Similar to earning an undergraduate or master’s degree, Ph.D. students complete coursework — albeit more highly specialized. The majority of a doctoral program is spent working individually or with an adviser doing research, ultimately leading to a dissertation defense, experts say.
“Really figuring out who you are as a writer and a thinker is so crucial to success in a doctoral program,” says Nicole Westrick, assistant vice president and dean for the College of Interdisciplinary and Continuing Studies at Morgan State University in Maryland. “That is different than any of the previous higher education experiences because when you’re doing a Ph.D., you’re essentially writing and creating new knowledge and entering your field and discipline of scholars.”
Earning a doctoral degree is a significant time and financial commitment, so potential Ph.D. students should understand what it means to do research and talk with people in their specific field of interest, says Oscar Holmes IV, professor and director of the Rutgers University Student Executive program at the Rutgers School of Business in Camden, New Jersey.
?”They really need to get as much information as possible from the actual people who are doing it currently, but also who have done it, so they can know what they’re getting into,” says Holmes, who has a Ph.D. in management. “You definitely shouldn’t get into it just because you think it’s cool to be called doctor … because it requires an enormous amount of sacrifice, not only from you, but from the people who love you, who are around you, your family.”
However, even if you’re prepared and begin, circumstances happen — and earning a Ph.D. may no longer be in your best interest. Here’s what to keep in mind before stopping your doctoral program.
[Should I Get a Master’s Before a Doctoral Degree?]
Reasons to Leave a Ph.D. Program
Change in Career Path
One reason to consider quitting a Ph.D. program is if it no longer helps you meet any career or academic goals, experts say. ?
“This is such a long type of investment — typically it takes five years,” says Holmes, who is also a member of The PhD Project, a nonprofit that aims to help business professionals and students from various backgrounds earn Ph.D. degrees. “So it’s not helpful for someone to try to force themselves through multiple years of studying and training and investment into a program where they no longer feel like it’s a career that they can be happy in.”
Some “may find that balancing the level of time and commitment for a Ph.D. program is outweighed by life responsibilities, whether that’s full-time work or family,” Westrick says.
Financial Concerns
There are fully funded Ph.D. programs, which means tuition and fees are waived and enrolled students receive an annual stipend to help with qualifying living expenses.
However, “the stipends aren’t that much,” Holmes says. “There were times where I had to lean on my family to get loans and stuff like that to hold me over until the next semester started. So it’s a huge investment. You are working, but … you’re not contributing typically to your retirement for those five years or whatever. So those are opportunity costs that you’re losing out on.”
Many students self-fund their Ph.D., so with the recent changes as part of President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” signed into law July 4, 2025 — which eliminated Grad PLUS loans and capped graduate school borrowing at $100,000 rather than the previous lifetime limit of $138,500 beginning in July 2026 — some may “find it challenging financially to sustain doctoral program enrollment,” Westrick says.
If there are financial concerns, speak with an adviser or others in the program to see if there are any options for additional funds, such as grants, Holmes says.
[Read: How Long Does it Take to Get a Ph.D. Degree and Should You Get One?]
Harms Well-Being
Another “robust” reason to quit is if continuing will “do irreparable harm to your mental health and/or if you are in a highly toxic environment,” says Ben Selznick, associate professor and adviser of postsecondary analysis and leadership at James Madison University in Virginia. He added that the “same goes for being in situations where you feel discriminated against” by faculty or peers. “Getting a Ph.D. is difficult and stressful, to be sure, but there must be limits.”
Holmes, for instance, says he experienced racism in his first Ph.D. program, causing his well-being to decline.
“The professors made it really, really difficult for me,” he says. “The first two years of my program, I had those bad experiences … I gained a significant amount of weight due to the stress, my anxiety level really increased a lot. There are real costs when you are mismatched into programs.”
After seeking advice from The PhD Project, which also helped with getting new letters of recommendation from professors, Holmes left his first program and enrolled at the University of Alabama — where he earned his doctorate in 2013.
Changing doctorate programs, however, isn’t easy due to capacity and funding limits, and the degree’s structure. Because switching to another Ph.D. program is uncommon compared to doing so in undergraduate and master’s programs, most doctoral students have to restart their time-to-degree clock.
“Even though I completed two full years of a Ph.D. program at one place, I had to start over completely new as a first-year student at the place where I matriculated through the second time because of the nature of Ph.D. programs,” Holmes says. “I was lucky — I did the full year of coursework over again in my new place and then the Ph.D. coordinator changed. The Ph.D. coordinator saw my quality of work and he thought it didn’t do me any good to take classes over again that (I’d) already kind of taken.”
Because of his adviser, Holmes was able to avoid retaking courses in his second year at Alabama and move forward in his Ph.D. program. “But that was such a serendipitous type of thing that happened,” he adds.
[How to Get Into Graduate School]
What to Do if You’re Considering Quitting
When deciding whether to quit, take some time to self-reflect by considering your goals for the program and how it supports your career aspirations, Westrick says.
Depending on the situation, it may help to take a pause rather than leaving the program entirely. For instance, Westrick took an 18-month leave of absence from her doctoral program at Temple University in Pennsylvania after being promoted at work.
“My adviser at the time did not know how to support me as someone who worked full time and was doing a doctoral program,” she says. “So that was not the right support system for me. I really thought about leaving my doctoral program, but ultimately made the decision that I had a question that I really wanted to answer — and came back.”
Stepping away for too long, however, can make it difficult to maintain momentum toward completion. So before making any decision — pausing or quitting — talk with an adviser, experts say.
“Sometimes, there are perfectly good reasons to quit a Ph.D. program,” Selznick says. “We tend to stigmatize quitting in general … when in reality it’s important to carefully evaluate both the real and opportunity costs of staying versus going.”
If you decide after getting all the facts that it’s in your best interest to leave your doctoral program, make a plan for what the next six months to a year would look like — even if it means that’s time spent job searching, he says.
Searching for a grad school? Access our complete rankings of Best Graduate Schools.
More from U.S. News
41 Graduate Degree Jobs That Can Pay Six-Figure Salaries
7 Critical Steps to Find the Right Grad School
How to Know if it’s Time to Quit Your Ph.D. Program originally appeared on usnews.com
