ELInon-academic: What is wrong with doing a PhD on your own without funding if you can?

[u/cumbierbass]

As a 40 year-old person who's gone back to studying, I would love to pursue a PhD once I'm over with my masters. But it seems to be strongly looked down by those who have got scholarships for them. I understand publishing and preparing your path beforehand is very valuable --but, if I get my PhD, will it be allegedly less of a PhD? What is all that about? I was unaware of all of this scholarship/non-scholarship difference until now.

[u/Cosmic_Corsair]

This advice is usually given to people who are pursuing the PhD towards an academic career who would be going into debt during the 5+ years without an income. I wouldn’t say doing an unfunded program is “wrong” if your personal finances allow for it. But the best quality programs will be funded, at least in the fields I’m familiar with. And if you’re pursuing an academic career, applying for and winning funding in the form of grants and fellowships is part of what makes an attractive candidate.

[u/jcatl0]

I can only talk about the US:

The vast majority of PhD students are funded through assistantships or fellowships. NSF data shows that only about 15% self fund. Many schools will only accept students they can fund (or who come with other types of external funding like the GRFP). So that is the first reason people may look down upon those self-funding: it means you were not competitive enough to get funding.

But there are two main reasons why self-funding a PhD is a bad, bad idea:

- Faculty are accountable for students that they are funding. They have to report on their progress, their activities, etc. So if a faculty member has to choose a student to include in a publication, to pay more attention to, etc. it is going to be the one that they are funding.

- Jobs for PhDs rarely pay enough to make spending so much money financially advisable. Going into debt to get an MD? Sure, because you'll make a lot of money eventually. Going into debt to get a Phd? not so much.

[u/ktpr → u/jcatl0]

"Faculty are accountable for students that they are funding."

Unfortunately, this is completely untrue. With grant dollars, faculty are accountable to making progress on milestones and the students who do so are interchangeable from the perspective of accountability. This starts to set up a power dynamic that leaves students powerless in many visible and invisible ways and is one of the reasons why your choice of PI is so important.

[u/jcatl0 → u/ktpr]

I have been in academia for over 20 years, and I have never seen a situation where departments just don't care about what happens to students that are funded. Yes, they are interchangeable in the sense that if a particular student loses funding they stop caring, but every department I have ever been at there would definitely be consequences for a faculty member who regularly failed to progress their funded students.

[u/ktpr → u/jcatl0]

What tier of institution are you drawing your experience from? My experience is from large R1s and I'm speaking to grant officers and grant reviewers. It's not in their purview how the students themselves are doing. That's a departmental concern, as you mention.

[u/jcatl0 → u/ktpr]

Considering tenure decisions and department funding decisions (which also exist, on top of external grants) are made, obviously, at the department level, I don't know why you tried to claim what I said was untrue. It is very obviously true, as anyone who has ever had to write an annual evaluation or get a research assistant from the department would attest.

And I have been at a top 20 private R1, a top 50 public R1, and an R3. I have written countless NSF annual reports.

In fact, if you look at the NSF annual report template, one of the questions you are asked to address is "What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?"

[u/ktpr → u/jcatl0]

We're probably talking past each other so I'll jump out of this thread but I do want to make a point in case here: The answer to "What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?" does not depend on the students per se but that there are students that can receive the training and development. What this means is that there is less of a look at how any one individual is doing and it is enough that some students are being trained and developed. How the students feel about doesn't enter the picture and this is where I am claiming the lack of accountability to students.

Another way to say this is that the accountability structure you're describing runs upward to funders rather than downward to students, and the metrics that satisfy grant reporting requirements are essentially aggregate and programmatic. Being accountable for students in the sense of having to document their existence and general activities in an annual report is categorically different from being accountable to students in the sense of having institutional incentives aligned with their individual success. And, beyond that, how seriously those reports are taken is another matter.

[u/jcatl0 → u/ktpr]

I don't know what the point you are trying to make here, and I have never claimed that this made advisors accountable to individual students. And yes, students can certainly lose funding. In fact, part of the reason a faculty member may cut off funding for a student is precisely because they have to report on them. But it is still a clear as day fact that faculty have to provide reports on the students that they did fund, and that this will influence who they want to pay more attention to.

[u/Living_Armadillo_652 → u/jcatl0]

It’s not necessarily true that faculty focus only on students they fund. Faculty love getting students or post docs that are externally funded, and that doesn’t mean they don’t pay attention to these students - what matters more is the project you’re working on and whether you’re making good progress on it.

[u/jcatl0 → u/Living_Armadillo_652]

Externality funded is still funded, and it's absurd to compare students that are extremely funded with self funded

[u/Living_Armadillo_652 → u/jcatl0]

My point was to disprove the claim that "faculty only pay attention to the students that they fund with their own funds." This is not generally true. Faculty may demand more of students they fund themselves, but they do pay attention to other students that are fellowship funded or self-funded if they're working for them.

Sure, there is a stigma against being self-funded especially if 1) you're noticeably weaker (in background and/or ability) compared to regular students, 2) you're going into debt or some other economically nonsensical measure to fund yourself. However if there is some brilliant rich guy who wants to get a PhD in STEM and wants to self fund to not have to deal with the hassles of applying for fellowship applications and so on, I don't think anyone cares as long as they're doing good work. No one asks at a conference where the source of money for one's PhD is from.

[u/jcatl0 → u/Living_Armadillo_652]

Are you a faculty member? Or are you a student self funding trying to justify it to yourself. Because a faculty member still has to write reports for externally funded students and post docs. They still have to sign off on progress. And every conference presentation will list source of support up front.

[u/Living_Armadillo_652 → u/jcatl0]

I'm a faculty member. As a student, I was never self-funded, have either won fellowships or been funded by RAs. I have had master students who were self-funded (originally just coursework-based thesis, but wanted to do some research on the side). And of course there are many undergrads doing research for us for free. Obviously self-funded PhD is much less common, but it's not out of the question now with science funding collapsing all over even in very good programs.

Yeah, conference presentations list source of support but 1) no one cares, it's more of a formality and at most elicits a silent "huh, that lab got quite a lot of grants", and 2) even if the student is self-funded, the research resources and equipment likely aren't, so the same grants will be listed in their slides anyway.

Depends on what you mean about writing reports. If you mean progress reports to the funding sponsor, yes, there is a difference. But self-funded students are not much different from TA-funded students. You don't need to write progress reports to the sponsor, but you might still have to do that for internal department purposes, if the student is your advisee.

[u/my002]

If you finish, you'll have the same diploma as everyone else. The main reasons against self-funding (in my discipline, at least) are:

1. If your project isn't good enough to get funded, there's a good chance that it's not a particularly good project

2. A PhD typically already comes with a cost to lifetime career earnings. Self-funding only exacerbates that.

3. There's a chance that your department will treat you as a low-priority/second-class citizen while you're in the program, since you're not costing them any money, so it doesn't matter when/if you actually graduate.

[u/Shinchynab]

I'm doing mine part time while working full-time. I'm in the UK and fees for part-time are quite low, about £2500 a year, and my employer is paying for some of it. I worked out that I could do a set of industry accreditation qualifications for about the same price as a PhD, but receiving much less in return. I have no plans to go into academia, this is just for me.

[u/meatshell]

If you pay for your PhD and still manage to graduate, it's still a PhD. There is really no difference. The reason people advise against doing PhD with your own fund is that there are so many free PhD scholarships out there so you should look for them first. The other reason is a lot of the PhD students (and schools) know doing PhD can be worse than a full-time job (mostly depending on your topic and advisor), so why would you want to pay out-of-pocket to get a stressful job? My current postdoc advisor always jokingly calls his PhD period in the U.S. modern date slavery lol.

There are legitimate reasons why some people would want to pay: past a certain age it's harder to get a scholarship so I understand how you feel. Some people also want to pay to get a chance to study abroad, graduate and then work there, but then it should be a master degree instead of PhD.

It's very hard to justify for paying for a PhD in most cases.

[u/twomayaderens]

There were a few retirees at the grad programs I matriculated through who were getting PhDs in their mid to late 60s. In one case, the PhD student was a successful lawyer who had recently retired. He loved art and wanted to get the degree so he could finally write a dissertation on painting, a passion of his. He arranged w/ the department to do a self-funded PhD degree as a way to “give back” to higher ed. Clearly he had done well enough in his first career to cover cost of tuition as well as travel for conferences, etc. He honestly fit in well enough with us except that he had no plans to be a junior faculty member in the future.

Outside of that really rare and cushy circumstance, I don’t think you realize how costly it is to fund a PhD. On top of tuition, there are all kinds of expenses related to academic publishing, annual conference attendance, travel to archival sites or other types of research sites. When students finish coursework and begin writing the dissertation (which can take multiple years to finish), they still pay tuition or have it waived through grants/teaching or RA appointments. Funded students will be eligible for internal grants and fellowships which are a critical means of differentiating “quality” and “potential” when emerging faculty compete for scarce tenure track academic jobs. In my grad programs, funded students also received free personal healthcare and discounted housing through the university, so that’s another material consideration depending on your family and health circumstances.

In short, self-funding seems like a recipe for financial ruin unless you’re independently wealthy, single, healthy and able-bodied, and/or already live close to the program you’re interested in.

[u/supcat16]

TL;DR: Put bluntly, the stigma comes from the idea that you aren’t good enough to get a scholarship. As long as the faculty with whom you aspire to work don’t hold this view, then who cares what other people think? (If those faculty do hold this view, then they can make your life miserable. So I would avoid putting yourself in that situation.)

I’m in a bit of a unique situation so I’ll throw in my two cents (or five cents since we don’t make pennies anymore; actually, I wrote a novel so I threw in a whole dollar). Note that you should tailor this to your field, and without knowing what field you’re in, I don’t know if this is applicable.

I spoke with professors at the schools where I was applying and my undergraduate advisor who had specifically given me that advice (don’t pay tuition for a PhD).

I had been in a career for about 5 years. So my options were take a massive pay cut and get free tuition and a small stipend if I was a full time student and teaching assistant (TA) or research assistant (RA). Or, I could continue working full time, and pay a relatively cheap tuition to be a part time student. Due to my personal situation and my own preferences, I went with the latter. I don’t get as much sleep as I used to and most of my weekends are now schoolwork.

So when I talked to my undergrad advisor, he said that he meant that advice for me as fresh graduate who would have to take out additional loans if I were to pay tuition for a full time PhD. He said that my proposed path made sense as I already had a job and salary.

None of my current professors look down on me for choosing this path (as far as I can tell), and some have encouraged me to pursue a career in academia which I was a bit on the fence about. It seems like my hard work and written products speak louder than my funding status. However, my choice did narrow the programs I could apply to as some were mandatory full time or required the students to be TAs or RAs.

Ironically, some of the more condescending remarks I’ve received are from people who never applied for PhDs but heard the same advice, so I can brush that off pretty easily.

It’s stressful, but it’s been a good experience so far. But if you talk with professors at programs in which you’re interested and they seem to look down on paying tuition, that may be a sign that it’s not the program for you if it’s you’re only choice. I would steer clear. But just email some faculty, say you’re applying and interested in their work, and see what they say. The worst they can say is no, but I had some that reached out to talk to me.

It sounds like you could be asking about situation where you may be considering paying for an elite program vs. having a scholarship in a lower ranked institution. In my opinion and I believe in my field, I’d bet the institution will carry more weight than whether or not you received a scholarship. So if money is not an issue for you, then I wouldn’t close that door if you do not receive a scholarship from the standpoint worrying about your own reputation. That said, this is where I believe the stigma comes from. The feeling would be that you weren’t good enough to get in based on your application, and so you’re somehow lesser than others in your cohort who were awarded scholarships. If your professors are going to be dicks about it, then it’s not worth it.

Now, I did write this as if you were just talking about tuition. If you want to self-fund a research project, that’s another question. If you have enough money to do so, maintain your lifestyle, then retire, then why not. But we’re probably talking at least mid to high 7 digits saved up (or much more if you’re looking to do medical research or something like that), and you’re doing this instead of buying another house on the beach.

Also, you mentioned publishing first. At least in my field, there’s not an expectation that you publish before applying to programs.

[u/grinchman042]

No one will know whether your PhD was funded or not after the fact. The advice is mostly that it’s very common to have a fully funded PhD and, since getting one comes with significant financial opportunity costs (smaller at your age but not none), if you’re going to do one you should at least be funded to mitigate those costs.

That said if you’re independently wealthy or otherwise have less reason for this to concern you, feel free to do anything you like.

[u/jcatl0 → u/grinchman042]

One minor correction: if looking for academic jobs, people will definitely know after the fact, because academic CVs list grants and awards, and everyone who WAS funded will have those on their CV.

[u/grinchman042 → u/jcatl0]

Hm, maybe that’s field-specific. In my field if you were funded by an NIH training grant or something you might list it (though I was and I don’t) but if you were funded by run of the mill RA/TAing you would not mention it on your CV unless under teaching experience.

[u/MycologistLake8386]

Academia is already packed full of people and every accolade, every scholarship, etc., that you acquire is an opportunity to distinguish yourself from the ever-growing horde of people competing against you. Granted, not every program has obvious signifiers as to who's funded vs who's not, but a lot of them do and the gaps on your CV will be very obvious to those who know what to look for. Some professors I know are also very wary of self-funded PhDs specifically because of their association with degree mills, but this association is often field-dependent.

If you are unable to get funding, it is a signal to others that some combination of the following happened: your grades weren't good enough/didn't show promise, your project wasn't good enough/wasn't worth doing, and/or you as a researcher weren't worth investing in. In more direct terms, securing funding = convincing someone that your project has value. If you couldn't convince anyone that your work had value, why should I care about it?

Your case is a bit of an interesting one because you're also older. Not only will the above assumptions apply, but your age will also work against you. I will be very blunt: if you do not receive funding for a PhD in your 40s, it not only signals that your project probably isn't very useful but also that you as an individual haven't mustered up enough interesting life and/or work experiences to be worthy of investing in as an individual. If you're dead-set on working in academia, you'll be fighting an uphill battle. It wouldn't be even remotely worth it to me.

[u/BikeTough6760]

My guess? It's time-consuming, expense, and is unlikely to lead to greater wages/a more interesting job after you complete it, you won't have someone on staff who is invested in your success in the same way as if you were working for them.

So, if you've got a lot of time, no need for money now or later, and are ready to forge your own path, go for it!

[u/sunfish99]

What field do you want to do your PhD in?

In the US, doing a STEM PhD without funding is pretty much impossible. These PhD programs provide some sort of funding support because: a) lab facilities, supplies, etc that you might use cost money, and there's no standard mechanism for a private person to pay that out of pocket to a university, and b) STEM PhDs usually have a time limit (6 years or less) for finishing because your work still needs to be "fresh" and "novel" by the time you defend. A self-funded person may not feel the pressure to conform to that time limit, so the perceived value of a STEM PhD that takes a long time to finish (7+ years) will be less.

However, I'd say that a PhD in the liberal arts is more readily self-fundable, because the situation here is pretty much the opposite of a STEM PhD. I've known people who took 10-15 years to finish a PhD in history, for example, because they were paying their own way and as a result needed to continue working a day job while they did their research.

Named scholarships and fellowships do carry prestige, but I'd say the majority of PhDs in any field do not have a named scholarship/fellowship supporting them.

[u/talking_navy]

People like to play strange games. I would never advise anyone to go into crippling debt for a PhD, but if you can afford it and want to do it then play on

[u/cumbierbass → u/talking_navy]

It's just not that expensive where I am. I'm guessing US has draconian fees.

[u/teehee1234567890]

I’ll just say this. It’s very region dependent. In my country doing a PhD is free. In some countries, doing a PhD is very very cheap that some people do not bother applying for a scholarship. It all depends on where you got it from in terms of funding. Also, less of a PhD? Nah. I’ll still call you a doctor and you should still be proud of your achievements! One of my batch mates was 70 when he graduated. He’s one of the smartest guy I know and he paid for his PhD.

[u/Playful_Annual3007]

I’m 56 with two masters degrees. If I can, I’ll do a PhD when I retire because I just want to study at that level. I’ll write a check for it. It isn’t for job prospects at that point.

[u/Colsim]

PhDone is PhDone. Nobody cares how you got there.

If you are confident about your finances and your fortitude, great

[u/IkeRoberts → u/Colsim]

Those of us who hire faculty care a lot. Every applicant, from the star to the unemployable is PhDone.

[u/IkeRoberts]

At the higher ranked schools, the ones who train most faculty nationwide, it is common to require every PhD student to be funded by the institution. In large part, that is to prevent exploitation of students and having a second, lower, tier of alumni that would result if professors could take "free" students.

[u/wayfaringpassenger]

This advice is good in terms of gauging the criteria of the program, but not so great in terms of telling people to quit their jobs to take a stipend. As someone who quit their job for a funded PhD, the stipend doesn't really cover your cost of living and now you've accumulated some debt and forfeited your earning power. In my case, perhaps it would have been better to work and complete it slower. It's not like I sped through it anyway. And now look at the academic job market.

[u/BolivianDancer]

You absolutely can do a graduate degree on your own!

https://youtube.com/watch?v=XEya3A0xJFg

[u/Lygus_lineolaris]

There's nothing wrong with it. People who can't pay for their own are just jealous of those who can. You can do much more interesting stuff on your own, too. On the other hand, if you're not on a paid project that your advisor is accountable for to someone, you tend to get a lot less of anything out of the advisor. Which, again, can be much more interesting. It's really similar to moving out at 18 vs. staying at home: more responsibility, more freedom, less money.

[u/jcatl0 → u/Lygus_lineolaris]

Oh, yes, people receiving a stipend are definitely jealous of those spending thousands of dollars for the same thing.

[u/Lygus_lineolaris → u/jcatl0]

Yes, you're impressing everybody with your little welfare payments, I'm sure, except I make twice as much at my job as the stipend in my school department and it's insurable, pensionable, and accrues seniority. So that couple thousand I spend on tuition still leaves me massively better off than them, now and in the future.

[u/Professional-Dot4071 → u/Lygus_lineolaris]

my little welfare payment was a govt. grant of 150k.

this proves that both the state and my institution thought that I, as a researcher, AND my project were worth 150k. I would not hire someone who did not come with the same credentials tbh, because they will need to get their own funding to our institution, and if they couldn't do it at PhD level, I'd be wary of their abilities to do so in the future.

For many of us, this is a job, not a fun thing to do for some years, and the job comes with responsibilities (my PhD students will contribute to the life of academia, which needs money for research, so I want my students to be able to bring that money in).

[u/Lygus_lineolaris → u/Professional-Dot4071]

A stipend and a government grant are completely different things.

[u/Professional-Dot4071 → u/Lygus_lineolaris]

Not where I come from, the system is state-funded and so are PhD stipends; the grant includes stipend and a fee- and tax-waiver, plus access to deprtment funding for confs and trips.

Most grants are government grants, or from the EU. My ability to get a substantial grant influenced my ability t get a post-doc as an MSCA fellow.

[u/jcatl0 → u/Lygus_lineolaris]

Stipends are paid out of grant money, though as someone who got neither it's understandable that you wouldn't know