I often see references to the value of an economics PhD in the EA community and at the 80k hours site.
I find it incredibly hard to relate those cost/benefit assessments of the econ PhD to my situation, because I am now a little over 29 years old, have already done a bunch of study (3 bachelors, 1 masters—around econ, maths, business), and have built 5 years of career capital in government economics roles (which might lose much of its value if I take 5-6 years off to do an econ PhD at a top school).
I am trying to build the greatest amount of career capital to maximise my career impact. Do you have any advice on how I can try to assess the diferences between jumping into an econ PhD for 5-6 years versus just continuing to build up capability and responisibilities along my current career path?
More generally, I imagine there are many EAs in their mid-to-late 20s who feel that it may be too late to jump into a long PhD, or at least that it is not very straightforward (or involve trade-offs that aren’t adequately addressed in existing advice) compared to when they were just a few years younger. I don’t have any sense for how justifiable these concerns really are. I’d like to get your views on the matter.
We haven’t yet put much thought into whether to do phds later on in your career.
One point is that because you’ll have less time to utilise the qualification, the overall returns will be lower. e.g. if you graduate from a phd age 25, then you have 40 years to use the career capital. If you graduate from one age 35, then you only have 30 years, so the return will be about 75% as large. Whether or not this means it’s not worth it, I’m not sure.
My other guess is that the more qualifications you have, the more diminishing the returns are. However, there is a boost from having a phd vs. a masters.
Two other thoughts:
1) Are you finding yourself constrained by the lack of an economics phd? What positions would you most like to take? Do these require phds? If not, consider just going into them directly.
2) Just a thought, you may be putting too much weight on ‘career capital as qualifications’. You can also get career capital by just working on important projects, notching up achievements and through that building your network.
Not drawing on the 80k framework or anything: do you think you could become an influential economist in government and be confident that you are really working along the right lines without doing a relevant PhD? There are lots of senior economic advisor roles in and outside government I’ve seen that look influential that are closed to people without one? So is the question whether you want to become an influential civil servant or whether you want to become an influential economist? And what type of economics PhD would you do—they all have different tracks?
Hi,
I often see references to the value of an economics PhD in the EA community and at the 80k hours site.
I find it incredibly hard to relate those cost/benefit assessments of the econ PhD to my situation, because I am now a little over 29 years old, have already done a bunch of study (3 bachelors, 1 masters—around econ, maths, business), and have built 5 years of career capital in government economics roles (which might lose much of its value if I take 5-6 years off to do an econ PhD at a top school).
I am trying to build the greatest amount of career capital to maximise my career impact. Do you have any advice on how I can try to assess the diferences between jumping into an econ PhD for 5-6 years versus just continuing to build up capability and responisibilities along my current career path?
More generally, I imagine there are many EAs in their mid-to-late 20s who feel that it may be too late to jump into a long PhD, or at least that it is not very straightforward (or involve trade-offs that aren’t adequately addressed in existing advice) compared to when they were just a few years younger. I don’t have any sense for how justifiable these concerns really are. I’d like to get your views on the matter.
Hi there,
We haven’t yet put much thought into whether to do phds later on in your career.
One point is that because you’ll have less time to utilise the qualification, the overall returns will be lower. e.g. if you graduate from a phd age 25, then you have 40 years to use the career capital. If you graduate from one age 35, then you only have 30 years, so the return will be about 75% as large. Whether or not this means it’s not worth it, I’m not sure.
My other guess is that the more qualifications you have, the more diminishing the returns are. However, there is a boost from having a phd vs. a masters.
Two other thoughts:
1) Are you finding yourself constrained by the lack of an economics phd? What positions would you most like to take? Do these require phds? If not, consider just going into them directly.
2) Just a thought, you may be putting too much weight on ‘career capital as qualifications’. You can also get career capital by just working on important projects, notching up achievements and through that building your network.
Not drawing on the 80k framework or anything: do you think you could become an influential economist in government and be confident that you are really working along the right lines without doing a relevant PhD? There are lots of senior economic advisor roles in and outside government I’ve seen that look influential that are closed to people without one? So is the question whether you want to become an influential civil servant or whether you want to become an influential economist? And what type of economics PhD would you do—they all have different tracks?