What's the value of a PhD? Reflections on Cumberland Lodge
Dr Steve Joy This week, I’ve once again had the delight of participating in Cumberland Lodge’s annual Life Beyond the PhD conference, along with more than sixty research students and speakers from many subjects, universities, and corners of the UK. The venue is magical: half lost in the middle of a thousand-year-old Great Park, the Lodge is a former royal residence with its own charmingly déclassé inventory of furniture supposedly found by the Queen Mother in the cupboards of Windsor Castle. Yet what struck me most vividly about the conference was not, in fact, the sense of having wandered into a low-budget prequel to The King’s Speech . Nor was it how engaged, thoughtful, and open-minded the participants were (although this was certainly inspiring). What struck me most powerfully was the pretty rare opportunity to ask big questions about the value of a PhD, of research per se, and to juxtapose these with the sort of practical, real-world concerns that doctoral students have to conf...