don’t need. What a terrible sweeping generalization.</p>

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<p>I think it is pretty clear the money is in finance. So if you want the money get an MBA after your BS. However if you want to work for JPL you might just want to get your PhD.
@JamesMadison there is a big difference between not necessary and foolish. Plenty of times an advanced degree is benefitcial but not absolutely necessary. I’m not even going to deal with the foolish. That would indicate that your goals where in a completely different direction and depends heavily on the debt load in the equation. I’m mean heck if you’ve got a trust fund and want to get PhD’s until the day you die, go for it.</p>

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<p>I’m sure 90% of Ph.D are paid with waived tuition. Who would pay for graduate school lol.</p>

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<p>MasterKuni, I’ve never heard of a single engineer paying for his/her PhD. They are almost always paid for through the research grant that funds their work.</p>

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<p>I can’t imagine what my life would have been had I not pursued my PhD, but I doubt that it would have been nearly as intellectually fulfilling, and probably not been as profitable either. </p>

<p>These calculations about whether it would be worth it seem really silly now, though I admit thinking like many people here do before I took the plunge. </p>

<p>I made sustenance wages teaching and doing research for 6 years a grad student, got a great paying job at a research lab, which paid more than my salary would have been after 6 years of working. I then rose rapidly with leadership positions due to offshoots of my own research. From that, I was able to join a pre-IPO startup that later went public. That was a life changing event. Then another startup, not so successful, but still great fun. I now hold a leadership position in research for a great company with a great salary and benefits still doing significant work. The hours are better and I can be an involved parent. Once the last is off to college? Who knows what lies ahead?</p>

<p>Could I have made as much without the PhD? Perhaps, but the intellectual satisfaction of creating something of great value, which I doubt I would have had quite the same opportunity to do, is priceless to me.</p>

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<p>(Sorry if this is a hijack…I weighed the options and this seemed a little less annoying than a new thread)</p>

<p>I would like to ask my own question, and I will delete it if this is not proper etiquette. But I hope that it’s something the answer to which is also hopeful in shaping OP’s decision:</p>

<p>I am not even a freshman yet, and don’t know at all how the engineering world works. But when I try to describe the sort of things I want to be doing, it always seems to be seen by others as “research.” Same with the job listings I see that sound coolest. I bounce around a lot (like a week ago I made a stupid thread about a PhD in biomed), but what seems consistent is that I want to be sort of “on the cutting edge,” developing new ideas for technologies, often specifically in energy. I feel like I want to be almost as much a scientist as an engineer, working in a in a lab for NASA or a company like GE or something. I am currently not concerned about the money at all ($50K/year sounds like plenty), but am concerned with prestige, respect and making cool impacts on the world.</p>

<p>I am not sure this is even a real job or how this work at all (I am totally uneducated), but from what little I can articulate, does this sound like something that would require graduate study likely, or could I get that sort of job with a BS?</p>

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<p>A PhD is required for a career in academia. A PhD is almost always required for a career in research, although even with a PhD a job in research is not guaranteed. If either academia or research are of interest, a PhD may be worth it. Otherwise, perhaps not. </p>

<p>There is an opportunity cost in time of being in a PhD program. Most engineering PhD students are supported by grants or RA or TA positions, so almost nobody pays the costs directly. But time spent in grad school living on a small stipend is time not spent earning a decent engineering salary and gaining valuable work experience.</p>

<p>I dropped out of a EE PhD program with a master’s. I’m one of the lucky few who was able to work in research without a PhD, eventually moving to a management position, although I have since moved on to a non-research, advanced development management position. I know an awful lot of people who prefer research work to development work.</p>

<p>I don’t think having a PhD is an impediment to getting a management position, if that is of interest to the individual engineer.</p>

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<p>If you are going into biomedical engineering, is a PhD worth it?</p>

<p>What about if you want to become a surgeon?</p>

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<p>@sacchi - what exactly is the difference between Development work and Research work? As in, what do you do and how high if a degree do you need to have to best chance at getting a job in either?</p>

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<p>So far I dont think I have known any phDs holding manager positions. However alot of phDs that I know of started multiple companies due to their access to alot of stakeholders and alot of time spent on inventing new stuff.</p>

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<p>I’m a EE, so I can best speak to that, rather than other types of engineering. Lots of EEs work in development, and a BS degree is all that is required. However, having an MS or a PhD can sometimes help to find a job, or a more interesting job. When I say development, I mean that the engineers develop products. Company X wants to make a product Y. Someone defines the requirements, and then developers implement them: select or develop the hardware platform, develop the algorithms and software to build the product. A QA (quality assurance) engineer then tests the product, before it is delivered to customers. Down the road a few years, another engineer supports the product - adds new features, fixes bugs, etc. Advanced development (what I do now) tends to be be bleeding edge, developing brand new types of products using better, newer technology than what is available now (as opposed to developing a product that is “me too”.) Although I don’t work in the automotive industry, an example would be that developing the Volt would be advanced development since it uses a lot of new, advanced technology, while designing the model 2013 year Camry would be development.</p>

<p>Researchers tend to work in central research labs of large companies, rather than in the business units where developers, QA, support, etc. work. Researchers generally don’t work on specific products, but on technologies that eventually are used in products. Researchers are much more likely than developers to apply for patents, publish papers in conferences and journals, participate in international standards bodies, etc. A PhD is usually required to work in research, but not always. Sometimes an MS can be good enough. Sometimes there are BS engineers in research, but they tend to work in more of a support role, than as a “researcher”. </p>

<p>Sticking with the automobile example, for many years before the Volt was first developed, researchers would have studied everything about electric cars, batteries, etc. </p>

<p>I’ve worked in both research and advanced development throughout my career, both as an individual contributor and as a manager. My highest degree is an MS - I was in a PhD program, but dropped out. Even though I didn’t end up with a PhD, I think the fact that I had been in a PhD program helped me get that first research job. </p>

<p>Lots of engineers aspire to work in research, and it is considered by many to be higher status than development. (And development is considered to be higher status than QA, support, etc.) However, I think a lot of people find advanced development to be the most exciting work. While “regular” development typically requires only a BS, “advanced” development often requires an MS or PhD, or else some really relevant work experience in the field.</p>

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<p>On the other hand, I know many, many PhDs holding manager positions. But they are in research and advanced development organizations, where many of the people who they are managing also have advanced degrees.</p>

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<p>Thanks for that amazing breakdown, sacchi. I have a much clearer idea of the landscape than I did before. I have been looking for something like this for months. Cheers</p>