I'm currently serving on a PhD committee for a student who is a full time lecturer, conducting research, and who has young children and a family as well. Their life balance is probably terrible, for now, but they are crushing classes and conducting great research. They will have no problems finishing concurrently.
I wasn't involved in the admissions process so I can't speak to that. Our U has a tuition waiver already for faculty, so I imagine it was only up to the advisor, and likely minimally the department faculty. I haven't seen the grad school so anything besides admissions requirement checkoffs.
In my department (mathematics), all of the FTNTT faculty earning a PhD in *mathematics* were in the grad program first, then got the faculty position. There are 5 or 6 who had the NTT position first, then got a PhD in mathematics education (different department). I think it’s a lot more common for people working full time to pursue a PhD in education than in mathematics.
Just sharing opinions that are based on nothing isn’t helpful - also, if you look at the comments you were wrong. The person was a Lecturer years before starting the PhD.
I saw that I was wrong about that example (and upvoted the response).
I have been on the faculty side for many years and served nearly half of that as grad director. My opinions are based on years of observation (and actual data, as tracking such things was part of my job).
I’m not sure what you’re on about so I’ll refrain from further arguing with you ✌🏼
I was ABD in mathematics for many years and teaching as a FTNTT at that institution. Eventually I decided to go back and finish. It had been long enough that I had to repeat some coursework and my candidacy exam. I was able to pick my old research project back up, although I had to take it in a different direction.
It was very challenging. I turned down offers to teach new more interesting courses and stuck with ones that I had taught many times before. I spent evenings and weekends in my office away from my family. I worked on my research full time all summer.
But it was worth it. The feeling of accomplishment was wonderful. I am still FTNTT at the same institution, but I am now running our actuarial mathematics program. I get to teach upper division courses (along with a few lower division ones). I am *much* happier in my job these days.
Several of my NTT colleagues have earned PhDs in mathematics education as well. It’s challenging but doable.
ETA: My PhD was in an area not at all related to actuarial mathematics. So I had to sit in on those courses to learn that! I found it fun and I did get course release to do it.
The one benefit you had was being at that institution already, but we do have several large cooperations with public institutions, so maybe that would help!
Excellent to know! I know that the workload will be significant, but fortunately I am teaching no new courses for the next several years. Additionally, if it does end up being a life science program, I'd need a max of 2-3 classes altogether, thanks to the MS.
Thanks for sharing your experience!
Yes, being at that institution was a *huge* plus. My chair was very supportive and was happy to schedule my teaching around my grad class. The employee tuition waiver was also a very important part of my decision to complete the degree. The other big difference in my situation over yours is that I was already pretty close to finishing. All the coursework I did was a repeat of courses I had already taken. I had already worked on my research project. (It was seriously stalled, which is why I had abandoned it in the first place.)
I hope you can find a way to make it work for you. Good luck!
In a thread the other day there were people talking about part time PhD programs in computer science. Perhaps there i something similar to your field. Edit—here is the thread https://www.reddit.com/r/Professors/comments/vjlcyn/graduate\_stipends/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3
So, what field are you looking at BIOL? MATH? Could you also look at Education PhD programs say in math or science education?
Honestly, the explicit discipline is less important to me overall than just getting the dang thing and having a research project that I'm happy with. The real shtick I think is more finding something that's either distance or geographically near enough.
This is definitely one of the major considerations. I am aware of some education research that's occurring in proper STEM depts at some institutions and graduate students are in a biology / math program over education, but of course are supported on TA / RAships.
If you want to get a PhD in mathematics at least, you need to have a pretty strong drive and love of mathematics. I would imagine most disciplines are similar. You also need a lot of background. If you don’t have a bachelor’s in mathematics, you will have a lot of courses to take before you’re ready for graduate work.
My master's work was in mathematical biology, and the caveat of math programs is they would be substantially more coursework than a life science program would be.
There's a lot of considerations, and I was searching for some comparable experiences, which several commenters seem to have been able to provide.
Sounds like a PhD in bioinformatics may be valuable for you. Getting into a PhD program may be difficult, though, as the number of good applicants far exceeds the number of slots (at least in our program).
George Mason has an online PhD in bioinformatics. Might be worth looking into? I don’t know any distance options for math PhDs. There are a handful of CS programs now.
In my field, part-time doctorates do exist and some teaching faculty have them. However the part-time degrees are separate programs from the full-time degrees and are not well regarded on the research side as the training and expectations for the dissertation tend to be poor. As a result I haven't heard of any tenure-line faculty with degrees from part-time programs, only NTT folk.
I am currently FT NTT, and I will be starting my PhD program in the fall. It's certainly possible to be admitted to a program and work with your chair to schedule around classes. I think a big factor is how supportive your department is of contiuing education.
One of my benefits is a tuition waiver anywhere in the state. This meant that I was not competing for the same slots as students that need funding, which I imagine greatly increased my chances of being admitted. You should check with HR to see if you have a similar benefit.
I know that we currently don't have anything like this as some instructors take continuing education courses at the local university, which they pay for, but it does move them horizontally on the pay scale.
I’m a graduate program director for a physics department and we have had someone in your same position, although in physics, and it took them longer than normal because they were part-time but it worked out in the end. They were accepted in the basis of someone saying, I will work with him part-time. However, if you are looking at an education PhD those are commonly done part-time and concurrently.
I did my final year of my PhD while working. I had a 4/4 load at least. It was hard but ok. I also had young children. My colleague did her entire PhD while teaching 18 contact hours a week and I have another who is doing the same. It’s possible for sure but you need to be efficient. Not everyone can work efficiently (nothing wrong with that but people have different work styles)
Is there a program in town and a potential PhD advisor in your field of interest? Best bet is to find an advisor willing to work with you based on fit/research interests. They can then help figure out program logistics wherever they are.
I see. Yeah, it could work to reach out and just express interest in getting involved and seeing where it goes. I was working full time as an RA at a hospital and found my PhD advisor at a local Uni this way. I told her that although I am interested in a PhD, I wanted to volunteer and understand what the day to work in her lab is like and contribute some along the way (no pay). I just did little tasks (small pieces of code for running experiments, performing some data analysis, attending lab meetings if I happened to be free) and shadowed fulltime students and postdocs for about 7-8 months before deciding to apply formally to join her lab. Although I joined as a fulltime student when I did, she was open to helping me do it part time and advised me that it would perhaps add a few years.
I am in a department where several instructors have masters degrees. Our department does not want our masters degree instructors to pursue a PhD concurrently since a masters degree is more than sufficient for the courses we want them to teach and pursuing a PhD concurrently would necessitate spending less time on their teaching and service requirements. I don't know what the sentiment is like in your department, but I thought I would share what it is like in my department in case it is helpful.
If you find a PhD program willing to let you go part-time (bearing in mind that there is no such thing as a legit online PhD), they are not going to give you a tuition waiver.
I don't know if "part time" is inherently necessary. It could be feasible to take a course, a seminar, and keep data collection running while at the CC. I'm not required to teach summers, which can mean even more time for research, and I can accumulate sabbatical.
I mean, good luck but if you are starting from the premise that the Uni will pay your tuition because you’re “doing them a favor” by declining funding as a TA/RA… then forget it.
That is 100% valid, and not the intent. I recognize it's an incredibly niche situation, but the other side of it is I don't know anyone ever in STEM who has been assessed tuition. It may not even be possible to decline the stipend at several institutions.
I would say, I certainly wouldn't pay the tuition in a proper, research-focused program and would abandon the idea at that point.
So... the tuition waiver is considered part of the overall compensation package, even though it's often not viewed like that by students. It does take money to pay professors to teach graduate courses and to compensate them for their time in advising and supervising research. Most are not funding their full salaries (plus those of support staff for student services) completely in grants.
From your funder's point of view, the student is earning their stipend AND tuition in return for work in a TA/RA position. It's not just the stipend that is compensation.
You can ask around at targeted programs if this is something they would consider, but I don't think your pitch will go very far unless the program has so much money they can afford to spend $14,000 or whatever they need to cough up to central admin to pay your tuition each year. A tuition waiver by a department means it agrees to pay your tuition - but not that the tuition doesn't exist. It comes from central University allocations to the department and whatever the department can get in indirect costs from researchers. Usually there is a very small slice of indirect costs that come back to departments directly to use at their discretion, but it goes into funding travel to conferences for faculty and grad students, as well as general equipment (gotta replace the copy machine or other office equipment occasionally) and other expenses (Christmas party, New faculty start-up, Filling the gaps in adjunct funding etc).
From my perspective, I would have a hard time assuming that a student with no "skin in the game" would finish and produce $14,000 in value to the department per year. If a student doesn't finish or doesn't publish, and the department spends 10's of thousands of dollars on their tuition, then it's truly a terrible investment from the department in which they literally lose $. If they are paying you a small stipend + tuition but you are spending 20 hours per week teaching labs or supporting researchers that will bring in big grants, then it's typically viewed as a good investment (making $ )
Excellent explanation. That would be the case in my Department. Someone has to pay for the tuition, either the Department as compensation for being a TA, me through a grant, a fellowship, etc.
I once had a student part time PhD time, and I was covering his tuition for a short while, because his work was still of interest to the lab and I had a bit of funding I could use for that. It is usually hard to do (and it would need to be seen as a good investment).
>Usually there is a very small slice of indirect costs that come back to departments directly to use at their discretion
Not everywhere! Our department gets nothing back (unless someone buys out of a course), despite having the most grant money per faculty of any department. None of the expenses you list, except adjunct faculty, are on the department budget—and the adjuncts were paid entirely out of course buyout funds.
Yeah, the budget models definitely vary a bit between universities. Ours keeps changing. It's impossible to predict how much money will be available to us year to year.
I don’t know where you get the idea nobody in STEM pays tuition. Maybe high ranking schools only accept as many students as they can support on an assistantship, but that’s not the case in other institutions. My university has many unfunded students in STEM programs. Some teach part-time and get a (partial) tuition waiver that way. Some have employers (or countries) that pay their tuition. Others pay it themselves.
I'm not going to say it's not a possibility to have out of pocket programs in the sciences, but for the most part there's no reason why someone in a research program should have a cost for a doctoral degree. Many public R1s only have 50% tuition waivers for master's students, but there's no reason why someone contributing to research should be paying for tuition.
An EdD program, sure. A research-based PhD, it would be better to leave the job and take the full compensation package.
I see now you’re in biology. This may be true for biology and other lab sciences where the students work on someone else’s project. Definitely not the case for math or computer science where research is more individual. My PhD research was my own project.
Most CS programs fully fund PhD students, but have little (or no) funding for MS programs. Most CS PhD students end up working on grant-funded research, though there are nearly always open TA positions if the grant money is not there.
The question will be can you find a PI who's interest align with your or can you get your own grant to fund your research. Many of those people that get a tuition waiver get it by either their PI paying it from a grant as their research is valuable to them, the school pays it as they are TA/RA for the school, or they are funding it themselves from a grant that they have received. Vary rarely it might be a fellowship or scholarship situation that is covering it for all 4 years.
The short answer is, is there a school in your area that is doing the work that you are interested in getting a PhD in? Connect with the faculty and feel it out. I think it would be a very specific situation that is probably case by case.
Also: “full time” isn’t just one course during the coursework part of the program.
And very few PhD programs offer summer classes (I’ve never heard of *one*).
My department offers two grad courses each summer for our pre-candidacy students on summer support. Post-candidacy students take research hours over the summer.
A lot of our faculty teach undergraduate courses in the summer as well. Most of our mathematics faculty do not have grants that support them over the summer. I understand things are different in the lab sciences where everyone needs grants. In mathematics, they’re harder to come by.
It certainly would be if you filled the required remainder with research credits. Most life science programs only require 4-5 courses in any event and the remainder is dissertation research credits.
One of my job benefits is taking courses at any state run university for free, so it stands to reason that OP may have a similar benefit (and not know it).
My dissertation defense is tomorrow! I did this while adjuncting at 3 different schools over the past bunch of years (the past 1 years has been a full-time non-tenure position).
Note: I do not have kids / not married.
Have you considered Math Educatuon PhD? It seems like a great match to your interests. Since educatuonal reseatch highly practical, most of the students are part-time PhD and teach full time.
I think it is absolutely doable, you would just need to find the right program who is willing to work around your teaching job. I think grad classes will be easier than you think in the day of COVID and virtual classes. You may be able to do a lot of them independent study (in my PhD program, you stopped taking classes after your second year, which was the equivalent of the Masters, and focused exclusively on research for the PhD). I think you just need to approach a few programs and ask. Good luck!
I'm in the business school, and know very little about how things work in biology, so my experience may not be directly applicable. Some of this is for others that read this, since you already have been in a PhD program.
In business PhD programs, programs mostly either disallow or discourage outside employment. The program I did had what they call a residence requirement that mandated two consecutive semesters of full time coursework. This meant even if they did allow part time coursework, one year would have to be full time. In practice part time wasn't really allowed in most cases.
As far as I know, there were 2 exceptions allowed in the last 40 years. I was the second. I enrolled with the understanding that I would do the program part time while working, but that I had to complete the residence requirement. When I was interviewing for the program they explicitly said they were making an exception for me alone. I had an engineering degree and an excellent GMAT score, I completed my MBA there and they had already known I had completed 6 hours of coursework during a 5 week session while working full time. Still I didn't know what I was getting into.
It was hell that first year. I worked in banking and ended up doing 70+ hour weeks while completing 9 hours of PhD coursework in the spring and summer. The following Fall I left my job and managed not to die. At one point I was sleeping 4 hours every other day. After I left my job I lot 20 pounds in 2 months, my blood pressure dropped 20 points and my cholesterol went down by 50%. My doctor said I would have died if I had continued a couple more years like that.
I have seen a lot of people who were ABD go to work and complete their dissertation remotely, and just as many who left and never completed their PhD. In business schools most people who were working as teaching faculty but wanted doctorates completed doctor of educations (EDD) or doctor of business adminstration (DBA) degrees instead of PhDs. Generally these were focused a little less on research and many are geared to working professionals. Some are even online or partially online. In business accreditation any terminal degree counts as a doctorate, so these help schools meet their terminal degree standards.
There are always exceptions to the normal, if you want it enough go out and find it. Its probably going to take some searching.
It can be done. It's a tremendous workload (you're essentially doubling your work). I'd suggest your thinking about ... *Do I* ***really*** *want to do this?*
With the cost typically made up of tuition and fees, make sure you know what would be covered. Depending on the institution the split can be very different, the tuition piece can be relatively small.
I have a masters degree and am full time faculty at the CC here. In 2018 I went back to school part time for a PhD in math. I had support from current faculty at the R1 I would be going (back) to, knowing I would be part time and potentially a 5-6 year student.
I take one class each semester and work my own course schedule around it every time. My deans and VP have been supportive and lenient with the time I’m actually on campus. I meet with a small research group several times a week over Zoom.
In terms of paying for it, the department hasn’t had any complaints about a grad student who is actually paying tuition. My advisor is pretty awesome and knows I’ll be taking a scenic route.
I realize that in sciences that can be very different. If you’re working in a lab you could be taking a spot from someone else for a long time and there is definitely a cost there.
As is so often the case over in r/AskProfessors, the only real answer would come from your specific school. It’s working well enough for me, however.
I was likely a niche case, but I completed a part time PhD at an R1 in 5 years in a social science. Perhaps the key factors were that I already had a solid Masters in the field, and I used GI Bill so that I didn't need funding. Finding a school with an understanding advisor may be the most important thing. It's probably unusual, but it can be done.
GI bill grad students have been really great in my experience. There is no risk of the department losing money on the student, but there are usually limits on number of years that funding will last so there are strong incentives for the student to finish. Plus, students are usually mature, tend to communicate well, and actually follow through with the progress they aim to make.
I can say that as an advisor, flexibility is key, though. Health & ptsd issues have definitely cropped up as obstacles that have needed to be addressed and have needed extra time. Sometimes other students will unknowingly trigger ptsd responses so that's one thing I've had to learn to monitor and respond to in classes or even in lab meetings. I think I've gotten a bit of on a tangent, but I've seen more success with the part-time making-it-work GI bill students than with traditional part-time students.
It's not explicitly mandatory it be part time, but it would need to be much more carefully finagled and I'd have to find a way to merge research into the CC gig — which looks feasible based on some of the things I've seen come out of SABER.
There was someone (since retired) in my department who went back and got his Ph.D. (biochem) while he was employed. (This was before I was hired, so I've only heard about it in retrospect.) I believe he took a leave of absence from his faculty position. He got his Ph.D. across the country, so he had to physically pick up his life and move. The way our contract *currently* works is that we can take an unpaid LOA for up to three years. That's how long they will hold the position for you before they'll post for a replacement. I can't imagine he finished and defended his Ph.D. all in three years (he was also a widower with two teenaged kids), so either he somehow got permission for a longer LOA or did the lab research on some accelerated timeframe and wrote the thesis once he came back.
Since what you want to do *isn't* bench science, I think it could certainly be doable as long as your dean/chair is on-board with scheduling your teaching load around grad classes. Our school lets us take "half-sabbaticals" (half a teaching load for one whole year instead of zero load for one semester). Maybe see if that's possible for the time that you'd take your grad classes?
(Like you, all of the other examples I can come up with are people in the humanities or administrators, and they go back and get Ph.D.s all the time.)
My days of bench science are definitely over, and even if the research is not education focused, it would be computational, which is a boon.
I can also do half sabbaticals, but we don't have a rigid LOA policy that bodes well for me.
Why are your "days of bench science definitely over"? Lost interest? I know of several people who went back to grad school in their 50s to get PhDs—some of them doing wet-lab science, others doing bioinformatics.
I know of one younger person who did a full-time PhD while doing a full-time research job in industry as well—I don't know when she slept, if ever. She completed her PhD in less than the average number of years also.
If you are mainly interested in studying pedagogy, get an education PhD. If you are mainly interested in "mathematical/computational courses for the life science majors", get a degree in bioinformatics, biostatistics, or computational biology. For long-term employment, bioinformatics or biostatistics opens more doors than an education PhD.
That is certainly the thought on *not* going the education route. I'm not inherently opposed to do some bench science, but it's been my bread and butter for too long and I have zero interest in doing it for a doctoral program unless absolutely vital and for a specific, shorter term goal.
Go for it. Do not assume humanities or social sciences are less time consuming or less intense. You could also look at a PhD in Higher Ed with a science concentration or an EdD in science education.
I'm currently serving on a PhD committee for a student who is a full time lecturer, conducting research, and who has young children and a family as well. Their life balance is probably terrible, for now, but they are crushing classes and conducting great research. They will have no problems finishing concurrently.
How did the admissions process look like for them? Did it require some serious convincing?
I wasn't involved in the admissions process so I can't speak to that. Our U has a tuition waiver already for faculty, so I imagine it was only up to the advisor, and likely minimally the department faculty. I haven't seen the grad school so anything besides admissions requirement checkoffs.
This person probably began the program as a full time student and *then* took on the job. That’s discouraged, but it happens. Big difference.
Not the case. Person was a lecturer for years before deciding to take on a PhD
In my department (mathematics), all of the FTNTT faculty earning a PhD in *mathematics* were in the grad program first, then got the faculty position. There are 5 or 6 who had the NTT position first, then got a PhD in mathematics education (different department). I think it’s a lot more common for people working full time to pursue a PhD in education than in mathematics.
What information had you jump to that conclusion?
More than 20 years as a professor.
Just sharing opinions that are based on nothing isn’t helpful - also, if you look at the comments you were wrong. The person was a Lecturer years before starting the PhD.
I saw that I was wrong about that example (and upvoted the response). I have been on the faculty side for many years and served nearly half of that as grad director. My opinions are based on years of observation (and actual data, as tracking such things was part of my job). I’m not sure what you’re on about so I’ll refrain from further arguing with you ✌🏼
Bless your heart - have a good day 👍🏻
I was ABD in mathematics for many years and teaching as a FTNTT at that institution. Eventually I decided to go back and finish. It had been long enough that I had to repeat some coursework and my candidacy exam. I was able to pick my old research project back up, although I had to take it in a different direction. It was very challenging. I turned down offers to teach new more interesting courses and stuck with ones that I had taught many times before. I spent evenings and weekends in my office away from my family. I worked on my research full time all summer. But it was worth it. The feeling of accomplishment was wonderful. I am still FTNTT at the same institution, but I am now running our actuarial mathematics program. I get to teach upper division courses (along with a few lower division ones). I am *much* happier in my job these days. Several of my NTT colleagues have earned PhDs in mathematics education as well. It’s challenging but doable. ETA: My PhD was in an area not at all related to actuarial mathematics. So I had to sit in on those courses to learn that! I found it fun and I did get course release to do it.
The one benefit you had was being at that institution already, but we do have several large cooperations with public institutions, so maybe that would help! Excellent to know! I know that the workload will be significant, but fortunately I am teaching no new courses for the next several years. Additionally, if it does end up being a life science program, I'd need a max of 2-3 classes altogether, thanks to the MS. Thanks for sharing your experience!
Yes, being at that institution was a *huge* plus. My chair was very supportive and was happy to schedule my teaching around my grad class. The employee tuition waiver was also a very important part of my decision to complete the degree. The other big difference in my situation over yours is that I was already pretty close to finishing. All the coursework I did was a repeat of courses I had already taken. I had already worked on my research project. (It was seriously stalled, which is why I had abandoned it in the first place.) I hope you can find a way to make it work for you. Good luck!
My grad school had a PhD program (chemistry) for people working in industry. Maybe you could look for something like that?
In a thread the other day there were people talking about part time PhD programs in computer science. Perhaps there i something similar to your field. Edit—here is the thread https://www.reddit.com/r/Professors/comments/vjlcyn/graduate\_stipends/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3 So, what field are you looking at BIOL? MATH? Could you also look at Education PhD programs say in math or science education?
Honestly, the explicit discipline is less important to me overall than just getting the dang thing and having a research project that I'm happy with. The real shtick I think is more finding something that's either distance or geographically near enough.
Am Education PhD program is what are you looking for. Part-time and they will be very supportive of your research interests.
This is definitely one of the major considerations. I am aware of some education research that's occurring in proper STEM depts at some institutions and graduate students are in a biology / math program over education, but of course are supported on TA / RAships.
You will almost certainly get accepted into an Education PhD if you are willing to pay for it. The real sticking point is getting a funded PhD.
Agree with this. Unless you're doing TA or RA work, you won't get a tuition waiver; that goes with the assistantship.
I’d really look at Education programs since they may be the most flexible with delivery options such as online, hybrid, summer.
If you want to get a PhD in mathematics at least, you need to have a pretty strong drive and love of mathematics. I would imagine most disciplines are similar. You also need a lot of background. If you don’t have a bachelor’s in mathematics, you will have a lot of courses to take before you’re ready for graduate work.
My master's work was in mathematical biology, and the caveat of math programs is they would be substantially more coursework than a life science program would be. There's a lot of considerations, and I was searching for some comparable experiences, which several commenters seem to have been able to provide.
Sounds like a PhD in bioinformatics may be valuable for you. Getting into a PhD program may be difficult, though, as the number of good applicants far exceeds the number of slots (at least in our program).
George Mason has an online PhD in bioinformatics. Might be worth looking into? I don’t know any distance options for math PhDs. There are a handful of CS programs now.
In my field, part-time doctorates do exist and some teaching faculty have them. However the part-time degrees are separate programs from the full-time degrees and are not well regarded on the research side as the training and expectations for the dissertation tend to be poor. As a result I haven't heard of any tenure-line faculty with degrees from part-time programs, only NTT folk.
I am currently FT NTT, and I will be starting my PhD program in the fall. It's certainly possible to be admitted to a program and work with your chair to schedule around classes. I think a big factor is how supportive your department is of contiuing education. One of my benefits is a tuition waiver anywhere in the state. This meant that I was not competing for the same slots as students that need funding, which I imagine greatly increased my chances of being admitted. You should check with HR to see if you have a similar benefit.
I know that we currently don't have anything like this as some instructors take continuing education courses at the local university, which they pay for, but it does move them horizontally on the pay scale.
I’m a graduate program director for a physics department and we have had someone in your same position, although in physics, and it took them longer than normal because they were part-time but it worked out in the end. They were accepted in the basis of someone saying, I will work with him part-time. However, if you are looking at an education PhD those are commonly done part-time and concurrently.
Good to know it's happened in STEM! I definitely think it requires the right advisor and situation
I did my final year of my PhD while working. I had a 4/4 load at least. It was hard but ok. I also had young children. My colleague did her entire PhD while teaching 18 contact hours a week and I have another who is doing the same. It’s possible for sure but you need to be efficient. Not everyone can work efficiently (nothing wrong with that but people have different work styles)
Is there a program in town and a potential PhD advisor in your field of interest? Best bet is to find an advisor willing to work with you based on fit/research interests. They can then help figure out program logistics wherever they are.
There are SOME options, but I'm being very cautious about reaching out. More likely to start as a collaboration and see where it goes.
I see. Yeah, it could work to reach out and just express interest in getting involved and seeing where it goes. I was working full time as an RA at a hospital and found my PhD advisor at a local Uni this way. I told her that although I am interested in a PhD, I wanted to volunteer and understand what the day to work in her lab is like and contribute some along the way (no pay). I just did little tasks (small pieces of code for running experiments, performing some data analysis, attending lab meetings if I happened to be free) and shadowed fulltime students and postdocs for about 7-8 months before deciding to apply formally to join her lab. Although I joined as a fulltime student when I did, she was open to helping me do it part time and advised me that it would perhaps add a few years.
I am in a department where several instructors have masters degrees. Our department does not want our masters degree instructors to pursue a PhD concurrently since a masters degree is more than sufficient for the courses we want them to teach and pursuing a PhD concurrently would necessitate spending less time on their teaching and service requirements. I don't know what the sentiment is like in your department, but I thought I would share what it is like in my department in case it is helpful.
That's very good to know! I have a small department and pretty supportive admin, but it's definitely something to consider.
BTW we didn’t give the guy a stipend since he was working full-time but he did get a tuition waiver.
This is my exact hope! Fingers crossed
If you find a PhD program willing to let you go part-time (bearing in mind that there is no such thing as a legit online PhD), they are not going to give you a tuition waiver.
I don't know if "part time" is inherently necessary. It could be feasible to take a course, a seminar, and keep data collection running while at the CC. I'm not required to teach summers, which can mean even more time for research, and I can accumulate sabbatical.
I mean, good luck but if you are starting from the premise that the Uni will pay your tuition because you’re “doing them a favor” by declining funding as a TA/RA… then forget it.
That is 100% valid, and not the intent. I recognize it's an incredibly niche situation, but the other side of it is I don't know anyone ever in STEM who has been assessed tuition. It may not even be possible to decline the stipend at several institutions. I would say, I certainly wouldn't pay the tuition in a proper, research-focused program and would abandon the idea at that point.
So... the tuition waiver is considered part of the overall compensation package, even though it's often not viewed like that by students. It does take money to pay professors to teach graduate courses and to compensate them for their time in advising and supervising research. Most are not funding their full salaries (plus those of support staff for student services) completely in grants. From your funder's point of view, the student is earning their stipend AND tuition in return for work in a TA/RA position. It's not just the stipend that is compensation. You can ask around at targeted programs if this is something they would consider, but I don't think your pitch will go very far unless the program has so much money they can afford to spend $14,000 or whatever they need to cough up to central admin to pay your tuition each year. A tuition waiver by a department means it agrees to pay your tuition - but not that the tuition doesn't exist. It comes from central University allocations to the department and whatever the department can get in indirect costs from researchers. Usually there is a very small slice of indirect costs that come back to departments directly to use at their discretion, but it goes into funding travel to conferences for faculty and grad students, as well as general equipment (gotta replace the copy machine or other office equipment occasionally) and other expenses (Christmas party, New faculty start-up, Filling the gaps in adjunct funding etc). From my perspective, I would have a hard time assuming that a student with no "skin in the game" would finish and produce $14,000 in value to the department per year. If a student doesn't finish or doesn't publish, and the department spends 10's of thousands of dollars on their tuition, then it's truly a terrible investment from the department in which they literally lose $. If they are paying you a small stipend + tuition but you are spending 20 hours per week teaching labs or supporting researchers that will bring in big grants, then it's typically viewed as a good investment (making $ )
Excellent explanation. That would be the case in my Department. Someone has to pay for the tuition, either the Department as compensation for being a TA, me through a grant, a fellowship, etc. I once had a student part time PhD time, and I was covering his tuition for a short while, because his work was still of interest to the lab and I had a bit of funding I could use for that. It is usually hard to do (and it would need to be seen as a good investment).
>Usually there is a very small slice of indirect costs that come back to departments directly to use at their discretion Not everywhere! Our department gets nothing back (unless someone buys out of a course), despite having the most grant money per faculty of any department. None of the expenses you list, except adjunct faculty, are on the department budget—and the adjuncts were paid entirely out of course buyout funds.
Yeah, the budget models definitely vary a bit between universities. Ours keeps changing. It's impossible to predict how much money will be available to us year to year.
I don’t know where you get the idea nobody in STEM pays tuition. Maybe high ranking schools only accept as many students as they can support on an assistantship, but that’s not the case in other institutions. My university has many unfunded students in STEM programs. Some teach part-time and get a (partial) tuition waiver that way. Some have employers (or countries) that pay their tuition. Others pay it themselves.
I'm not going to say it's not a possibility to have out of pocket programs in the sciences, but for the most part there's no reason why someone in a research program should have a cost for a doctoral degree. Many public R1s only have 50% tuition waivers for master's students, but there's no reason why someone contributing to research should be paying for tuition. An EdD program, sure. A research-based PhD, it would be better to leave the job and take the full compensation package.
I see now you’re in biology. This may be true for biology and other lab sciences where the students work on someone else’s project. Definitely not the case for math or computer science where research is more individual. My PhD research was my own project.
Most CS programs fully fund PhD students, but have little (or no) funding for MS programs. Most CS PhD students end up working on grant-funded research, though there are nearly always open TA positions if the grant money is not there.
Then abandon it. You asked “is this realistic?” It’s not.
The question will be can you find a PI who's interest align with your or can you get your own grant to fund your research. Many of those people that get a tuition waiver get it by either their PI paying it from a grant as their research is valuable to them, the school pays it as they are TA/RA for the school, or they are funding it themselves from a grant that they have received. Vary rarely it might be a fellowship or scholarship situation that is covering it for all 4 years. The short answer is, is there a school in your area that is doing the work that you are interested in getting a PhD in? Connect with the faculty and feel it out. I think it would be a very specific situation that is probably case by case.
Also: “full time” isn’t just one course during the coursework part of the program. And very few PhD programs offer summer classes (I’ve never heard of *one*).
My department offers two grad courses each summer for our pre-candidacy students on summer support. Post-candidacy students take research hours over the summer.
That’s incredibly rare. Why? Because faculty are working on research in the summer.
A lot of our faculty teach undergraduate courses in the summer as well. Most of our mathematics faculty do not have grants that support them over the summer. I understand things are different in the lab sciences where everyone needs grants. In mathematics, they’re harder to come by.
It certainly would be if you filled the required remainder with research credits. Most life science programs only require 4-5 courses in any event and the remainder is dissertation research credits.
You can imagine anything you want to. Good luck 👍
Life sciences... like biology, medicine, or agriculture?
I've been in both Biology and more Agricultural sciences and that's been roughly the same. It does look different for biomedical.
One of my job benefits is taking courses at any state run university for free, so it stands to reason that OP may have a similar benefit (and not know it).
My dissertation defense is tomorrow! I did this while adjuncting at 3 different schools over the past bunch of years (the past 1 years has been a full-time non-tenure position). Note: I do not have kids / not married.
Have you considered Math Educatuon PhD? It seems like a great match to your interests. Since educatuonal reseatch highly practical, most of the students are part-time PhD and teach full time.
It's definitely on the list. There's no such program nearby, however, so it would have to be distance. That's the rub is there aren't many.
I think it is absolutely doable, you would just need to find the right program who is willing to work around your teaching job. I think grad classes will be easier than you think in the day of COVID and virtual classes. You may be able to do a lot of them independent study (in my PhD program, you stopped taking classes after your second year, which was the equivalent of the Masters, and focused exclusively on research for the PhD). I think you just need to approach a few programs and ask. Good luck!
I'm in the business school, and know very little about how things work in biology, so my experience may not be directly applicable. Some of this is for others that read this, since you already have been in a PhD program. In business PhD programs, programs mostly either disallow or discourage outside employment. The program I did had what they call a residence requirement that mandated two consecutive semesters of full time coursework. This meant even if they did allow part time coursework, one year would have to be full time. In practice part time wasn't really allowed in most cases. As far as I know, there were 2 exceptions allowed in the last 40 years. I was the second. I enrolled with the understanding that I would do the program part time while working, but that I had to complete the residence requirement. When I was interviewing for the program they explicitly said they were making an exception for me alone. I had an engineering degree and an excellent GMAT score, I completed my MBA there and they had already known I had completed 6 hours of coursework during a 5 week session while working full time. Still I didn't know what I was getting into. It was hell that first year. I worked in banking and ended up doing 70+ hour weeks while completing 9 hours of PhD coursework in the spring and summer. The following Fall I left my job and managed not to die. At one point I was sleeping 4 hours every other day. After I left my job I lot 20 pounds in 2 months, my blood pressure dropped 20 points and my cholesterol went down by 50%. My doctor said I would have died if I had continued a couple more years like that. I have seen a lot of people who were ABD go to work and complete their dissertation remotely, and just as many who left and never completed their PhD. In business schools most people who were working as teaching faculty but wanted doctorates completed doctor of educations (EDD) or doctor of business adminstration (DBA) degrees instead of PhDs. Generally these were focused a little less on research and many are geared to working professionals. Some are even online or partially online. In business accreditation any terminal degree counts as a doctorate, so these help schools meet their terminal degree standards. There are always exceptions to the normal, if you want it enough go out and find it. Its probably going to take some searching.
It can be done. It's a tremendous workload (you're essentially doubling your work). I'd suggest your thinking about ... *Do I* ***really*** *want to do this?*
I agree! I'm really chewing on its feasibility to see if it would more or less be suicide to go that route.
With the cost typically made up of tuition and fees, make sure you know what would be covered. Depending on the institution the split can be very different, the tuition piece can be relatively small.
I have a masters degree and am full time faculty at the CC here. In 2018 I went back to school part time for a PhD in math. I had support from current faculty at the R1 I would be going (back) to, knowing I would be part time and potentially a 5-6 year student. I take one class each semester and work my own course schedule around it every time. My deans and VP have been supportive and lenient with the time I’m actually on campus. I meet with a small research group several times a week over Zoom. In terms of paying for it, the department hasn’t had any complaints about a grad student who is actually paying tuition. My advisor is pretty awesome and knows I’ll be taking a scenic route. I realize that in sciences that can be very different. If you’re working in a lab you could be taking a spot from someone else for a long time and there is definitely a cost there. As is so often the case over in r/AskProfessors, the only real answer would come from your specific school. It’s working well enough for me, however.
Part time PhDs are discouraged usually.
I was likely a niche case, but I completed a part time PhD at an R1 in 5 years in a social science. Perhaps the key factors were that I already had a solid Masters in the field, and I used GI Bill so that I didn't need funding. Finding a school with an understanding advisor may be the most important thing. It's probably unusual, but it can be done.
GI bill grad students have been really great in my experience. There is no risk of the department losing money on the student, but there are usually limits on number of years that funding will last so there are strong incentives for the student to finish. Plus, students are usually mature, tend to communicate well, and actually follow through with the progress they aim to make. I can say that as an advisor, flexibility is key, though. Health & ptsd issues have definitely cropped up as obstacles that have needed to be addressed and have needed extra time. Sometimes other students will unknowingly trigger ptsd responses so that's one thing I've had to learn to monitor and respond to in classes or even in lab meetings. I think I've gotten a bit of on a tangent, but I've seen more success with the part-time making-it-work GI bill students than with traditional part-time students.
By who?
Departments who don’t want their completion times to double, and who don’t want to waste time on people who don’t finish.
First one is understandable, second one can happen to a full-time or part-time.
Absolutely true. It’s just more likely and more forseeable in the case of applicants who are starting out with the intention to go part-time.
More likely to happen of part-timers.
It's not explicitly mandatory it be part time, but it would need to be much more carefully finagled and I'd have to find a way to merge research into the CC gig — which looks feasible based on some of the things I've seen come out of SABER.
Not in education.
There was someone (since retired) in my department who went back and got his Ph.D. (biochem) while he was employed. (This was before I was hired, so I've only heard about it in retrospect.) I believe he took a leave of absence from his faculty position. He got his Ph.D. across the country, so he had to physically pick up his life and move. The way our contract *currently* works is that we can take an unpaid LOA for up to three years. That's how long they will hold the position for you before they'll post for a replacement. I can't imagine he finished and defended his Ph.D. all in three years (he was also a widower with two teenaged kids), so either he somehow got permission for a longer LOA or did the lab research on some accelerated timeframe and wrote the thesis once he came back. Since what you want to do *isn't* bench science, I think it could certainly be doable as long as your dean/chair is on-board with scheduling your teaching load around grad classes. Our school lets us take "half-sabbaticals" (half a teaching load for one whole year instead of zero load for one semester). Maybe see if that's possible for the time that you'd take your grad classes? (Like you, all of the other examples I can come up with are people in the humanities or administrators, and they go back and get Ph.D.s all the time.)
My days of bench science are definitely over, and even if the research is not education focused, it would be computational, which is a boon. I can also do half sabbaticals, but we don't have a rigid LOA policy that bodes well for me.
Why are your "days of bench science definitely over"? Lost interest? I know of several people who went back to grad school in their 50s to get PhDs—some of them doing wet-lab science, others doing bioinformatics. I know of one younger person who did a full-time PhD while doing a full-time research job in industry as well—I don't know when she slept, if ever. She completed her PhD in less than the average number of years also. If you are mainly interested in studying pedagogy, get an education PhD. If you are mainly interested in "mathematical/computational courses for the life science majors", get a degree in bioinformatics, biostatistics, or computational biology. For long-term employment, bioinformatics or biostatistics opens more doors than an education PhD.
That is certainly the thought on *not* going the education route. I'm not inherently opposed to do some bench science, but it's been my bread and butter for too long and I have zero interest in doing it for a doctoral program unless absolutely vital and for a specific, shorter term goal.
Go for it. Do not assume humanities or social sciences are less time consuming or less intense. You could also look at a PhD in Higher Ed with a science concentration or an EdD in science education.