Education and Career Forum

I have completed B.Com with specialization in Taxation and now I want do PhD in Taxation. Am I eligible? Or, do I need to do M.Com or any other Master's degree first? If not, then from where can I do PhD in Taxation?

No you cannot apply for PhD unless you have masters degree.

What are your aims in gaining a PhD? Here are a couple common reasons:
1) I want to become a professor/lecturer/academic
2) I want to work in a chemical industry (pharma, petrochemicals, agrochemicals etc)
3) It sounds prestigious and you’d like to be able to put Dr. in front of your name and one day win a Nobel Prize.
4) You’ve done well in your undergraduate degree and aren’t entirely sure what to do next.

Reason 1) is a good reason to do a PhD HOWEVER there’s a very high risk you won’t be able to become a tenured professor. A very real possibility is that you are stuck doing post-docs for a very long time with little in the way of job security and not very great pay options. If you’re happy with that then go for it.

Reason 2) is probably the best of the 4, there are many positions in chemical industries which are very dependent on the expertise gained from a PhD. If this is your reason then look into exactly what the jobs you would be interested in require and try to involve work with industry in your PhD.

Reason 3 and 4) I think are very common reasons (even if no one admits it). They’re also utterly terrible reasons. If you think this is part of the reason then think very long and hard about what you want out of life. A PhD is going to take at least 3 years of your life (if in the UK, Australia or NZ) and if you don’t enjoy it/are unlucky then it could easily take upwards of 7 years (if in the US). This is a big chunk of time. And if at the end of it all you decide to go do something else then it’s very likely you could have got a lot more out of other options.