Why do so many people continue to pursue doctorates?

Because who wouldn't want my life?

 

Good Lord, between this and the "Wright Thompson seeks advice from me" post, it's officially Humblebrag Hour around here!

 

I have, mercifully, not been following that.

 

I don't think many people pay to do a PhD, do they? Not in Canada anyway. I lived in a grad residence in school, and my impression of PhDs was that they were in love with deeply weird things—I remember one was doing his thesis on Medieval birth control—and doing a PhD gave them several years of a pretty enviable lifestyle in pursuit of that strange passion. There are worse ways to spend your twenties than being paid to become an expert in something.

 

If you're talking about my post, I didn't say he came to me for advice. I said we talked about his story and he said he was going to get Tiger, which would have been his way to one-up me, because he knew I didn't get him in the past.

I mean, I guess I "advised" him that he wouldn't. Good advice, turns out.

 

A Ph.D. in almost any engineering field is golden because you can teach or be a titan of industry, especially in petroleum.

 

Both of my in-laws who got their engineering Ph.D.s (big-time school) say they never made a penny more than they would have if they had stopped at their master's. But one is now in academia, so it helped there.

 

LTL, yes, that's pretty much true that a masters -- or, hell, even a bachelors -- in engineering can set you up nicely. The Ph.D. is mostly for academia, although I'm sure a lot of NASA folks have them.

 

If the Ph.D. in German literature doesn't lead to a tenure-track gig, becoming Slate's go-to critic of higher ed is always an option.

 

I thought about going for a Ph.D. in American Literature when I was working toward a career in academics. I decided to take a year off after the master's and 20-plus years later I've never done it. I really enjoyed the master's thing though, much more than undergrad.

 

Unless typefitter is bragging about drinking Wright Thompson under the table, it's really not much of a brag.

 

There are jobs out there for recent grads, but you can't coast through a program or take eight years to write a dissertation, and you have to be wiling to take a job pretty much anywhere in the U.S.