I have noticed based on my search that nearly 60% of research roles in think-tanks in Europe have PhDs.
So almost half of them don’t. If you want a job at one of those think tanks, I would strongly recommend that you just go straight for that.
If you want to do research, then do the research you want to do. If the research you want to do mainly happen at a company or think thank, but not really in academia, go for the company or think tank.
There are other ways of getting a PhD degree that does not involve enrolling in a PhD program. In many countries, the only thing that actually matters for getting the degree is to write an defend a PhD thesis which should contain original research done by you. For example if you just keep publishing in academic journals, until your body of work is about the same as can be expected to be done during a PhD (or maybe some more to be on the safe side), you can just put it all in a book, approach a university and ask to defend your work.
This may be different in different countries. But universities mostly accept foreign students. So if you can’t defend your independent thesis at home, go some where else.
In UK there are 4 ways to get a PhD (according to this website) and only one of them is the traditional PhD program.
Here is a discussion on independents PhDs. People are disagreeing on weather it is possible to do a PhD with out a supervisor, pointing towards different practices in different countries.
Several people claim that “The PhD process is about learning, not just publishing.”, but my impression is that this is a very modern idea. A PhD used to be about proving your capability, not monitoring your learning process.
So almost half of them don’t. If you want a job at one of those think tanks, I would strongly recommend that you just go straight for that.
If you want to do research, then do the research you want to do. If the research you want to do mainly happen at a company or think thank, but not really in academia, go for the company or think tank.
There are other ways of getting a PhD degree that does not involve enrolling in a PhD program. In many countries, the only thing that actually matters for getting the degree is to write an defend a PhD thesis which should contain original research done by you. For example if you just keep publishing in academic journals, until your body of work is about the same as can be expected to be done during a PhD (or maybe some more to be on the safe side), you can just put it all in a book, approach a university and ask to defend your work.
This may be different in different countries. But universities mostly accept foreign students. So if you can’t defend your independent thesis at home, go some where else.
I did some googling.
In UK there are 4 ways to get a PhD (according to this website) and only one of them is the traditional PhD program.
Here is a discussion on independents PhDs. People are disagreeing on weather it is possible to do a PhD with out a supervisor, pointing towards different practices in different countries.
Several people claim that “The PhD process is about learning, not just publishing.”, but my impression is that this is a very modern idea. A PhD used to be about proving your capability, not monitoring your learning process.