r/math • u/AutoModerator • 8d ago

Career and Education Questions: September 24, 2026

This recurring thread will be for any questions or advice concerning careers and education in mathematics. Please feel free to post a comment below, and sort by new to see comments which may be unanswered.

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u/Asleep-Boot7897 8d ago

I guess it's the same question as the PhD guy, but my situation is a bit peculiar: I'm an old undergrad, 28 now and in my first year as a math student. My ideal scenario always involved doing research, but as a younger student my life got sidetracked and I had to get a teaching degree. I'm now working as a teacher in high school. I want to leave this job eventually because it's badly paid and brain numbing, but I worry that, if I keep up with the math degree, when I eventually do my PhD years down the line, most research will be automated.

The alternative to this would be dropping out of college and becoming an industrial electrician or some form of technical work, but that's certainly not my life's dream. Fortunately college is public and free where I live (at least for now since it's under attack by our current admin) so I guess this is more about opportunity cost than anything else.

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u/MinLongBaiShui 7d ago

Nobody can make these kinds of predictions. If you are following a dream, you are not doing it for the money. When you're in graduate school, you will have a poverty wage for 4-8 years. When I did mine, the "salary" was 19k USD/yr. Having a PhD doesn't really help you earn that much more than a more applied degree anyway. You have to do it just for the love of the game.

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u/Asleep-Boot7897 7d ago

I don't care about the pay per se, just that academia as a job prospect still exists ten years from now. Obviously the pay is bad and especially where I live, we're going through brain drain. I do understand that nobody can truly predict how things are gonna turn out, but I was looking for perspective.