I went straight from undergraduate into a PhD program and skipped the master's step. I was incredibly fortunate to find a supervisor who thought master's were a waste of time and was happy to state my undergraduate study was sufficient for him to take me on. That outlook and position saved me a tonne of money and a year of life.
I say this because he was damned right and wish more people would just say master's are not a requirement for pretty much anything. Prior to getting into a program "early," I was going to go do a master's just to be allowed to apply to PhD programs. The courses i was looking at offered me nothing but a badge. I found those who wanted to go do master's were, more often than not, just lost people who thought it was the natural 'next thing to do' after undergraduate study; like they were in a video game and the master's was the next harder level to beat.
The only good thing I've found worth doing a master's for is to retrain and specialize, but I find this is more reflective of having not really utilized your undergraduate degree than anything else. It's a welcome second chance, but gosh, it's a racket far too often. F anyone who thinks you need one to do anything.
I have neither but have heard the opposite - a masters is fun, learning a lot and rewarding. A PhD is brutal, under compensated and you'll spend 75% of time filling our grants, paperwork, TAing and everything but research.
Really depends on the country (I did my PhD in the UK), but I don't know of any PhD student writing grants, and TAing doesn't generally take up more than a day a week (I think I did no more than a couple of hours a week). In the US, you sometimes need to take classes for PhD study (I think this is terrible, BTW, but that's a somewhat separate thing), but for me, I did research, I'd say, 75% of the time.
A PhD is a waste of time if you're in terms of improving your income. It's just an apprenticeship in research, so it's only good if you want to do that as a career. In terms of enjoyment, I think a PhD is really tied to how much joy you can derive from research, much of which is months and months of work to just prove one or two incredibly minor things (which, honestly, are going to be of little interest to anyone and basically will serve only to show you can do research, not that what you were researching was in any way noteworthy). For me, I loved my time as a PhD student because what I was researching involved learning and using a lot of cool stuff, and I really liked the academic community "feel" and culture (for all its many, many faults).
I say this because he was damned right and wish more people would just say master's are not a requirement for pretty much anything. Prior to getting into a program "early," I was going to go do a master's just to be allowed to apply to PhD programs. The courses i was looking at offered me nothing but a badge. I found those who wanted to go do master's were, more often than not, just lost people who thought it was the natural 'next thing to do' after undergraduate study; like they were in a video game and the master's was the next harder level to beat.
The only good thing I've found worth doing a master's for is to retrain and specialize, but I find this is more reflective of having not really utilized your undergraduate degree than anything else. It's a welcome second chance, but gosh, it's a racket far too often. F anyone who thinks you need one to do anything.
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