To get a PhD or to not get a PhD..?

After my first summer of graduate studies at USF and my internship at DC Water, I realized that maybe a PhD was more my speed than a Master's degree.

Why?

Well, I had a lot of big ideas for my research (now written pretty coherently in narrative form on this website under Research Interests → Wetland Management Feedbacks), which meant I either let some of those go or consider upgrading.

I've also definitely solidified my love for conducting research, and if I want a tenure-track faculty position — or as my internship at DC Water showed me, a job as a coordinator of an R&D lab at a water management agency — a PhD is necessary.

But there were plenty of reasons why I hadn't entered into a PhD program initially and I had to consider those pretty carefully as well. Here's my best ramble at my thought process for making the decision to switch from a Master's program to a PhD one in case you find yourself struggling in a similar situation.

The first issue is, of course, time.

PhD's in my field (biological/natural sciences) typically take anywhere from 4–7 years. That's right, years. Some can even take a decade if your experiments just keep failing or, say, a hurricane wipes our your field site. That means by the time I graduate, I might be almost 30 years old (only 22 when I started!) That's up to 10 years of my student loans continuing to accrue interest (amounting to thousands of extra dollars owed)... 10 years of being paid next to nothing... 10 years of terrible health insurance and definitely no dental... 10 years of throwing money away on rent because there's no way I could afford to buy anything... &10 years of endless stress, of course.

On the other hand, a master's degree can take up to 4 years (and often does in my field), so at that point, what's another 3, right? Especially if it can mean higher paying jobs and more options to continue pursuing research at the end of the long, long road.

But, is that even true anymore?

This brings me to issue #2: becoming overqualified.

In recent years, the world has apparently decided they've had enough of PhDs. There are just too darn many of them and getting one does not apparently guarantee you a job post-graduation like it used to. Don't believe me? Read about it in the Atlantic, or the Economist, or Science magazine.

All of them say the same thing: you spend a lot of time, forgo a lot of money, and at the end of the road it might not be paid back to you. Yet, almost every faculty member I talk to says there are plenty of jobs in academia. That all of their grad students get a job post-PhD if they want one. This is anecdotal evidence, of course, and likely comes from a place of privilege where the faculty members that tell me this all come from primarily high-producing R1 (research heavy) schools.

But, even if it is true, is a job in academia really my best (or only) option?

This brings me to my third and final issue, #3: academia itself.

While the draw of tenure is a pretty strong one, it's hard to ignore the blatant inequalities that exist in my field (and many others). I would love to continue following my research interests and contributing to scientific consensus as the world battles global threats like water insecurity, climate change, sea-level rise, and rapid urbanization, but that would mean I have to work within the walls of an institution that demonstrates again and again to me its sexism.

I won't dive into the rampant sexual harassment faced by women in STEM fields across the country or the gender-bias in publications and research dollars awarded, but I will mention some personal day-to-day struggles.

My department is majority female graduate students, yet the faculty in my department are overwhelming male. We've hired four new faculty members in my time at USF, giving our department the perfect chance to tip the scales a little bit, and while they brought highly qualified women to the final round of interviews each hiring cycle (some of whom were ranked almost unanimously first by the graduate students), they ultimately hired four men and no women.

This leaves me with few female role models and even fewer women who could possibly serve on my committee (read: determine my fate as a graduate student). This can make it extremely difficult to talk about some of the frustrations felt uniquely by women to men.

But I suppose this can be the case across multiple fields and in multiple industries, so the grass is not necessarily greener on the other side, right?

After working for DC Water this summer, I'd also like to believe that there are more jobs running research labs outside of academia where the culture may be changing faster than in the "Ivory Tower" I've become accustomed to.

What this long ramble hopefully convinced you of is that deciding to pursue a PhD is definitely a tough choice and one I don't think is right for everyone.

I sincerely struggled with my decision for quite sometime and there's no way to know if I ultimately made the right call or not. But, I'll keep my fingers crossed, send some good vibes out into the universe, and hope they come back my way.