hardhead

Quanics is correct. I would never recommend paying your own way at a graduate program--go where you are funded. A graduate stipend will net to about $20k/year (there are some amazing fellowships that will fund $50k+ but they are very, very competitive). In a "real job" you'll often be making much more than $20k, as I was when I was a higher ed IT professional (and could have qualified for free tuition as an institutional employee). PhD programs are rated by several factors including graduation rate and time to completion. It is obvious to me now that the people who are choosing the students to fill the very limited number of graduate student seats in any given year will choose those who are committing to work full time on graduating.

Many people do complain about academia being hostile to family life (see http://100rsns.blogspot.com/2010/09/15-marriage-and-family-u... for a particularly negative view). However, many of my colleagues had children during graduate school. They took time off classes but then used their "down time" (e.g. child napping) to focus on writing and came out ahead. I got married immediately before entering grad school and had my first child as I was writing my dissertation. The timing worked really well for me. I was lucky that my wife could support me through graduate school (on top of my stipend).

Often, you don't. When I applied to graduate school I intended to keep my full time "real pay" job. My PhD program only accepted students who would take a graduate student stipend and commit full time to the "program." After going through it, I understand why they want that commitment and I would not recommend anyone try to get a PhD in the spare time.

It is certainly smart to spend some time outside of school after your undergraduate education before attending graduate school.

However, I would still encourage potential applicants to be very cautious when deciding to attend graduate school, especially in the humanities (and philosophy specifically), due to hardships of the post-graduate job market. The hard science and social science (my field) markets are far less dire than the humanities. As outlined in the original linked article, the process of getting your PhD is pretty brutal and you lose a lot of potential income on the years you are receiving a low graduate stipend. However, I would disagree with the author in the linked article--many graduate programs (especially in the US) do a very good job of providing graduate students with skills to complete a thesis. Schools are investing a lot of time and money into each graduate student and want them to succeed.

Once you make it through to the other side, the job market for recent PhDs is another thing all together. The recent recession has hit universities hard, especially public research institutions, and especially in the humanities. Therefore, only a very few graduates are able to secure tenure-track jobs (networking while you are a grad student helps—and hope for a lot of luck). This is often because so many applicants who have less appealing jobs (such as community college or non-tenure track jobs) are applying to the same tenure-track jobs as a recent graduate and have far more teaching and research experience. If you get one of the less appealing jobs, you are generally given a very high teaching load and low pay, which harms your potential of producing more research to secure a better job. I would recommend reading through this page: http://100rsns.blogspot.com/2011/04/55-there-are-too-many-ph... (and all of the reasons posted there).

All of that said, I was fortunate enough to receive a wonderful tenure-track job as a professor at a public research institution straight out of grad school. The job hunt was rough--I sent out an incredible number of applications over 6 months before I got a single interview. Persistence paid off, fortunately.

The PhD and academia are great if you can make it through the system. The system is rough. You really must be dedicated to your research and teaching to make it through. Also, FYI, the hours I work and stress levels as an academic dwarf those compared to when I was a higher-ed IT professional. Fortunately, I find this work far more rewarding. Try your best to get a seat at a relatively prestigious school in your field and be as productive as possible during those years. That will go a long way towards getting you out in a successful place at the other end.

During the mid-90s, a high school math teacher gave me extra credit for presenting my class a slight variation of this CC verification algorithm, thus providing a real-world application showing modulo math to be relevant.

While it might be true that TAs are "undervalued" in their paycheck, you have to also account for the fact that the university is often paying 5-20k+ for your tuition, fees, insurance, retirement, and other costs of being a student and employee. They are also training you to be an academic. Teaching undergrads the fundamentals of your field is very useful towards that end. Graduate school is not something to be undertaken on a whim--it is a huge commitment in time and resources. Ultimately, graduate school is not something to pursue if you're trying to make more cash.

I left a lucrative and successful career in IT 5 years ago to pursue my PhD because I wanted to research and teach in academia. I have met many other students who left lucrative positions to come back to school. Universally all these students understand that this career choice is not about the money, it is about lifestyle. The academic tenure-track job market is fiercely competitive and can be brutal. The tenure process is tough for young faculty members. Ultimately, a doctorate is for those who are passionate about pursuing high-quality, highly technical or theoretical research (either in academia, the government, or private industry) or for those who have a passion to teach at the university level.

I'm fortunate to have secured a tenure-track position at a research institution starting this autumn. The salary I'll be making will be considerably less than what I would have been making, not to mention the 5 years of not making a decent salary. The ability to continue pursuing my research agenda, collaborate with incredibly bright colleagues of my choosing, work more flexible hours than in my previous jobs, create and develop courses for undergrad and grad students which may have an enormous impact in their careers, and spend more time with my wife and kids makes me very happy with the "value" I'll be getting out of the time and effort it took to pursue a PhD.