The Wrong Perception of Doctoral Degrees
A doctoral degree in science and engineering prepares you well for both academic and industrial careers
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When doctoral students near the end of their PhD (abbreviation of the Latin phrase philosophiae doctor, with philosophiae coming from Greek: philos = lover and sophia = wisdom) they are faced with a common dilemma: stay in academia or go to industry.1 It is a stressful moment, as these two career paths don’t intertwine, yet this choice sets the tone of the rest of your professional life. In academia, you will follow a predictable pipeline from postdoc to assistant professor to associate professor and, finally, to full professor. Your daily schedule will be split between laboratory work (as a postdoc), teaching, meetings, reading, and writing. A lot of writing! From manuscripts and book chapters to grants, recommendations, and other applications.
But if you decide to join the industry, there is no set path. You could join a company as an engineer or a scientist, or you could join a national lab as a scientist. Alternatively, you could go into consulting, test your mettle in entrepreneurship, or do something else. Who has the right to judge what you do with your life? Yet in all cases, your daily schedule will be split between meetings, writing reports, reviewing reports, and some kind of deep work (e.g., market analysis as a consultant or laboratory work as a scientist).
Expectedly, doctoral studies prepare you well for the academic track (after all, it was designed for that purpose). As a PhD you learn how to write and speak well, how to manage projects, how to design, and carry out experiments, how to analyze data and how to publish manuscripts. In short, you learn how to be an independent scientist who is able to carry out original scientific work. Yet, a PhD does not always prepare you well for the industrial track. And how could it, some would say, considering the diversity of career paths in industry? I disagree with this line of thought because I believe that a PhD equips you with the necessary tools to excel in any career.
If you join a serious research group you could not have earned your doctoral degree without mastering the following skills:
Independence. You are assigned a research topic and you become a captain of that ship. No one will hold your hands and tell you what to do or how to do it. You decide how to approach a problem, which experiments to do, and how to contribute to the field.
Teamwork. Research groups are often multicultural, with members coming from different technical backgrounds and levels of expertise. You have to learn how to work with all of them and be a nurturing colleague. You will train other members in specific techniques or equipment and, at some point, you will be asked to mentor younger colleagues.
Sales. You cannot get a PhD degree without publishing in scientific journals.2 And you cannot publish without a good story. A story that encompasses the state of the art (i.e. what was done up until now), the remaining problems (i.e. what remains to be fixed), the solution (i.e. what you propose to resolve these problems), the method (i.e. how was your solution implemented), the results (i.e. what was achieved), and the framing (i.e. how do these results fit in the body of knowledge of that specific field). Publishing is nothing else but selling the merits of your research and convincing other scientists to accept your ‘‘product’’.
Project management. You will have to juggle several projects at the same time, so managing it all properly becomes paramount. From deadlines to milestones and risk management, it is all there. Without this skill, it is unlikely to have a productive doctoral degree.
Strategic thinking. When you are at the precipice of known knowledge, looking at the vast abyss of the unknown and understanding that whatever you do must make sense in your final dissertation, you have no choice but to start thinking strategically. You do that by considering each project as a piece of the puzzle, helping you unravel one mystery at a time, and helping you build a coherent new thought or theory that advances the field.
Aren’t these skills useful wherever you go? Aren’t these the exact skills, other than the technical expertise, that the corporate world looks for in potential hires? Indeed they are. The importance of soft skills cannot be underestimated.
I have interviewed dozens of candidates and what I noticed is that PhD holders themselves are often unaware of what soft skills they have. Either because they are not familiar with corporate-speak or because they haven’t thought deeply about what skills they use in their everyday activities.3 A good interviewer will be able to assess to what degree the interviewee is proficient in the aforementioned skills. But if the interviewer doesn’t understand what a PhD entails day-to-day, then we start hearing some variation of ‘‘a PhD is useless for industry‘‘.
Over the years, I have gotten the impression that many don’t really understand what a doctoral degree is. The assumption is that it is simply a continuing education in some obscure specialization, and by education they imagine classes, homework, and exams. It would be more truthful to present doctoral students as trainee scientists, undergoing training to become independent academics, original thinkers, and creative problem-solvers.
Which brings me to my last point. If I had to summarize into one sentence the biggest benefit of pursuing a PhD degree, it would be this: you learn how to learn. And when you know how to learn, you have the necessary tools to excel wherever you go.
That’s all for now. Until next time 🔋!
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This post was written from the point of view of a doctoral degree in science and engineering.
I had the good fortune to publish ~20 manuscripts (half of them being first author) for the work done during my doctoral degree.
I would advise every PhD student to think hard about what skills they are developing and to correlate them with soft skills that are asked for in the corporate world. You may positively surprise yourself.