Regardless of whether it is the topic of your final thesis (e.g. master’s thesis) or another field of research that you consider particularly relevant and close to your heart – by writing your doctorate, you may have the opportunity to specialize in that topic, to continue working on the questions that move or interest you and to become an expert in your topic, perhaps contributing to an urgent debate, or helping solve an academic or social problem.

If you are motivated by an interest in a particular topic, asking yourself the following questions can be helpful:

• Who is the best supervisor and which is the best university/college for me?
  Are there any structured programmes or collaborative research projects that could be relevant to my field of research?
• Is there specific financing available for my subject area?
• In which professional (possibly also interdisciplinary) context is the topic located? In which subject do I want to/can I obtain a doctorate?
• Do I have the necessary formal requirements to obtain a doctorate in this subject? What methodological knowledge do I need, what do I still lack and how can I acquire it?
• What does the topic mean to me?

Were you drawn to the academic nature of the study programme? Is being a researcher or scholar an interesting career goal for you? Then a doctorate is the right choice for you, because with the exception of genuine doctoral positions, a large proportion of academic activities at higher education institutions and non-university research institutions require a doctorate. In research management too, a doctorate is a welcome and often required qualification, just as it is for management positions in non-university research establishments such as museums, educational institutions, etc.

A doctorate enables you to expand your academic qualifications and shows that you are capable of independent academic work with a doctoral thesis and a subsequent oral examination to prove it. However, even an excellent doctorate does not give automatic entry into an academic career.

There are currently very few permanent positions in the fields of research and teaching below professorship level at higher education institutions in German-speaking countries. The path to a professorship therefore often leads through a long phase of status insecurity, during which a high level of commitment and often a high degree of flexibility and mobility are required. Whether there is a realistic chance of a professorship at the end of this path is usually not foreseeable at the beginning, as this depends on developments within your subject, but also on higher education policy decisions. In Germany, attempts are currently being made to make post-doctoral career paths more predictable with instruments such as tenure-track professorships. However, traditional career paths, such as a habilitation or habilitation-equivalent achievements continue to exist.

However, a doctorate in the humanities and social sciences also qualifies you for a variety of activities both within and outside the academic world. It can therefore be worthwhile to look into these different options during your doctorate and, if necessary, to try out different paths – e.g. via different work experiences, internships, periods abroad, self-employment…

Further information and advice

Whether it’s in business, administration, politics, foundations and media, or in cultural institutions, archives and museums – you will meet people everywhere in Germany with doctoral degrees, even outside academia, especially in middle and upper management positions.

Nevertheless, there is no simple and clear answer to the question of whether a doctorate is also worthwhile for a career outside academia. It depends very much on your subject, career goal or the sector you are aiming for, as well as your other personal circumstances. The situation in the humanities and social sciences is not as clear cut as in medicine – where a “doctor” title is still very often associated with the career goal of physician – or in the natural sciences – where a doctorate is often a necessity for a career in industry. In most cases, other qualifications and experience are required in addition to the doctorate to successfully enter the non-university job market.

A part-time doctorate can have the advantage of allowing you to gain valuable professional experience during your doctorate. However, it can also mean having too little time available to work on the doctoral thesis. It should not be the case that all after-work, weekend and vacation time is completely planned for the doctoral project. Therefore, realistic time planning is important.

You can find services related to mental health at Mental Health Services for Students: individual advice and short-term psychotherapy, courses on various topics (including procrastination) as well as Online advice on writing problems (in German).

Some degree programmes in the humanities and social sciences lead to a relatively clearly defined career goal, e.g. lawyer, teacher, psychologist. Most, however, lead to a wide range of options and the corresponding job markets are diverse, but also quite confusing. Job advertisements for young professionals that are specifically aimed at graduates of a particular subject are few and far between, especially in many humanities and some social science subjects. So why not stay at university for the time being, further develop your existing research interests, acquire additional qualifications through a doctorate and then enter the job market from a better starting point?

If you are asking yourself these questions, it may be useful to seek appropriate advice, e.g. from the Career Service at JGU (in German). It can help you clarify your motivation, weigh up the possible benefits of a doctorate for your further career development, and even point you in the direction of possible alternatives that you may not have thought of yet.

Aiming for a doctorate because there are no concrete alternatives is generally not advisable.

It is quite common for university professors or other lecturers to approach advanced students on their own initiative and ask them whether they are interested in doing a doctorate, possibly even offering them a doctoral position, e.g. if the student has performed well in a course or final thesis or proven themselves as a student assistant or graduate assistant. A good relationship and mutual appreciation between the doctoral candidate and the supervisor are essential and an important basis for a successful doctorate.

However, such an offer does not mean that you should rule out other options too quickly. Rather, you should thoroughly examine your motivations, expectations and the general conditions relating to the doctorate. Once you have decided that you want to do your doctorate, you should also consider where best to undertake your project and find the most suitable supervisor(s).

This can also be another university/higher education institution (possibly also abroad) or with another supervisor. It is therefore worth finding out about the opportunities in your subject and related disciplines and clarifying questions such as:

• Which institutes and which supervisors have the relevant research foci for the topic you wish to address in your doctoral thesis and the method(s) you wish to use?
• Is the supervisor you are considering well networked in the academic community?
• How well does the topic you want to address fit into current academic debates?

In fact, there is little reliable data on how long doctorates take on average in Germany and what percentage of doctoral projects that are started are actually completed. In structured doctoral programmes, a doctorate is generally expected to take three to four years, but the actual duration of doctorates in the humanities and social sciences can certainly be longer. A realistic time schedule is important.

Particularly in the humanities and social sciences, many doctoral candidates begin work on their thesis project with a high level of intrinsic motivation, strong identification with the goals of academic research and with their own thesis topic. Very ambitious goals are often set when defining the research question. But during the doctorate comes the realisation that the work involved is much more demanding and complex than previously assumed. The research question has to be narrowed down, the corpus reduced, and you must face the fact that by the end of the thesis you have fallen badly short of answering all the questions you asked yourself.

These experiences are not failures, but part of the academic socialisation and qualification process associated with doing a doctorate. In the natural and life sciences, it is very common for several doctoral candidates in a research group to work on relatively small sub-problems and achieve progress together. In some humanities and social sciences, however, the image of the lone scholar at a desk in an ivory tower still prevails. Yet there are many opportunities for you – before and alongside the publication of your doctoral dissertation – to have an impact on the academic community and also on society. Academic communication and the transfer of research results into practice are now seen as the “third mission” of universities and research institutions. Perhaps your topic has a connection to your professional practice or your voluntary work? Perhaps you would like to present your results on social media or in a blog? Shorter scholarly articles can often generate more attention than a weighty doctoral thesis. Attending and actively participating in conferences, seminars, congresses and meetings of young researchers can also help you focus on and communicate the relevance of your topic.

The decision for or against a doctorate in the humanities or social sciences is often one based on a high degree of uncertainty: the question of how many of these uncertainties you are willing to accept and how important the goal of a doctorate is to you in relation to other life goals cannot be answered with purely academic arguments. Rather, it is also about your personal values. Individual advisory sessions can help you to find out how you want to set your priorities.

This question cannot be answered in general terms either, but depends on your individual requirements and goals. An individual advisory session can also help here.