Goals Pursued when Going for Ph.D. Studies

Why does a person decide to do a Doctorate?



The answer to this question is very varied, by professional, work, intellectual, and social ambition. Each person will have their own mobile, but what all the students share is that the path and motivation are not a straight line.

Responsibilities, and many times the same dynamics of the doctorate, make this process a roller coaster, which in order to cope with, you must always be very clear about the initial objective that made you start this beautiful path.

In the following graph we can see, according to a study carried out by Alexander Tarvid, called Motivation to study the Doctorate: Case of Latvia, the main reasons that motivated students to obtain a Doctorate.



Motivation to Study for PhD Degree: Case of Latvia Alexander Tarvid ∗

This paper studies what goals individuals pursue when enrolling in doctoral studies and how it affects the characteristics of the university they find important for choosing it and information sources on the doctoral programs they find useful.

Tarvid's work aimed to understand "what goals people pursue when enrolling in doctoral studies and how it affects the characteristics of the university that they consider important to choose it and the sources of information about the doctoral program that they find useful. ”.

We quote the main findings of the study carried out by Tarvid:

Firstly, except for geosciences, biology, chemistry, and material science, and agriculture and environment, a large majority (at least 60%) of respondents pursue either mostly or primarily personal goals when deciding to go for doctoral degree.

Secondly, among the fields where more than 60% of respondents report having mostly personal goals are both non-technical (history and philosophy, arts, and management) and technical (physics and mathematics and engineering) fields. Thirdly, the share of respondents motivated mostly by labor-market factors is higher in technical fields, but there also are exceptions: most notably, engineering, but also IT-related fields, and geosciences. Note a high share of PhD students in management (around 20%) and education and psychology (around 30%) who were motivated mostly by labor-market factors.



Evaluate your motivations and decide on the program that best suits your reality.

To make this decision, it will be useful to evaluate the following variables:

● Family. Making the decision to study also impacts the life of your immediate family.

● Your inner strength. You must work to be a resilient person, with tolerance for failure and frustration.

● Discipline. It all depends on yourself and how you manage your time and resources.

● Objectives. Do you have defined the topic that you are passionate about? Keep in mind that you will spending many hours working on it.

● Economy. Be clear about your financial possibilities during these years, for your maintenance and that of your project.

And do not forget to evaluate the options of online studies, that every day there are more offers that will allow you to combine studies with your personal life, in addition to not incurring additional expenses, since you can do them from wherever you want.