Advantages and disadvantages of doing PhD research at a non-academic lab

What are the advantages and disadvantages of doing your PhD research (in science, math, or engineering) at a non-academic lab (like a government or industrial lab) vs. the traditional academic setting? (Of course, the degree is granted by a university.)

When is one option better than the other if you have the choice between doing your research in an academic or non-academic setting?

A few potential advantages I can think of:

• You're likely to be hired by the lab after graduation. If you don't want to enter academia and are happy with the lab, this could be your career. If you do want to enter academia, often you're in good company because leaving research labs for academia isn't uncommon.


• You can work with more people (your school's students and professors and the lab's researchers). This'll expand your professional network and expose you to different perspectives.



• Your affiliation with the lab could add some credibility to you and your research.

A few potential disadvantages:

• Travel could be problematic if your school and your lab aren't close. This could be mitigated by taking care of the coursework first.


• The research topic is often dictated by someone in the lab if you are funded by them. If you decide this topic is not worth researching or not interesting then you might have a problem. Politics in the lab could change the research topic in the future and that might also be a problem.

Answer

Throughout graduate school I worked at and was funded by a university-run laboratory that operated somewhat like a government laboratory and was largely funded for applied research. I now work at a UARC (which is similar to an FFRDC). Given that my graduate school lab was already affiliated with the University, though, my situation is slightly different than yours.

At least in the US, it is relatively hard for non-academic laboratories to find funding for basic research; funding agencies like the NSF have a prejudice toward funding degree-granting institutions. Therefore, in my experience, much of the flavor of the funding at non-academic laboratories is geared toward applied research. This might not be a problem, but it can be a challenge to find a deep, Ph.D.-level problem to solve when your sponsors are interested in seeing more concrete results.

In my case, working at an applied research laboratory to fund my graduate degrees was actually somewhat of a benefit. Due to the reasons I listed above, it was difficult for me to latch onto a deep problem to solve for which there was stable, direct funding. Therefore, I used my position at the laboratory to basically "pay the bills" (it covered my stipend, tuition remission, &c.). That gave me the freedom to work on related—but not directly funded—problems that interested me. This of course had the overhead of essentially working two jobs at once, but it had the added benefit of providing visibility to my "side" research to the sponsors who were funding my "pay the bills" research. It also paid for my trips to relevant conferences, at which I was able to present both flavors of my research.

Now that I am working at a UARC, I see others here who are also pursuing part-time Ph.D.s. Most of them seem to have found a similar model to mine: They use their position at the non-academic lab to "pay the bills", and then focus their actual research on a related but independent problem. If you are able to fund yourself (i.e., if your Ph.D. advisor doesn't have to worry about finding funding for you), then many advisors will be willing to take you on as a student.