In 2 years, I’ll be getting my Master’s Degree. Will I really have to be in school for another 4 or 5 years in order to earn a stable living?
These are two separate questions.
Will I really have to spend another 4-5 years in school in order to earn a stable living? - Almost certainly not. There are lots of jobs you can get with a master’s degree in virtually any field. You don’t have to get a doctoral degree unless you need it to do something very specific. Even if you felt your master’s was essentially worthless, in many cases it might be more worth it to do a different master’s degree than it would be to get a PhD.
Is a PhD worth it?
That depends entirely on what you plan to do with it. A PhD is a research degree. Pursuing one is an indication that, at the least, you have some kind of burning passion to study something specific for 4-8+ years. Ideally, you’d also want to make a career out of that research/scholarship - being a professor at a college or university, or a high-level researcher at a nonprofit or government agency or a private company, or some other position that would benefit from intense long-term research training.
Since it is such an investment of time and opportunity cost, it’s not a decision to be made lightly. And I’d say that if you’d be satisfied with the kinds of jobs you can get with a master’s, then it’s not really worth the outlay of time.
@roethlisburger Um, thank you, but what does this have to do with my question?
^In most fields, there’s far more newly minted Phds each year than tenure track faculty positions. Many people are disappointed when they can’t land a faculty position after finishing their Phd. If you don’t give us your major or what you would like to do after graduation, you should expect a generic answer.
@roethlisburger My major is mathematics.
@halfblock Are you a US citizen?
There’s a lot you can do with a math major without a PhD, which is only really necessary if you want to go into academia.
A couple thoughts - and from someone who has one…
A) they are expensive and time consuming.
B) you’ll probably be learning with some of the better minds in your profession; you’ll learn as much from your fellow students as from your professors.
C) it can be absolutely necessary if you want to be tenured at a college or university. Most decent college faculties are 85-95% doctoral degree holders.
D) if you are young in your profession, having that advanced degree really helps. I was quite young in my first official and real job and it was clear my bosses used that degree to explain why I was in the room, or on the task. (Not in a show off sort of way, just in passing… “Dr. ____ will be assisting with the ___”)
E) you need to think really hard about completion before you start. At my graduate school, the average completion rate was only 12%. That is a lot of time and money spent by many folks without actually getting the degree.
F) in the end, I would talk to a lot of people doing the kinds of mathematics you want to do… figure out who went which path and how it connects to you. And you’ll do some great networking along the way!
G) and from an employment perspective? Depends on your kind of mathematics, but there is typically great demand for anyone who can sophisticated analytics, modeling, etc etc… and you don’t need a doctorates for that necessarily at all.
… two cents. Any help?
Is getting a Phd as miserable as Medical School? I want to get a Phd in Computer science?
I want to get a Phd in computer science.
and @halfblock, do you want to get into research?