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I'm in my undergrad and I know a couple people wanting to go for their masters because finding a job is difficult right now, I feel like finding your first job with a masters might be harder than finding a job with only a bachelors no? Reason being, places don't want to pay more for a guy who is equally as inexperienced
My wife went back several years after under grad for a phd. Biochem. It's probably had a negative effect on job prospects. Either over qualified or under experienced. She's currently making minimum wage doing care work. Never got a job where a phd was an advantage.
I mean you could also not mention a phd or masters on your resume. Tailor it for the job
She tried that but then it leaves a 5 year gap
Call it taking a sabbatical to have a kid. They can't demand proof of the kid.
That's my perspective as well, we're either overqualified or underexperienced, as you said. For, personally, it also took a toll mentally, both because the journey was tough due to the pursuit of funding, but also because I finished during COVID, which took any chance away, due to the absolute lack of networking happening at the time.
Yeah my wife was the same. 2018-2023. Delayed a little over a year because they shut the labs for months and limited occupancy when it opened. Basically 3 years she hardly saw anyone.
I think nothing beats experience, regardless of what your education is. As long as you can prove that you know what you're talking about, companies will hire you. So, if you've got a masters or a doctorate, but no experience, you're in a tough spot immediately. On the other hand, there's a trade-off with time; the time you spent on your education is time you could've spent instead gaining experience and networking. It's hard to do both, but during a masters it might be possible. Quite harder to do while pursuing a doctorate though, unless the networking is happening inside academia.
I think the real advice is that you shouldn’t do post-graduate studies unless it’s paid for, comes with a stipend, or comes with an assistantship. Too many people (including myself) have paid for advanced degrees out of pocket only to find that they were pure coursework with no tangible experience.
The other piece of advice that isn’t often given is that post-graduate work really is training for jobs in academia. If that’s not where you want to end up, then those degrees are rarely useful (outside of academia). There are a few fields where masters-level is required for entry level jobs, but setting your course for a PhD is really a course to an academic post.
Exactly, but even if your tuition is paid for with a grant, alongside a stipend, I would argue against pursuing a PhD, with the only exception being when you want a job in academia, like you said. The amount of money you'll be making in academia is absolute peanuts compared to the industry, and the same goes for relevant work experience.
Personally, I had to get a grant with a stipend, or else I wouldn't be able to afford it. I also got to lecture as an invited assistant for a year, but I never really wanted to teach. I wanted to dedicate myself to research, but I quickly realized nobody around me was actually trying to push the boundaries of knowledge and, instead of discussing ideas, learning from each other, and taking some freakin' risks, what I found was a lot of ass kissing, and seniors constantly doing paperwork to get funding, while delegating research to students. Everything that mattered to me felt secondary to everybody else. It felt quite lonely, so I eventually made the decision to leave, after nearly 20 years studying and working at the university.
It wasn't easy (still isn't), and this is why I like to share this perspective. Maybe it can save some heartache and financial hardship to a few people.