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Kief- t1_j9sdqtz wrote

Reply to comment by rlpw in People in DC with a Master's degree make less than the average DC salary? by jdeeebs

PhDs (especially quant or STEM) are not appropriate comparisons to masters or average salary in DC. Those who want tenure-track professor positions choose to accept low compensation (~90-110k). But they have industry jobs as an outside option if and whenever they want to leave. The current market rate for PhDs with no work experience is 200-250k and many employers offer 6-figure signing bonuses in finance, consulting, pharma, tech (well, maybe not tech at the moment). Government pay is somewhere in between, and those positions generally start at GS-13. If you want to become a professor money probably isn’t the reason you got a PhD anyway.

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FennelSuperb7633 t1_j9tl5d7 wrote

That’s not necessarily true. Business school professors make a ton of money. I don’t know about STEM fields. I would bet a starting salary for a tenure-track political science professor is $120K+ in DC, not bad either.

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Kief- t1_j9tpe6w wrote

Of course, I’m sure 120k+ AP starting positions exist. I didn’t say AP positions are strictly in the 90-110k range. That’s the ballpark and you can find observation points above and below that range.

My point was that PhDs often choose a lower comp even when outside option is available, which is a different situation from master’s. E.g. Business professors with 180k+ salary can find higher paying positions in industry if they wanted to leave academia. So wouldn’t you agree masters vs PhD salaries are not comparable because of the selection bias?

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Medievalismist t1_j9ucp7c wrote

Humanities PhD over here screaming into a bag.

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rlpw t1_j9urs5w wrote

My PhD is in a social science. I knew what the prospects were going in sorta. I say sorta because the choice to get a PhD wasn’t entirely based on the job market - it was based on actual interest and I knew I wasn’t going to be paying for it. But it’s still a bit disappointing when going about looking for work or seeing these salaries.

I saw a few positions targeting just masters level experience and explicitly stated they won’t hire a PhD. At the same time I saw phds hiding their phds to get work. 😩

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Medievalismist t1_j9uzpf9 wrote

I graduated the year after the 2008 crisis. When I went in to the PhD there was still the fantasy that if you did well and worked hard, you could get an academic job. Not only did that evaporate, but they kept evaporating with fewer and fewer and fewer every year since.

Feeling the same as you, where a PhD is either a curiosity that nobody cares about, or is seen as an active hindrance to getting a job. I hate it so much.

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rlpw t1_j9v4py1 wrote

The commenter above mentioned STEM PhD industry salaries are like 200k. Perhaps specific stem fields although most folks don’t consider social science a stem field despite science being in the name. Also the titles of positions can be confusing and arbitrary - ie a “research associate” for some organizations require a PhD while others require at least a bachelors.

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