hi guys,

how are you all doing. may i kindly ask you for your advice with respect to my future career plans please.

i did a bachelors degree from Arden university online. my life was in a mess back then but i somehow got a first from arden.

then i went on to do my masters in real life full time from a solid university (ranked top 20 in the world) and achieved distinction. i wrote a dissertation and i also realised that publishing in the top journals in my field would not be hard for me.

should i go onto a phd? will my somewhat weird background hinder my employment in academia in a top university in future?

or should i just stop at masters and try my luck at finding a good job?

Depends what you would want to do after a PhD. Your background will make very little difference in academia once you have a PhD.

It won't matter if you get a PhD from a decent uni and do some good research. There's many more things that are far more important for a successful academic career.

I don't think your undergraduate degree matters too much. I know of someone doing an online masters degree at Oxford Uni and they didn't do an undergraduate degree. They just got onto the masters course through having a few years experience of working in the subject area.

I also know a professor who didn't do a PhD. They just went from undergraduate degree to masters degree, to researcher then lecturer, senior lecturer then professor. They have quite a lot of papers published (social science).