Top 4 Energy Company offer: Technical Data Analyst position - Upstream (Geoscience) TOC - $139k (2 yrs Geoscience experience). Vs. University of Texas Austin offer: Fully funded PhD in Geoscience - Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) research. What are your thoughts? Asking for a friend who is not on Blind. Comments are welcomed too.
The decision of every geology student. Go to work now for big oil making more money than most senior end of career geologists makes in every other industry, or stay in academia? My brother had a similar decision to make. No one gets a PhD in geology unless they want to spend their career teaching. If they want to teach, then by all means. My brother ended up spending two years getting his masters in a geophysics discipline. It allowed him to satisfy an academic urge for more than a bachelors and it made him more attractive to the oil companies he then went to work for. Energy companies generally don’t pay for PHDs unless it is in a highly specialized discipline.
My old boss had a phd in geology and is probably now making close to a million
Having been in a PhD program and leaving with my masters (by choice not due to lack of skill - several first author publications under my belt); I strongly recommend against a PhD program. The experience is at the end of the day medieval and I can tell you from personal experience it was one of the lowest points in my life. If your friend has the ability to get an industry job they should. The money and ability to live their life is priceless compared to the cruel grind of grad school. To the previous posters point about teaching, note getting a PhD is just the first hurdle. After that it's fighting to secure the very rare tenure positions which are mostly dependent on your ability to research and churn out papers. Once getting a tenure spot your time is spent writing grants to secure funding and research as that's what's prioritized. The teaching is secondary unfortunately. Having taught undergrad students and whenever I'm asked this question I strongly advise against a PhD. Please encourage your friend to take the industry offer (start earning some good $$$) they can always decide to go back for a PhD if they find they cant stand the good compensation
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