The question asked at incoherently scattered ponderings: Why would anyone want to get a PhD in sciences?
[T]he bottom line is that 10 years later non-PhD path can provide on the order of 0.5 million more in earnings than the PhD path. And one could argue that the career options after completing PhD and 1 or 2 postdocs are still quite bleak.
No, a PhD doesn’t get you more money. What it tends to get you is interesting work — there are opportunities that become possible with a doctorate that won’t be there without treading that path.
Discovery is like the black rose. It can only be seized where it is not. Every now and again we skip lunch and reach out where the black rose cannot possibly be. Sometimes it is right there, waiting.
PhDs are issued so the rest of the population knows when to duck.
the assumption that money should always be the goal is wrong…
also I bet most students don’t realize how crappy being a grad student will be. I sure don’t!
The postdoc assumes you stay in academia. While that’s certainly my goal, I would not be disappointed to go into a science job in industry and make some very nice money that I wouldn’t make as a postdoc. The trick is to get a Ph.D. in something that has real-world earning potential in case the tenure-track job search doesn’t work out.
@Matt — Not necessarily; there’s option 3. My second postdoc morphed into my current government-lab job, and my first postdoc may have helped ensure the second.