Here's a related but off-topic question: How does one earn a PhD in the US while working a full-time job to support a family, including a wife, children, and a home?
You don't. A PhD is a full-time job, a 40-60 hour/week one.
I did the part-time Master's. That was a huge mistake. You will not get the education, the time to research, the networking, the collaboration, or the presence to do the job right.
A PhD done wrong is a waste of your time and the university's time.
Often, you don't. When I applied to graduate school I intended to keep my full time "real pay" job. My PhD program only accepted students who would take a graduate student stipend and commit full time to the "program." After going through it, I understand why they want that commitment and I would not recommend anyone try to get a PhD in the spare time.
I think hardhead might have just been referring to keeping a "full time job" which is impossible in many of the STEM PhD programs in the US. A lab-mate of mine has a child, and I know a few others in my program that have children as well. Almost all STEM PhD programs offer stipends for TAs and/or RAs, so you might get on the order of 20K/year to be a student. That being said, there are no shortage of people claiming the grad student -> postdoc -> nontenured prof. -> tenured prof. route is hostile to those wanting a family.
Quanics is correct. I would never recommend paying your own way at a graduate program--go where you are funded. A graduate stipend will net to about $20k/year (there are some amazing fellowships that will fund $50k+ but they are very, very competitive). In a "real job" you'll often be making much more than $20k, as I was when I was a higher ed IT professional (and could have qualified for free tuition as an institutional employee). PhD programs are rated by several factors including graduation rate and time to completion. It is obvious to me now that the people who are choosing the students to fill the very limited number of graduate student seats in any given year will choose those who are committing to work full time on graduating.
Many people do complain about academia being hostile to family life (see http://100rsns.blogspot.com/2010/09/15-marriage-and-family-u... for a particularly negative view). However, many of my colleagues had children during graduate school. They took time off classes but then used their "down time" (e.g. child napping) to focus on writing and came out ahead. I got married immediately before entering grad school and had my first child as I was writing my dissertation. The timing worked really well for me. I was lucky that my wife could support me through graduate school (on top of my stipend).
my father worked full time while receiving his phd in the professional field he was employed in. he has had a very successful academic career. his dissertation was no joke and he has advanced much further than others from more prestigious universities.
i don't understand this mindset and the fact it exists is why i would never go back for a phd (pure math phd drop out). this is why so much research ends up being inapplicable garbage that doesn't advance a profession so much as hit the current vogue in academics. half the shit i saw pushed the current boundaries of human knowledge further away from anything applicable, interesting, or worth spending 6 years of your life on.
Good research takes time and intense focus. I.e., you want to be able to have a total focus when your mind is fresh. That is not going to be doable after you've already worked your 8-9 day (maybe if you're in the 1% of humans who can do that, but I'm talking about the common case). This is going to get worse in the case of having a family.
I'm not going to comment on your father, since I don't know him, don't know his research, and don't know his field. :-) But I know that I've been... less impressed... with part-time PhD research than with full-time PhD research. There are ways to manipulate your situation into a less conflicting one, that is true, but that depends on the employer and the university.
> pushed the current boundaries of human knowledge further away from anything applicable, interesting, or worth spending 6 years of your life on.
That's just your opinion, ne? Why should academics do anything that is applicable? Isn't it industry's role to take this research and channel it into something practical (or ignore it if its not)? A surprising amount of effort has been expended over the years in software that have been avoided by some basic attention to the research literature.
But that leads us down an entirely different discussion, one I don't think is really resolvable here and now.
Do you really need the extra stress? Doing a PhD is really a full-time undertaking, as in 40+ hours / week diligent work. Doing it part-time still requires 20+ hours of quality time to be successful.
