How Crucial Is A Doctoral Degree?

Or do we need an Ivy League degree or an MBA to embark on a steady career progression?

I recently came across an article in the Forbes magazine centering on Athe education level of 400 richest Americans. The article makes me wonder if we really need a doctorate degree in our lives. Or in short, how high a degree should we pursue in our tertiary education.

Looking for another perspective, one may wonder what is the significance of holding a PhD which is often deemed as the jewel among a slew of post-graduate degrees which encompass both the Masters and Master of Business Administration (MBA). Does it add more value to one’s career or professional development?

Ironically, what I gathered from the Forbes article is that doctorate degrees do not serve as passports to becoming billionaires. In fact, an undergraduate education is reckoned to be a sufficient entry level to becoming a US millionaire.

Likewise, most of the globally famous individuals in the Forbes 400 list consider higher education to be no more than a “degree”. There are 84 graduates in the Forbes 400 list (21%) which runs parallel with the fact that only 33% of American adults have completed a Bachelor’s degree.

Jeffrey Preston Bezos, founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Amazon who amassed a mind-blowing US$112 billion fortune in 2018, graduated from Princeton University in 1986 with degrees in electrical engineering and computer science (for the record, Bezos surpassed Microsoft Corp founder Bill Gates as the richest person on the planet in July 2017).