What a PhD is actually worth

Last night Jay and I were on Skype with his mom when she asked something to the effect of "what will you have at the end of your graduate school years?" Although the meaning of her statement was not exactly clear, it did get the wheels in my brain turning about what we really do get out of our degrees, and it may not always be as clear a yay-or-nay answer as it appears.

On the one hand, each PhD student gets an acknowledgment in written form that he/she has spent a specified amount of time eating, breathing, and sometimes sleeping the research project now complete. The degree gives us a certain authority to go forth and conquer any research project or task that may be asked of us, but what everyone else doesn't know is that we don't know everything about everything just because we have a PhD. We glorified academic slaves can tell you in an instant the molecular weight and function of a specific protein, but could probably not name the last time we had a haircut or a manicure. We just know a lot about a little part of something, which brings about the next point.

The whole process of getting a PhD revolves around training you to think, plan and rationalize through confusing data, failed experiments, and the vast unknown intellectual terrain. To believe that your research results from graduate school are really going to change your life (and everyone else's) is a vain, albeit optimistic, idea. I'm not trying to be pessimistic here, just realistic. (Geez, I sound like my dad!) As my advisor has said, though, this experience is about the process, how you think about a problem, how you plan to find out about that certain issue, and how you end up solving it in a rigorous but elegant way. In other words, a PhD is just proof that you can think "scientifically".

So, proving that you have learned how to think scientifically is great and all, but there is a flip side. While our peers are buying houses, starting families, and building savings for retirement, we have opted to accept minimal compensation that, in turn, requires us to spend late nights, lots of weekends, and countless stressful hours of blood, sweat and tears to eke out the incremental advances we call science. All for the reward of writing a paper that only a few people in the world will appreciate, and which will get lost in the halls of some academic journal never to be heard of again. At least you can say you have published papers. I guess.

Although I don't think I would do anything differently (and after the road I took to get here, I should like the decision I made), there are definitely people for whom this lifestyle choice is not ideal. Grad school doesn't always offer the automatic six-figure income after graduation that law school or med school might, but there are still plenty of people who slip into graduate school because "I didn't know what else to do". Let me make it clear: this is not something to do so you're not bored. This is a commitment! As my sister thinks about graduate school, and many of my friends start to make their way out of graduate school for one reason or another, it takes some serious introspection to truly understand the consequence of following this path and whether it is a good fit for where you are in your life. Some times it means stepping back for a year and re-evaluating the pros and cons, sometimes it involves doing something completely different...no matter what the decision is - to pursue an idea in lab, or to leave it to those who really want that experience - this is a unique time in our lives - we are only young once so don't waste it!

To get back to the original idea, though, I will start with a quote from Rent: " 525,600 minutes! 525,000 journeys to plan. 525,600 minutes - how can you measure the life of a woman or man? In truths that she learned..."

How do you measure the worth of a PhD? In papers published? Intellectual progress made? A cool technique that you invented or a polymer that will revolutionize drug delivery? Is the pay cut made up for by the satisfaction you get from your work, the intellectual stimulation you receive on a daily basis, the people and moments you would never have had and jokes you could never make with anyone else because they are beyond nerdy? How could you ever quantify the life-long value of what we are doing here?