 The seven best doctorate degrees of 2023. In today's video, we're going to be talking about the best doctoral degrees that you can get. So the thing about doctoral degrees is they take a very long time to get. On average, a doctoral degree is going to take over eight years on its own, right? That's not counting the bachelor's degree or the master's degree that you have to get before you even go into a doctoral program. So in many cases, doctoral programs are going to take somewhere between 12 to 13, maybe even 14 or 15 years before you even get your degree. Now that is specifically for a PhD. There's other types of doctoral degrees known as professional degrees. These typically are going to be much faster. I would say on average, they take somewhere between six and nine years. And those who get doctoral degrees go over $100,000 in debt on average. And I've talked about this in other videos. So I'm not going to get too deep into the statistics and stuff like that. I've done that in other videos. But the whole point here is if you are going to get a doctoral degree, you're going to spend a tremendous amount of time and very likely money as well. And if you're not directly spending money, because there are cases where you can get a stipend, you can get your whole degree paid for, you are spending something even more precious than money. And that is opportunity costs, because that entire time that you were getting your PhD, you could have been making money. So it's very, very important that you make sure you're getting a good return on your investment and you make it very clear to yourself what your goals are. So hopefully this video can help with that if you're considering getting a doctorate, because I'll be honest with you, I don't think it's a good option for over 95% of people. And this is coming from somebody who got a doctorate myself. So if you appreciate videos like this, go ahead and smash that like button even harder than Dr. Bruce Banner. And let's go ahead and jump into this one. All right. So the first one on the list is going to be a physical therapist. So there's about 11,000 people graduating with doctorates in physical therapy every year. And if you type in physical therapist on Glassdoor, you're going to see they make about $82,000 per year. And if you look up physical therapist on BLS, you'll see they make about 89,000. Additionally, if you put physical therapist into LinkedIn, sort by entry level, you're going to see 75,000 results. And the best thing about physical therapy is that it does have an 89% meaning score. That means that people are very satisfied with their jobs typically. And yes, physical therapy does have some of the highest job satisfaction ratings. So overall physical therapy when it comes to the salary is a little bit on the low side, especially for a doctoral degree. Now, this is a professional level degree. So you can typically get it within about six to eight years. So yeah, this one is pretty good. And you're going to notice that there's going to be a lot of medical related doctoral degrees on this list. And there is definitely a reason for that. First of all, medical degrees tend to have a lot of demand. So again, if we look at BLS number of jobs is 247,000, and it's growing at 22%, which is much faster than average. And of course, one of the main reasons for this is first of all, it's a necessity, right? People absolutely are going to need healthcare no matter what. And second of all, you actually have to get a degree in order to get into the job, right? So you can't just decide one day, Oh, I'm going to be a physical therapist. And six months later, you've got a job, you have to go through that process of getting a degree. Whereas in a lot of other industries, there are alternative ways to get into those careers. So that creates what's known as a barrier to entry. People have to jump through those hoops, they have to get that degree in order to get licensed, and then eventually get a job. So getting the degree sucks. But once you have it, you have that nice barrier to entry. Number six on the list is going to be dentist. So according to NCES, the National Center of Education Statistics, there's about 6,300 dentists graduating every year. So if you look up dentist on glass door, you're going to see $251,000 a year for the salary. And if you look it up on BLS, you're going to see 159,000. Now there is a huge disparity there about $100,000, because it really does depend on what specialty you go down, and whether you work for someone else or start your own practice. But if you look on BLS, there's 155,000 jobs available, and it's growing at 7%, which is faster than average. And if you type in dentist on LinkedIn at the entry level, there are 18,000 results. So it's a classic career, still a lot of opportunity there. I would say on average, this degree is going to take around eight to nine years. It is also a professional level degree as well. And again, it has that barrier to entry because you have to get the degree in order to get licensed and get a job. Now one thing about dentists is they do tend to go very deep into debt. I've seen estimates that the average debt dentists accumulated is over $250,000. And it can be even more than that if you start your own practice because you have to take out a loan to buy the building and rent all the equipment, etc. So dentist is one of those things where you're going to eventually make really, really good money, but you basically have to sacrifice your 20s as well as part of your 30s before you even make it above ground. Number five on the list is going to be pharmacist. You would get your PharmD in order to become a pharmacist. This is the degree that I actually got myself. And there are 14,000 pharmacy graduates per year, according to NCES. Now, according to Glassdoor, pharmacists make about $128,000 per year. And according to BLS, they also make $128,000. Now the number of jobs for pharmacists is 314,000 and it's growing at 0%. Keep in mind, this was the 2019 statistics. Now, the reason that I kept the 2018-2019 statistics is because obviously a lot of stuff happened in the world after 2019 and it really changed a bunch of different things in a way that isn't necessarily permanent. So we really don't know whether these changes are permanent or whether it was just something that happened because of the, you know, everything that happened in the world. So I decided on these lists to actually just keep the 2018-2019 statistics. And after everything goes back to normal, maybe in 2022, 2023, 2024, I'll probably go ahead and update the list. But with that being said, when everything happened in the world, the demand for pharmacists actually surged and they even started offering sign-on bonuses for pharmacists again. So that was really interesting. The reason that the growth rate was at 0% is really complicated, to be honest. But the main reason is because pharmacy schools are just churning people out. There really isn't any regulation in pharmacy schools like there is with medical schools. So hopefully in the future, in order to preserve the profession, we see a little bit more of that. But if you type in pharmacist on LinkedIn at the entry level, you are going to see 30,000 results. And so 14,000 graduates, 30,000 results at the entry level, not bad. Now, I've made other videos where I get more in depth on this, but just be very careful if you go into pharmacy thinking that you want to become a retail pharmacist. Those jobs tend to be the ones that are much more saturated than the clinical jobs. But yeah, I was able to get my PharmD degree in about five years and nine months or so. So this is one that you can do accelerated relatively easily, and it is a doctoral level degree. Next on the list is going to be STEM degrees, and these are PhDs. PhD stands for Doctor of Philosophy. Now, the reason that the S in STEM is a lowercase S, I did that on purpose. So the reason that is is because science degrees are simply not as good as technology engineering or mathematics degrees when it comes to the numbers. So everybody tries to over generalize things like, oh, just get a STEM degree. And that is not true. Some of the worst degrees are actually science degrees. Now, one thing I will say about PhDs, and I'm not going to go too in depth on this because I've made other videos that really cover this in depth, but PhDs do take a long time. However, STEM PhDs tend to be much faster and more affordable than non STEM PhDs. And this is all because of simple supply and demand. If you graduate with an engineering bachelor's degree, you will very likely be able to find a job relatively easily. Whereas if you graduate with a sociology bachelor's degree, it's going to be very difficult for you to find a job in sociology. And so a lot of people who graduate with sociology bachelor's degrees are going to go back to school and try to get a master's or a PhD. Whereas many people who graduate with engineering bachelor's degrees don't have to do that. They can start making money right off the bat. And so colleges have to try to incentivize people with engineering bachelor degrees to go back and get their master's or their doctorate. Whereas they don't really have to do anything for people with sociology degrees. And this is one of the reasons why you see a lot of stipends for STEM PhD programs, whereas you don't see that for art, sociology, social sciences, etc. Or at least if you do, it's much more competitive and harder to get. Now that being said, I'll just go ahead and randomly pick one. Electrical and electronics engineering at the doctorate level, you're going to see 2200 graduates per year. And if you look up electrical engineer on Glassdoor, you're going to see they make about $95,000 a year. Obviously, if you got a PhD, you'd probably make quite a bit more than that. And if you look up electrical engineer on LinkedIn at the entry level, you're going to see 38,000 results. Now some people might want to become a college professor. And again, with STEM degrees, it's much easier to get into those positions. With non-STEM degrees, you're probably going to see a position that has like, you know, one opening and there's like 400, 500 people applying to it. And this is why a lot of people think that graduate school is very similar to a pyramid scheme with certain degrees. But if you are able to become a professor, and especially if you're able to get tenure, it can be a really good gig. So for instance, if you look up professor on Glassdoor, you're going to see that they make about $114,000 a year on average. But if you type in college professor on LinkedIn at the entry level, there's only about 4,000 results. So I can tell you from experience, I was in undergrad, I joined a medical fraternity, and many people from that fraternity ended up going into doctoral programs. A lot of them ended up going into professional programs like dentistry, pharmacy, medical doctor, and some of them ended up going into PhD programs. And of course, I kept in touch with many of those people. And I can tell you the ones who went into PhD programs for the most part did not have a good experience. Even the ones who ended up finishing their PhDs typically complained about it quite a bit. And I'm not going to get into details here, but you really need to research this and know what you're getting yourself into if you decide to go into a PhD program. I interviewed someone on my channel, Javier, who was in a PhD program. He realized that it was kind of just a really bad experience overall. It was not a good return on investment. It was not at all what he expected it to be. They were working him really hard. He was working over 80 hours a week, etc, etc, etc. And he realized after he finished, he probably wasn't going to be able to get a job. And if he was able to get a job, it likely wasn't going to pay very well. So what did he do? He went to a career that has much more demand, which is digital marketing. And I interviewed him. Definitely check that out. If you are interested in getting into a career like this, like if you're thinking about going to a PhD program and you decide it's not for you because there's simply no demand for a lot of those, definitely check out the free masterclass, which I'll put down in the description, as well as the pinned comment below. Next one on the list, number three is going to be a doctorate level nurse. So the technical name for this one is DNP or Doctor of Nursing Practice. And this would get you into a position called nurse practitioner. Now currently there's about 3,500 people graduating with this degree per year, but it's going to get much more common in the future because the career of nurse practitioner is moving towards becoming a doctoral level degree, right? So they're basically trying to make it to where everybody who becomes a nurse practitioner has to get a doctorate. Now, if you look this one up on Glassdoor, you're going to see they make about $139,000 a year. And if you look up nurse practitioner on LinkedIn at the entry level, you are going to see a whopping 196,000 results. So this is a phenomenal career to go into at the doctoral level, it's good. If you can still get in at the master's level, it's also good. There's also certain specialties where you can make even more money. Some of the nurse practitioner specialties make even more than doctors, believe it or not. So yeah, nurse practitioner, phenomenal career. Another thing that's great about it is it's more flexible than if you became a medical doctor. So if you become a medical doctor and let's say you pick surgeon, for instance, and then you decide, you know what, I kind of don't like being on call and getting woken up in the middle of the night and having to go and do like 12 hour surgeries or something like that. Unfortunately, it's a really difficult for you to change your specialty. But if you become a nurse practitioner, it's much more easy for you to change your specialty, right? So if you're like, you know what, I want to go into dermatology instead, you can do that. Number two on the list is dental specialist. And this is somebody who became a dentist and then they decided that they wanted to specialize further. Now, this obviously takes a very long amount of time because to become a dentist, let's say you take eight years. Well, you have to go to school again to specialize. But with that being said, if you become an orthodontist, for instance, you're going to make about $292,000 a year, maybe even more. And if you type in dental specialist on LinkedIn, you're going to see 15,000 results. So this is one that is going to take a tremendous amount of your time. It's basically going to take up all of your 20s into your 30s. You might even be 40 before you break even. But when you do break even, you are going to be making incredibly good money, especially if you start your own practice. Next one on the list, number one is going to be medical doctor. Now, this is number one for doctoral degrees. But with that being said, I still don't think this is a good choice for probably 95% of people. I made a video talking about why I think becoming a medical doctor is overrated. And the reason I made this video is because when I was an undergrad, it seemed like everybody and their mom and their cousin and their dog wanted to become a medical doctor. Like I would be in all these classes and I would ask, hey, what major are you? They'd be like, Oh, pre-med. I'm like, Oh, okay, okay, cool. I'll turn to the other person. Hey, what major are you pre-med? You know, it seemed like everybody wanted to become a doctor. And then a lot of them are also pressured by their family to become doctors as well. And the reality is becoming a doctor is an incredibly massive commitment for you to make. It's another one of those where you're giving up your 20s and your 30s, you're probably going to go over $200,000, $250,000 in debt. And then finally, you become a doctor. But guess what? Doctors have some of the highest depression and suicide rates. And it's because they have a massive amount of pressure on them. So you really want to make sure you know what you're getting yourself into if you want to become a doctor. Don't just do it because society says you should or your family says you should or anything like that. Only become a doctor if you're doing it for the right reasons. But with that being said, about 18,000 people become MDs every year and another 6,000 get their DO or doctor of osteopathic medicine degree. And they're actually merging those two degrees over the next five years or so. Now medical doctors according to Glassdoor make on average about $200,000 a year, but that is going to range greatly depending on your specialty. And if you look up medical doctor on LinkedIn, you're going to see 53,000 results at the entry level. So there's definitely quite a bit of demand for people who are medical doctors. Now again, depending on your specialty, you might make up to like 617,000 for neurosurgeons or 186,000 for pediatric infectious disease doctors. And the length of time it takes you to become a doctor is also going to range greatly. So for instance, you know, four years for your bachelor degree, another four years for medical school, and then maybe you do three years to become a family practice doctor. So that would be about 11 years to become a doctor assuming that, you know, everything you finish really quickly on time. But there are many cases where it might be four years to get your bachelor's, four years to get your doctorate, and then seven years for the residency and then another two or three years for a fellowship. So that would be about 18 years before you start making the fully fledged doctor money. Right. So I'm going to get off my soapbox here. Make sure you do your research. That's all I'm going to say. Please, please listen to me on this. Make sure you do your research. Again, I would highly recommend if you're considering especially a PhD program to check out that interview with Javier, which I will put right here.