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<p>At the risk of sounding like a broken record and stirring up more controversy, I would say that it’s useful for a lot more than that. To take Professor X’s example regarding Native American Studies, sure, a PhD from Oklahoma might be better than one from Harvard if you actually get a research career in that field. But what if you don’t? What if you can’t? </p>
<p>Basically, I’ve seen too many people with PhD programs, or at least started them, and are now in careers that have little to do with whatever it is that they studied. Yes, some of them are consultants or bankers, but that’s hardly the only example. Others started off as researchers but were later promoted to management and hence never use their technical skills. Some embarked upon different careers entirely; for example, some became small business owners, others became IT workers. One woman that I know with a PhD in chemical engineering became the head of an NGO to save seals. Another person that I know who has a technical Phd is seriously thinking of running for political office. </p>
<p>Before anybody objects, allow me to enumerate some of the many reasons why you might not end up with a research career. </p>
<p>*Many people who start PhD programs don’t finish, for the simple reason that a lot of people find out that they don’t really like the lifestyle of a researcher. I believe studies have shown that only about 1/2 of all entering PhD students will actually complete it, the rest usually ending up with a consolation master’s (although a significant group won’t even get that.) Whatever you might say about the merits of an Oklahoma PhD vs. a Harvard PhD, I think there is little dispute that Harvard master’s is clearly better than a Oklahoma master’s. After all, if you end up with just a master’s degree, you’re highly unlikely to be pursuing a research career anyway (as after all, if you really liked doing research, then you probably wouldn’t be leaving your program).</p>
<p>*Even if you do finish, a lot of PhD students won’t get academic placement. This seems to be particularly true in the humanities (i.e. Native American Studies). There are quite simply too many PhD’s produced in those disciplines than there are academic spaces for them such that even graduating from the top program in your field won’t guarantee that you’ll get placed.</p>
<p>*Many disciplines, like, again, the humanities, don’t have an active private sector analog to hire them as researchers. I rather doubt that there are a lot of private firms out there that are hiring droves of researchers on Native American studies. {Engineering, natural sciences and social sciences are better in this respect.} The upshot is that not only might you not end up with an academic offer, you might not even have a private sector offer either. That is, not one in your field of interest. </p>
<p>*Even if you can get a job in your field, it might be a low-end one such that you might prefer an entirely different career. It is quite a common refrain from PhD students at schools like Harvard, MIT, Stanford, etc. that while they would prefer an academic or research offer, they’re not going to end up working for some low-ranked no-name school or take a low salary for just some research job at some mediocre company; if that’s the best they can get, they’re going to do something else with their lives (i.e. banking, consulting, venture capital, launching their own startup, etc.). That illustrates the career flexibility that these people have with their degree’s name brand. A guy getting his PhD from Harvard can seriously consider McKinsey or Goldman Sachs as options. The guy from Oklahoma, not so much. </p>
<p>*Even if you do graduate and do get a good research job, some people decide they don’t want one anyway. People change their interests all the time. I know people who, upon finishing their PhD’s, were burned out and were sick of their topics, who wanted to take a break and do something else for a few years. In many cases, that break ended up being a permanent break. If you’ve been grinding away at the same research question for many years straight, you can very easily find that you’re tired of it. Many people begin to think that there’s much more to life than just sitting around, analyzing regressions or editing research papers or designing new experiments. You simply want to do other things.</p>
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<li>Aligned with the point above, even if you do embark on a research career, like I said, many people years later decide to switch to something else, often times to management. I know a lot of people who worked for many years as research scientists or engineers, but have been or want to be promoted to general management. Once you become a general manager, nobody is really going to care how good your specific PhD program is, because they’ll have no idea. All they will see is the name of the school.</li>
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<p>I’ll give you a case in point. I know a guy who got his PhD from Harvard and then became a researcher for several years until he decided he wanted to do something else. So what did he do? He leveraged the Harvard alumni network and met people through his local Harvard Club to get himself a job; now he works in a venture capital firm whose partners are largely other Harvard graduates. He wouldn’t be able to do that if he had gone to some school that didn’t have such a powerful alumni base. </p>
<p>It all comes down to risk aversion. I know you guys seem to think that it’s irrational for somebody to turn down a stronger program for a better brand name. I actually believe the opposite - that it’s entirely rational, given the uncertainty of the future. You don’t know what’s going to happen in the future, and you don’t know what kind of career you will have, and a brand-name school will, if nothing else, at least give you a highly marketable signal. </p>
<p>For those who want to jump down my throat - and I expect that there will be many of you - I would say that the real problem is that the life of a PhD student is risky. Like I said, many people won’t even finish their programs, and even of those that do, there simply are not enough good research jobs for everybody. That is to say, if every PhD student actually managed to finish and if enough research/academic jobs were available for every single new PhD, and those jobs all paid well, then people wouldn’t need to be risk averse. For example, people really could rationally turn down Harvard for Oklahoma because they would know that they would have a good research job waiting for them once they finish their PhD (and their finish would be guaranteed). But that’s not the world that we live in. We live in risky world. PhD programs admit plenty of students who won’t graduate, there aren’t enough research jobs for everybody, and many of those research jobs (especially in the humanities) don’t pay well. Hence, given that risk profile, it is entirely rational for people to want to keep their options open. </p>
<p>Hence, it is the risk that is the real problem. Don’t blame me for that, as I’m not responsible for the risk. I’m just telling you that it is there, I didn’t create it. Don’t shoot the messenger.</p>