They’re also different career paths. PhDs generally lead to academia, government jobs, or quant funds. If you want to wind up in one of those fields, more power to you.
Yeah, I still strongly disagree with people saying MBA’s, MA’s, etc are more prestigious than a CFA charter. Unless you have a top tier MBA from Harvard, Wharton or the like, the CFA will get you more attention hands down. I live in the Northeast U.S., and everyone and their brother has a Master’s degree here. There is no differentiation, it’s the standard. A CFA is not standard, although the charter is now becoming a focus of many people since just the MBA or equivalent doesn’t stand out anymore.
yes, and its become a CFA > MBA argument again. The question was something along the lines of, “How does the workload of PHD compare to a CFA Charter.”
Yeah it never stays on topic, but then again a better question may be what are you planning on doing? A PhD holder prob has no need for a CFA charter other than to cushion their resume. Workloads, I have no idea as I did an MBA, not PhD. I would imagine PhD is a lot more work. Grad school isn’t very difficult, you just show up and do the work and you get the degree. Oh yeah, and pay a shit load of money too…
most ppl i know think the CFA is pretty basic…MBA is different from a MA academic fields…
Well, there are a lot more MBA’s than CFA charterholders out there. Supply and demand argument takes it from there. Think about how many MBA’s are churned out of business schools now. I’m not trying to knock MBA’s, I have one myself. I’m just saying they aren’t as exclusive as a CFA charter. Whether or not you think a CFA is ‘basic’, that’s your own opinion. Let’s be honest, an MBA is not difficult to obtain. People don’t pay tens of thousands of dollars to get denied or fail out of b-school. No one would go if that were the case.
i never said anything about an MBA…i think MBAs are a waste of money…i’m talking about Masters…an MBA is the CFA for networking…
An MBA is a Master’s degree. What do you think the “M” stands for?
I think he means that only academic masters’ have any weight, because only academic study is real study. The rest is just “networking,” which “everyone” knows doesn’t have any value. Of course, he also points out that academic knowledge is useless for investing. So, putting those two together, clearly, a masters degree only has value if it is, in fact, valueless. At least for investing. Please pass the joint. I want summa dat. v=.~
Just cause its useless for investing doesn’t mean its useless in life…and I was being a bit harsh, its not “useless”, just not very useful for my style…i’m sure there are tons of ppl out there that have applied academic theories and done well in investing…but I can’t name any except those guys at LTCM… academia teaches you how to think and how to interpret the world around you…it sets a framework for you to build on…its unfortunate though that lots of PHDs don’t ever end up doing that…they just end up being nerds…
MBAs are better for finding a job. CFAs are better for keeping it.
I have no idea how an MBA got looped into this argument. Var99 just suddenly brought it up first for some reason
I totally disagree, and you probably have no idea what you’re talking about. If you put in the time spent on a phd into the CFA program, you certainly far exceed the 300 hours per level. In fact, you probably quadrupled it, if not more.
It was in context. Someone brought up Master’s degress vs. CFA etc. An MBA is a master’s degree.
So you quadrupled it? So what? You can still easily fail, there is no element of chance like that with a PhD. No logical person can say it’s harder to get a PhD/ MBA/ Masters than a CFA. You can’t fail any of those 3.
Someone doesn’t understand survivor bias. 100% of people with Ph.D.s (honorary doctorates excluded) finished a Ph.D. program. Not 100% of people who start a Ph.D. end up with Ph.D.s. After attrition, I would bet that the number is more like 50%. No one receives a Ph.D. after only 900 hours of studying (approximately 6 months of full-time work), plus a few exams.
Totally agree there is some bias there, but basic argument still holds. In my business school class, very few of us didn’t make it all the way through the 2 years. I’d estimate we lost maybe 10-15% of the class by graduation. PhD’s may have a higher attrition rate due to the sheer volume of work and commitment needed. Again, I’m not sure what the value of CFA and PhD would be. We have some PhD’s here where I work and some are pretty high up in the firm. I don’t think very many have their CFA though. They don’t seem to want or need it I guess.
i have a ton of respect for PHDs…all my close buddies in grad school went on to do PHDs in excellent schools…let me put it this way, a strong PHD is equivalent to an MBA, CFA, CA…you have any idea how hard it is to score a PHD in a good school? i’m done with this discussion. find me at the water cooler talking about hot classy babes.
I would guess that it is much harder to get accepted to a PhD program from a top school that to graduate conditional on having gotten in. They don’t take many people and tons apply. Also, you should probably focus on econ/accounting/finance PhDs, rather than the whole spectrum, since that would probably be most likely what someone would consider versus a CFA. I would guess that the econ/accounting/finance PhDs have higher graduation rates within four years than almost any other subject. As bchad said, it’s either hard to judge because its qualitative, or in hard sciences they have to spend time working in labs and doing all kinds of extra crap (and then if they don’t want to go into finance they have to do a postdoc or other crap).
Ok, I’ve been avoiding this thread due to the stupidity of the title (“CFA vs PhD”), but somehow, it is becoming a monster thread. Anyway, I am commenting on this sentence which I found interesting: “I would guess that it is much harder to get accepted to a PhD program from a top school that to graduate conditional on having gotten in.” From a statistical perspective, this is probably correct. However, we should also be aware that the definition of “difficulty” is different depending on your stage of life. When you are an undergrad trying to get into a PhD program, it is simple to focus completely on academics. “Difficulty” is objective - whoever has the best GPA, test scores, papers and recommendations wins. In graduate school, this stuff is still important. However, you must also deal with the fact that you are spending your life chasing a degree, while other people your age are moving up in their careers, making money, possible getting married, buying house, etc. Sure, if you are determined enough, you will probably be able to put together a thesis and get the PhD. The problem is that every PhD student will at one point question whether or not their life sacrifice is worth it. The people who drop out of PhD programs are not necessarily less smart or hardworking than the people who complete the program. Many of them just decide that the cost is too great. So, academic difficulty is not the only difficulty of PhD programs. To complete the program, you must also have great determination and the sheer belief that what you are doing is the best use of the many years that it takes to finish your PhD.