Steve Tippins Ph.D. tells graduate students to pick a narrow dissertation topic, not one that tries to change the world. Finish it fast to avoid years of tuition and save the big questions for later, when you can get paid to answer them.
I see people all the time who come to me with dissertation ideas that are huge and they want to change the world. And the simplest way to know is your committee says, yeah, you can do it. It's doable. Okay? You want to make sure you aren't trying to save the world or change the world or anything like that. You're trying to answer a question and that's it. Another way I like to tell people to think about this is you want to get your dissertation finished as quickly as possible for 2 reasons. One, most people don't want to pay tuition forever, and 2, when you do get to those big, meaty, juicy questions, you can be doing those while someone's paying you to do them.
