start me up!

Don't get a doctorate!

I should have written on this point long ago. But now I feel prompted because I've finally had a chance to look at the now-slumbering Invisible Adjunct blog. The fact is that I have had a doctorate myself since 1994 and rarely had the chance to use it. It's like I have it to show evidence that I'm a smart guy. Or a smartass, maybe. :-)

What's wrong with having a doctorate? For starters, if you want to teach with it, there are very few full-time college jobs available. You pretty much have to wait for someone to DIE before there is an opening, because of the tenure system. You may think I'm exaggerating, but I have seen this. I'm not against tenure: it's the only way to preserve academic freedom. But it is used nowadays to get certain people jobs-for-life, and to prevent others from having a chance. I myself teach part-time at the College that hosts this blog, and I would be all but invisible there if my wife did not have tenure. Like the Invisible Adjunct. Full-time faculty walk past us, sometimes not seeing us. Because the students are "customers," they also are more vital to the campus community than we are. The non-academic staff are the ones who make the rules, also without considering our situation. Don't get me wrong: I love teaching, and I like TCNJ a lot. But the point is, I didn't need to get a doctorate to be paid less than I'm worth, to share an office with six or seven people, to teach required freshman classes and become forgotten afterwards.

In industry you usually don't need a doctorate, either. I developed a neural network from scratch for my doctoral thesis; nobody uses that research because the project I did it for was shut down a few months after I graduated. Don't get the idea that project managers seek people with advanced degrees -- they don't. They seek people who will fit in to project teams and keep things moving as they are. You don't need a doctorate for that; in fact, it hurts you. Somebody with a bachelor's degree can "play for the team," and that's why headhunters and human resources people will dismiss you without a second thought if you have a doctorate. It's not simply that they think you cost too much; it's that they can get someone to do the same thing for fresh-out prices. (They also know that if they are patient, they will find exactly the person they want for exactly the price they want to pay, but that is another story.)

I've got a teaching certificate now; I've applied for another one and will soon apply for a third. There isn't a school system in New Jersey that cares whether I have an advanced degree; all they care about is whether I have a certificate. That's it. And I certainly do not need a doctorate to get certified.

The only environment in which I've found my doctorate has any value at all is that of the entrepreneur. With GreyPilgrim, Inc., my advanced degree was valued because it added intellectual credibility to what was otherwise a very small project team. But no entrepreneur hosts a research environment: it's about getting the job done and getting the products to market. For the person with the advanced degree, it's about wearing a bunch of hats, too. Your advanced study has trained you to wear many different hats, whether you know it or not; but you have to free yourself from the illusion that a small company will allow you to advance your scholarship. You can have fun; you can learn a LOT; you can take projects from cradle to grave; but you cannot advance a field of study. Your academic life as you knew it is over.

The short answer: if you are considering getting a doctorate, don't. If it's too late, and you are already in the pipeline, then decide: are you going to be a poor part-time academic, or a poor gambler on a start-up? I know which way I'd go. How about you?

Labels: education

posted by Ron @ 12:40 PM