Annual Salary?

[Tatsukun]

I make around 4 MILLION ! ! ... um ... yen.
That's something like 35K in USD

Oh well, it's enough, no kids thank god. Then again, I live in Tokyo, where my annual rent is about 17K USD (roughly half my income)

I hate rent!

Other questions:
I have a BS (Marketing), and a teaching certificate from Cambridge.

I teach English at a big University in Tokyo. I don't make too much much money, but I get 23 weeks of paid vacation a year. That's pretty fun.

I suppose I could work part time during the off time, but who wants to work when you can game?!

-Tatsu

 

[The Edge]

Im not employed, but I get £30 a week form a government 'EMA fund' (Education Maintenence Allowence) just to show up at college which I would do anyway. That converts to $52.3453. Plus theres no tax applyed to it, and I have no major costs/bills/expenses etc.

ps - I dont know much about the american education system, but I think UK college is different to USA college. Here its curently free optional higher education that goes between leaveing high school and university.

personaly I think that tax money could be spent better, but since refuseing it wont fix that, im not complaining.

 

[tarchon]

Hmmm. I meant either a masters level or a doctoral level.

Yes, pursuing a degree is going to take longer while working full-time. But it is one way around the loss of income.

There are tons of people who pursue masters degrees, MBAs, JDs, etc in part time programs.

PhDs are very individualized in nature and they do not encourage part time study, but there are still some people who pursue them in part time programs. Especially in fields like computer science where there is a significant pay disparity between grad assistant pay and full time employee pay i.e. would you rather be a full time student/part time employee for 20k a year or full time employee/part time student for 100k+ a year.

Of course anyone would rather get 100K (which is pretty high for an MS in CS anyway), but I spent a good 8 years in grad school and I never met a single person out of literally hundreds who managed to work a (separate) full time job while in in a PhD program. Most PhD candidates work 50-60 hours a week on classes and research for at least 2-3 years, and often more like 4.
One thing I did consistently observe though is that everybody who did succumb to the temptation to start working full time again after the first couple years (after completing coursework and exams but before completing te dissertation and defense) never finished, or at least didn't finish until they took a long leave.

 

[Desdichado]

I teach English at a big University in Tokyo. I don't make too much much money, but I get 23 weeks of paid vacation a year. That's pretty fun.

I suppose I could work part time during the off time, but who wants to work when you can game?!

Holy crap! Talk about quality of life! I am a bit envious!

 

[Desdichado]

I find there to be a diminishing return on salary. Like, the jump from say, $30k a year to $50k a year is probably huge, the jump from $50k a year to $70k is probaby hardly noticable at all. Anyone else feel this to be true?

I dunno. I make 86k/year, and I'd certainly notice a big change if I had a 20k bump in salary. Maybe my numbers are skewed slightly upwards, though--I've got four kids and live in a relatively (although nothing like SoCal or NYC) expensive part of the country. My threshold for which the diminishing returns kicks on may just be higher. I can definitely see a picture hovering somewhere between 100k and 110k annually where any more would just increase my saving though.

Although even that's significant, as it could advance my retirement by years when all is said and done. But in the short term it wouldn't make much difference.

 

[DaveStebbins]

For a PhD? I don't know what kind of PhD programs you're familiar with, but that's a pretty unrealistic expectation. It's something you can do with a masters, but I've never seen anyone pull that off on the doctoral level, though sometimes you can get away with doing some part-time consulting.

One of my gaming buddies just got his PhD in Engineering while working full-time as an Engineer. It took him something like 6-7 years, but he did it. So I'm pretty sure it can be done if one really wants to. True, he didn't have as much free time for his wife and kids as he would have liked, but they're both glad he did it (and both glad it's over). I guess it's a matter of deciding one's priorities and sticking with it.

-Dave

 

[tarchon]

One of my gaming buddies just got his PhD in Engineering while working full-time as an Engineer. It took him something like 6-7 years, but he did it. So I'm pretty sure it can be done if one really wants to. True, he didn't have as much free time for his wife and kids as he would have liked, but they're both glad he did it (and both glad it's over). I guess it's a matter of deciding one's priorities and sticking with it.

My guess is that he also had a very nice committee chair and an unusually laissez-faire department. Most schools literally have a full-time residence requirement on PhDs. ASU isn't even what I would call a tough school, and all PhD students there have a 1 year minimum full time requirement, plus whatever individual departments want to tack on. 2 years isn't uncommon, and there are usually a lot of obligatory seminars and such involved with that. I could see somebody only doing a year or two full time and then stretching the rest out, but anyone who does a part-time PhD all the way through has had rules bent in their favor. That's not to say it wasn't justified or anything, but it would be extremely exceptional.

 

[Endur]

Most schools literally have a full-time residence requirement on PhDs.

I can think of at least two Virginia schools that do not have a full-time residence requirement for a Ph.D. in Computer Science. Neither Virginia Tech nor George Mason University have such a requirement. I checked Va Tech recently and GMU several years ago.

But, a one or two year full-time requirement is very easy to satisfy, so I don't see much of a difference between going full time for a year or two and part time for X more years vs. part-time for y years. As far as I'm concerned, these two scenarios are the same.

And, I would not expect a full-time student to meet part-time students who are pursuing a Ph.D. Part-time students tend to have work and family priorities that cause them not to spend time with full-time students. As a part-time student myself, I've met five or so other part-time CS Ph.D. students from various universities in the last eight years.

 

[tarchon]

I can think of at least two Virginia schools that do not have a full-time residence requirement for a Ph.D. in Computer Science. Neither Virginia Tech nor George Mason University have such a requirement. I checked Va Tech recently and GMU several years ago.

But, a one or two year full-time requirement is very easy to satisfy, so I don't see much of a difference between going full time for a year or two and part time for X more years vs. part-time for y years. As far as I'm concerned, these two scenarios are the same.

And, I would not expect a full-time student to meet part-time students who are pursuing a Ph.D. Part-time students tend to have work and family priorities that cause them not to spend time with full-time students. As a part-time student myself, I've met five or so other part-time CS Ph.D. students from various universities in the last eight years.

http://www.vt.edu/academics/gcat/gcaPolicies.html

Residency Requirements for Ph.D. and Ed.D.

At least 24 graduate-level credit hours, including no less than 15 hours of course work (not research 7994), must be completed while in residence at the Virginia Tech Blacksburg campus. Students may receive residence credits during the summer sessions, but not during any academic year semester(s) in which they are enrolled for fewer than 6 credits or if they are employed more than one-half time (that is, a maximum obligation external to their academic program of 20 hours a week). The Graduate School may grant policy exceptions to individual degree programs and students.

 

[Zander]

I teach English at a big University in Tokyo.

Tatsu,
If you don't mind me asking, which one?

I was a student in Tokyo for six months as part of my doctorate.

Everone else,
Sorry about this OT post.