biggest negative you’ve received due to having that PhD

 After achieving a PhD, what would you say is the biggest negative you’ve received due to having that PhD?

One of the biggest negatives about achieving a PhD is the fact that academia doesn't pay well enough to enjoy the simple things of life.

As a result, a good chunk of PhDs are forced to get jobs in industry where pay and working conditions are better. It means only certain kinds of people end up in academia-graduates who don't need to worry about their finances or folks who don't have much financial responsibility.

I really feel it's about time academics received a pay boost commensurate with other professions. For the amount of years spent studying, the pay could be a lot better.

In my case I was not forced to join industry, it rather happened as I was open to both avenues. I was lucky to get an offer at a start-up prior to submitting my thesis and just held on to it. Now now I continue to develop skills and stay in industry and moving up the ladder.

But once I left academia and joined industry, I realized how nice life can be: real work-life balance, no toxicity, better respect, contributing to a big picture, and making a real-world impact with measurable outputs.

I would not ever return to academia for a million dollars and I am content with my decision.

Education simply not valued in the age of ignorance

Everyone knows you don’t go into an academic field for the money

I don't think it should be the case that Academics continue to accept income that barely meets basic life's needs. It's time to question the status quo and fight for better working conditions rather than accepting what is thrown at them.

Of course different countries will treat their academia and professionals differently, we can conclude that a country is and will develop by the way it treats its academia; we need academics to be well remunerated so that more research and solutions can be undertaken to address the many rising global challenges.

While I agree with you that people who stick to academia often get less money and perks than what you would make in the industry, it really depends a lot on where you are. For example, in Germany, as a academic you are a public servant of relatively high rank with a pretty decent salary for the national realities, especially when compared to the low-medium end of the industry, and almost guaranteed yearly adjustments. In other countries the money is not that good in comparison to the cost of living in the country/city.

The issue in many cases is that people look at the industries and take the wages practiced in large companies as a standard, when many people will not make it to those positions, especially without relevant work experiences and (increasingly frequently) connections.

The biggest negative is finding a job. The private sector would rather not pay for a Ph.D., so there are fewer positions, and if your boss does not have a Ph.D., you will have to deal with your boss’s insecurity. I was also a professor and after 8 years, I got tired of getting paid like crap, working insane hours, and being expected to kiss really bad students’ asses. If you’re a white male in academia, it’s even worse because you are treated as though you are a representative of every historical injustice by white males. In my case, I was blindsided by a visceral hatred of white men that the University not only tolerated but fostered.

It also means there is a socioeconomic barrier to academic careers even greater than the socioeconomic barrier to getting degrees. That creates a skewed perspective reinforcing privilege.

I never saw much privilege in academia when I was in it.

Rich and poor alike got paid dismally. There was no one in authority keeping anyone out; it was more about trying to retain people - to continue to PhDs.

Damn all to do with socioeconomic privilege. When I was an undergraduate about 8/9% of eligible kids went to university in the UK.Today it's what - about 60%?

University is no longer a privilege - it's a right! Public school admissions into university today are dwarfed today by state school applicants too.

You missed her point. “Rich and poor alike got paid dismally” is exactly her point. Those of independent means or rich families don’t care about the pay. Poor people can’t afford to work for dismal pay. That’s the socioeconomic barrier she’s talking about.

Name me one wealthy / private income academic, who has won a Nobel prize?

Over 85% of undergrads’ at Harvard are on a scholarship of one kind or another. The original statement is pure click-bait.

If either of you really cared about equality/privilege in academia, then consider this.

The entire western world’s commercial R&D budget has been hugely subsidized by Western higher education since WW2: Nobel prize winners at Cambridge/ MIT, etc, conducting pure science on behalf of say, Apple/ Amaxon/Boeing, etc, and receiving in return a paltry $1M for their /their lab's efforts!

Meanwhile the product they invent is then sold by said coys for $M10s-$M100s. Frankly commerce pays peanuts for academics, but which paradoxically are their life blood in C21.

If commerce had to replicate say, CALTEC’s laboratories, institutional knowledge, libraries, data and academic staff - and then build their own knowledge/ techniques - and hire full- time staff, just imagine how much that wld cost each individual business - on a global economic scale.

How much do you think a scientist who has a Nobel prize for biochemistry is worth in a free academic market? Think magic circle lawyers’ salary; then triple it. Now buy him/her a private lab’, hire their entire lab staff with a minimum of a phd, buy expensive equipment for the lab’, pay salaries, pensions, create company databases and libraries..

Think about it……

So I got my PhD when I was 19 and while I was doing my Post doctoral research I was being bullied by a bunch of chemistry students and one of them was someone I went to primary school with

So I got my PhD when I was 19

I watched our oldest pig fly when I was 19.

😂

You mean 29 ?

No, I mean 19

And to show you what I mean here Is my Doctorate

□Charles Sturt University ( see coat of arms here )

In the name of the Council and by the authority of the same be it known that

Hugo Klatovsky

having fulfilled all the requirements and having passed all the examinations prescribed by the By-laws and Rules of the University has this day been admitted to the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

with all the rights and privileges attached thereto and in witness whereof the Council has authorised the Common Seal of the University to be hereunto affixed.

( Chancellor's signature)  ( Interim Vice-Chancellor and President signature)

[COMMON SEAL AFFIXED ON THIS THIRTIETH DAY OF AUGUST TWO THOUSAND TWENTY-THREE ] 

11626292 ■

Well done you!

The fact that the supply of academics continues to *FAR* outpace the demand for academics, I would argue that academic salaries are too high rather than too low.

As a former economist, I kind of agree with you. So long as academics are being paid more than the minimum wage, we should pay them what the market determines. Once you start paying people what they are ‘worth’, everyone will demand a pay rise and the economy will be hit with massive inflation.

As a former English lecturer, I had some skin in the game. I decided after twelve years of bad pay and ever increasing workloads, to leave academia and become an economist. And that’s OK. That’s how the market works.

Later, I took a semi-retirement adjunct position, with very poor pay. And that’s also OK. I was back doing what I wanted to do (to teach literature). And I could hardly demand that my impoverished students pay higher fees so that I could be paid what I am ‘worth’.

We must, however, warn our students, before they do their PhDs, that academia pays very badly, and that if they want to own a house or have children they should reconsider.

Totally agree.

I worked in a support position for education while earning one but then being turned down for opportunities because I did not have enough experience to move to higher education which was the goal. Still not able to achieve the goal and always have the same reason, not enough work experience. So now I teach as an adjunct which I would never give up as teaching is so fulfilling even if the pay is not. However, I also work a full-time job in educational support for administration and communications. I feel that a PhD is NOT as valued as it was at one time either. Once they hear you have it, they move on to someone less educated but more experienced.

Nothing much when you hungry you still want to eat. If you talk rubbish no one respects you

And in yhe cases of STEM PHDs, the pay can be double if not sometimes triple academia.

I did not pursue a PhD because I did not want to be poor again. I stopped at the bachelor's level and had a job that paid well. Although many years later I wish I had done it. Perhaps in my next life, I will.

Agreed 100%

Income is determined by balance between supply and demand. Ph.D. system is set up to multiply number of people in the job market. If it was not for tenure - salaries will be even lower. Just look at what happens to people who can not enter the tenure track system because there are just so many candidates to chose from.