You have been accepted into to read ! You are paid a stipend of $ per year. You find an apartment for $ per year. Taxes amount to another per year. Other expenses (food, clothing, etc.) amount to $ per year. Fresh and rosy eyed, you start your PhD. I'll be done in years, you say.

Work that you had started in a previous research group has finally been published. It involved a lot of rewrites, and you being away didn't help, but it's done! It is accepted in .

Congratulations! You have passed your qualifying exam. You recieve a grade.

You join the lab of . It's a research group, and they publish loads of papers.

They have a reputation for .

You write and present a dissertation proposal. Your committee is impressed, and you're particularly happy about how your preliminary results have revealed what the next 3 years will be like.

You stumble into a side project. A chance encounter with a colleague leads to a some hastily written code that solves a problem that they were grappling with. You get a paper out of it -- your first! It ends up being published in .

After many months of fevered work and many false starts, your first major project is ready to go. You publish a paper in .

You present your results at a conference, and many people see your poster. You throat is sore at the end of the session. For some reason, this conference is always at a ski resort. You go down several runs.

Your advisor tells you that you need more time to finish your thesis. You agree stay on for more years.

With mild panic, you realize that you can't say what you've done in the last year. At all. Yes, you've published a paper, but you can't say what it's about. You still haven't really made progress on your core project.

Suddenly, all those people asking you when you're going to graduate are back. You're not sure what to say.

Reviewer #3 for your thesis paper has completely lost their mind. They want new data, and they seem to have missed the entire point of your paper. You work -hour days for weeks to address their comments. You finally re-submit, and it's accepted in .

You finally finish your PhD. You defend your thesis, and there is a lot of and champagne.

You have been accepted into the perfect lab at . The postdoctoral fellowship pays you a stipend of $ per year. You find an apartment for $ per year. Taxes amount to another per year. Other expenses (food, clothing, etc.) amount to $ per year. You sign a contract for years.

Work that you had started in your PhD has finally been published. It involved a lot of rewrites, and you being away didn't help, but it's done! It is accepted in .

You agree with your PI to stay on for another years. As you begin your third year of your postdoc, you console yourself by telling yourself that you've only completed two years. 2 is less than 3, you tell yourself, nodding sagely. You end up working on a project with a programmer who never did a PhD. You idly wonder what your life would be like had you not done a PhD. You decide that you're done with academia. You're not sure what to do next. You've spent decades moving towards a goal that was a tenured faculty position, and you now do not want it anymore. You feel lost and adrift. You consider moving to New Zealand and working on a sheep farm. After attending a series of job fairs, you decide to make a linkedin. You make a CV. You list your papers. You agonize over whether you should list your joint-first authors. You think about applying to several jobs, but you don't actually, because you decide you're not qualified for them. You accepted a job offer from as a . You are paid a salary of $ per year. You find an apartment for $ per year. Taxes amount to another per year. Other expenses (food, clothing, etc.) amount to $ per year. You make a retirement contribution of per month.
The employer matches your contribution up to per month. You think you're going to stay here for at least years. You are pleasantly surprised to find that you have a work-life balance. Your boss does not send you emails at 8PM. You are not sure if you should be happy or sad about this. You wonder what to do with your extra time. You take up . After your stint at your first job at academia, you felt restless. You apply to a job, and and you get it. Wow! You accepted a job offer from as a . You are paid a salary of $ per year. You find an apartment for $ per year. Taxes amount to another per year. Other expenses (food, clothing, etc.) amount to $ per year. You make a retirement contribution of per month.
The employer matches your contribution up to per month. Out of the blue, your PhD advisor emails you. "Hey, I've been thinking about that paper you never finished. I think you need to finish it."

You .
You have been accepted into for a Master's in ! The degree costs $ per year. You find an apartment for $ per year. Other expenses (food, clothing, etc.) amount to $ per year.

It's a year programme.

You make a contribution to a project that had been ongoing for years. It is submitted shortly after you finish the work. It is published in .

You finally finish your degree. It's been expensive, and hectic, but you have a piece of paper that says you're a master, and it's time to move on. You can now apply to all those jobs that state on the first line that they're looking for someone with a master's degree.

You accepted a job offer from as a . You are paid a salary of $ per year. You find an apartment for $ per year. Taxes amount to another per year. Other expenses (food, clothing, etc.) amount to $ per year. You make a retirement contribution of per month.
The employer matches your contribution up to per month. You think you're going to stay here for at least years.

You are flown to company HQ for the annual meeting. You wondered if you'd get to fly Business class, but you end up with a middle seat in the last row.

It's been one year since you started your job. You didn't think this was going to happen, but you learnt a lot. You look back and wonder how you ever got hired -- you know so much more than a year ago! You are also awarded a stock grant. You unlock your first tranche, which is shares.

You decide to go on a vacation. You've always wanted to go skiing. You go down several runs.

You accepted a job offer from as a . You are paid a salary of $ per year. You find an apartment for $ per year. Taxes amount to another per year. Other expenses (food, clothing, etc.) amount to $ per year. You make a retirement contribution of per month.
The employer matches your contribution up to per month. You think you're going to stay here for at least years. It so happens that it is very important for you to attend a Very Important Conference that is critical to your work, and (some say) the very future of the company. The conference is in .

You successfully make a pitch to your boss, and she agrees to send you to the conference. Rumors of layoffs are flying around the company. You are not sure if you are safe. The axe falls - and is laid off. You dodge the bullet this time. You accepted a job offer from as a . You are paid a salary of $ per year. You find an apartment for $ per year. Taxes amount to another per year. Other expenses (food, clothing, etc.) amount to $ per year. You make a retirement contribution of per month.
The employer matches your contribution up to per month. You think you're going to stay here for at least years. You end up working on a project with someone who just finished their PhD. You idly wonder what your life would be like had you done a PhD. You had heard rumblings about this for a while now, but your boss tells you in your 1:1 that he is quitting. He's worked hard, and he wants to take a break. He's going to move to New Zealand to take up sheep farming. You . After months of hard work, you've shipped your first major project. You've been working on this for a while, and it's finally done. You're not sure if it's a success or a failure, but you're proud of the work you've done. You are laid off from your job. You are not sure what to do next. Suddenly applying for a job takes on a new urgency. It takes you months to find a new job. You find an apartment for $ per year. Other expenses (food, clothing, etc.) amount to $ per year. After much searching, you accepted a job offer from as a . You are paid a salary of $ per year. You find an apartment for $ per year. Taxes amount to another per year. Other expenses (food, clothing, etc.) amount to $ per year. You make a retirement contribution of per month.
The employer matches your contribution up to per month. You start getting linkedin requests from recruiters. You find that it's mostly a waste of time. Your company encourages you to attend the annual Outdoor Retreat and Team Building Occurrence (ORTBO). It's in . There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen. Somehow, you've ended up doing demos for your product. This means talking to a lot of customers (that you like), but it also means a lot of prep. The first few demos are a bit rocky, but by demo #10 you're a pro. You can anticipate every question, and you consistently get many "oooh"s and "aaaah"s.
Based on these choices, it cost you
$1,001,000


to do a PhD (thus far!)

This is a highly simplified simulation of what could have happened if you had (or not) done a PhD. It is not a prediction of what will happen to you. As such, a number of simplifying assumptions are made.
  • We ignore the possibility of getting into a PhD program, and leaving with a Master's degree. In many PhD Programs, this is a possibility, and is sometimes forced onto candidates that are not able to complete the PhD, or that fail their qualifying exams.
  • We focus on PhD in Science-adjacent fields (Biology, Physics, Maths, etc.). I honestly don't know anything about PhDs in other fields, so I'm not sure how to model them.
  • We assume that only federal taxes are paid. State taxes are ignored and assumed to be negligible.
  • We assume that there are no other sources of income, and therefore no other taxes to be paid. For tax purposes, we assume a single filer and no dependents.
  • We assume that there are never any medical issues or expenses. No illnesses, no hospital stays, no substantial costs for medical treatment.
  • For the simplicity of the simulation, we assume that the following events are linked together: change in job status, change in rental expenses, change in other expenses. We don't model moving houses at times other than changes in jobs.
  • We assume that you never get married or have children.
  • We assume that you can have a negative net worth, and that there is no cost to this. (This effectively simulates a very low interest loan with infinite flexibility)
  • Shares granted by company are assumed to have no value.

  • Are you saying I should have done a PhD?
    No.
  • Are you saying I should have not done a PhD?
    No.
  • WTF?
    There are many reasons to do a PhD: because you're really interested in the subject, because you love the process of research, you love being in a university, or (maybe) because you believe it is required for your eventual career.

    However, it is important to realize that we don't live in a vacuum. We live (for now) in a (capitalist) society, where the niceness of your house, your ability to (not) die of preventable diseases, and your ability to retire comfortably are all dependent (entirely) on your ability to amass wealth. The more money you earn/have/steal, the nicer your house is, the more likely you won't die because you can't afford insulin, and the more likely your child will go to a school where the teachers are paid something above a poverty wage.

    Given the overwhelming nature of this reality, it is important to consider the tradeoffs between different future paths. Passionate about research in complex systems? Want to spend a good chunk of your life working on problems no one, in the entire history of the world, has ever worked on? Want to discover something new and advance the frontiers of human knowledge one tiny bit? You may want to do a PhD. But do so knowing full well that this will cost you, and your family, a lot of money. This simulation helps you put a number to that. As inaccurate as it may be, I would argue that it's more accurate than the number you had in your head before you started this experience.

    Unless you're independently wealthy and/or a nepo baby, there is a real, numerical monetary cost to doing a PhD. It's your choice to make, but make it a slightly more informed one.
  • I found a bug/typo. I have a suggestion for a change/improvement.
    File an issue on GitHub, or send me a PR!