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[nezahualcoyotl]

It's kind of useless these days. I am unemployable in non-academic setting, but also there is no job in academic

Exactly my position. After enough trying and failing, I've given up on a decent non-academic job, but it's not like the academic market is looking brilliant. I wish I'd studied engineering and looked for a job right out of college.

I don't regret getting a PhD, but I do regret getting this PhD.  It was the wrong discipline at the wrong school at the wrong time.  I did make a few friends, so that's one positive.  Also, I only had to pay for the first year, and it was relatively inexpensive, so I have no debt from this.  But I didn't enjoy the process, particularly the last two years.  In fact, I raced to finish because I wanted to get away from such a toxic environment.  If I had to do it all over again, I would have chosen another discipline and attended a few years earlier, when I lived in another state.

There is an element of this in my case, my choice of supervisor was particularly unfortunate (he was much like Prof. Smith from Piled Higher and Deeper). At the end I was pulling multiple all-nighters working on my thesis because I wanted out asap.

I found my PhD experience to be the antithesis of the life of the mind - yes, I learned quite a lot, but it was also a profoundly anti-intellectual environment (esp. among the students, the faculty wasn't so bad), so conversations were essentially (again, as shown in Piled Higher and Deeper) either about Britney Spears' underwear or about research. I signed up for some societies relating to my non-research interests, and when others learned what I was studying, well, I might as well have said I was Jack the Ripper (because STEM is of the devil in some folks' view). I made some friends but relationships with others in my department were mostly toxic. Ironically my PhD killed my interest in the field, a rather Catch-22 situation.

[farm_boy]

"'Tis better to have gotten the PhD and lost than never to have gotten the PhD at all."

maybe

[posttoastie]

Intellectually speaking, I do not regret it.  Financially speaking, I do regret it. 
Given the present job market in higher ed, I would not recommend getting a PhD to my worst enemy.

[whynotevolve]

I don't regret my PhD.  However, I am in a field where one does not pay to get a PhD (I was paid to do research and teach).  Also, there are very few options for someone with just a B.S. in my field.  I would recommend to some people to stop at a Masters depending on their career goals.   

[dilettante]

I regret spending the most precious 5 years (23 - 28) of my life doing a PhD that may be worth no more than a penny. If I knew my postdoc life earlier, I would give it a second thought before starting PhD studies. PhD training in bio just does not make much sense, hard to justify the time spent.

[madhatter]

I don't regret it, but I went into it with my eyes open, and I deliberately selected a subfield in psychology that had (and has) good employment prospects in a wide range of settings -- academia, industry, consulting, and government. I've been able to work in several sectors, picking up a wide range of experience. The compensation has been good. I do regret dragging my heels on finishing -- I could have wrapped up the degree a few years earlier if I'd really buckled down -- but all in all, it's served me well.

I wonder if the difference between the regretters and the non-regretters is career planning. Did you pick a program just because of your love of the field or with a clear understanding of the job market and salary potential in mind?

[punchnpie]

I wonder if the difference between the regretters and the non-regretters is career planning. Did you pick a program just because of your love of the field or with a clear understanding of the job market and salary potential in mind?

I don't think love of the field and career planning are mutually exclusive. I am happy about being in my field. It changes all the time and is never dull. It may demand a bit more work because of the changes and having to tweak courses every year (I can't repeat the same lectures on 'Romeo and Juliet' for 20 years, for example), but that's fine.

The field is useful in industry and maybe half of the three cohorts I'm most familiar with went into industry or were already there when they started the PhD. A friend has been bugging me to join his employer, a major firm where I could do extremely well financially, but I like the academic life.

So, I went in knowing that there were alternate career paths and that if things didn't turn out on the academic side, I had options. Another friend left an unsatisfying academic to work at Microsoft in some very interesting projects. The ABDs that I know also have good jobs in industry or academic administration. They are not flipping burgers or adjuncting at 4 schools to survive.  I'm interested in a lot of things, but I can't make good money at some of them and I need to support myself. I don't see anything wrong with looking at your interests and strengths and deciding which to pursue career-wise based on marketability and salary.

[erzuliefreda]

My answer to this question varies depending on the day/month/year it is asked. When I am grading a mountain of freshman blue books, I will say this was a terrible path to follow. When I am puttering away in an archive somewhere, I might marvel that I can even get paid to do such awesome work.

Overall, although I complain plenty, academia has been very good to me. Our perceptions are shaped, of course, by our expectations. I grew up in a household below the federal poverty line; my mother cleaned other people's houses and did minimum-wage home health care work for a living. Although I am not debt-free, I do own a truly lovely home now, and have a job in which I am treated with a great deal of respect. People address me as "Doctor" or "Professor." I work hard at teaching and service, but this affords me some time for research, which is a joy to me. In the end, getting my Ph.D. turned out to be a great move, although there was no way to know it would be at the time.

[westcoastgirl]

Now that the sun is shining out, I've wrapped up my last chapter and landed a post-doc, I will say that I'm not so sure I regret it. All is not well since there are still some kinks to work out (and I still haven't defended) but things are looking much better than they were in the doldrums of Jan. when I first posted here.

[bruceleroy]

Exactly my position. After enough trying and failing, I've given up on a decent non-academic job, but it's not like the academic market is looking brilliant. I wish I'd studied engineering and looked for a job right out of college.

Tee hee hee... I got my PhD in engineering and that hasn't made the job market more attractive in the least. Both academic and non-academic markets are extremely competitive at the moment.

Having said that, I'll echo the majority and say that I do not regret getting my PhD. I started with the idea that I wanted to teach. That was my motivation and all I really cared about but things have changed. I have been applying for faculty positions at teaching focused univerities (rare in engineering but they do exist). I have not had much luck with that but my doctoral research and now my post-doc have shown me that I like engineering research very much. Earning my degree was a very long struggle but now I have two very attractive options; continue on my research path OR transition into teaching if that becomes available. I am extremely happy I stuck it out.

[drnobody]

No. I did it for me. I wanted to know I could. I love teaching and want this as a career, but I have a PhD. Me! Dr. Nobody, who was kind of a nobody growing up. For me it was an achievement that overcame a past not paved with educational success. It was more personal. I am very glad I got it, even though there were easier ways to go, but maybe not as interesting!

[bruceleroy]

I'll echo drnobody in saying I did it for myself. The fact that I love teaching and my discipline (mechanical engineering) were undeniable motivations. However, the fact of the matter is that I have brain damage and the general assumption is that I'm stupid. Working "I have a PhD in mechanical engineering" into a conversation is one heck of a way to say I'm not stupid.

[alleyoxenfree]

I too did it for me, but I also expected that it would give me a reasonably secure living.  Such were the projections in the field at the time.  It wasn't a flighty move.  In hindsight, I would have gone into a different program that would have suited my personality more in terms of the future work, and that would have given me more options for role models and mentors.  The teaching in my program was truly abysmal despite the big names and I consider that other than one prof, I taught myself everything I learned in this area.  I got no help learning to publish, to make a career, or to find a job, so slogged through without mentoring on sheer teaching talent and interest in students.  It's been far harder and more impoverishing than the lives of my friends who chose other fields. 

I like having a Ph.D.  I just wish I'd had more help selecting a more compatible field and making a career out of it.

[infopri]

I taught myself everything I learned in this area.  I got no help learning to publish, to make a career, or to find a job, so slogged through without mentoring on sheer teaching talent and interest in students.

Back in the day, my entire program was like this.  Students may have found mentors, but there was no formal training on how to write a dissertation or find a job or publish or get tenure or anything else involved in an academic career.  There was plenty of mentoring on how to do research, but that was about it.  Everyone in my cohort and those before ours, and a few after ours learned most of what we know on our own.  In contrast, students in my program now have semi-formal instruction in all of these areas.  What I would have given to have had those seminars when I was a student! 

As for the content, my field is incredibly wide, and we had terrific faculty, but only in some of the subfields.  There was only one in my particular subfield (but none in my specific area within that subfield) and he relocated while I was working on my diss, which meant I had to get a new advisor midstream.

But I don't regret getting the Ph.D. itself for even a moment.  Yes, it was hard, but to quote one of my favorite lines:  It's supposed to be hard.  If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it.  The hard is what makes it great.

[nezahualcoyotl]

Exactly my position. After enough trying and failing, I've given up on a decent non-academic job, but it's not like the academic market is looking brilliant. I wish I'd studied engineering and looked for a job right out of college.

Tee hee hee... I got my PhD in engineering and that hasn't made the job market more attractive in the least. Both academic and non-academic markets are extremely competitive at the moment.

Well, a PhD makes you less employable, at least compared to spending that time and effort on internships, etc.

Having said that, I'll echo the majority and say that I do not regret getting my PhD. I started with the idea that I wanted to teach. That was my motivation and all I really cared about but things have changed... I have not had much luck with that but my doctoral research and now my post-doc have shown me that I like engineering research very much. Earning my degree was a very long struggle but now I have two very attractive options; continue on my research path OR transition into teaching if that becomes available. I am extremely happy I stuck it out.

Crucial difference with me - my PhD killed my interest in research, which was the original motivation for doing a PhD in the first place. So for me there are no truly attractive options in academia and seemingly no options at all outside it.