I have a decision to make very soon whether to continue on with the PhD and possibly turn down a very good job opportunity or take a year off from the PhD and accept the decent job which is good experience and good money but not in my area.

My dilemma is that I'm working so hard on the PhD to get a better job so I am reluctant to turn down a manager position to possibly not have any job opportunity at the end of my PhD, on the other hand, to accept the job I would be taking on a position managing a care home for the elderly which would need at least a year commitment and is not in the area I'm studying and I would need to postpone my full time study.

My university and supervisor won't allow me to do the PhD part time. Has anyone been in a similar situation??

I always think take the job if it's acceptable to you, unless you can't live without doing your PhD or there's lots of jobs going with a PhD in your area.

My advice = go with the job. Just browse this forum and see how many freshly minted PhD grads are unemployed or in a job way below their qualifications. If I could wind back the clock I wouldn't bother. Please don't do it - that's what I say to everyone!

That's a really tricky one - and it sucks that you aren't able to change to part time. I think you have to ask yourself what your PhD means to you. Why are you doing your PhD? You will eventually get to the job you want after you've finished - it's not all as bleak as people say it is. If you love your research and fear that having a break from it will throw you off track then I'd stick to the PhD and see it through. However, if you feel you need a break from it then maybe it will benefit you in the long-term - both professionally and academically. Good luck! :)

That's my worry, that I've been trying to get a job in my area for years and that's the reason I went for the PhD in the first place but the job opportunity is as a care manager which I think could give me valuable experience to get a job after my PhD but I dont want to sacrifice the PhD to get that experience. It a such a hard choice to make. The money and the experience would be great and I am more than capable of doing the job but I feel that it's possibly a waste of my 8 years of studying psychology.

Really??

I know this is not a solution but i just wondering why your university doesn't allow you to change to part-time. Is it because there's no such system in your faculty/university?

Personally, I would try to take a year off from the phD and go for the job. But thats just me.

You have to ask yourself a few questions:
1) Are you funded? Is it even possible to take a year off without losing the phD?
2) Why don't they allow you to go part-time (as secondwing already stated). Do you work with patients to obtain the phD?
3) If you really have to suspend your studies, is there a possibility to do some extra work in the meantime - literature review or so - so you don't have the feeling that you "wasted" the year?
4) Will the job help you in any way to get a better (or in your eyes more suitable for your qualifications) job in the end?

Hope that helps,
Rina

hi, same reaction with Eds! the most pressing question for me (at first thought) would be why the phd cannot be done part-time. It is sooooo difficult to land a job. There are many advertisements, no doubt about that, but it may be only ONE position for something more than one person can do. It has been depressing, job-wise for me, I can only hope it gets better.

good luck
love satchi

I am a few waiver student and you can only get a fee waiver for a full time course. If I got this job I could afford to pay the fees myself but I would need to do an NVQ in management if I got the job so it would be easier to take a year off while I did that and get the place up to a higher standard than its at before returning to the PhD. I would still attempt to work on the PhD and publish some papers in that year "off" it would just ease some of the pressure. While the job isn't directly related to psychology, it would be a management position in the care sector so I think it would help towards a post-doc position.

I don't know if it's similar - my husband also got a good job offer at a good research institute during the last year of his PhD but the job requires him to stop being a student. So the boss suggest him to withdraw from the university, as the university provides the "withdrawal with credit hours acquired" system (this means that my husband has not gotten his PhD yet but he will do the viva/defense at another time, provided that he's already acquired all credit hours required for graduation). Please take note that my husband has this choice because he already completed most of his PhD works 6 months before his scheduled viva date.
So in your case, maybe it depends on how much your PhD work left if you want to try this "withdrawal with credit hours acquired" system. Or maybe you can just take a year off. I hope this story helps. Wish you all the best, clairaN.

I would take a leave of absence for a year and still work on the PhD during what spare time I had.

How badly do you want the PhD compared to the job? How far off finishing are you.

Economic sense is to take the job. Is it a temporary contract of one year? Suspend the PhD for one year and come back to it.

Is it permanent? If so, you have some soul searching, but I remember the battle I had to find another job after my second post-doc finished. As said, there's plenty posts on here from people unable to find work.

Would I have quit in similar circumstances to you? I don't know, however, if I knew exactly what problems I was going to face a few years later (overqualified, waiting for something better to come along, etc.) I'd have been sorely tempted to jump ship if a really good job opportunity came along.

Click on the link to view the PhD Game, which I think sums up the situation as regards PhDs, jobs and unemployment fairly well for many people.


Ian

Fair comment Eds!!! :-)

Ian

Just 'played' that game... scarily likely!!! Can't really go past step 9 at the mo... but looking forward to it.

Not.

Cheers!