I am applying for a Ph.D. in Financial Engineering and have talked to friends/acquaintances at Northwestern (Ph.D. Financial Engineering), Columbia (MFE) and Princeton (Ph.D. Financial Engineering). All three of then have explained that most often than not Ph.D.s end up stuck in a back room analyzing and working out solutions to complex problems, then reporting back to the front office with explanations/recommendations and going back to the back-room drawing board. My motivation for pursuing a Ph.D. is to contribute to the existing body of knowledge in a practical field such as Financial Engineering. However, the prospect of being stuck in a back room "crunching the numbers" does not sound very enticing to me. I would much rather do academia with consulting.
Hypothetically, do you really need a Ph.D. to do financial engineering in industry? Realistically, a company could just hire top researchers from academia from time to time to tackle the hard problems and have the MFE people apply the results. So what kind of roles do Ph.D.s generally hold in industry?
Hypothetically, do you really need a Ph.D. to do financial engineering in industry? Realistically, a company could just hire top researchers from academia from time to time to tackle the hard problems and have the MFE people apply the results. So what kind of roles do Ph.D.s generally hold in industry?