To Get a PhD or Not to Get a PhD?
In graduate school or after, many of us become statistical Hamlets, asking, “To get a PhD or not to get a PhD?” Unable to pull off an acceptable crossover trial, the ASA Committee on Applied Statisticians gives you the experiences of four statisticians who took different paths after their master’s degrees. We’ll post them throughout the year. Starting off the series is Kathryn M. Irvine.
Kathryn Irvine
Kathi Irvine is a research statistician with the US Geological Survey at the Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center in Bozeman, Montana. She was chair of the Section on Statistics and the Environment in 2018, president of the Montana Chapter of the ASA several times (small group), and is currently publications chair-elect for the Government Statistics Section. Kathi has both an MS and a PhD in statistics.
Should I get a PhD in statistics? The question inevitably comes up as one is working through a master’s degree in statistics. The pondering becomes even more intense if you have passed your MS comprehensive exams at a PhD level and the department has invited you to stay on. This was my experience, and I decided to stay.
In retrospect, my decision was easy. I enjoyed graduate school and the department I was in (Oregon State Statistics Department). I had no competing family or other obligations to keep me from staying. Also, I had a BS and MS from other institutions, so I wasn’t in the “trap” of an academic history that listed the same university for all my degrees. Finally, the faculty was great and well-respected in my area of interest at the time—Bayesian and spatial statistics as applied to ecological problems.
Should I have worked for a doctorate? In fact, I didn’t need a PhD in statistics to be a research statistician in the federal government (US Geological Survey). I wouldn’t have suffered through real analysis and probability and measure theory—and, believe me, I did suffer. Most of my colleagues with the same position description have a master’s degree in statistics and a PhD in another discipline. If I had known this, would I have made another choice? Maybe.
Yet, being a “card-carrying PhD in statistics” affords me opportunities I don’t think I would have had otherwise. There were insights gained through my PhD experience I don’t think I would have gotten elsewhere. I am able to span scientific disciplines and statistical methodology. I could consider competing for other jobs if I wanted to—pharmaceutical companies or Google aren’t high on my list, but it is reassuring to know my PhD wouldn’t hold me up if I wanted a change.
If I had pursued a PhD in ecology or wildlife sciences, my only real options would be nongovernmental agencies, environmental consulting, state and federal land management agencies, or academia. Plus, these folks often do postdoctoral work for years. My cohort of PhDs in statistics, on the other hand, got jobs before the ink was dry on our diplomas, and we now work at banks, corporations, consulting firms—where real money can be earned.
But could I have gotten my current job as an ecological statistician with just an MS in statistics? Possibly. Would I have been able to advance to higher pay grades under the research grade evaluation process without a PhD? I doubt it.
Another upside for me is I have a huge amount of autonomy in my current position, still within the scope of my agency’s mission, of course. I am not so sure I would have that without a PhD. Even in my agency, a PhD holds cachet—for better or worse. Academic pedigree can be helpful in some situations.
So, was earning a PhD worth it? For me, absolutely!
Be sure to check in next month to read about Mark Otto and the path he took after he earned his master’s in statistics.
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I think this misses a key factor. It is not about sitting through tough courses, but the commitment to a deep field of research for a long period without making much money.
Many especially in the US finish undergrad with hefty loans, some even have families to support and cannot afford another 5 years of grad school barely earning any money. I used to see that most folks in the program either came from financially well to do families, or international students who are on student visas and don’t have a choice or have a spouse who holds a job and able to support them as they go through the program.
You definitely don’t want to pursue a PhD because someone else is telling you to for no matter what reasons unless they can convince you of the topic being really exciting and worth spending the next 5 years researching or can pay you enough. Neither of these are the case when one decide to pursue a PhD.
A PhD is something one should pursue for the passion of the research and contributing to the field, not to think of it as something simply be a label that offers some kind of privilege or make it easier to get a job or promotions.
Although jobs and promotions should be decided on the skills and performance (would you rather hire someone who has 5 years of experience delivering in the real world on the similar role than a fresh PhD who spent the past 5 years in academia). At some point the PhD should even out with real world job experience even in a purely research setting. But it is folks with PhDs who set this never ending cycle, like one of my managers once told me that he was going to fill a role in my team with a PhD even though we didn’t think it needed one (we had a strong candidate who had just a MS). His primary justification was that, by hiring a non-PhD to that level, he would be devaluing his own PhD degree in addition to saying that the person with a PhD showed that they could work not for money but for the love of the subject. Two years in the role the person was sick and tired of research/burnt out and took another role in the company doing project management, completely unrelated to our area.