finishing phd while working

Is it possible to earn a PhD while working? The brutal truth

Working alongside your PhD seems like an attractive proposal until you look at all of the different commitments you need to make to actually get a PhD and submit your dissertation. Working part-time may help PhD students financially but it often comes at an academic cost.

It is possible to earn a PhD while working. However, it requires strict time management and can be very complicated. You have to balance any other significant commitments inside and outside of your PhD.

A PhD is typically the equivalent time commitment as a full-time job. The majority of the PhD students I know work at least 40 hours a week. So, trying to get a PhD while working is very time intensive – 80-hour + weeks.

Some students drop down to a part-time PhD in order to balance all of the particular commitments of a PhD program and working hours.

Whether or not you are a part-time PhD student or you are studying your PhD full-time, here are all of the aspects you should consider if you are considering working alongside your PhD research. This is what you need to know if you are considering getting your doctorate while working.

Can you work during a PhD?

Some institutions full-out ban their PhD students from working full-time alongside a full-time research commitment. They want to make sure that you’re working 100% on your PhD because balancing work isn’t easy.

Although it may not be banned in some institutions it is generally expected that students focus on their research and coursework full-time during a PhD and are therefore not typically able to hold down a full-time job.

Some programs may allow for part-time work, but it is generally not recommended as it can interfere with academic progress.

Additionally, many PhD programs offer funding in the form of stipends or fellowships which can help support students financially during their studies.

There are a few things to consider if you are thinking of working during your PhD.

The first is whether or not you will have enough time to dedicate to both your work and your studies. You don’t want your work to suffer because you are spending too much time on your PhD, or vice versa.

Another thing to consider is how working will affect your funding.

If you are receiving PhD funding or a scholarship from an external source, they may have stipulations on whether or not you can work while receiving their funding. Be sure to check with them before taking on any paid work.

Lastly, you will want to make sure that the work you are doing is related to your field of study. Working in a related field can help you with your research by giving you real-world experience that you can apply to your studies.

Even though some institutions allow you to work, should you?

Should you work during your PhD?

Some students feel that they need to work in order to support themselves during their PhD, while others feel that they can focus solely on their studies.

There are pros and cons to both approaches.

Working during your PhD can help you to cover your living expenses and may even allow you to save some money. However, it can also be a distraction from your studies and may make it more difficult to find time to do research.

I know that I wouldn’t be able to balance the pressures of a full-time job with my PhD studies and, therefore, decided to not have any jobs during my first year – this included jobs inside the University such as demonstrating in undergraduate laboratories.

Therefore, it is possible to do a PhD whilst working full-time but you really have to consider the impact of the extra pressures and commitments

. It is much easier to work alongside your PhD if you have a strong research-based masters degree and your job outside of your degree is flexible enough to allow you to attend different academic commitments such as attending seminars, meeting with advisers, and travelling to conferences.

Ultimately, the decision of whether or not to work during your PhD is up to you.

Consider your financial situation and how working would impact your studies before making a decision.

It can be difficult to juggle work and study commitments, and you may find yourself feeling overwhelmed and stressed. You may also have less time to socialize and enjoy your student life.

So, it’s important to think carefully about whether working during your PhD is right for you.

What type of work can you do during a PhD? Part time or Full time?

During your PhD there are a number of different options that you could consider if you want to (and you are allowed to) get a job.

I do not recommend working full-time alongside your PhD but, there are some options for part-time work to earn a little bit of money alongside your studies.

Full time work

My recommendation is that you do not try to fit a PhD alongside full-time work. Trying to work full time is asking for trouble.

There will be so many more pressures on you that it will not be a very enjoyable experience.

A PhD requires you to be creative.

Creativity comes from having enough mental space to allow your mind to connect new and interesting ideas together. If you are busy with work you will not have the mental capacity to be able to do this effectively.

Therefore, I recommend that you consider at least dropping down to part-time work if you are insistent on pursuing a PhD alongside employment.

I have seen PhD students complete a PhD part-time supported and partly funded by their current place of employment.

Part time work

If you want to know more about the best PhD student part-time jobs check out my full guide – click here for the full article.

There are a variety of part-time jobs that can easily supplement your income during a PhD.

The best PhD student part-time jobs will have flexible hours, provide you with a reasonable hourly rate, and not distract you from your primary goal of completing your PhD.

I have highlighted in my YouTube video, below, all of the different side hustles that PhD students can try if they need to earn a little bit more money.

The common part-time jobs for PhD students include:

• Hospitality
• Customer service
• University-based jobs – such as tutoring, marking exams, student services and working in laboratories
• Online jobs such as user testing, notetaker, and translating.
• Freelancing. Selling a skill that you have two people on services such as Upwork .

Why Should You Worry About Working During Your PhD

There are a number of reasons why you should worry about working during your PhD.

The most important is balancing workload, the fact that you were extending your time in academia by a significant amount, the increased risk of burnout, and ensuring you have enough resources to keep you going for multiple years.

A PhD is just like a full time job.

Therefore, getting a PhD while working full-time will be incredibly difficult. Both commitments will require at least 40 hours per week each.

Nonetheless, if you are able to have full flexibility on your work schedule and you are capable of distance learning for some part of your PhD it may be much more possible.

Many PhD students struggle with just the commitments of earning a doctorate. Consider working alongside your PhD very carefully.

Time it takes

A PhD will typically take between three and seven years. During this time it is extremely stressful and you need to make sure you’re capable of researching at your best for the entire time.

I have always said that a PhD is a marathon and not a sprint. Adding extra years to your PhD if you need to can be worth it. However, you must consider the amount of time it will take you to get your PhD and the potential return on that investment.

Unless you have a particular career secured or in mind for after your PhD the extra years it takes to complete a doctoral degree part-time are generally not worth it.

Burnout is a real consequence of doing a PhD.

By working alongside your PhD you’ll increase your chances of burnout significantly. This is true even if you like to study.

If you are prone to feelings of being overwhelmed I would stay away from earning a PhD whilst working full or part-time.

Slowly introduce part-time work if you need to once you have settled into the general routine of your PhD.

Tips for Earning Your PhD While Working

Here are a few general tips that may help you if you find yourself having to work alongside your PhD:

Talk to everyone involved

Everyone involved in this process needs to be on board. There will be times when you need to ask favours from your supervisor, colleagues, work supervisor or others.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help: Whether it’s from your supervisor, colleagues, or friends and family, don’t hesitate to ask for help when you need it.

This is not a sign of weakness, but simply a recognition that we all need assistance from time to time.

Stay Organized and on Track

Find a routine: Try establishing a set schedule for at least most days of the week and stick to it as much as possible. This will help you to stay focused and make the most of your limited time.

Get Involved in the Research Community

Remember to stay in touch with your research community.

Working part-time or full-time can mean that you miss out on the exciting recent advancements and collaboration with people in your field. Make an extra special effort to attend seminars, talks, and networking events to help progress your research and your academic career.

Don’t squirrel yourself away!

Work with your strengths

Know yourself: Be honest about how well you work under pressure and how much free time you realistically have.

If you know that you work better with a tight deadline, then try to structure your work schedule accordingly.

Personally, I need as much free mental space is possible to perform at my best. Just do what is best for you.

Wrapping up

This article has been through everything you need to consider if you are tempted by earning a PhD while working.

Your PhD programme may dictate whether it is possible to work alongside your PhD. Whether or not it is a good idea will be down to you and if you are able to balance an insane amount of commitments and work.

My general recommendation is that you should focus 100% on your PhD journey and although it is definitely possible you’re going to be at risk of burnout.

Combining part-time PhD’s, part-time jobs, and finding a flexible job that will help keep you focused on the primary goal of finishing your dissertation is the most sensible way of working alongside your PhD.

Dr Andrew Stapleton has a Masters and PhD in Chemistry from the UK and Australia. He has many years of research experience and has worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow and Associate at a number of Universities. Although having secured funding for his own research, he left academia to help others with his YouTube channel all about the inner workings of academia and how to make it work for you.

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Ten Simple Rules for Finishing Your PhD

Jacopo marino.

1 Department of Chemistry, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

Melanie I. Stefan

2 Department of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America

Sarah Blackford

3 Society for Experimental Biology (SEB), Lancaster University, Lancaster, United Kingdom

Introduction

After years of research and with completion in sight, the final year of the PhD often represents the most challenging time of a student's career, in which the ultimate reward is the PhD honor itself. A large investment in time, energy, and motivation is needed, with many tasks to be completed; concluding experiments must be carried out, results interpreted, and a research story mapped out in preparation for writing the final thesis. All the while, administrative obligations need attention (e.g., university credits and mandatory documents), papers may need to be published, students mentored, and due consideration paid to planning for the next career move. Without some form of strategic action plan and the employment of project management skills, students run the risk of becoming overwhelmed and run down or of not meeting their final deadlines. Personal time management and stress resilience are competences that can be developed and honed during this final period of the PhD.

Here, we present ten simple rules on how to deal with time issues and conflict situations when facing the last year of a PhD in science. The rules focus on defining research goals in advance and designing a plan of action. Moreover, we discuss the importance of managing relationships with supervisors and colleagues, as well as early career planning.

Rule 1: Plan Your Last Year in Advance

Preparing a plan of action for the final year of your PhD is vital. Ideally, devised and agreed upon with your supervisor, a plan will help to optimize the time left and reduce feelings of being overwhelmed. Individuals plan in different ways; some prefer to work towards their goals in a stepwise linear fashion, whilst others are more comfortable flitting from task to task until all the jobs are done. There is no definitive way to plan, so find out what works best for you. You may decide to map out a timeline, or perhaps a mind-map is your preferred planning style. Whichever method you use, it's important that you adhere to your plan whilst allowing for some flexibility (but not distraction or procrastination).

Your time frame will vary according to the organization of your graduate school, your supervisor or advisory committee, and even your graduation date, but one year before submission of your doctoral thesis is the time when you should decide on how best to invest the last months of your research and associated activities. Having a plan of action will help to avoid time wasting, e.g., being distracted by superfluous experiments that might be interesting but are not necessary. Furthermore, from a psychological point of view, referring to a concrete plan can make you feel more secure and in control. Ideally, the supervisor and PhD student should both agree on the overall plan (with provision for the unexpected, e.g., technical issues), with intermittent reviews every few weeks to check that progress is being made. Your supervisor should also be able to advise you on the organization and writing of your thesis—for example, its structure—and the number and length of chapters to include.

Rule 2: Make Your Priorities Clear

Select the activities you want to include in your plan. What are your priorities? They are likely to include experiments that will give the thesis a conclusion or that may be necessary to publish a final paper. Mandatory administrative tasks will also need attention, and allowing time to prepare for your next career move will give you the best chance of a seamless and successful transition post-PhD. As a final year PhD candidate, you are likely to have acquired high-level competencies comparable to those of a junior postdoctoral researcher, in which case your supervisor may offer you responsibility for new projects or graduate students. Saying no to him/her can be difficult for various reasons, e.g., fear of potentially creating conflict in your relationship or causing a negative reaction or of perhaps losing the opportunity to be included in future research activities and publications. It can also be difficult to let go of a topic or project to which you are wedded or to miss out on the opportunity to help train the next generation of scientists. In such situations, referring back to your plan (Rule 1), previously agreed upon with your supervisor, should help to remind you both of your priorities and deadlines, making negotiation easier. However, should any conflict of opinion arise between you, bear in mind that finding a mutually agreeable solution is the best way forward. You can take advice from a mentor or refer to the many publications that provide approaches and tactics for effective negotiation. If the relationship between you and your supervisor is more complicated and cannot be resolved by a discussion, you may need to turn to your graduate school, your academic committee, or other senior managers in your institution, who can act to mediate the situation.

Rule 3: “The Truth Can Wait”

A research project is never really finished, so do not try to do everything before submitting. In fact, the perfect doctoral thesis does not exist; there are students with good research projects and many publications and others with more difficult and testing challenges who are still waiting for their first paper. If the project is ambitious, it might take several years to reach the final goal, and thus the thesis might only be a small part of the whole story. If the project is going well, it will open up new research questions and future directions, some of which will be beyond the scope of a PhD. At some point, you need to decide that what you have is enough for a PhD and start writing (a strategy we heard described at a dissertation-writing seminar in Cambridge as “the truth can wait”; it helps to write this on a post-it note and stick it on your computer!). Starting to write the thesis is not easy when there is a sense that more could be done to accumulate more data and a fuller story; a common mistake is to go back to the lab instead of getting started with the results chapters of the thesis. To postpone writing will cause delays and not necessarily improve the thesis whilst increasing the prospect of unfulfilled and extended deadlines. Thus, once the experiments that you have agreed on have been completed, it is really important to start writing with the data in hand.

Rule 4: Enlist Support

Finalizing experiments and writing the thesis (and even papers), as well as considering your next career transition, can be stressful and even isolating. It is a contrast to the relatively more relaxed earlier years of the PhD experience, and the writing process does not come naturally to everyone. The prospect of facing these stresses alone can make the experience even harder to bear, so it is advisable to communicate with and find support in those you trust and respect. Relying on such people during this period can help to ease the strain and enable you to achieve your final aims so that you arrive at your PhD graduation with your sanity still intact! Talking about personal feelings with selected colleagues usually helps you to realize that you are not alone, whatever difficulties and challenges you might be experiencing with your research project, supervisor, or coworkers. Sharing uncertainties and talking through issues can be constructive, helping you to understand the strategies other people use to cope with similar problems. As well as colleagues, it can also help to talk to friends and family, even though they won't be as au fait with the highly particular challenges you are experiencing. You can share your feelings and anxieties with them, but they can also act as a welcome distraction to help you to relax and take a break from thinking about the stresses of your PhD.

Support and advice can also come in the shape of courses, books, blogs, mentoring, etc. There is much published on the subject of how to write a thesis [1] . Furthermore, graduate schools, such as those in which we are based, usually offer courses to help PhD candidates improve their personal and professional skills. For example, the University of Zurich organizes courses on, amongst others, time and self-management skills, managing conflict, and academic writing and publishing [2] . The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard lists workshops and resources offered across the university on topics such as scientific writing, time management, and overcoming procrastination. In addition to relying on your supervisor, postdoctoral researchers in your group or department (or even friendly collaborators) may agree to read chapters of your thesis and comment on aspects such as content, logical flow of ideas, and the overall structure. At a later stage, you may want to engage someone to check your grammar, spelling, and reference style (this can be especially important if you are not writing in your native language). If your PhD defense includes a presentation, try to practice beforehand, preferably in front of some of your peers, and include asking for feedback and possible questions that may come up. This should make you feel more prepared and confident.

Rule 5: Get Familiar with the Software

Being familiar with software for both writing and making figures will facilitate the creation of your thesis. One of the most effective tools with which to produce a scientific document is LaTeX ( www.latex-project.org ). This software, freely available, is not as immediately understandable as other text editors, but the advantages are greater: it offers a professional layout similar to published books, it makes the insertion and management of figures easier as their position in the file does not depend on text editing, and it allows for easy typesetting of mathematical equations and referencing of articles from a bibliography database. Moreover, the text file size does not increase while inserting figures, making its handling easier. An example LaTeX package for typesetting dissertations is “classicthesis”, written by André Miede ( http://www.miede.de/index.php?page=classicthesis ). Although advantageous, LaTeX can also present disadvantages. In contrast to commonly used text editors (e.g., Microsoft Word), it does not make it easy to track changes in the manuscript, often a preferred way for supervisors to correct theses in an electronic form. Therefore, we suggest you discuss the preferred software with your supervisor when you agree upon your plan (Rule 1).

A professional design software can also speed up the creation of figures for your thesis, which can be further used for your final PhD presentation, so check whether your institution provides an introductory course to some of these software packages. Taking a one-day class can save you a lot of time later. Organize your bibliography; many excellent reference managers exist that allow you to catalogue and annotate the papers you have read and integrate them seamlessly with text processing software (e.g., Endnote or the freely available Mendeley and Readcube). Choose one that fits your needs and check whether your university provides institutional licenses (and be disciplined about adding each paper you read to it!).

Consider using version control software. This allows you to keep a log of all the changes you make to a file or directory and makes it easy to recover a previous version if something goes wrong or to merge two versions of a file. This is often used in software projects to produce, document, and improve computer code, but it can also be useful when working on a long text document, such as a dissertation. Commonly used free version control systems include git/GitHub [git, github], Subversion [svn], and Bazaar [bzr] (see Table 1 ).

Most important of all is to have a backup strategy. A hard-drive crash at the wrong moment can set your work back by weeks and jeopardize the timely completion of your thesis. Institutions or departments will often have a backup system employees can make use of. This may require you to install a specific piece of software on your computer that backs up your data at regular intervals or to save your file on an institute server. Contact the information technology (IT) department at your institute to learn about your options.

Rule 6: Know Your University's Procedures and Regulations

During the course of your PhD, you will have been acquiring project management skills, such as organizing your time and resources, reviewing progress, and meeting deadlines. In order to avoid last-minute surprises, you can capitalize on and develop these skills during the final year of your PhD. Prepare a list of all the documents and certificates that you will need, even before you start writing; it will be of critical importance to include this information in your plan and priorities (Rules 1 and 2). Having a good working relationship with someone who can help you to navigate a bureaucratic process will usually be an asset and will ensure you are familiar and aware of all the rules. Considering the amount of documents and certificates that are needed for handing in a thesis, it is advantageous to introduce yourself to the institute secretary or human resources manager, as well as any other staff who can help you to deal with the administrative side of the process. Don't rely on previous documents, which may have been revised since the last person in your group graduated. Be aware of all the necessary institutional administrative requirements (e.g., credit points, research seminar attendance, publications, etc.), as well as the faculty criteria, including deadlines (as well the date of the graduation ceremony), thesis copy numbers and format, font size, binding, and supporting documents. Take time to go through the list of documents and start collecting them in a folder. Get the formatting right early on, e.g., by using a dedicated template file. With your documents in order, you are bound to feel you have the situation more under control, which can help to reduce stress and enable you to focus more closely on writing your thesis.

Rule 7: Exploit Synergies

You are doing a lot of work for your thesis, so use it to your advantage. The literature review in your introduction can also be used to write and publish a future review article, an idea that might also be welcomed by your supervisor. If you are intending to write a grant proposal for a postdoctoral fellowship on a similar research topic, you can use some of the thesis introduction and future directions as a basis for your research plan. If you are keen to gain teaching experience, you could propose a short course on your specialty area. For instance, at Harvard Medical School, senior graduate students and postdoctoral researchers can be involved in lecturing on short, specialized “nanocourses” [3] . You may also be able to deliver a specialized lecture within a class your supervisor is teaching or, ideally after you have completed the PhD, teach at a workshop or summer school.

Take advantage of opportunities to deliver a talk as an invited speaker at a conference or at another institute, for example, if you are visiting a research group or investigating possible postdoctoral options. This will give you the chance to practice your defense presentation in front of an unfamiliar audience and, at the same time, allow a potential future supervisor and colleagues to gain a more complete picture of your research interests, skills, and personality.

Rule 8: Pay Attention to Your Career

It is not always easy to decide on which career path to follow after your PhD. You have been trained primarily towards an academic research career, and so many PhD graduates choose to continue on with a postdoctoral position as their first career destination. This is perfectly acceptable, and many industrial employers look upon early-career postdoctorals favorably. However, it is worth bearing in mind that permanent tenured positions are hard to secure nowadays and competition is tough, with less than 5% of those who complete a PhD ultimately realizing an academic career [4] . For those who are determined to have an academic career, a strategic research plan is crucial; for those who are unsure, a viable alternative career plan is equally important.

Knowledge of your professional and personal skills and capabilities, personality, values, and interests, as well as how to map them onto the job market and sell them to employers, will help you to make effective career decisions and a successful transition to your next job. In addition, factors such as your personal situation and priorities, mobility, and preferred work–life balance all need to be taken into consideration before entering the complicated world of the job market. Be ready to make compromises either in your work or personal life, depending on your priorities. Take advantage of courses and professional career guidance and coaching while you are still at university, as they are usually offered free of charge. Along with books and websites, face-to-face career support can help raise your self-awareness and knowledge of the job market so you can start to decide which types of career may best suit you. Blackford's book and blog [4] contain useful material on career planning for bioscientists, with concrete examples of different career paths within and outside of academia, and further information and resources. In addition, the Science Careers portal offers an online tool [5] to create an individual development plan and explore your career options based on your skills, interests, and values. Also, take advantage of dedicated career job boards associated with specialist websites, such as that of the International Society for Computational Biology [6] .

How soon should you start job seeking? Finding a job whilst writing up your thesis can seem like an attractive prospect, but it's important to consider that applying for jobs can easily take up as much time as working a full-time job. Then, if you do secure a job, the time left for writing up your thesis, completing experiments, and wrapping up your lab work will be seriously limited. It is exceedingly hard to write a doctoral thesis in the evenings after work or on the weekends, so in case you are offered a job before you have finished the PhD, consider seriously how this might affect your work and life. On the other hand, finishing a PhD when scholarship money has been seriously reduced (or has run out) comes with a different set of challenges. Many students need to tap into their savings (if indeed they have any), drastically reduce their spending, and move out of their accommodation. Losing employment at the university can also affect health insurance, social security, and visa status. Finishing up a PhD under these additional constraints and pressures can be extremely challenging, both logistically and psychologically. To ensure that you can concentrate all your time on (and get paid for) finishing your PhD, start planning ahead one year earlier. Be aware of your university's regulations, talk to your supervisor about the funding situation (is it possible for you stay on as a postdoctoral researcher for a short period?), and know what you need to do in order to finish on time (Rule 1).

Rule 9: Network

Unofficial statistics tell us that only around 30% of jobs are advertised, so to enhance your employment prospects you would be well advised to network in order to access the hidden job market. During the final year of your PhD, and even earlier, you can build up and extend your network so that your chances of finding the job of your choice are optimized. If you are looking for research positions, your supervisor might have contacts or know about positions available in academia or industry. Reviewing your personal network further will reveal it consists of colleagues, friends, and family. You may also have a wider network of collaborators (research and industry), people associated with your research whom you have met during the course of your PhD, as well as many others. Conferences, seminars, informal gatherings, and learned societies are great places to meet the academic community face to face or to broaden your horizons. Job fairs are held at universities and sometimes during conferences, where experts from industry look for potential employees as well as sometimes provide informal advice on your curriculum vitae (CV). Try to exploit these opportunities if they come your way.

A relatively recent, and highly democratic, addition to the networking system is social media, through which it is possible to meet people online from all over the world and from all walks of life. More and more professors, researchers, students, policy makers, science “celebrities”, science communicators, industry personnel, and professionals have a presence on social media, using it primarily for work-related purposes. Researchgate, LinkedIn, and Twitter are probably the most useful platforms for networking with academia, business, and the wider world, respectively. Your online profile should be fully completed and reflect your expertise, achievements, and personality. Used to greatest effect, social media will give you access to information, jobs, and influential people—its importance to you as a PhD student cannot be overestimated.

Rule 10: Leave on Good Terms

Wrap up the work in your lab, especially if you are leaving the institute. This includes any required training of new personnel in the methods and techniques you use, having lab notes in order, making it easy for other lab members to access your protocols and data, organizing and labelling your reagents and equipment, and documenting your computer code. If someone is taking over an unfinished project from you, take time to hand it over. Discuss with your supervisor to find a solution for who will do the final experiments, how to proceed with the writing of journal manuscripts, and what should be the order of authorship. If you have started a project that you want to take with you to your new lab, discuss with your supervisor how to handle possible future publications and how to agree on material transfer. If your work resulted in patents or patentable innovations, make sure you are clear about regulations concerning patents and intellectual property, both at your PhD institution and at the institution to which you are moving. Stay in touch with your former colleagues and cultivate the contacts you have made in graduate school; they are sure to be useful during the course of your career.

Acknowledgments

Jacopo Marino is grateful to colleagues from the University of Zurich for the everyday discussions that have inspired this manuscript. Melanie I. Stefan is likewise grateful for discussions on the topic with fellow predocs (and sympathetic postdocs) at the European Bioinformatics Institute. She would also like to acknowledge advice and support from Nicolas Le Novère and Susan Jones, which helped her navigate her PhD and graduate in a timely manner. She has since learnt a lot from discussions with colleagues at the California Institute of Technology, the University of Tokyo, and Harvard Medical School.

Funding Statement

The authors have received no specific funding for this article.

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Can You Earn a PhD While Working?

Earning a doctoral degree is a common goal for many who value education and career advancement. In some fields, earning a PhD offers the chance of climbing to the pinnacle of the profession. For other fields, such as psychology, a PhD is often a prerequisite to begin practicing. 

In most cases, doctoral students enroll in their PhD program on a full-time basis—which may sound like it would leave little time for working. However, there are exceptions, and some students do decide to earn their PhD while working.

Earning a PhD While Working: Is It Possible?

Talking to your employer about getting a phd while working full time, choosing a doctoral degree program, discussing your phd and work schedule with your advisor, tips for earning your phd while working.

Doctoral degree students fund their graduate education in a variety of ways, such as through tuition waivers and stipends from their schools or with outside scholarships. However, not every PhD student will be fully or even partially funded; this makes it necessary for them to earn their PhD while continuing to work.

Additionally, many people decide to return to school to earn a PhD after spending a few years working in their industry. For these students, the idea of resigning from their positions to return to school on a full-time basis may be a bittersweet pill to swallow. The dual issues of finances and employment raise an important question: Is it possible to earn a PhD while working?

The short answer is: Yes, it’s possible—and many people have done it. However, it can also be quite complicated. After all, balancing so many significant commitments can be a bit stressful. If you’re thinking about earning your PhD while holding down a job, you’ll need to do some careful planning and have sustained motivation to finish your degree.

Before you make the commitment to enroll in a doctoral program, you should consider several factors: 

• How long will it take you to finish a PhD in your desired field ? Note that degrees in some subject areas typically take longer than others.
• Do you have a strong social support network in place? 
• Do you want to work full time and be a full-time PhD student? Or will you work full time and be a part-time PhD student?

It’s important to embark on this journey with your eyes open. Yes, it’s going to be challenging. But if you keep reminding yourself of your reasons for pursuing a PhD, you’ll find that it’s easier to continue pushing forward.

If you’re planning on earning your PhD while working full time, you’ll need to have a discussion with your employer before enrolling. This will be easier if you’re going to earn your PhD in the same field as your current job. If that’s your plan, you can even ask your employer about tuition reimbursement from the company.

Even if your PhD isn’t in the same field as your current profession, your employer may be empathetic about your goals. Discuss whether flex-time work arrangements are available as well as whether the company has any employees who already have a doctoral degree. The extra support from someone who has already been on the PhD journey could prove invaluable for you.

Your choice of doctoral degree program will influence whether it’s feasible to earn a PhD while working. Ideally, you’ll want to choose a program with online classes . This will give you some much-needed scheduling flexibility and reduce your commute time. 

If you’ve decided that you’d like to be a part-time student and a full-time employee, then you’ll need to carefully review the requirements of the degree program, department and university. In some cases, there is a requirement that PhD students complete their degree within a certain period, such as six or seven years.

You should also be aware of all other requirements, such as whether there are any residencies. Even in an online program, residencies take place on campus. They are great opportunities to network and to work closely with professors, advisors and peers.

Although it may not always be possible, it’s ideal to work with a dissertation advisor who also earned a PhD while working. Regardless, whether your advisor worked part time or full time, they should have some valuable insights that can help you.

Once you’ve found the right dissertation advisor for your needs, you can sit down with them to discuss your plans. Some specific topics to discuss include the following: 

• Frequency and scheduling of meetings with your advisor 
• Fitting your dissertation work around your work schedule 
• Expectations for your progress on your PhD 
• Preferred methods of communication (advisors usually prefer email) 
• Course load for the first few semesters

You can even ask your advisor for time management tips if you wish. To keep yourself on track toward PhD completion and to hold yourself accountable, it’s a good idea to draft a brief action plan toward the end of each meeting. Make notes about what you need to accomplish before your next meeting and the process of completing those steps. 

Earning a PhD while working is no mean feat, but it’s definitely possible. Use the following tips to facilitate the process. 

• Find a routine: Try establishing a set schedule for at least most days of the week and figure out when you are most productive. 
• Designate your study space: Even if you don’t have a spare room to use as your office, you should try to designate a distraction-free area of your home to concentrate on your PhD work. 
• Use motivational reminders: In your study space, hang up a list of the reasons why you want to earn your PhD to keep yourself motivated. 
• Use a timer: If you can’t seem to focus, try setting a timer for an hour. Then, commit to working non-stop during that hour before you allow yourself a brief break.

Grand Canyon University’s College of Doctoral Studies is a leading destination for students who wish to earn their PhD while working. GCU offers a variety of online doctoral degree programs where students can benefit from flexible scheduling, financial aid opportunities for graduate students, and networks such as the Virtual Doctoral Community Network™ to help students connect with each other. Click on Request Info at the top of your screen to explore your doctoral degree options at GCU.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Grand Canyon University. Any sources cited were accurate as of the publish date.

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5 Things to Consider Before Doing a PhD While Working

• By Nicholas R.
• August 19, 2020

Those interested in getting a PhD but dreading the several years of no income or a stipend that doesn’t meet their needs may consider a part time or even a full time job. That way, they can gain experience in the field, save up a little money and have a non-academic route they could later make use of. After all, if you’ve already made it to the point where you’re eligible to study at PhD level, you’ve already proven that you have great time management skills and that you can dedicate yourself to your studies, right?…

It might sound like a workable plan to many, but getting a PhD while working might not be as easy as you may think. Take it from many PhD students and postgrads who warn that it a slippery slope from a part time PhD to no PhD at all.

If you decide to go down this route, keep the following considerations in mind to give you the best chance of succeeding.

1. Know Your Programme

Some part time PhD programmes, especially the ones offered by online universities and distance learning schools, are well suited for those who want to work and study at the same time. Some aren’t as rigorous or time-consuming as others, and in some fields, the experience of working in industry through your current career will be a great benefit. A part time PhD will also have a more manageable workload , and supervisors will usually be more experience in providing support to working students. But keep in mind that some PhD part time programmes will not be eligible for financial aid or funding , at which point part time study may no longer be personally worth it.

2. Know Your Job

If your work is related to your field of study and your employers understand and support the requirements of your PhD, you will have a much less stressful few years. Therefore, one of the first things you’ll want to do is to get your employer on your side.

You can go about this by sitting down with them and explaining what your research will be about, how it will benefit your professional development and how it will benefit them as a business. You will also want to reassure them that you’ll be able to remain committed to your job during your studies, as this is likely to be their biggest concern. Don’t just stop at their verbal support, ask your manager to sit down with you to discuss the possibility of funding support, study days and the assignment of a mentor if your workplace has a doctorate holder.

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3. Know Your Situation

If you have young children, a sick parent, or generally any commitments that require hours of your time, it’s probably best to stay a full time student. If your field requires many publications or relies heavily on being able to network and interact with other researchers, keep in mind that you probably won’t be able to live up to their expectations if you already have work commitments you need to keep up.

4. Know Your Supervisor

Your supervisor should be supportive of the fact that you’re attempting to carry out a PhD whilst working part time rather than seeing it as a hindrance. As is to be expected, part time students generally struggle more than full time ones due to having greater external commitments, less contact time and a longer programme duration (beyond five years). You will want to find a PhD supervisor who is aware of these challenges, and if at all possible, try to get one who has taken this path themselves.

A good supervisor won’t only limit their support to physical help , such as introducing you to other researchers, suggesting relevant literature and facilitating data access, but also to emotional and mental support. A supportive supervisor maintains a good attitude and demonstrates concern for your research project. They should be keen to see you excel, help you refine your research skills and make you feel confident enough to experiment with your research approach and share your work whenever the opportunity presents itself, whether it is at a conference or in your place of work. Although you will be responsible for navigating yourself through your doctorate, a good supervisor will act as your safety net for when you get a little lost.

5. Know Yourself

Even the most organised people aren’t prepared for the workload that comes with a PhD. Make a time chart and be truly honest with yourself about how much time you have in the day, it might not be as much as you would think once you’ve factored everything in. Doing a part time PhD requires about 15-20 hours of commitment per week – will you have 15 hours to spare alongside your job, family and friends and other obligations? If not, then working and studying at the same time will most likely be out of your reach.

These considerations will hopefully put you in a better position to tackle a PhD while working part time (or dare I say it, working full time!). Even still, tackling a several year long PhD programme whilst working is probably one of the hardest things you will do, so if you decide to go down this road, much kudos to you.

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Ellen is in the third year of her PhD at the University of Oxford. Her project looks at eighteenth-century reading manuals, using them to find out how eighteenth-century people theorised reading aloud.

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Dissertating Like a Distance Runner: Ten Tips for Finishing Your PhD

The above photo is of Sir Mo Farah running past Buckingham Palace into the home stretch of the London Marathon. I took the photo two days after my viva, in which I defended my PhD dissertation. Farah become a British hero when he and his training partner, Galen Rupp, won the gold and silver medals in the 10k at the London Olympic Games.

I had the honor of racing against Rupp at Nike’s Boarder Clash meet between the fastest high school distance runners in my home state of Washington and Rupp’s home state of Oregon. I’m happy to provide a link to the results and photos of our teenage selves since I beat Galen and Washington won the meet. (Note: In the results, ‘Owen’ is misspelled with the commonly added s , which I, as a fan of Jesse Owens, feel is an honor.) By the time we were running in college—Rupp for the University of Oregon and myself for the University of Washington—he was on an entirely different level. I never achieved anything close to the kind of running success Rupp has had. Yet, for most of us mortals, the real value in athletics is the character traits and principles that sports instill in us, and how those principles carry over to other aspects of life. Here I want to share ten principles that the sport of distance running teaches, which I found to be quite transferrable to writing my doctoral dissertation.

To provide some personal context, I began as a doctoral researcher at the University of Birmingham in 2014. At that time my grandparents, who helped my single father raise my sister and me, continued their ongoing struggle with my Grandfather’s Alzheimer’s. It was becoming increasingly apparent that they would benefit from having my wife and I nearby. So, in 2015 we moved to my hometown of Yakima, Washington. That fall I began a 2/2 teaching load at a small university on the Yakama Nation Reservation as I continued to write my dissertation. Since finishing my PhD four years ago, in 2018, I have published one book , five research articles , and two edited volume chapters related in various ways to my dissertation. As someone living in rural Eastern Washington, who is a first-gen college grad, I had to find ways to stay self-motivated and to keep chipping away at my academic work. I found the following principles that I learned through distance running very helpful.

(1) Establish community . There are various explanations, some of which border on superstitious, for why Kenyan distance runners have been so dominant. Yet one factor is certainly the running community great Kenyan distance runners benefit from at their elite training camps, as discussed in Train Hard, Win Easy: The Kenyan Way . Having a community that values distance running can compel each member of the community to pursue athletic excellence over a long period of time. The same can be said for academic work. Many doctoral researchers have built-in community in their university departments, but for various reasons this is not true for everyone. Thankfully, alternative ways to establish community have never been easier, predominantly due to technology.

Since my dissertation applied Aristotelian causation and neo-Thomistic hylomorphism to mental causation and neural correlates of consciousness, I found it immensely helpful to meet consistently with neuroscientist, Christof Koch, and philosopher of mind, Mihretu Guta. Mihretu does work on the philosophy of consciousness and Christof propelled the dawn of the neurobiology of consciousness with Francis Crick . Though Mihretu lives in Southern California, we met monthly through Skype, and I would drive over the Cascade Mountains once a month to meet with Christof in Seattle. As my dissertation examiner, Anna Marmodoro, once reminded me: the world is small—it’s easier than ever before to connect with other researchers.

It can also be helpful to keep in mind that your community can be large or small. As some athletes train in large camps consisting of many runners, others have small training groups, such as the three Ingebrigtsen brothers . Likewise, your community could be a whole philosophy department or several close friends. You can also mix it up. As an introvert, I enjoyed my relatively small consistent community, but I also benefitted from attending annual regional philosophy conferences where I could see the same folks each year. And I especially enjoyed developing relationships with other international researchers interested in Aristotelian philosophy of mind at a summer school hosted by the University of Oxford in Naples, which Marmodoro directed. For a brief period, we all stayed in a small villa and talked about hylomorphism all day, each day, while enjoying delicious Italian food.

Whatever your community looks like, whatever shape it takes, what matters is that you’re encouraged toward accomplishing your academic goal.

(2) Know your goal. Like writing a dissertation, becoming a good distance runner requires a lot of tedious and monotonous work. If you don’t have a clear goal of what you want to achieve, you won’t get up early, lace up your running shoes, and enter the frosty morning air as you take the first of many steps in your morning run. There are, after all, more enticing and perhaps even more pressing things to do. Similarly, if you don’t have a clear goal of when you want to finish your dissertation, it is easy to put off your daily writing for another day, which can easily become more distant into the future.

(3) Be realistic about your goal . While it is important to have a clear goal as a distance runner and as a doctoral researcher, it is important for your goal to be realistic. This means your goal should take into account the fact that you are human and therefore have both particular strengths and limitations. Everyone enters the sport of distance running with different strengths and weaknesses. When Diddy ran the city it would have been unrealistic for him to try to break the two-hour barrier in the marathon, as Eliud Kipchoge did . If Diddy made that his goal, he probably would have lost all hope in the first mile of the marathon and never finished. Because he set a more realistic goal of breaking four hours, not two hours, he paced himself accordingly and actually finished.

The parent of two young children who is teaching part-time can certainly finish a dissertation. But the parent will have a greater likelihood of doing so with a reasonable goal that fits that individual’s strengths and limitations. If the parent expects to finish on the same timescale as someone who is single with no children nor teaching responsibilities, this will likely lead to disappointment and less motivation in the middle of the process. Motivation will remain higher, and correspondingly so will productivity that is fueled by motivation, if one’s goal is realistic and achievable.

Another element of having a realistic goal is being willing to adapt the goal as your circumstances change. Sometimes a runner might enter a race expecting to place in the top five and midway through the race realize that she has a great chance of winning (consider, for example, Des Linden’s victory at the Boston Marathon ). At that point, it would be wise to revise one’s goal to be ‘win the race’ rather than simply placing in the top five. At other times, a runner might expect to win the race or be on the podium and midway realize that is no longer possible. Yet, if she is nevertheless within striking distance of placing in the top five, then she can make that her new goal, which is realistic given her current situation and will therefore sustain her motivation to the finish line. Sara Hall, who could have and wanted to crack the top three, held on for fifth at the World Championships marathon because she adjusted her goal midrace.

The PhD candidate who initially plans to finish her dissertation in three years but then finds herself in the midst of a pandemic or dealing with a medical issue or a family crisis may not need to give up on her goal of finishing her dissertation. Perhaps, she only needs to revise her goal so that it allows more time, so she finishes in five years rather than three. A PhD finished in five years is certainly more valuable than no PhD.

(4) Know why you want to achieve your goal . My high school cross-country coach, Mr. Steiner, once gave me a book about distance running entitled “Motivation is the Name of the Game.” It is one of those books you don’t really need to read because the main takeaway is in the title. Distance running requires much-delayed gratification—you must do many things that are not intrinsically enjoyable (such as running itself, ice baths, going to bed early, etc.) in order to achieve success. If you don’t have a solid reason for why you want to achieve your running goal, you won’t do the numerous things you do not want to do but must do to achieve your goal. The same is true for finishing a PhD. Therefore, it is important to know the reason(s) why you want to finish your dissertation and why you want a PhD.

As a side note, it can also be immensely helpful to choose a dissertation topic that you are personally very interested in, rather than a topic that will simply make you more employable. Of course, being employable is something many of us must consider. Yet, if you pick a topic that is so boring to you that you have significant difficulty finding the motivation to finish your dissertation, then picking an “employable dissertation topic” will be anything but employable.

(5) Prioritize your goal . “Be selfish” were the words of exhortation my college cross-country team heard from our coaches before we returned home for Christmas break. As someone who teaches ethics courses, I feel compelled to clarify that “be selfish” is not typically good advice. However, to be fair to my coaches, the realistic point they were trying to convey was that at home we would be surrounded by family and friends who may not fully understand our running goals and what it takes to accomplish them. For example, during my first Christmas break home from college, I was trying to run eighty miles per week. Because I was trying to fit these miles into my social schedule without much compromise, many of these miles were run in freezing temps, in the dark, on concrete sidewalks with streetlights, rather than dirt trails. After returning to campus following the holidays, I raced my first indoor track race with a terribly sore groin, which an MRI scan soon revealed was due to a stress fracture in my femur. I learned the hard way that I have limits to what I can do, which entails I must say “no thanks” to some invitations, even though that may appear selfish to some.

A PhD researcher writing a dissertation has a substantial goal before her. Yet, many people writing a dissertation have additional responsibilities, such as teaching, being a loving spouse, a faithful friend, or a present parent. As I was teaching while writing my dissertation, I often heard the mantra “put students first.” Yet, I knew if I prioritized my current students over and above finishing my dissertation, I would, like many, never finish my dissertation. However, I knew it would be best for my future students to be taught by an expert who has earned a PhD. So, I put my future students first by prioritizing finishing my PhD . This meant that I had to limit the teaching responsibilities I took on. Now, my current students are benefitting from my decision, as they are taught by an expert in my field.

While prioritizing your dissertation can mean putting it above some things in life, it also means putting it below other things. A friend once told me he would fail in a lot of areas in life before he fails as a father, which is often what it means to practically prioritize one goal above another. Prioritizing family and close friendships need not mean that you say ‘yes’ to every request, but that you intentionally build consistent time into your schedule to foster relationships with the people closest to you. For me, this practically meant not working past 6:00pm on weekdays and taking weekends off to hang out with family and friends. This relieved pressure, because I knew that if something went eschew with my plan to finish my PhD, I would still have the people in my life who I care most about. I could then work toward my goal without undue anxiety about the possibility of failing and the loss that would entail. I was positively motivated by the likely prospect that I would, in time, finish my PhD, and be able to celebrate it with others who supported me along the way.

(6) Just start writing . Yesterday morning, it was five degrees below freezing when I did my morning run. I wanted to skip my run and go straight to my heated office. So, I employed a veteran distance running trick to successfully finish my run. I went out the door and just started running. That is the hardest part, and once I do it, 99.9% of the time I finish my run.

You may not know what exactly you think about a specific topic in the chapter you need to write, nor what you are going to write each day. But perhaps the most simple and helpful dissertation advice I ever received was from David Horner, who earned his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Oxford. He told me: “just start writing.” Sometimes PhD researchers think they must have all their ideas solidified in their mind before they start writing their dissertation. In fact, writing your dissertation can actually help clarify what you think. So “just start writing” is not only simple but also sage advice.

(7) Never write a dissertation . No great marathoner focuses on running 26.2 miles. Great distance runners are masters of breaking up major goals into smaller goals and then focusing on accomplishing one small goal at a time, until they have achieved the major goal. Philosophers can understand this easily, as we take small, calculated steps through minor premises that support major premises to arrive at an overall conclusion in an argument.

Contained within each chapter of a dissertation is a premise(s) in an overall argument and individual sections can contain sub-premises supporting the major premise of each chapter. When you first start out as a doctoral researcher working on your dissertation, you have to construct an outline of your dissertation that maps out the various chapters and how they will relate to your overall conclusion. Once you have that outline in place, keep it in the back of your mind. But do not focus on writing the whole, which would be overwhelming and discouraging. Rather, focus on writing whichever chapter you are working on. The fastest American marathoner, Ryan Hall, wrote a book that sums up the only way to run long distances in the title Run the Mile You’re In . And Galen Rupp discusses in this interview how he mentally breaks up a marathon into segments and focuses on just finishing one segment at a time. Whatever chapter you’re writing, make it your goal to write that chapter. Once you’ve accomplished that goal, set a new goal: write the next chapter. Repeat that process several times and you will be halfway through your dissertation. Repeat the process a few more times, and you will be done.

By the time you have finished a master’s degree, you have written many chapter-length papers. To finish a dissertation, you essentially write about eight interconnected papers, one at a time, just as you have done many times before. If you just write the chapter (which you could call a “paper” if that feels like a lighter load) you’re writing, before you know it, you will have written a dissertation.

(8) Harness the power of habits . Becoming a great distance runner requires running an inordinate number of miles, which no one has the willpower to do. The best marathoners in the world regularly run well over one hundred miles a week, in addition to stretching, lifting weights, taking ice baths, and eating healthy. Not even the most tough-minded distance runner has the gumption to make all the individual decisions that would be required in order to get out the door for every run and climb into every ice bath apart from the development of habits. The most reliable way around each distance runner’s weakness of will, or akrasia , is developing and employing habits. The same can be true for writing.

If you simply try to write a little bit each weekday around the same time, you will develop a habit of writing at that time each day. Once you have that habit, the decision to write each weekday at that time will require less and less willpower over time. Eventually, it will take some willpower to not write at that time. I have found it helpful to develop the routine of freewriting for a few minutes just before starting my daily writing session of thirty minutes during which I write new content, before working on editing or revising existing content for about thirty minutes. My routine helped me develop the daily habit of writing, which removes the daily decision to write, as I “just do it” (to use Nike’s famous line) each day.

I have also found it helpful to divide my days up according to routines. As a morning person, I do well writing and researching in the morning, doing teaching prep and teaching during the middle of the day, and then doing mundane tasks such as email at the end of the day.

(9) Write for today and for tomorrow . Successful distance runners train for two reasons. One reason—to win upcoming races—is obvious. However, in addition to training for upcoming races, the successful distance runner trains today for the training that they want to be capable of months and years ahead. You cannot simply jump into running eighty, ninety, or one-hundred-mile weeks. It takes time to condition your body to sustain the stress of running high mileage weeks. A runner must have a long-term perspective and plan ahead as she works toward her immediate goals on the way to achieving her long-term goals. Similarly, for the PhD researcher, writing a dissertation lays the groundwork for future success.

For one, if the PhD candidate develops healthy, sustainable, productive habits while writing a dissertation, these habits can be continued once they land an academic job. It is no secret that the initial years on the job market, or in a new academic position, can be just as (or more) challenging than finishing a PhD. Effective habits developed while writing a dissertation can be invaluable during such seasons, allowing one to continue researching and writing even with more responsibilities and less time.

It is also worth noting that there is a sense in which research writing becomes easier, as one becomes accustomed to the work. A distance runner who has been running for decades, logging thousands of miles throughout their career, can run relatively fast without much effort. For example, my college roommate, Travis Boyd, decided to set the world record for running a half marathon pushing a baby stroller nearly a decade after we ran for the University of Washington. His training was no longer what it once was during our collegiate days. Nevertheless, his past training made it much easier for him to set the record, even though his focus had shifted to his full-time business career and being a present husband and father of two. I once asked my doctoral supervisors, Nikk Effingham and Jussi Suikkanen, how they were able to publish so much. They basically said it gets easier, as the work you have done in the past contributes to your future publications. Granted, not everyone is going to finish their PhD and then become a research super human like Liz Jackson , who finished her PhD in 2019, and published four articles that same year, three the next, and six the following year. Nevertheless, writing and publishing does become easier as you gain years of experience.

(10) Go running . As Cal Newport discusses in Deep Work , having solid boundaries around the time we work is conducive for highly effective academic work. And there is nothing more refreshing while dissertating than an athletic hobby with cognitive benefits . So, perhaps the best way to dissertate like a distance runner is to stop writing and go for a run.

Acknowledgments : Thanks are due to Aryn Owen and Jaden Anderson for their constructive feedback on a prior draft of this post.

• Matthew Owen

Matthew Owen (PhD, University of Birmingham) is a faculty member in the philosophy department at Yakima Valley College in Washington State. He is also an affiliate faculty member at the Center for Consciousness Science, University of Michigan. Matthew’s latest book is Measuring the Immeasurable Mind: Where Contemporary Neuroscience Meets the Aristotelian Tradition .

• Dissertating
• Finishing your PhD
• graduate students
• Sabrina D. MisirHiralall

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• Working While you Study for Your PhD

Written by Hannah Slack

It's possible to work during a PhD with careful time management. You might choose to do this if you need a job to help cover the cost of a postgraduate degree. Or, you may want to learn industry-based skills to benefit your future career. This page will take you through the different types of work PhD students often undertake, and the pros and cons of maintaining a job alongside such an intensive degree.

On this page

Can you work during a phd.

The simple answer is yes, you can work while studying a PhD and in fact, many do. The most common form of work is teaching during your PhD . But some students may also have part-time (or full-time jobs outside of the university).

Depending on the amount of work you plan to undertake, you will have to consider whether it would be better to do your PhD part-time or full-time. It’s highly unlikely you’ll be able to do a full-time job alongside a full-time PhD. However, it is possible to work part-time alongside a full-time PhD (or vice versa).

What type of work can you do during a PhD?

There are many different types of work PhD students can apply for. When someone says that they work alongside their PhD, most will assume that they have a stable, permanent contract. However, many PhD students work short-term contracts.

Contract work

The most common job for doctoral students is teaching undergraduates. Most departments will offer teaching opportunities to second-year and above researchers, paying you for training, seminar time, prep work and marking. Usually, you'll be able to decide how many seminar groups you wish to take on, allowing you to schedule work around your research. Teaching is an excellent chance to experience the other responsibilities that come with working in academia .

Another popular type of contract work is assistance roles . Many academics run outreach programmes that require more hours than they’re able to put in. Usually, emails will be sent around the departments advertising a short-term role. Jobs often include data entry, content management and research assistance. Again, these can be a great opportunity to build up workplace specific skills and receive a small financial boost.

Permanent roles

Some PhD students may also work more permanent roles. Often, self-funded students have to seek employment in order to financially afford tuition and living expenses. These students usually work part-time in industry . This can be both within and outside of the university. The types of roles students may undertake include admin, hospitality and even marketing. It’s a good idea to search for roles that match up with your skill set and future career goals .

Given the academic pressures of a PhD, many universities advise students not to work more than 16 hours a week . Otherwise, they may find themselves falling behind on a full-time PhD programme.

Pros and cons of working during a PhD

Working during a PhD can be a great opportunity to learn new skills and refine your current ones for future job applications. In fact, many Research Councils often require their funded students to undertake some form of work experience in order to build industry related skills.

However, managing a job on top of your own research can be stressful and limit the amount of free time you have available. Here are some of the most important pros and cons to consider before applying for a job.

• Gain more industry related experience
• Helps reduce financial pressure
• Regular forced breaks from your research can help refresh the mind
• Make connections with work colleagues, reducing the isolation often associated with PhD research
• Less time in the week to work on your PhD
• Schedule clashes could mean you miss out on academic opportunities, such as conferences
• Potential feelings of isolation from the academic community if you’re committed to an industry job

Tips for working during a PhD

#1 prioritise workload management.

The main thing to consider before applying for a job during your PhD is how you’re going to manage the workload. The PhD already comes with a hefty amount of work and so adding to that can cause additional stress.

The key is to set your priorities and manage your time effectively , taking regular breaks. Just like a job allows you to take holiday, do the same for your PhD. If the workload gets too much, be willing to consider the necessity of your job or whether it would be possible to reduce your PhD from full-time study to part-time .

#2 Talk to your supervisor

You should also discuss your situation with your supervisor so they’re aware of your wider responsibilities and time restraints. They’ll then be able to better advise on your progress. Additionally, you should make your industry boss aware of your PhD commitments. They too may be able to assist you. This might mean offering flexibility to your hours in case of last-minute academic events or allowing extended holiday to prepare for the viva .

#3 Don't forget to get involved in the research community

Working while studying can be time-consuming, but it's important to stay in touch with the wider research community nonetheless! Make sure you still find the time to attend conferences, seminars and networking events. This will help you form academic connections and get the most out of your doctorate.

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What happens during a typical PhD, and when? We've summarised the main milestones of a doctoral research journey.

The PhD thesis is the most important part of a doctoral degree. This page will introduce you to what you need to know about the PhD dissertation.

This page will give you an idea of what to expect from your routine as a PhD student, explaining how your daily life will look at you progress through a doctoral degree.

PhD fees can vary based on subject, university and location. Use our guide to find out the PhD fees in the UK and other destinations, as well as doctoral living costs.

Our guide tells you everything about the application process for studying a PhD in the USA.

Postgraduate students in the UK are not eligible for the same funding as undergraduates or the free-hours entitlement for workers. So, what childcare support are postgraduate students eligible for?

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Can I do a PhD while working?

Study tips Published 31 Mar, 2022  ·  4-minute read

Completing a Doctor of Philosophy requires some serious dedication. But committing all your time to research can leave a significant gap in your income. So, can you work and do a PhD at the same time? Let’s find out.

We spoke with two UQ PhD candidates, Chelsea Janke and Sarah Kendall, to get some insights into whether you can get a PhD while working – and how to balance your work with your research.

Can you get a PhD while working?

The simple answer is yes, but we wouldn't exactly recommend it. There’s nothing technically stopping you from continuing to work (at least, to some extent) while you pursue a PhD, but doing a higher degree by research is a big commitment. So, you need to think carefully before you attempt to juggle both.

The more complex answer is that it depends heavily on the type of work you’re doing and how quickly you want to complete your research.

PhD candidates can continue working part time while completing their research. Of course, this depends on the nature of their research and other work.

Keep in mind : some PhD scholarships are only available to full-time candidates and may not allow you to earn more than a certain amount to remain eligible. If you’ve applied or plan to apply for a scholarship, make sure to check the relevant terms.

For  international students , some extra restrictions apply. You can work up to 40 hours per fortnight, but this must not interfere with your full-time study load or your academic performance. Further limitations may apply if you're on an RTP scholarship (maximum 270 working hours per year) or being sponsored by your government.

Doing a PhD while working: full time, part time or casual?

Chelsea is quick to warn us that both working and researching full time is a recipe for disaster.

“A full-time PhD could not be done whilst working full time,” she says.

Doing both part time is feasible, but only if you’re happy to wait a few extra years to see the fruits of your labour.

“I know people who have worked part time and done their PhD part time – usually in the same research group or field,” says Chelsea.

“But keep in mind it took them 7-8 years to finish their PhD; it’s not the most efficient strategy.”

Committing to a full-time PhD while doing some incidental work on the side seems like the most popular approach for candidates, in Chelsea’s experience.

“Most full-time PhD students will pick up some casual work tutoring, marking, helping the lab manager, or assisting other researchers with their work,” she says.

“This means they can do a few hours here and there without their own PhD work being too disrupted.”

Sarah’s circumstances allow her to maintain a part-time job while completing her PhD, though she acknowledges you have to be lucky to be in a position to do so.

“PhD candidates can continue working part time while completing their research; of course, this depends on the nature of their research and other work,” says Sarah.

“Both my research and work are very flexible, and I can complete them whenever suits me.”

Learn about Sarah’s research or read her series about becoming an academic in law .

How to balance work with your PhD

If you plan to work whilst doing your PhD, you will need to manage your time well.

It’s one thing to ask can I do a PhD while working – actually managing to juggle the two is a whole other challenge. Sarah and Chelsea agree that time management is the most important part of making this work.

Sarah suggests keeping a strict schedule to divide your time evenly between your commitments, as this is what works for her.

“I find that I maintain a balance best by setting specific hours to work on my PhD (usually from 9am to 4pm Monday to Friday) and then on my other work commitments (usually Saturdays and sometimes a couple of hours before dinner),” she says.

“The hours you set to work on your PhD and other commitments will depend on whether your other work has set hours though, as well as when you work best – you might get some of your best research and writing done at 5am!”

Top tips for working while doing your PhD

• Only do so if you really want/need to and if you know you can manage the dual workloads.
• Tell your boss. Make sure your employer knows about your plans to juggle a PhD with your workload. See if there’s anything they can do to make the journey easier for you. For example, just like Sarah, your employer may be able to provide you the flexibility to complete your work on a schedule that accommodates your research hours.
• Consider a part-time PhD if cutting your hours or quitting your job isn’t a viable option. Yes, it might take longer. But if it means maintaining a comfortable balance between your research and your current career, it might be the best choice for you.
• Chat with your PhD supervisor. They’ve been there and done that, making them a great source of wisdom when it comes to pursuing a PhD while also balancing your other life commitments. You may also have peers currently doing a PhD who can provide some advice.

Haven’t chosen your supervisor yet? Read these tips for finding a suitable academic. It’s also a good idea to be upfront with your supervisor about your intention to work/research part time, as some supervisors prefer to work with full-time PhD candidates.

• Seek casual work at your university and in your field where possible. By keeping your work and research close together (both in terms of location and mindset), you may find it less challenging to keep on top of both.
• Make sure you’re passionate about your PhD topic . If your research just feels like a second job on top of your usual work, you’ll likely burn out before long. When developing your research proposal , make sure your thesis is providing that spark of curiosity that’s going to keep you inspired to follow through with your research – even on nights when you’re drained from work.

Ready to get started? Whether you’re dedicating yourself to a full-time PhD or keeping a balance between research and work, The University of Queensland is ready to support you.

Learn more about completing your PhD at UQ

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10 habits that helped me finish my PhD

Doing a PhD is a long-distance run where you don’t know when (and if) you get to cross the finish line. Moreover, you are running through a misty landscape, unsure for long stretches where you are and whether you are heading in the right direction (and what is the right direction, anyway).

Sounds familiar? It surely was familiar to me. Few years into my PhD, I found myself in a very uncomfortable situation: it was slowly time to finish my work & write up the thesis, but I didn’t have any reasonable, publishable results yet. I was in the middle of a big mess — and my mind was a big mess, too. I was distracted most of the time, jumping from paper to paper, from idea to idea, starting something but not finishing it, procrastinating with little busy work, and pushing away what was important. This stressed me out more and more, so that finally I had to face the reality and do something about it.

So I read some blogs about self-management and productivity and started to experiment with my behaviors. And I discovered that productive habits and routines were indeed the perfect solution for my situation.

The power of habits

Why are habits so powerful? The short answer is that having any kind of regular routine is helpful because it alleviates the burden of choice . Decision making is exhausting for the brain, and when we have to make too many decisions in a given day, we feel overwhelmed and even unhappy.

So developing habits frees us from wasting our decision capacity on little everyday things like when we are going to do what. As a result, we will feel more focused and capable to do better work for longer time.

Moreover, habits and routines are a great help with achieving goals . Setting goals is not sufficient to actually achieve them – we need to do something, and for big goals it means doing a lot. Some people even argue that you don’t need to set goals at all – just develop the right habits and they will bring you the desired outcome.

You can design your routines by deciding which behaviors you want to do daily or weekly, and allocating certain time (and/or a place in a sequence) for them. For example: after I wash my teeth, I do some yoga, then I have breakfast.

Before a habit becomes automatic, you need to repeat it daily for a month or two. There are many tricks that help you stick to your chosen behavior and not give up. For example, you can place little notes to yourself at visible locations around your room or house, set an alarm clock that will remind you that it is time for your habit, use a big calendar and mark every day when you do your habit with a big cross, or even ask a friend to act as an accountability partner and report to them every day (or week) how you are doing with your routine. If you want to learn more, here is my favorite minimalist guide to sticking to habits .

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10 habits that saved my PhD

Now, let’s be more precise: How can you overcome your problems and finish the bloody PhD? Here I show you the most important daily and weekly habits that I developed during grad school, habits which helped me complete my thesis and stay (mostly) sane.

• Planning , which included daily, weekly, and long-term planning of my projects. I tried to plan my day at the end of the previous day, so that I could be productive from early morning and didn’t waste time with figuring out what I need to do. Furthermore, I learned to divide my todo list in two parts: “ big rocks ” that I tackled first thing in the morning, and “todo” containing all the little things that needed to be done, like emails and other organizational stuff. Big rocks were the most important things, but they were rarely urgent. So if I would not prioritize them, they would be endlessly postponed. Moreover, I found it important to break down these “big rocks” into small actionable steps , otherwise they would feel too big and intimidating, so I would rather procrastinate than work on them.
• Morning routine was another game changer for me. I designed an optimal start into my day where I could do all the necessary things quickly without employing much decision making and start my work day with a fresh and focused mind. I included here healthy habits like morning yoga that gave me the necessary energy boost for a whole day of hard work.

• Daily writing in my lab book : Towards the end of my PhD I (finally!) started to document my research activities in a great detail — in a lab book. (If you wonder why I started so late with it: As I was working with computational models, lab book was not required, unfortunately.) I described here not only my procedures and results, but also included notes about the papers I read, and reflections about ideas and open questions I had. Starting with the lab book was THE great turning point in my PhD: turning away from procrastination and towards great productivity that allowed me to graduate much faster than I thought was possible. Regularly using the lab book brought multiple benefits : First, it generated detailed documentation, so I didn’t need to repeat simulations or re-read papers anymore. Second, writing about my difficulties actually helped me find solutions. Third, I wrote texts that I could recycle in manuscripts and my thesis. Fourth, it gave me daily painless writing practice that later enabled me to write up my thesis quite fast, without writer’s block and procrastination. And fifth, it created a feeling of daily progress, which motivated me to keep going and not give up.
• Taking notes when reading papers : I used to just highlight the relevant parts in the text and write my comments and questions on the side as I was reading a paper. Later I realized that I can avoid the need to re-read papers (for example, when searching for appropriate references) when I write a little summary of the most important points (most important for me and my project!), including my evaluation of the methods and results and their relevance to my project. Since the papers I read were related to my own work, this additional writing practice helped me build a rich vocabulary for describing my own research.
• Weekly meetings with my supervisor and co-author turned out to be an excellent measure against procrastination. For example, I could not spend the whole week lost in the literature — I had to do at least something that I could bring to the discussion. These meetings were a great opportunity to talk about my research challenges, which was itself often sufficient to resolve them. Moreover, here I found motivation in times of despair: when I was fed up with my project, talking about what I did and what I thought often increased my interest in the project again.
• The big picture day : Friday afternoons were reserved for stepping away from the daily work and trying to get a larger overview of what I was doing, what the recent results meant, and where should I go next. These moments allowed me to cut through the fog and search for the direction and meaning in what I was doing. It was also the perfect time for planning my activities for the next week.

• Having a regular hobby that has nothing to do with your research. For me, it was music and dancing. What I learned the hard way: don’t stop with your hobby when you feel like you need to be working more. My hobbies helped me overcome the dark periods when I worked hard for my thesis, but the effort was not reflected in the achieved results. During these times, it is important to have something else that works, something where one can experience progress.
• Regular sport activities : The long days at the desk during my PhD were not good for my body, I felt that very clearly. My back was aching, the shoulders were stiff, even my digestion seemed to work worse than before. I had to start with regular sport to not hurt myself. Jogging, other aerobic activities (dancing :)), and yoga not only helped with my body, but as a result I felt more energized and focused as well.
• Having a social life is similar to cultivating a hobby, but here it’s about interpersonal connections that, at the end, make life worth living. Similarly to giving up a hobby, we might tend to sacrifice our social life when the work gets tough. But that’s a bad idea: when I stopped meeting friends and going out for more than few weeks, I felt isolated and unhappy. A phone call with a good friend or a Friday night out would improve my mood and make me ready for work again.

These 10 habits made a great difference in my PhD productivity and well-being. But what about you? Do you have experience with some of the listed habits? Or do you cultivate other habits that help you with your PhD life? Please, share them with us in the comments!

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5 thoughts on “ 10 habits that helped me finish my PhD ”

Thanks…I would rather call these as the 10 PhD commandments…….specialisation, not bringing work to home, daily planning are my habits…in these scale I consider myself as a 5/10 boy. Sport….sport….I have to get into it……..Friday night out….?

Haha, thank you! Friday night out was an example: find a way to socialize that works for you 😉

If it possible to make download as PDF documents it will be so readable. Thank you

Dear Moustafa, unfortunately, no pdfs of my online articles are currently available. I’m sorry! Best, Martina

Comments are closed.

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How the PhD Program Works

Program Overview

Completing your doctorate at Wharton requires 5 years of full-time study. The first 2 years in the program prepare you for admission to candidacy by taking courses, qualifying exams, and starting research projects. In the last few years, you are primarily conducting research full-time including writing and defending your doctoral dissertation.

Admission to candidacy.

You begin by taking courses required for your program of study. All programs requires a preliminary exam, which may be either oral or written.

Some programs may have further requirements, such as an additional exam or research paper. If you enter with a master’s degree or other transfer credit, you may satisfy the formal course requirements more quickly.

Beginning the Wharton PhD Curriculum How the first two years of the Wharton program helped students discover their interests, learn the tools of the profession, and fuel their passion for teaching.

The Doctoral Dissertation

Upon successful completion of coursework and passing a preliminary examination, you are admitted to candidacy for the dissertation phase of your studies.

Your doctoral dissertation should contain original research that meets standards for published scholarship in your field. You are expected to be an expert in the topic you choose to research.

You are admitted to candidacy for the dissertation phase of your studies upon successful completion of coursework and passing a preliminary examination, but you can start thinking about and working on research of relevance at any time.

The dissertation process culminates with a “defense,” in which you defend the proposal orally before your dissertation committee.

While working on your dissertation, you interact extensively with Wharton faculty. Together with interested faculty, you create your own research community that includes your dissertation advisor and dissertation committee.

Policies and Procedures

Get more detailed explanation of course requirements, academic standards, the Teacher Development Program, time limits, and dissertation procedures and requirements.

Sample Program Sequence

Years 1 & 2.

Coursework Examination Research Papers Research Activities Field-Specific Requirements

Directed Reading & Research Admission to Candidacy Formulation of Research Topic

Years 4 & 5

Continued Research Oral Examination Dissertation

Hear From Our Doctoral Community

From phd student to colleague, wharton’s phd program prepared this doctor to perform economic evaluations in health care, what brought this cdc researcher to wharton's phd program.

A Guide to PhD Success: How to Thrive During Doctoral Studies

Your chances to succeed in any PhD or doctoral degree program increase when you are prepared from the inquiry stage to life after. These tips will help you survive—and even thrive—in graduate school.

• Planning Tips
• PhD vs. Doctorate Prep
• Key Features
• Success Tips
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When it comes to reaching the pinnacle of academic achievement, a Doctor of Philosophy, or PhD, is at the top. Getting your PhD provides a sense of accomplishment and prestige and gives you a boost both professionally and monetarily. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics , employees with a doctoral degree have the lowest unemployment rate. They are among the highest median weekly earners (second only to those with a professional degree such as a law or medical degree). From an economic perspective, it’s easy to see why people decide to get a doctorate.

Many PhD students start eagerly, yet never get their degree because they lose their motivation. This guide will help prepare you for your PhD program and provide tips on what to do to stay on track for success.

Programs that might interest you:

Planning for Your PhD or Doctorate

The PhD degree is a terminal degree, which means it’s the highest level you can achieve in this field. After earning a PhD, you’re an expert in your area of study. 

Much of the PhD curriculum isn’t about teaching you information; you’ve already learned that in your undergraduate and master’s level studies. Instead, the primary purpose of the PhD curriculum is to teach you how to think, including improving your critical and analytical thinking skills. When you enroll in a PhD program, you’ll learn to develop a research topic, implement a research plan, and analyze research data. You’ll also get opportunities to improve your writing and communication skills. Keep reading to find out what steps you can take to ensure a doctorate is the right academic and professional path for you.

What Are Your Goals? 

Answering this question is the first thing to do before starting any PhD program; remember, getting a doctorate will take several years and a lot of hard work. In most cases, a PhD is a highly specialized degree designed to prepare graduates for future careers in research or academia. So, if the idea of teaching college students or conducting research doesn’t excite you, a PhD might not be the best degree for you. 

Another consideration is your career path. Generally speaking, if a career path requires a PhD, it will involve at least some research or teaching. But there are some jobs where the PhD is more of an eligibility requirement to work in the field.

Finally, be sure you can make it through the program. Most PhD programs last three or more years and involve a large amount of self-directed study and writing. If you prefer taking classes to studying and researching on your own, hate writing, or aren’t a self-starter, you’ll need to adjust your expectations before your first day of class.

Do Your Research

Once you’ve determined that a PhD is right for you, start your research. If applicable, make sure each program you consider has programmatic accreditation and, at the very least, the school you wish to attend has institutional or regional accreditation. 

Figure out what sort of research opportunities you’ll have. As a PhD student, you’ll be working on your research and helping a professor (who’s also likely to be your mentor or advisor) with their research. You need to ensure you’ll have access to the equipment, facilities, and support services necessary to complete your research projects. 

Look into funding opportunities. One of the biggest challenges for researchers and professors is getting funding for their work. As a graduate student, you’ll also deal with these challenges. 

Consider the program’s reputation and its faculty. Are any faculty members renowned experts in your chosen field? Is the school or program well-respected and widely recognized? Who you know and where you went to school opens doors to make it easier for you to achieve your goals.

Costs of Your Degree

When making plans for your doctorate, you’ll need to figure out what you can afford. Investigate the costs of attendance, starting with tuition and fees. Next, look into financial aid and academic funding. What scholarships, paid internships, fellowships, and student loans are available to help pay for school?

Most likely, teaching and research assistantships will be available. These involve receiving a stipend or other form of compensation to help a professor with their teaching load or research projects. In addition to helping pay for school, these opportunities help you hone your research and teaching skills. 

Finally, don’t forget the cost of your degree in terms of time. The good news is that the speed at which you complete your dissertation largely depends on you. But it will still take time. You’ll need to choose a research topic, design and conduct your research, compile and analyze your data, and then write, rewrite, and defend your dissertation. Plus, some classes may only be offered during a particular semester or in a specific order. In short, getting a PhD isn’t a quick process.

Application Deadlines

When getting ready for your PhD program, there are three major deadlines to keep in mind. 

First, there’s the application deadline. Some schools have different deadlines depending on which semester you wish to start. Other schools have a rolling admissions process, so there’s no absolute deadline to complete the application. Find out which applies to your situation. 

Second, some deadlines will precede your application. For instance, if you need to take an entrance exam, you’ll have to register and complete it well in advance of your application deadline. Some of these tests are only administered a few times a year. 

Third, keep an eye on financial aid deadlines. This includes completing financial aid forms like the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (most commonly referred to as the FAFSA) and scholarship application due dates.

Application Process

The application process varies depending on your program and school. Most PhD programs require the following:

• Online application
• Application fee
• Personal statement 
• Academic statement or answers to a series of questions explaining why you want to earn a PhD in your chosen area of study and explaining your background in that area
• Resume or curriculum vitae (CV)
• Letters of recommendation
• Examples of prior work, such as a portfolio of papers or projects
• Official transcripts
• Admissions test scores, such as for the Graduate Record Exam (GRE)

One of the most important things you can do is to get organized, so you don’t miss any deadlines. Start writing your essay and preparing for the GRE as soon as possible. Also, ask people you trust for recommendation letters well in advance. By giving them plenty of time, you’ll get better, more compelling letters that can really help your application stand out.

PhD Versus Doctorate Preparation

The terms PhD and doctorate are sometimes used interchangeably. There are many different doctoral programs; a PhD is one of the most common. Some professions require a doctoral degree for licensing or for specific credentials, but that degree isn’t necessarily a PhD. Let’s look at some differences between a PhD and other doctorates.

What is a PhD?

A PhD is a doctorate in philosophy. The program’s primary focus is to develop a student’s ability to analyze data, evaluate theories, and conduct original research. Some classes offer new ideas and information in the academic area and a comprehensive examination; others teach the skills necessary to design and conduct novel research, draw conclusions, and effectively communicate the results to others. 

To that end, most PhD programs culminate with a dissertation. A dissertation is a paper that explains a doctoral student’s research and findings. Most students take several years to complete these steps to finish their dissertations:

Find an area to investigate that hasn’t been examined before.

Find an advisor and/or committee to guide your dissertation and research.

Discuss the proposed topic and get it approved by the committee and advisor.

Develop a research proposal and submit it for approval. During this step, you’ll decide how to conduct your research and what the research process will require. Your committee and advisor will review it and make sure it’s ready for you to move forward.

Conduct your research. You’ll gather data, analyze it, and draw conclusions from your findings.

Review your results and, if all goes well, finish writing your dissertation. Be prepared though. If you run into problems or results requiring additional research or another data review, you may have to do more research before you can finish writing.

Defend your dissertation. This is the last major step in completing a dissertation. It consists of orally presenting your research to a committee and then defending it. The defense allows you to demonstrate your knowledge in the independent development of the research and conclusion. 

A dissertation defense usually results in one of three conclusions from the committee—approval with no changes, approval after minor changes, or major modifications needed before the dissertation is approved. If no changes are needed, submitting your dissertation is basically an administrative task of preparing it to go into a database for publication. If minor changes are needed, complete them before submitting your final dissertation; another committee meeting usually won’t be needed. If major changes are required, the committee will meet again to review your dissertation before deciding whether to approve it and whether you can move ahead with submitting it.

What is a Doctorate?

A professional doctoral program (like a PsyD or EdD) is similar to a PhD program in that it’s usually a terminal degree in that field. But it’s different from a PhD because the curriculum focuses not on original research but on applied research and the development of practical skills that graduates will use in their industry or area of work. After graduating, those with a professional doctoral degree usually are eligible for additional certifications and licenses or can take on greater responsibilities and new roles in their profession.

PhD and professional doctorates both teach research skills. But research theory and more abstract scientific principles get a bigger emphasis in a PhD program. You may have more traditional classes in professional doctorate programs than in PhD programs because of the decreased focus on research.

Qualities of a Successful Doctoral Student

Whether you’re shooting for a PhD or a professional doctorate, expect the process to take at least three to five years. Mentally prepare yourself to handle the repetitive work, constructive criticism, and seemingly endless research and writing. The process can also take a psychological toll. To get through all this, it helps to have certain qualities. 

Doctoral students need to be willing to not only take the first step in the learning process but also be willing to work hard to achieve their goals.

Flexibility

You may have to deal with a fair amount of change, especially when starting your dissertation. For example, you might go through several potential topics before starting your research.

Rejection is far more common at the doctoral level because everyone involved is very smart, and there’s a lot of competition for funding, fellowships, and publications. When the inevitable setbacks hit, you must be ready to try again.

Earning a PhD or other doctorate can take years. Much of the timetable depends on you, but part of it relies on factors that can’t be sped up, such as finding funding for a research project or waiting on an advisor or committee members.

Self-discipline

Much of the learning is self-directed. So, if you aren’t pushing yourself toward an academic goal, no one else is going to remind you to speed things up.

Organization

Earning a doctorate involves many moving parts, especially regarding your dissertation or final research project. Part of your job is to keep track of all the requirements and ensure they are done at the right time.

Critical thinking

Getting a PhD is about learning how to think and not simply following what other people do. Not only will critical thinking help you identify issues for research, but it will also come into play when analyzing your data.

A clear sense of purpose

Getting a PhD or professional doctorate takes considerable time and effort. Students shouldn’t try to get this degree unless they have a clear reason to need it.

There’s a lot of rejection in graduate school, so maintaining confidence isn’t always easy. But if you don’t believe in yourself, it’ll be hard to convince others.

Research, writing, and public speaking skills

Excellent communication skills are imperative. It doesn’t matter how great an idea is if you can’t effectively convey it to others.

Passion for learning

Many students who seek a PhD do it because they want a career in education or research. Either career path leads to a lifetime of constant learning. This thirst for knowledge also helps as you work to earn a PhD, providing extra incentive to dive into the research and try new things.

Originality

A vital part of your dissertation is coming up with an original topic to study. Originality also comes into play during research because you’ll most likely encounter unforeseen hurdles that you must overcome to ultimately be able to draw conclusions from the research.

Tips for Doctoral Success

Now that you’ve decided to get a doctorate and know what qualities will help you succeed, let’s look at some tips to maximize your success. Completing a doctoral program can take as much perseverance as intelligence (if not more); many of our tips focus on helping you maintain the right mindset and stay focused despite the hurdles.

During Your First Year

Attend the orientation

It’s important not to skip orientation, even if it’s optional. You’ll learn a great deal about your program and will meet classmates and individuals who may be instrumental in helping you get your doctorate. 

Pick the right mentor

When choosing a mentor or advisor, pick someone related to your study interests. For example, choosing a professor whose research inspired your topic is a good idea. But there are other factors to consider, such as how well you get along with the professor and how available they are.

Pick a research topic that interests you

It doesn’t take a doctorate to know that working on something you enjoy is a lot easier than working on something you hate or are bored with. The more interested you are in your dissertation topic, the easier (and faster) it’ll be to complete your work.

Schedule your week

Plan your schedule, including time to step away from school and work, even for a little bit. Organize your week to ensure your break time doesn’t diminish your time for studying, research, class, and other academic obligations. If you feel you’re meeting your other obligations, you’ll be more likely to allow yourself a brain break.

Size up your weaknesses

No one is an expert at everything. Figure out what you need extra help on and take steps to remedy these deficiencies. Tutoring, extra informal studying on your own, or enrolling in a class are all good options.

Start writing from day one

You’ll discover two benefits to this approach. First, it helps develop your scholarly writing skills. Second, it can help you get a head start on your studies, whether you want to make the best grades in class or are beginning work on your dissertation.

Rest of the Journey

Reach out for help

It’s unrealistic to expect to know everything while you earn your degree. If you did, you wouldn’t need a doctorate. Your professors, advisors, and mentors expect you to ask for assistance—and they may even think it’s odd if you never do. 

Stay flexible

This flexibility will help you as you estimate a timeframe for completing your dissertation. Learn to expect changes, tweaks, and modifications during the process, and remind yourself that these unexpected detours will help you learn and will likely result in better research.

Be part of the community

Interacting with your peers can improve your mental health and professional prospects. Remember, these interactions are networking opportunities for people you may work with closely in the future.

Conduct your research

You won’t find your answers on a website. Remember, you’re trying to ask and answer a question that’s new, so doing lots of research is inevitable.

Go to conferences

One of the biggest struggles for researchers is getting funding. And one of the best ways to raise money is by getting recognized for your work. Take every opportunity to present your findings at conferences or other events and find a journal that will publish your work. 

Learn to write grants

You’ll need money for your research, and lots of it. Your ability to obtain grants and funding will be almost as important as how well you do in class and how interesting and original your research is. If you can’t pay for the research, the world will never see the results.

Be kind and compassionate to yourself and others

Cut yourself (and others) some slack. If you’re struggling in your doctoral program, chances are good your classmates are too.

The Dissertation or Doctoral Study

Meet with your advisor

Even if you think you’re doing everything perfectly, have a second brain and set of eyes to review your plans and findings. Having a regular meeting with your advisor helps establish a routine during the doctoral process.

Seek a fellowship

Fellowships are significant for several reasons—compensation, tuition assistance, prestige, real-world learning, and networking opportunities. If you get a fellowship, make sure it doesn’t interfere with your academics or work on your dissertation.

Prepare for your final project and exam

Practice makes perfect. Reviewing your presentation helps ensure you’re explaining it clearly and helps you better retain the information. The more familiar you are with a subject, the more confident and comfortable you’ll be discussing it.

Join a dissertation support group

The dissertation process can be a grind, and it helps to have a support network in place. Your support group can give advice when you run into technical challenges, provide a sounding board for you to talk through problems, and give emotional support when things get tough.

Get editing and writing support

You should have access to writing support services from your program, whether from your advisor, committee member, or a formal department. However, getting additional feedback and a second editorial opinion about your writing never hurts.

1. Doctoral Dissertations and Proposals

Indiana University Bloomington’s Writing Tutorial Services offers writing guides to help students with their studies.

2. DoctoralWriting SIG

This is a blog with resources and discussions about the doctoral writing process.

3. Explorations of Style

This blog covers all things related to academic writing.

4. Google Scholar

Check out this free online database of scholarly articles and journals.

5. Guide for Writing a Funding Proposal

A lot of effort in the PhD process involves finding money for research. This web page focuses on how to improve your chances of getting much-needed funding.

6. The PhD Project

This nonprofit organization works to increase the number of racially and ethnically diverse business professors with doctorates.

7. Resources for Dissertators and Thesis Writers

Review this list of online resources for all aspects of the dissertation-writing process.

8. WorldCat

This site describes itself as the world’s most extensive online library catalog.

9. Writing and Presenting Your Thesis or Dissertation

This site is filled with advice to make the dissertation or thesis writing process go as smoothly as possible.

10. The Writing Center—Dissertations

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s writing center offers practical advice on how to avoid being one of the 50% of doctoral students who never finish their degree.

Planning for After Your Hooding

Think about your career

Even though you had plans for your doctoral degree, make sure those plans are still viable. Perhaps the job market, economy, or even your academic interests have changed.

If you are pursuing academics, prepare

This includes making sure your vital documents are in order, including applications, your CV, application letters, a statement of research, an outline of interests and future research plans, a statement of teaching interests, and teaching evaluations.

Does your program offer career placement?

Getting post-graduate employment will largely depend on your efforts. See what career services your program offers and whether they have contacts and resources you could take advantage of.

Ask your mentor to help

It’s common for doctoral students and their mentors to become friends during their educational careers. After graduation, consider staying in touch with your mentor or advisor. They may not only be a good friend but may also provide you with inside information about potential jobs, research, or funding opportunities.

Stay in contact with the network you’ve made

You might be able to help them out in the future, or they might have a perfect opportunity for you.

What if Your PhD Program is Online?

Online learning has really taken off. This has led to a proliferation of many online degree programs, including PhD and professional doctoral programs. They allow students to complete many of their academic requirements off campus. This added flexibility makes earning a doctorate more convenient. Yet this different learning format means you’ll have to slightly modify your approach to earning your degree.

Build Your Tribe

Learning is usually more effective (and enjoyable) with others. But online learning means you lose out on the in-class opportunities to mingle with classmates. Don’t be afraid to reach out to classmates about what’s going on. Talking to your peers gives you access to different perspectives.

Dedicate a Space

Sometimes it’s hard to get into the right mindset for learning. One way to mitigate this problem is to create a routine. Because online learning can take place anywhere and at any time, it helps to carve out a particular time and area dedicated to school-related obligations.

Get To Know the Professor

Spending a little time getting to know your professor is a worthwhile investment. For one thing, they’ll be more likely to help if you need a favor. Plus that professional connection could pay dividends later when you need a letter of recommendation or contact at a school or company where you hope to work. 

Technical Knowledge

Because online learning relies heavily on technology, you’ll be responsible for making sure your technology works properly so you can meet your academic requirements. Dive into your program’s learning management system and understand how it works. Take a few extra minutes to test out the communication platform, such as videoconferencing or direct messaging, so you’re comfortable with it before classes start. 

Writing Skills on Display

Because of the asynchronous learning possible with remote education, you’ll rely more on your writing ability to convey your ideas to your classmates and professors. While it’s obvious you need to be a proficient writer when preparing formal papers and journals, don’t forget that you want to maintain this level of writing professionalism and skill among your professors and classmates in emails and chats and on message boards. 

Time Management

Even if you’re attending a traditional PhD program, many of the academic requirements are self-paced. Tack on online classes, and now students have even greater control of how quickly they earn their degree. Create a schedule and take careful note of class and dissertation deadlines so you can set a schedule and stick to it.

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| April 24, 2023

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| April 06, 2023

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| May 02, 2023

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Tress Academic

#73: What’s needed to finish your PhD?

December 1, 2020 by Tress Academic

Are you uncertain if you are ready to submit your PhD dissertation? Or hesitant to wrap up your work and move your project to the finish line? You might be stuck in the wrong mind-set, or not sure if you’ve enough material, or simply procrastinating thesis submission. Let us help you to identify what might be holding you back, and how to figure out what’s really needed to make it to the finish line. 

Have you ever thought about what is actually needed to finish your PhD? Really identified what still needs to be done so that you can wrap it up? Have you identified the remaining tasks that you have to accomplish in order to complete your thesis and hand it in? Or are you dragging this out–conducting one experiment after the other, running another round of analyses, and asking yourself what else you might include?

We often observe that advanced PhD students are hesitant about wrapping up their PhD work, deciding on a clear strategy for finishing, and getting ready to hand-in their dissertation. Below, we discuss reasons why you might be dragging it out instead of finishing on time. We will also let you know how you can avoid getting stuck in the final PhD phase, and instead head towards your PhD graduation day with speed and determination. 

We have a super helpful free worksheet ‘ ‘Completing my PhD: what’s needed’ attached, which will help you to shift your mind and focus your attention toward those essential tasks you should be working on during the final months of your PhD so you can submit your thesis on time. 

If you want to hear more about how to complete your PhD study successfully, sign up to our free webinar for PhD candidates .  

Phases of a PhD study

PhD projects go through different phases: 

In the start-up phase, you decide on your project goals, your individual research objectives or which hypotheses to test, and you study the literature, get your supervisory committee together, and design your experiments or decide on your field-work. 

Phase II: 

The second phase begins when you start executing your project – now you are working on achieving your research objectives. The emphasis in the middle part of your PhD is on project execution and data gathering. It also includes the writing of the scientific papers that will be included in your dissertation, and writing the dissertation itself. The transition from phase one to phase two is not always clear-cut, and some features can run parallel – especially if you are working with a series of sub-projects that together will form your overall project.

The final phase starts when your research draws to an end. This comes when your research questions are answered, data are gathered, and field-campaigns are completed. Your focus is now on doing remaining analyses, data interpretations, revising papers that came back from review, and on dissertation writing. While some parts of phase two and three may run parallel, the emphasis in the final PhD phase clearly is on finishing your PhD project, and getting your thesis ready so you can turn it in. In this final phase, your mind should focus on PhD completion and on your life after the PhD – if you want some inspiration, check out our blog post “Life after the PhD – it’s waiting for you!” 

In the final PhD phase but stuck in the mind-set of an early PhD?

At the beginning of a PhD study, what exactly you are going to investigate or develop is often quite open- you are looking around for inspiration, ideas, latest approaches or methods. And even in the second phase, you keep an open eye on how to take your project further. As you are generating your own data and getting first results, you may come up with new ideas, and thus refine and improve your projects. So you work with the mindset of a researcher who’s on the lookout for novel aspects that can be included, or further work you could undertake to make your project even better. This is perfectly fine, and the way it should be in phase two.

Obviously at some point you’ve got to shift your mind, call it a day (or years), and stop watching out for new things. Your focus now should be on completing your sub-projects, papers, analyses, and wrapping up. This is the end-phase of your PhD, and you should now shift your mindset towards honing in on what you achieved and handing in. 

But not all PhD students manage this transition. Although the end of their PhD time (also regarding their working contract or scholarship) approaches, they cling to the mind-set of an early PhD student. 

Being ready to finish a PhD often is a deliberate decision you take rather than an automatic result of a definite end-point of your research. Because, well, the end-point may not be so clear after all – you could go on answering further research questions. Towards the end of your PhD, you may be at the height of your experience so far, you have insights you’ve not had before, and your research skills are well-trained. Plus, you may have exciting results and heaps of data, and in that situation it is very tempting to just go on with your research instead of heading towards the finish line. 

If you are a PhD student in the final phase, you should always ask yourself: What are you lacking so that your supervisors and faculty would accept your submission of the dissertation? That shows that you have shifted your mindset towards PhD completion. To give you a start with that, we’ve included a free worksheet ‘Completing my PhD: what’s needed’

Apart from working with the wrong mindset, there are a couple of other reasons why PhD students hesitate to enter the final stages of their PhD and move on to submitting their dissertation. 

Why aren’t you moving towards the end of your PhD?

Reason 1: procrastinating thesis submission.

You may feel quite comfortable in your role as an advanced PhD student. You’re well accustomed now to the daily trot of work at your department, your work is exciting, you’ve got nice connections to other PhD students and the wider scientific community. Why should you shake up your life and put yourself under the stress of completing? It may sound strange, but this is playing a big role. Although you know that your contract is running out, for now, you feel safe – and handing in will end that feeling of safety. 

Also, as long as you go on doing more analyses, reading, and writing, the outcome of your PhD is open, and you feel that you can still improve it. But when you decide to finish and present your work to the faculty for evaluation, it is fixed – judgement day! What you hand in constitutes your PhD, and that may feel scary, and may be the reason you drag-it-out. 

Reason 2: No clear idea how to move towards the finish line – being confused

Towards the final PhD stage, your project and results may look quite messy, and you may have difficulties bringing it all together. Maybe you have lost the overview of everything you did over the past years, and are lost as to how to finally mold it into one coherent thesis. Or you may still be awaiting final reviews of papers to be included in your dissertation, and may be unsure how to write up the other parts of your dissertation. 

If you want more directions for the final phase of your PhD, sign up for our free webinar ‘The 4 Secrets to a Successful PhD’ ! 

Reason 3: Uncertain if you have enough or what exactly you are lacking?

We often meet PhD students who think they do not yet have enough data, groundbreaking results, or sufficient knowledge in their subject area to get the PhD done and move on to the defence. However, this uncertainty is more frequently the outcome of muddled feelings, and quite possibly imposter syndrome for some, rather than being based in evidence. 

If that’s the case for you, ask yourself, why do you think you don’t have enough material yet to finalise your dissertation? Would you know any more or would you have better results if you postpone any longer? And since you are a scientist, why not get some evidence. 

How to find out when you’ll be ready to submit?

Learn from peers:.

Figure out what other PhD students did before you, what exactly they have included in their PhD theses, and what was necessary for them to complete successfully. Ask postdocs who recently got a PhD from your faculty how much they included and what they submitted, and how the entire evaluation process went for them.

Discuss with supervisors:

Obviously this is also an issue that you discuss with your supervisors. But be careful what you ask them. They may be as excited about your findings as you are and would certainly have ideas for more or additional work, while forgetting that your contract is coming to an end. Above all, you should be clear about wanting to complete, and communicate that you are keen to achieve that. Then you can discuss if you’re ready or which essential bits are still missing. 

Often, the last PhD committee meeting is used to give the green lights for entering the final PhD phase, wrapping up your PhD work, and moving it toward submission. This is a perfect occasion to ask your supervisors if there’s anything that is still required from your side, or if they think you’re good to go. 

Check PhD regulations:

Finally, look at the exact requirements of your university or faculty – do you fulfil all formal criteria for finishing your PhD? Including the educational part, coursework with necessary credit points, teaching or supervision, you name it! What are the administrative or formal steps you have to undertake upon handing in your dissertation? So get those PhD regulations out one more time and double-check exactly what you have to do. 

Gauge the benefit of going on with your PhD work :

Ask yourself if there is an additional benefit to continuing? Like: A really big breakthrough is just around the corner and would amplify the impact of your PhD work. Or you could have significantly better chances on the (post-doc) job market. So, how does the additional time and resources you invest in completing later stack up against the benefit of completing sooner (and being on the job-market sooner)? If your university has a ‘pass’/‘fail’ system and no grading for your PhD work, and you know that you can finish with great results already – then why should you go on?

Consider the above mentioned points, and then make a decision on when you will be ready. We suggest you make up your mind for yourself. It’s important that you know what you want to do. It is a sign that you are ready for graduation if you are able to judge your achievements realistically and make that decision for yourself. Do you want to hear more about how to complete a PhD?

We’d love to help you make the remaining time in your PhD more enjoyable. Would you like to hear more about how to complete your PhD study successfully, sign up to our free webinar for PhD candidates  

Resources: 

• Blog post #2: So you want to finish your PhD on time?
• Blog post #43: Life after the PhD – it’s waiting for you!  
• Blog post #60: Are you delayed with your PhD?

More information:

Do you want to successfully complete your PhD? If so, please sign up to receive our free guides.

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© 2020 Tress Academic

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Frequently asked questions.

In short, yes, you can work while studying for your PhD.

The hard part to juggle is finding the time to do both. You may find that part-time study is more flexible for you but it takes longer to complete. An excellent way to combine work and study is to get a job within the university you are studying at.

Check out other sources of support for PhD Students .

There are several benefits to both full time and part time PhD study. It can be extremely difficult to juggle a full time postgraduate position alongside working. It’s not called full-time for nothing! This is intensive but you can complete a full time PhD faster than it’s part-time equivalent.

Studying for a PhD is a big commitment, either full time for 3-4 years or part-time for generally 6-7 years. If you want, or need, to be working and studying for PhD this could have an impact on your study: here are some of the things you may find it helpful to think about before starting your PhD.

Is funding for a PhD in the UK enough to live on?

If you are fortunate enough to have full funding for your PhD, your studentship should cover both fees and living expenses and be tax-free. The stipend levels for students studying for a PhD in the UK is set by UK research councils for their own studentships, and this is followed by Universities for their own studentships. These will provide enough to live on and not to have to be working and studying for a PhD.

If you are looking for PhD Funding, you can search for your ideal studentship from the many opportunities we have listed on Postgraduate Studentships. We have a section for Charities and Trusts who are set up to support students looking to get additional financial help with their studies.

How much work is included in a Graduate Teaching Assistantship?

Some PhD studentships are called Graduate Teaching Assistantships – this means that you will be teaching for a certain number of hours in each academic year and this is part of the conditions of the studentship. It is advisable to find out exactly how this works with the University advertising the opportunity. Will you receive separate payments or is this part of the studentship? How many hours will it involve and how will that relate to your PhD? Will you receive training?

If you are considering an academic career, there may be some advantage in getting some initial experience. However you may also struggle with working and studying for a PhD at the same time.

Should I study my PhD full-time or part-time if I need to work?

If you need to work and study, it’s important to think about how you will manage that. Can you study full-time and work at the same time and if so how much work can you do? A full-time PhD is regarded as a full-time commitment. So anything other than a supplementary job for a few hours per week is challenging. Some students start with a full-time PhD and then move to studying the PhD part-time. So you would need to discuss this with your university first.

Planning to study a part-time PhD takes longer overall but it may also give you the time to do your PhD and to make the money you need. If you do decide to study part-time you may already have a job that will allow you to have flexible hours. Think also about part time work in a field that relates to your study. If you need to look for a job that will help you do your PhD, your University is likely to have temporary or part-time jobs that students can apply for on campus – most universities have a database of these jobs for students so you can find out in advance what the pay rates are and if that would be enough.

Universities also have a range of part-time jobs which may be administrative or involve working in labs. If you apply for one of these jobs, especially in your own department, it’s important to make sure you work out how you will manage this. This way, you're prepared for when you are working on your PhD and when you are working on your job.

What if I am an International Student?

If you are an international student in the UK there will be restrictions on how many hours you can work. The UK Government has made some improvements to this. There are more opportunities now to study and work in the UK .

Talking to your University about your options

Your university wants you to succeed at your PhD. It has experienced students working whilst studying and works and what doesn’t. If you are planning to work whilst studying it’s a good idea to talk to your department. These questions may form part of your application process because your Supervisor will want to make sure you have the means to conduct your research as well as support yourself.

Many students study for a PhD and work for at least part of the time and complete their PhD successfully. If you look at the options beforehand, you can plan what works best for you. This way you can get the most from your PhD whilst working at the same time.

Looking for PhD Funding? There are a wide range of study funding opportunities for intending PhD students on PostgraduateStudentships

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Is it possible to complete a Master's degree while working full-time?

There's a question which asks is it possible to get a PhD while working full time ? The responses to this were essentially "yes but say goodbye to anything except school and work" or "only if you're a prodigy".

My first question then: can I complete a Master's degree while working without killing my social life? Browsing the course names gives me the impression that at least 10% will be review from my undergraduate degree.

Specifically

I'm interested in deepening my knowledge in my area (software/computer science) and am in NYC, where Columbia U would be a great option for this. I have completed an undergraduate degree and since a PhD seems like a stretch, I am considering a Master's degree.

My job has a 40 hour work-week but has flexibility with timing.

• 5 As a supplement to the answers, I'd like to say that MS/MA degrees designed for working professionals often involve little or no research. If you plan to apply to PhD programs in the future, you will want to beef up your research experience as much as possible. –  setholopolus Commented Jan 14, 2020 at 3:51
• 12 I have a follow-up question.. why? I'm a software dev and I'm not sure that an MA or Phd increases earning potential relative to time and money invested in said degree...? –  Cloud Commented Jan 14, 2020 at 10:37
• 10 @Cloud: For the sheer joy of learning. –  Daniel Commented Jan 14, 2020 at 16:05
• 3 I graduated with a Masters in Software Engineering from the University of Texas at Dallas. It was a program aimed at professionals. Most of my cohort consisted of working professionals, about 5-10 years into their careers. It required 7 full Saturdays and 3 full Fridays per semester. My employer required that I take those Fridays as vacation days. Some of us were old. I was well into my 50s when I started - so it made little obvious economic sense. However, I was laid off 18 months after graduation and found a job 2 months later. When I got bored, I found another job (15% raise) –  Flydog57 Commented Jan 14, 2020 at 20:56
• 4 I did both master's and Ph.D. while working full time. Each degree took a long time. –  Bob Brown Commented Jan 14, 2020 at 21:51

13 Answers 13

A lot of people in the US do this, actually. Some places have enough evening classes at the MS/MA level that it may not disrupt normal work hours. But it takes a lot out of the rest of your life, of course.

It is easier in a field in which you can complete the degree without research, say by coursework and/or creative writing.

But if you can afford to spend three hours a night in class for a couple of nights a week and also do the required other work then it can happen on a reasonable time scale. And NYC has a lot of options.

At least in the US, there are often masters programs designed specifically for people with full time jobs. Often people attend these programs with support and even funding from their employer. Classes are mostly at night. Your work schedule may permit you to take normally scheduled classes, however.

Unlike a PhD program, you also often have the option to draw out your studies a bit, and trade a longer time to degree for a bit more sanity in your day to day.

As with most things, you'll have to check the specific policies of a program you are interested in.

• 3 I did one of these, it was a 3 year degree with 2 three hour lectures per week (depending on the lecturer either 2 evenings or 1 evening and Saturday afternoon). You could complete it in 2 years if you did the summer semester. It was a huge amount of work, I would only recommend it if you really want the degree but for me it was worth while. –  David Waterworth Commented Jan 14, 2020 at 21:47
• @DavidWaterworth The people who I know have done similar have typically done it in more like 4 years, probably the same total work that you are describing, though, just spread over more total time. –  Bryan Krause ♦ Commented Jan 14, 2020 at 22:02
• yes 2 years was incredibly intense. It was basically working and studying full time. It was only worth it because of the future career prospects (it was a quantitative finance masters) –  David Waterworth Commented Jan 14, 2020 at 22:07
• @DavidWaterworth Yeah, a 2-years masters is pretty standard for a full time degree, in the US anyways, for most subjects. I'd expect it would be a lot of work to complete that degree at the same time as full-time employment. –  Bryan Krause ♦ Commented Jan 14, 2020 at 22:11

I have completed 2 Master's degrees online with a full time job and 3 children. It is very possible. I did spend several hours a night on homework. I did that several times a week. I did have time to spend with my family as well. It does require a lot of time.

Ask yourself this: In 2 years, where are you going to be? It will be 2022. Regardless if you enroll or not, it will still be 2022. So, go ahead and enroll because you might as well embark on something challenging. The nice thing is that unlike certifications, degrees do not expire with time. Hope this helps. Good luck! Go get it!

• 2 Kudos for so much successful post grad work with such a full life. Respect! –  Bohemian Commented Jan 17, 2020 at 0:23

It's doable (I know someone who did it) but expect it to be hard. You can compare it with your current job - a full-time Masters student might work 40 hours a week. If you do it part-time, you might have to work 20 hours a week. Added to your day job, that's 60 hours a week. Can you cope with that? Some people undoubtedly can but for others it'll be very stressful, especially since you'll probably have to keep it up for months if not years.

... but it's doable.

Yes. It is definitely possible to do Masters or PhD degree while working. I did that comfortably.

I wish you success in your pursuit of learning.

I achieved M.S. degree in Software from a great university while doing a demanding job in a New York based company.

These 3 factors have helped me achieve the degree without hassle:

The Manager was convinced that what I am learning will be beneficial for the company's business. Hence, I did not have an objection for pursuing higher studies.

A Senior colleague who had achieved the same degree provided guidance and mentoring.

Fellow colleagues got inspired by the stories that I shared about those who got better pay after completing the degree.

Had I not had the approval and encouragement from the Employer, colleagues and friends, I would not have been able to achieve the degree.

Thanks to them.

I could achieve the degree and also pay back with these returns:

• Better value and more efficiency at work
• Sticking with the company for a long time
• After completing the degree, I became a mentor and helped a few others advance their careers.

• This is an interesting answer because your employer seems to have been enthusiastic about it - how did you bring up the idea to them? –  shayaan Commented Jan 15, 2020 at 1:49
• I explored my company's HR policy on encouraging higher studies and professional ceritifications. I also talked to some senior colleagues who had already pursued studies while working. Support from all these sources helped to get the idea accepted enthusiastically by my manager and team members. –  Gopinath Commented Jan 15, 2020 at 23:29

As other answers have mentioned, it is not just possible to complete a master’s while working full time, but there’s a whole assortment of great master’s programs designed specifically to accommodate career professional students.

In the industries I’ve worked in, primarily aerospace engineering and defense, it’s a prevalent part of the culture that early career people will sometimes choose to pursue a master’s while working. Many of my peers and I are currently following (or have recently finished) that path, so I can share what I’ve learned from our experience.

Schools/Programs: It seems you’re already looking into programs that are local to you. That’s often a great choice, but another route worth considering is an online program which doesn’t require you to be physically on campus. The idea of an online program can have a negative connotation to some, but an online master’s program in engineering from a university with name recognition is often indifferentiable from a degree gained while studying full time on campus. One example I can think of is a master’s at USC’s Viterbi School of Engineering, which you can complete without ever setting foot on campus, but the degree you receive is identical to that of any other master’s student. I’m sure there are a number of other programs like this

Time Scale: As others have mentioned, the time it will take you to obtain a master’s this way will be significantly longer (prodigies aside). However, in all programs I know of you can mostly set your own pace. Many of my peers have found that taking 1 class a term is plenty of additional workload and taking any more can be overwhelming. That being said, if taking 1 class a term it can take 2.5+ years to complete the degree, even if you choose to take a summer class or two. Regardless of the pace you end up choosing, I highly recommend starting out with 1 class the first term, so you can learn how to properly balance work and school before feeling immediately overwhelmed.

Value: How much value you will personally gain from the program is difficult to judge, but it’s a crucial exercise before you commit to years of school. Some key questions that you should ask yourself are:

• Why do I want to do this? (e.g. do I think it will help me land more promotions at work, make me look more prestigious to my colleagues, do I just really enjoy learning in an academic setting)

Once you’ve answered that question, think about these:

• How much will this help me advance in my career? (e.g. I’m partway through my program and I’ve reached the position that newly graduated master’s students are hired into in my company. Doing my master’s for the promotion would’ve been a poor choice for me)
• How much will this additional academic learning benefit me over additional time I could spend learning on the job? (e.g. a number of my peers in EE/CS are now pursuing their masters in order gain expertise in machine learning. This has resulted in them landing projects at work they may have not gotten otherwise. It’s helped them break into a field that was otherwise mostly closed to them. If they had studied the same field they work in every day, the calculus for the benefit would be different)
• How much do you enjoy academic studying? (Hopefully you have at least some enthusiasm for it, as it’ll be a significant part of your “free” time for a while)

Pursuing your master’s while working full time is a fairly accessible and not uncommon route. How much social life you have left over and how much benefit you get from the program depends largely on how you choose to accomplish this goal.

I did this myself, but I've seen lots of people failing. There are a lot of hints and compromises you should think about:

What helped me:

I've earned many credits from "isolated classes", which I took before actually enrolling. Time is critical when your are not exclusively dedicated to an academic program. So work a lot before the clock starts ticking (i.e. before enrolling) and don't let yourself lag behind schedule once the countdown starts.

I was dismissed from work to attend regular classes, but did not take work hours to work on my thesis or class activities.

I often took a full day every weekend only to study/work on my thesis. Other than studying on workdays.

I was lucky my advisor was okay with meeting with me outside working hours, I did went to his place rather than his office (that is something many people would be uncomfortable with though).

The program had difficult admittance exams, but I had seen everything on grad school. I worked with topics covered in most classes I've attended, and made my thesis on the same topic of my graduate thesis, which was the specialty of my advisor. All of these are measures I considered would put the program on "easy mode" for me. While it was still far from easy, I know a guy who failed to deliver a thesis within deadline because among other reasons, he wanted to work with something completely different than what he did on graduation, took no classes on the relevant subjects and his advisor was not from the exact field.

What you should be concerned about:

You will have setbacks. You need to leave room for failure to occur while not being catastrophic. I've known a guy whose thesis depended on an experiment, which required a few custom materials. The company that sold him one of these materials screwed up its composition (and the guy was able to notice and prove it later on). Basically, this meant that a very important experiment had basically failed due to execution error, but by then he had no time to wait for new materials and no results to compose a master thesis.

You will likely need to cut-off some hobbies. People often feel like learning something new and thus decide to do a master's program. These same people often decide it's a good time to also learn a new language, or start playing some musical instrument, and doing both at the same time might be a bad idea. While you should not stop physical activity or simple hobbies like going to the movies, there is a limit to how much you can effectively learn and focus on your daily life. And doing a masters while also working full time already pushes you close to this limit.

It does take a toll on social life. I've spent a month without seeing my girlfriend while preparing a pre-thesis. At some other point I had very limited time to see her because other than studying I also needed physiotherapy five times a week. People understand this up to some point, but both you and them will be frustrated by the situation (this depends a lot on the type of people you relate as well).

You may be out of the academic environment, but you should try to put yourself in it. I hadn't had the opportunity to attend a single thesis defense or a random seminar while I was enrolled in the master's program. People often talk and exchange useful information on daily life and on social events. Often students spend work hours at the university rather than at home, which makes them and teachers much more accessible. But if you spend work hours at your full time job, you are out of this circle. So you'll miss on the information, tips, culture and so on that makes the academic program a tad easier.

Vacations are not (primarily) for traveling anymore. While I did took days from my work vacations to travel and enjoy myself, it happened that I had classes during vacations, and often spent a lot of time working on my thesis or class assignments when on vacation. From an outsider opinion, I've seen people fail their master's while working due to what I believe was a "vacations are sacred" mindset. If you think you'd be okay by skipping classes when on vacation and going traveling to forget everything about work and studies, then you've just increased the difficulty settings by two levels.

• (3) and (5): agreed. Social life takes a beating, and vacation time dries up quick. –  Cloud Commented Jan 15, 2020 at 21:54

At least with regards to the UK - it's highly dependant on the institution and the demands of their program. I had a guy on my CS masters course who worked full time and due to the self-learning-centric course design, he managed to get away with making a deal with his employer in regards to flexitime and compulsory program obligations. He also practically lived and worked on campus.

I wouldn't personally recommend it unless you have a very fortuitous set of circumstances and potentially a flexible employer. I'd be worrying about the mental strain of doing both in parallel, least of all that it'd impact my social life. As mentioned, there are part-time masters courses available as well, but I don't know much about them.

But if you're set on it, definitely look into the prospective program and its demands before making the leap - perhaps even ask your current employer if accommodations can be made?

Personally I'd take the advice of one of this centuries greatest philosophers: "Never half-ass two things. Whole-a** one thing" - give each thing in your life the time it deserves.

Yes, it is possible to do a masters while working full time. The trade-off is that it takes a much longer time to get a degree in many cases.

I know that at least one university in the UK offers such courses, as my father was the Distance Learning Coordinator for the Civil Engineering department. There is a short article about what Civil Engineering Distance Learning they offer published on their website.

I think many of the other departments also offer part-time courses, although not all of these are Distance Learning so you will need to attend some classes on campus AFAIK. You can study some of my own degree there. Details of the Computer Vision MSc show that a one year Full-Time masters degree is expected to take around 5 years as a part-time module.

A fifth of the study time a year of a full-time course (one day a week) should leave you with some time to socialise and live a normal life.

I did this with a thesis-based MSc in Software Engineering. It was a terrible idea.

I worked full time (>40 hours/week) at a software engineering job. Since it was my first job, I also wanted to be good at it, so I put in more than 8 hours a day. I would then come home, eat, and either work more remotely for my employer or work on my MSc. Weekends were spent the same way.

• It does let you get a Master's without quitting a good source of income
• It affects relationships with family/friends because there is almost 0 free time.
• Meeting with your thesis supervisor is hard because you're always at work!
• It is really hard to come home after a long day at work and to sit down and focus on something. Looking back at it, I think I could have finished my thesis a year faster if I didn't have to go to work.
• It requires a lot of self-motivation and organization because any experimentation you are doing will be self-driven.

I would not recommend it if you can avoid it. I was mentally drained every day (slept well though!).

• Appreciate hearing this as it's a very valuable perspective, congratulations on getting your degree despite the challenges! –  shayaan Commented Jan 15, 2020 at 7:15

This is definitely doable, and I know because both me and my wife have done it (simultaneously in fact). And we had kids while we did it. And she was pregnant with and gave birth to another child during the final semester of both of our programs...I would not recommend aligning having a child with this (we didn't mean to, but life happens).

Look into executive masters programs - I was able to go through an executive masters of software engineering program which was designed for working professionals, and was able to keep my full time software engineering job. The classes were 2 saturdays and one friday a month, and most of the classwork was on your own time, so it definitely requires the motivation to work on your own without having regular classes. The professors were all fairly available for questions via email and stuff. Overall it was a positive experience for me I'd say, and was worth the trouble. Hold off on having kids until afterwards though....

As for social life, I do have to admit I had less free time during the program than I would have otherwise, but not none. I guess it depends on how much social time you desire, but one thing I would say is this depends a lot on the program. With my program, I was able to get a lot of the work done in and shortly after class, so I was able to mostly keep the extra time to class days. There were a few weeks each semester where I had a large group project due or was studying for a test where I would be busy every day in the week but for most of the project I still retained my evenings for the most part. I'd say overall my free time was cut in half on average (some weeks having mostly the same amount, some weeks being completely shot, especially around finals for instance).

You can do this with a standard masters degree (e.g. non executive program), as I know several people who are doing this, but I would really recommend looking for programs specifically tailored towards working professionals - I find that the courses themselves were better adjusted for real world application of the material and were more helpful for growing myself as a working engineer as opposed to some of the regular masters level engineering classes which I took as an undergraduate, which were much more academic in nature and not really applicable to my day to day as a working engineer.

Hope this helps.

Depending where you are and who you work for, maybe your employer would be willing to let you do some of your course on their time? If it's relevant. They might even contribute to the costs.

This is not uncommon here (Germany), especially for PhDs, but then it has to be relevant and useful to your employer. In fact, our firm will offer to support you with advice and a sponsor, as well as leave and fees.

I work full time and I am doing two Masters degrees part time. I looked at both curricula and decided I could rush it and lose energy and motivation or take it slowly (4/5 years) and stay sane . I don't have much of a social life (by choice), only use the TV for news and perhaps a 1 hour drama series. Sunday evenings are quiet times when I watch a 1 hour movie on Netflix. For sport I weight lift or cycle daily to keep fit and hike during the vacations.

I know people who have done this as a dual degree within a 3 year period and think that's impressive but I'm happy to just be steaming along. I'm not doing it for any other reason but because I'm very interested in the subject (don't think I could earn a living out of it, particularly at my age). I would have just done one but got a full scholarship for the 2nd degree and just couldn't say "no". In one of the programs, for example, I am prepared to take 9 credit hours in a year (one course a trimester) . It's doable if you are really motivated, happily single, work in a conducive culture and are able to set definite boundaries.

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