6 Most Useless PhD Degrees in the World [2024]

 6 Most Useless PhD Degrees in the World

6 Most useless PhD Degrees

Usually, in many fields, graduates offer distinct benefits for students who go for extra years in school.

What makes PhD degree most useless is that it takes much time and funds to get to an end.

Some do not answer, those who do not know and those who believe.

A magazine asked 40 companies if they employed PhDs.

Eleven of them did not answer; fourteen said they did not know how many they employed; six said they had very few.

Finally, nine have a significant number and said they believe in these graduates.

Doctoral students do not always know how to look for work in the private sector.

One in ten enters the job market without having completed an internship in the private sector.

There are fewer and fewer doctoral students in the world. Between the difficulties in finding funding and the poor image of research, their integration into the job market is proving to be delicate.

What is a PhD?

A PhD is an academic degree awarded after the presentation of a thesis.

A university degree that requires years of full-time work.

After the Master II degree, the certificate is validated after a minimum of three years of research.

Under the guidance of a thesis director, a doctoral student is called a doctoral student.

Even though it is qualified as the highest degree in university studies, the number of doctoal students is increasing day by day and the opportunities are becoming fewer and fewer.

One of the reasons that make a PhD degree useless is that the academic job market is almost saturated.

The PhD, a real headache

A real "slave labour" is what defines the studies for a doctorate.

Indeed, the research work to obtain a doctorate is hard and requires a lot of thought.

In addition to the 7 days week research, the pressure of specialization and the low salaries, long hours of daily work are also required to hope for a successful defence of the thesis.

If the wrong reasons for doing a PhD are nagging at you, you mustn't get into it.

It is the realization at the end that the goals are impossible that discourages students, but not the doctorate itself.

5 Reasons That Make Some PhD Degrees Mostly Useless

The idea of doing a PhD is on your mind. You want to discover this world of in-depth research and get conclusive results.

But dissatisfaction with the results of lengthy academic research is something that PhD students share.

This article shows you 5 reasons PhD is useless.

1. Some PhD does not protect you from unemployment

It is often referred to as the best way to avoid unemployment.

Think first of all about the various professional opportunities you can get.

Focus on your long-term goals and what you feel is essential.

Is it more important to you to spend your time studying or to move quickly in the professional world?

2. A long degree that takes too much time

If you want to see your projects, come to fruition in the next few years, you'll have to move on.

Especially since the reward, often disappointing about your expectations, only arrives after years and years of research.

3. You are not going to make a fortune with some PhD degree

Can you even name any great fortunes with some PhD degrees nowadays?

Even billionaires like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg didn't even finish their studies a concrete reason to consider certain PhD as a useless degree.

Lean towards the world of entrepreneurship instead if money is an opportunity for you.

4. A PhD does not necessarily make you an intellectual person

A PhD degree, in the collective imagination, often represents the idea of an intellectual elite and an exceptional individual.

On the one hand, job offers are scarce and the salary of a professor is lower than the workload.

On the other hand, mere social prestige does not fill a fridge.

5. PhD degree graduates are often underestimated in the professional field

As a result of excessively academic orientation, business leaders often complain about the lack of skills of PhD students.

Deemed "too specialized", even those who remain in the academic profession have difficulty adapting given the diversification of the academic sector.

Consider taking time for yourself and at your own pace, broaden your skills and try to discover a world outside of academia.

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6 Most useless PhD degrees in the world

1. A PhD Degree in Humanities

A PhD degree in humanities is mostly useless because researchers struggle to find public funding, at all costs.

This is especially true in the humanities, where only one out of three doctoral students have access to funding.

This instability also explains the hidden lack of research interest.

There are many other contributions, those from companies (Cifre contracts) or local authorities.

But then the subjects of the theses are imposed, which restricts the researchers. To get a PhD contract, you have to choose your subject carefully.

At the first level of reading, the theme may make you smile. However, he explains: "the difficulty was to find a corpus that was both innovative and useful, that could provoke a public debate.

This is the case with Pokemon, which enjoys an unprecedented economic and cultural weight."

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2. A PhD Degree in Culinary Arts

A PhD degree in culinary arts is mostly useless, as the returns on an expensive degree are more than the tuition fees.

Raw talent and experience are generally preferred by employers who are convinced that academic credentials are inferior to raw talent.

Thus, doing a PhD in culinary science will be a waste of time since you would have to spend most of your time in a kitchen and not in classrooms.

3. A PhD degree in Fashion Design

Looking at it globally, a degree in fashion design is not always a lost cause.

What makes the PhD degree in fashion design mostly useless is that it is a field that requires innate artistic abilities as well as a strong aptitude for creativity.

You don't necessarily need to be in a classroom for this since it can help you connect with counterparts in the industries.

You can use your efforts and personal acquisition as a talent and thus a strong portfolio for job opportunities.

4. A PhD degree in Art History

A PhD in art history is useless in that history is an easy target with a high and accessible niche.

Anyone can read up on it and acquire the same knowledge as anyone else in a classroom or a course.

It's a waste of money for tuition that is mostly $50,000 (£37,450). 

You can always use this fund for personal research and focus on what you think is important to know instead of spending on a predefined program.

5. A PhD Degree In Physics

Christophe, who is finishing his PhD degree in management, confirms the importance of the theme in finding funding: "The very many theses on gender or the environment, sensitive and current themes, have easily found grants in recent years.

In physics, for example, where their interest is more tangible, 97.5% of the researchers have doctoral contracts.

Christophe, however, has not managed to find this sesame.

Like nearly a third of PhD students, he works at a series of odd jobs to complete his anthropological research on entrepreneurship.

6. A PhD degree in Pharmacognosy

Because it necessarily involves druids, who are delightful characters, probably the only ones to use serpents to cut mistletoe while smiling, for a good part of the day.

Why it's very serious: Pharmacognosy is the study of organisms that can have medicinal effects: plants, fungi, animals.

Access to the thesis is not available online, but it is easy to imagine, in the light of what we know the virtues of medicinal plants.

Other most useless PhD degrees include:

• A PhD degree in Commercial Art and Graphic Design
• A PhD degree in Mass Media
• A PhD degree in Music
• A PhD degree in Marketing and Market Research
• A PhD degree in Information Systems

Concluding Remarks 

The government wants to review the framework of the third cycle and what makes PhD degree mostly useless. 

Its proposals are not unanimously supported by the community of research professors, who fear the arrival of "light theses".

The discontent is growing among researchers. At issue: a draft decree aimed at reforming the doctorate, the highest French university degree.

The main aim of institutions is to guarantee doctoral students a very high level of training and better national and international recognition of their degrees.