I see what you're saying, but I think a good education benefits the recipient and society as a whole. My subject-specific knowledge may be pretty much irrelevant to most people but the personal qualities and professional skills I have acquired and developed such as objectivity, capability to make evidence-based decisions, computer literacy, writing abilities, problem-solving abilities, presentation skills, resilience etc are very useful. Of course, these skills can be attained without doing a PhD. I don't think people should be prevented from getting qualifications just because they won't be able to use them directly afterwards.

I think that actually what needs to happen is that students are told very clearly their chances of an academic career before applying for a PhD, so that only those that seek an academic career will do a PhD, or those that just want to do one for personal reasons. And/or the benefits/skills/personal attributes that a PhD holder offers need to clearly highlighted to employers, so that they are an advantage rather than a hindrance. And obviously science needs more money, because then it can afford to pay experienced scientists rather than taking on PhDs and postdocs as cheap labour and then there would be more permanent jobs available.

Sounds perfect Ellebelle :)

Hopefully someone else on here has heard of a similar situation. Does anyone know?

Sorry to hear about your experience and that's great that you are much better.

I don't see what they wouldn't upgrade you if your work is progressing well enough. There's certainly no harm in asking.

Lectureships are basically permanent as well, which is the first step on the road to being a professor.

Generally, it goes lecturer to senior lecturer to reader to professor. Some teaching fellows are also permanent at some universities.

I think in the UK, only 3% of science PhDs get a permanent academic job and the chance of being a professor is 0.3%.

75% of UK science PhDs have a job outside of science or industry.

Even though I won't be able to work in science, I still feel that undertaking my PhD was useful for so many things and I'm glad I did it.

I would say my postdoc is pretty much exactly the same in terms of doing the lab work and writing papers and presentations and training and conferences as a PhD.

But, I would say it's less fun than a PhD. I guess I found the first time I did any of these things was fun and took effort, but now it's easy. Picking up a new protocol is now easy, writing and submitting papers is easy, standing up and talking in front of 100s of people gets easier. Plus, with my PhD I loved where I lived, the uni, the city and my lab mates, plus my supervisors were great so... And there's no teaching with my postdoc, and I loved that aspect of my PhD.

I don't feel any pressure or stress at all to be honest... but I think that's more about me rather than a postdoc not being stressful. I didn't find my PhD particularly stressful either, but I had the same issues with deadlines, experiments not working and long hours as everyone else.

I feel like an imposter all the time too - I look at other postdocs and I think they are 'real' postdocs and I wish I could be like them... but again, I think it's more about the personality they project rather than any tangible difference.

Medicine for sure. Like you said, career opportunities post-PhD are bleak. (I'm a biology postdoc.)

Disadvantages to medicine that I perceive to be (and means I wouldn't want that option) are: shift work, moving around to get training and then permanent positions and ... the big one, dealing with human health issues. If these things are fine with you, then take the medicine route.

Or is there any way you can upgrade/downgrade Word versions at home so you are using the same one as uni?

Yep... don't do it.

I only did my work on university computer because of those exact problems.

Basically, stick to one version of Word (e.g. 2013) for thesis editing.

If you don't do a PhD, what would you do instead?