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.

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.

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.

Put my life on hold to pursue a PhD in CS, because I thought that would guarantee me a future. Well, it did not. Going straight into an industry job would have made my life a lot better financially and I would probably be buying a house by now.

It depends on what you actually like to do. For something like computer science, I wouldn’t pursue a higher education. This was my path. CS was the hot thing back then (it might look like it still is sometimes, but it’s not really, it’s a lot more like plumbing now). I ended up with a PhD in CS, which is essentially useless. In CS, the only thing that matters, after understanding the basics, is keeping up with new tech and learning for yourself. No college degree can really prepare you for this. Now, if you want to be a doctor, you wouldn’t be able to skip the degree. That’s why I said it depends.

Personally, for my job, if I went back I wouldn’t pursue a higher education anymore. I was doing perfectly well learning by myself even before high school. If you are able to get into an online community of people with the same interest, you’ll be able to learn a lot more, and build a network of contacts. You’ll skip useless subjects and just build up what matters.

My advice to you is to follow your passion (everything will fail anyway, so that’s how you get motivation to keep going). After you know what you want to do, then decide if you need a course or if you can get a job and learn by yourself in order to progress. Unless the job you’re seeking requires some kind of credential, like medicine or law, then you can progress much faster by doing. It won’t look like at first, but you will. If you end up pursuing a higher education, then my advice is to try and go through it as quickly as possible. The goal is to get out quickly. Staying in academia has a terrible cost for the mind. If you lose your mind, you’ll lose everything later.