Why We Must Redefine the Value of Having a PhD

My personal mission is to Free the PhD - to broaden our global perspective of what it means to have this degree! #freethephd

We all know there is a serious problem in the pipeline of PhD production in most of the scientific world.

We already know that we have way too many PhDs, and definitely not enough academic jobs for everyone.

Besides, we know not all of us are interested in an academic job in the first place.

Why waste more time, energy and effort trying to get a job that you’re not excited about?

If you feel abandoned by the system, now is the time for us to change it - from the inside out.

How, you ask?

"We change the system by becoming successful, as PhDs in all fields, in the endeavors that we personally excel at - no matter what others within academia might think or say." - #FreeThePhD

Because nothing says “it was worth it in the end” than loving the life that you have, while making an impact that you’re proud of.

Only this way can we be honest advocates and supporters of research, STEM, scientific thought, and academia itself.

So many PhDs that I know are terrified of "wasting" their degree - all our years in the lab, field or in front of our keyboards drafting manuscripts, digging through literature and crunching numbers, playing by the rules that we've known for so long.

But here’s the kicker - the more we fear wasting our PhDs, stats show the longer we end up toiling and picking at this vague dream of academic success, kicking what might be a horse that died years ago.

This isn't just a waste of time - it can actually be damaging to our careers and health.

We're in the age of the innovative 21st century - of self-driving cars and drones delivering mail - so it's about time to put our career plans as research trainees under the microscope - because frankly, most of us have not been encouraged to think about our futures in a realistic way!

As scientists, we seem to stay “trainees” forever.

We’re always waiting for just another grant...just another paper...one more set of experiments.

And then you wonder where another year went.

I know too many friends and classmates who have given science the best years of their life -and not gotten much back from this one-sided relationship. And yet we all still remain scientists at heart - so how do we reconcile being mistreated by something we love and identify with?

Part of this is the flaws of the structural system we have today - and every system has flaws.

But a big part is also us - those of us who make up the system, who power it and make it run. We have often been too self-constrained - too complacent. All too often we prevent ourselves from advocating for ourselves.

We too often hold ourselves, and others like us, back from doing what we should be doing - which is going out there to spread the power and logic of our research experience into every corner of our society.

We do this through developing and supporting the unique strengths of each individual, by helping every PhD and researcher of every level excel in the careers that are the best fit for them - rather than measuring everyone by the limited standards that prevail within academic life.

If we want success in life, we have to go get it ourselves, instead of waiting for it to arrive at our doorstep. #FreeThePhD

This includes recognizing when something is worth another year of effort, and when it’s time to cut your losses while you’re ahead - or before you fall too far behind in the life you want to have.

Time doesn’t wait around for most of us to achieve happiness and success by most traditional academic definitions of tenured professorship. If we don't get that big grant, Nature, Science or Cell paper by a certain time or in a certain cadence, we're probably not going to get that faculty job, or stay in that faculty position - whether we agree that this is a good thing for science or not. (Don't get me started on if you happen to be a woman or minority group trying to make it in research!)

Time is especially merciless if we don’t achieve some tangible and ideally impressive work experience by a certain stage in our careers.

Why?

The bald truth is that generally, for all job seekers, it’s our job to show employers what we can do for them - unfortunately not the other way around.

For most of us coming straight from a purely academic research topic, this is extremely challenging, because we often have had no other professional or real world experience.

All many of us know is how to do research in the academic environment - and while our skillsets are undoubtedly extremely valuable to society, it’s often not nearly enough to convince someone to take the risk to hire us right off the bat.

This is why so many of my fellow PhDs remain an unproven, and still directly untapped, pool of social and economic potential.

Right out of grad school or a postdoc, we get trapped in the Catch-22 sinkhole of being both under qualified and overqualified for every job out there.

How many hours have you and I wasted sending out applications and getting crickets day after day?

How many depressing days will you never get back?

Your time is a finite resource. Have you been using it wisely? #FreeThePhD

To add insult to injury, we are all getting older as we finish our manuscripts or grant applications or first or second postdocs.

We get more physically and mentally tired and worn down.

Families and health concerns may start putting serious financial pressure on us to bring home more bacon and spend more time with the people that make life worth living.

We are less energetic about going in to work every day, and many of us feel more and more hopeless as time drags on that we will ever get that kick back in our step, feel the excitement that we felt when we first fell in love with science.

But here’s the key thing to admit if we want to break out of this cycle:

We don’t avoid failure by refusing to face reality.

Instead, we may actually sentence ourselves to being undervalued and underappreciated by a system that does not have any honest incentives to make large changes in our benefit at this time.

If you won’t take action and move forward, you will never have the life you want to have - and you will never be the advocate for research and science that you probably want to be.

Instead of wasting your PhD in a job that you’ve heard other people perhaps making fun of, or risking having a life that you fear is doomed to being boring and intellectually unfulfilling outside academia, find out if this is necessarily true for you, because you'll probably find that it won't be.

The actual biggest waste of your time is sitting around worrying, imagining the worst, or re-sending the same resumes that keep getting rejected from opportunities you think you should be a shoo-in for.

If you keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, you may want to have a brutal re-evaluation of whether or not it’s time to change the parameters of your experiments, or maybe just ditch your original hypothesis altogether.

Life is no different from doing research or advancing science. If you're constantly getting negative results, your data is telling you something.

It means something isn’t working, and you need to figure out what’s wrong and change your methods or assumptions.

It's up to you to either listen to your data, or not.

If these things sound like the struggles you’ve been having, I strongly advise you to reach out and get the protocols you need to move forward in your life. For me, I was lucky to have supportive faculty and family in my life to get me through the months of stress and worry and emotional turmoil during my own job hunt, and during the many ups and downs of being a member of working society.

Yet still, I've never looked back after leaving the academic lab and wonder why it took me so long to leave.

Actually, I know exactly why it took me that long. I lacked the facts. I lacked the perspective. I lacked the support and encouragement to do what was best for my career at the systemic level.

It's why I started Free the PhD, because I know all of these pains and stresses, have helped others through them, and I think it’s time that we remove these barriers for each other at a larger scale.

I support the career goals of fellow researchers because I love science, and I fear science is getting endangered by our collective lack of support for the career potential of our most vulnerable and valuable members.

How can I recommend a career in STEM with a straight face to the next generation if I know that so many of them will face painful, stressful transitions into an unwelcoming workplace after all their years of blood, sweat and tears?

And what does this mean for the future of innovation, if we can't be bothered to reward or at least make the careers of those who contribute to it viable long-term?

During the simultaneously difficult and wonderful time we have in academia, we need specific, up to date guidance on work expectations, hands-on experience with real world problems that are relevant to business and industry; personalized feedback on job application materials, practice doing interview questions and responses with no-nonsense expectations, and ideally also to gain experience with team-based assignments, as well as selling and negotiations.

Most importantly, we need emotional support in dealing with difficult people and challenging assumptions and psychologies holding us back from fulfilling our full potential.

I provide scientists with supportive, steadfast advice that is no nonsense, well informed and experienced with helping PhDs get jobs, keep jobs, and advance quickly in their careers, because every person I help is changing the scientific landscape for the better. I believe that happy scientists, no matter what they're doing professionally, make the world a better place.

I want you to reach out to someone for help in your career prospects if you're struggling - and if this is something I can assist you with, or bring to your students or graduate student or postdoc event, let's talk.

I want more people in research to think about these questions seriously, and to take action on them for their futures:

• What do I need to do to find a job where I can be paid fairly for the amount of time and energy I spend working, to support the lifestyle I want to have?
• What does it mean to be valued and appreciated in my day to day work if I don't stay in academia?
• What kinds of jobs are realistic for me to try for at this stage in my career?
• How should I get skills or work experience that can launch me in a new direction if I don't like where I am now?
• How do I future-proof my career?
• How do I advance in my current job?
• What’s happiness in life worth to me?

Let’s find out together. If you read a career book, reach out to me or others for resume advice or coaching, apply for an internship, schedule informational interviews, or offer to mentor someone because you were inspired or motivated by this post, then I've done my job.

I strongly believe that this experiment to Free the PhD is definitely worth a try! If you feel like you need permission from someone to start - then by all means, permission granted!

=============

If you have words of encouragement, resource requests, your own PhD transition story to share, or want to show your support for Free the PhD's mission by contributing your time or making a financial contribution, please get in touch!

Join the Free the PhD Email Newsletter here for regular news, advice and encouragement in all things PhD Careers.