Why are there so few physics majors?

[atyy]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=graphic-science-science-tech-jobs-enticing
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-science-degrees-stack-up

There's a shortage of scientists because scientists don't get paid enough?

OK, we know the market can be quite stupid, but does this make sense?

 

[ParticleGrl]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=graphic-science-science-tech-jobs-enticing
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-science-degrees-stack-up

There's a shortage of scientists because scientists don't get paid enough?

OK, we know the market can be quite stupid, but does this make sense?

No, if there were an actual shortage salaries would be rising on their own. They are not. All my PhD friends want industry jobs doing science, and they can't get them. All data says glut, not shortage. Also, keep in mind that companies have been complaining about shortages for literally decades, and yet real salaries have been mostly stagnant.. If there were shortages, companies would be hiring undergrads to fill necessary spots. They'd be actively recruiting anyone who could be trained. None of this is happening. The only companies that recruited in my undergrad physics department were finance companies.

To my knowledge, there is no data to support a general under supply of scientists and tons of data to suggest the opposite.. So why do companies complain?

I suspect part of the problem must be a fairly broken hiring system. Another part might be that companies are over constraining their hiring- they don't want to train anyone so they are looking for specific qualification sets. The cynic in me thinks that companies complain about shortages just so we keep funneling money into grad programs, train more scientists than jobs, and keep salaries lower.Further, the bad career prospects might push talented students away, so lie to them about their prospects.

 

[twofish-quant]

I stand by my original assertion- people generally don't do physics because most people who COULD do physics CAN do engineering, and the latter is a better chance at the sort of career physics majors/engineers want.

Or biology, or economics, or law.

 

[-Dragoon-]

I'm only a first year student, but here's my experience.

Just after first semester, about 1/3 of those in my class (physics majors) switched to either engineering, business, or computer science. From the few I've talked to, they told me said they did their research and found that a physics degree is a very bad degree in terms of job prospects without graduate school. It is very hard to justify spending hours upon hours in a library practising problems (if you aren't a genius) only to come out 4 years later with terrible job prospects. At least the engineering students who went through a similar workload have multiple job offers before they graduate.

What's worse is professors and department career counsellors with their own agendas that try to "debunk the myth" and parrot the statement that "physics degrees are the most versatile". Fortunately, I have a professor who cares for his students and won't hide the facts about a physics degree. Also, talking to any HR employee who's company isn't affiliated will gladly tell any physics student that physics majors would never be hired to fill engineering and technical positions at their firm. Crafted computer programs will screen out those resumes that do not contain an engineering or computer science degree depending on the position.

 

[twofish-quant]

I suspect part of the problem must be a fairly broken hiring system.

I think another problem is the "second Einstein effect." One cool thing about physics is that one brilliant scientist can change the world, which means that you don't need that many scientists. Once Albert Einstein comes up with general relativity, what's the "second Einstein" supposed to do?

There are maybe a few hundred active high energy particle theorists. Let's suppose you triple the number of theorists. Does it mean that you discover quantum gravity any faster? No. Once you have a few dozen theorists, adding more doesn't help much.

It's interesting that the areas that *aren't* subject to the second Einstein effect are those that hire. For example, waiters and janitors. It doesn't matter how brilliant a waiter or janitor you are, if you have X customers or X toilets, you have to hire Y people. Computational stuff tends to be more immune to this problem. If you have a ton of code, it has to be debugged.

Another part might be that companies are over constraining their hiring- they don't want to train anyone so they are looking for specific qualification sets. The cynic in me thinks that companies complain about shortages just so we keep funneling money into grad programs, train more scientists than jobs, and keep salaries lower.

I don't think it plays much of a role in graduate programs, because companies just don't think that far ahead. It does play a major role in immigration debates. However that was 2006. No one in the US complains about a labor glut, and immigration is something of a non-issue now, because most skilled Chinese and Indian nationals are "going home" where companies are hiring. The Chinese government is just pumping vast amounts of money into high technology industries, and demand for Ph.D.'s is strong. I think that India is doing something similar.

Unfortunately, those jobs are closed to new graduates who are not Chinese nationals as the PRC will only issue a work visa if you have three years of experience.

One thing that is scary is that I'm actually considering voting for Newt Gingrich because he is suggesting that the US do the same thing.

 

[atyy]

I think another problem is the "second Einstein effect." One cool thing about physics is that one brilliant scientist can change the world, which means that you don't need that many scientists. Once Albert Einstein comes up with general relativity, what's the "second Einstein" supposed to do?

There are maybe a few hundred active high energy particle theorists. Let's suppose you triple the number of theorists. Does it mean that you discover quantum gravity any faster? No. Once you have a few dozen theorists, adding more doesn't help much.

But it would be nice to have more physicists - I don't think Einstein as a "lone genius" was so crucial - ok, maybe he got GR 20 years ahead of his time - but Nordstrom, not Einstein, did in fact produce the first relativistic theory of gravity, and following his route would have lead to gravity as spin 2, which is classically equivalent to GR in harmonic coordinates. I think many more far reaching revolutions like quantum mechanics and the Bell Labs stuff were produced by communities rather than individuals (ok, they were geniuses, but ordinary ones). Would it work if we could somehow train them not to expect jobs in physics, so that it's normal to do business or engineering classes and internships during a physics undergrad or PhD? At the very least having the man in the street be a PhD-level physicist would make them less susceptible to being fleeced by academics ("my subject is so hard - only a genius can do it").

 

[ParticleGrl]

There are maybe a few hundred active high energy particle theorists. Let's suppose you triple the number of theorists. Does it mean that you discover quantum gravity any faster? No

The question I'm trying to get at isn't "why aren't there more particle theorists", it seems somewhat obvious to me that producing physics that many physicists find overly esoteric is probably not ever going to be a high demand occupation.

But, when engineering companies need someone to do thermodynamics analysis, etc why not higher a particle theorist? Sure, the particle theorist hasn't done thermo research, but they had to pass a qualifying exam, so they have at least a masters level understanding of thermodynamics, and they can learn quickly. If we were really in a shortage- someone with the high level training and broad background of particle theorist could easily slide into some sort of R&D position at an engineering or tech company.

Would it work if we could somehow train them not to expect jobs in physics, so that it's normal to do business or engineering classes and internships during a physics undergrad or PhD? At the very least having the man in the street be a PhD-level physicist would make them less susceptible to being fleeced by academics

Yes, we absolutely should tell undergrad physics majors that they aren't going to get a job in physics. Its the truth! We should also tell them that not having an engineering degree can be a career detriment in fields that care about PE licensure. We should point out all the reasons that physics is a bad choice, and if they still want to do it, good for them. Misleading people about the nature of the career path you are advocating for them is tremendously unethical, should we even have to consider whether or not we should be honest about job prospects? When a freshman at UT reads the numbers you posted earlier, they are trusting their department to properly advise them, and the department is failing horribly. Looking back at the poor information I was given hurts a lot, because people I honestly thought cared about me, and about my career cared more about their department's enrollment.

With your man on the street/phd question you are hinting at a pet issue of mine- we train lots of scientists, but the average person is basically innumerate and scientifically illiterate. The solution is not to make everyone a phd physicists, its to increase the education level of everyone else. Our system is great at sorting out people who want to be scientists and truly terrible at teaching everyone else even the smallest bit of science.

 

[chiro]

But, when engineering companies need someone to do thermodynamics analysis, etc why not higher a particle theorist? Sure, the particle theorist hasn't done thermo research, but they had to pass a qualifying exam, so they have at least a masters level understanding of thermodynamics, and they can learn quickly. If we were really in a shortage- someone with the high level training and broad background of particle theorist could easily slide into some sort of R&D position at an engineering or tech company.

You need to look at this from an employers view:

They need to hire someone that can do the job at hand. If someone out there already has the skills to do a job and can work with other staff, it doesn't make sense to hire someone else that 'could' do the job but 'hasn't'.

Also one thing about particular roles is the specifics: engineers work with 'specifics' more than many scientists do. On top of this their training is more suitable to their role.

To add to this, imagine if you had a lot of non-specialists trying to create something that is both new and comprehensive (it could be a new product, infrastructure whatever). By having generalists you don't get things done in the manner that you do when you have a specialist. Having lots and lots of specialists means that not only can things get done far more quickly, but that in quicker time things get done in a far more comprehensive environment.

I could not imagine for the life of me in the modern age and especially with the kinds of projects that are worked on this day in age (in terms of complexity and required resources) that the situation would ever change.

 

[twofish-quant]

I think many more far reaching revolutions like quantum mechanics and the Bell Labs stuff were produced by communities rather than individuals (ok, they were geniuses, but ordinary ones)

But we are still taking about relatively small communities. Maybe a thousand people or so.

Also, once someone has figured it out, there isn't any new work to be done on the old theory. If you build a car, then in a few years, it's going to wear out, so someone has to build a new one. Theories don't "wear out" so once you've figured out GR, it's not necessary for someone to refigure it out.

Would it work if we could somehow train them not to expect jobs in physics, so that it's normal to do business or engineering classes and internships during a physics undergrad or PhD?

I get worried about internships because here there really *is* a conspiracy to create cheap labor (i.e. I've been in meetings where people decided to start an internship program to get people to work cheap). One thing that worries about "internships" is that pretty soon "interns" become the "real workers" and if a company can get all the work done via interns, they will. (Hey! Post-docs!)

One thing about internships is that there is a bit of dishonesty if you tell people that they are working cheap for a great job in the future, and that job doesn't come. In that case the system gets really nasty because you have real workers that are disposable.

One bit of denial in academia (and I'm harsher toward academia, because academics are supposed to think about this) is that people pretend that adjuncts, graduate students, and post-docs aren't "real workers" when in fact they are. One problem is that I think it hurts scholarship.

At the very least having the man in the street be a PhD-level physicist would make them less susceptible to being fleeced by academics ("my subject is so hard - only a genius can do it").

The US graduates 1000 physics Ph.D.'s a year. There are 30 million people in the US labor market. If we were able to boost 1000 physics Ph.d.'s to even 10000, that would require so much change that my head spins.

Also, I don't think that you have to worry about people being fleeced by academics. Most people in the US strongly distrust academics, and being seen as "intellectual" is a sure way of losing an election. In some ways having lots of academics may make the situation worse, since academics tend to blind themselves to the problems in academia.

One way of thinking about it is that you have a basic science course that is taught either by an overworked graduate student or an adjunct that barely makes enough money to avoid being on food stamps, and that's supposed to look *attractive*?

 

[ParticleGrl]

They need to hire someone that can do the job at hand. If someone out there already has the skills to do a job and can work with other staff, it doesn't make sense to hire someone else that 'could' do the job but 'hasn't'.

What I was trying to get at was what a shortage of scientists/engineers would look like. If there is a shortage that means that there ISN'T someone out there already trained- so you go with the generalist and train them for the specifics.

It also means that the "selling point" we use to get people into physics is a problem- if no one wants a broad background, being a generalist is a kiss of death.

Having lots and lots of specialists means that not only can things get done far more quickly, but that in quicker time things get done in a far more comprehensive environment.

This model only works if you have no shortage of labor (and works best in a glut). For every new project, you'll need a different mix of specialists, so you'll constantly have to churn workers, which is a slow and time intensive process if there is a labor shortage.

If there is a labor shortage, you are much better off hiring smart generalists and letting them move from project to project because its easier than constantly finding different specialists.

The fact that businesses operate the way they do just further indicates there is no shortage of workers- so why do companies say there is?

 

[twofish-quant]

But, when engineering companies need someone to do thermodynamics analysis, etc why not higher a particle theorist?

Because he is looking at ten other resumes of people he can hire without taking any risks or doing anything creative. Now, if you are in a booming market, then the people aren't there and you have to do something creative. During the dot-com boom, people were hiring web developers with anyone that had a pulse.

If we were really in a shortage- someone with the high level training and broad background of particle theorist could easily slide into some sort of R&D position at an engineering or tech company.

Exactly. We don't have a labor shortage. I was lucky enough to graduate when there really was a labor shortage, so I know what one looks like. The other thing is that manufacturing in the US has been generally shrinking which means that the demand for engineers has gone down.

Misleading people about the nature of the career path you are advocating for them is tremenously unethical, should we even have to consider whether or not we should be honest about job prospects?

I think that that's already done. However, it's a deeper problem, because right now there aren't any job prospects for physics majors. There aren't any real job prospects for anyone. One thing about physics, is that the lies and misstatements have been less egregious than for things like law school, so this is a general problem with academia and not just with physics.

Looking back at the poor information I was given hurts a lot, because people I honestly thought cared about me, and about my career cared more about their department's enrollment.

I think I got screwed over less than you, because some of the important people in my life were much more honest about the future. Sometimes, honestly involves saying "I don't know what is going to happen, and you'll be on your own." Also, people in my life have been generally supportive.

One reason I thought the NSF numbers were bogus was that the "body language" from the people that I knew suggested that they didn't believe them. You hear someone talk about the wonderful future job openings in physics, and the people I knew sort of shrugged and didn't act as if they believed them. Part of it was that the MIT physics department got hit really hard in the 1970's and in 1990 the end of the cold war was bringing a lot of defense cuts.

I think in the end, one thing that I do believe is that the important people really did care about me. I left MIT mad as hell about the place, but it's occurred to me that if I had left a "satisfied customer" then my education would have been sub-standard.

Chomsky is right. There really is a power elite that runs the world, and one thing that I got the sense at MIT was that I wasn't been groomed to "have a career in physics". In a real sense, I was being trained to "run the world as part of the power elite." So the people that ran the physics department at MIT don't care about departmental enrollments. They care about maintaining the power of MIT and the United States, and at some point the people that run the world would "hand the keys of the world" over to me and my classmates.

One weird thing is that since I'm no longer in a great deal of pain and agony, it's a little hard for me to go back to remember why I was in pain.

The solution is not to make everyone a phd physicists, its to increase the education level of everyone else. Our system is great at sorting out people who want to be scientists and truly terrible at teaching everyone else even the smallest bit of science.

But then again maybe the person on the street is smarter than us suckers.

You ask people why they should learn science and engineering, and the standard answer is that you'll make more money and have a better career, and then the person looks at the adjunct that is teaching their kids and says "yeah, right..."

So let's suppose we are honest, learning science and engineering *won't* make you more money, and it could really mess up your life. At that point, the person on the street looks less stupid, and we are the suckers.

 

[chiro]

What I was trying to get at was what a shortage of scientists/engineers would look like. If there is a shortage that means that there ISN'T someone out there already trained- so you go with the generalist and train them for the specifics.

It also means that the "selling point" we use to get people into physics is a problem- if no one wants a broad background, being a generalist is a kiss of death.

I'm not saying it can be done or that it isn't useful, I'm just trying to put it from an employers viewpoint. If an employer doesn't really know that you could train someone with X background quickly and that they would be able to Y things that would be good them, then its not surprising that X doesn't get hired.

Also twofish has written posts about HR in relation to his field (quant finance/coding for finance) and has outlined the issues of when some HR people (think external hiring companies) don't understand how skills translate or even understand what certain skillsets are at all.

If you can convince an employer then by all means do so, but based on some of the stories here on PF (and abroad) it seems that for many of these cases, employers aren't convinced.

This model only works if you have no shortage of labor (and works best in a glut). For every new project, you'll need a different mix of specialists, so you'll constantly have to churn workers, which is a slow and time intensive process if there is a labor shortage.

If there is a labor shortage, you are much better off hiring smart generalists and letting them move from project to project because its easier than constantly finding different specialists.

The fact that businesses operate the way they do just further indicates there is no shortage of workers- so why do companies say there is?

That's a really good question.

There might be some truth in it and it might be completely misrepresented.

For example in Australia there are huge shortages in engineering fields of "highly skilled" engineers but for some of those same fields there are enough graduate engineers. Now to get someone to the "highly skilled" stage you need to invest quite a bit of time doing further training to get to that point.

So in terms of people saying "we need more engineers", they might be misrepresenting themselves by not saying "highly skilled engineers in field X with Y project background".

Then again they might not be saying for those reasons and it could be some other reason like a political statement.

 

[ParticleGrl]

One reason I thought the NSF numbers were bogus was that the "body language" from the people that I knew suggested that they didn't believe them.

The thing that's really frustrating is that the bogus idea that we have a shortage makes the job search harder! For several non-technical jobs, the opening question is "how do I know you won't jump ship for the first job in physics that comes along?" If potential employers think scientists are in high demand, they are going to be skeptical that the science phd is going to stay, and that's fewer job offers for people trying to leave the field.

You ask people why they should learn science and engineering, and the standard answer is that you'll make more money and have a better career, and then the person looks at the adjunct that is teaching their kids and says "yeah, right..."

To me, the lie isn't even that physics will make you money. To me the lie is more insidious- its the idea that studying physics will get you a job doing physics! Phds and postdocs are sold as basically physics apprenticeships.

So let's suppose we are honest, learning science and engineering *won't* make you more money, and it could really mess up your life. At that point, the person on the street looks less stupid, and we are the suckers.

I'm not suggesting the person on the street is stupid because they didn't actively study science. I'm suggesting that being able to think rationally about numbers/basic concepts in science is a more useful skill to teach to the average person than high school level physics.

Remembering that gravitational potential energy is mgh is useless for most of humanity. Understanding how we know that vaccines don't cause autism is tremendously useful. Our k-12 system should focus on the latter, not the former.

Right now, your high school system seems to filter out the top x% capable of performing well, and it teaches them enough to succeed in college science courses. It teaches everyone else practically nothing. How many people's only memory of high school science is that they hated it? We have the wrong focus- we paradoxically train too many scientists and have a largely scientifically illiterate populace.

 

[atyy]

But we are still taking about relatively small communities. Maybe a thousand people or so.

Also, once someone has figured it out, there isn't any new work to be done on the old theory. If you build a car, then in a few years, it's going to wear out, so someone has to build a new one. Theories don't "wear out" so once you've figured out GR, it's not necessary for someone to refigure it out.

Well, I suspect the communities could be much larger. I think the biggest revolution in recent years (computing and the internet) was driven by huge communities. I also suspect we should also count the whole GPS community and its users for getting GR understood well enough that it's in undergraduate textbooks. True, not all of them had PhDs, but I tend to think that progress in science is largely societal - if we had no Einstein, we'd still have GR by now. Also, there can be huge advances on old, "well-understood" stuff - like Gabor and holography which only needed classical Maxwell's equations, or Poincare's work on the stability of the solar system which produced the qualitative theory of differential equations and was a forerunner of chaos.

I get worried about internships because here there really *is* a conspiracy to create cheap labor (i.e. I've been in meetings where people decided to start an internship program to get people to work cheap). One thing that worries about "internships" is that pretty soon "interns" become the "real workers" and if a company can get all the work done via interns, they will. (Hey! Post-docs!)

That's interesting. At least in the US, shouldn't a labour law prevent this (the same way one isn't supposed to pay a foreigner less than an American)?

The US graduates 1000 physics Ph.D.'s a year. There are 30 million people in the US labor market. If we were able to boost 1000 physics Ph.d.'s to even 10000, that would require so much change that my head spins.

Also, I don't think that you have to worry about people being fleeced by academics. Most people in the US strongly distrust academics, and being seen as "intellectual" is a sure way of losing an election. In some ways having lots of academics may make the situation worse, since academics tend to blind themselves to the problems in academia.

One way of thinking about it is that you have a basic science course that is taught either by an overworked graduate student or an adjunct that barely makes enough money to avoid being on food stamps, and that's supposed to look *attractive*?

Well, I don't mean fleeced in that way. Musicians are mostly poor, but the great musicians are respected for their creativity. Scientists are thought of in the same way too, but I suspect overly so. Both music and science reflect their societies, but while GR would be the same no matter its discoverer, there is only one Schubert now and forever.

A possible counter is that the prevalence of high standard of amateur music-making has gone up tremendously over the years. But that's in the spirit of the point I'm searching for - we don't really need more scientific Bachs or Schuberts to advance science - once we had Newton, everything else could just be attributed to society. In 300 years, every school kid will learn quantum field theory, let's get there faster.

Now having said that, I'm confused whether physics PhDs should be paid well or not. Is a physics PhD like a conservatory graduate or an engineering graduate? Both are highly skilled. The former generally expects to have a really hard time getting jobs, the latter is generally reasonably paid.

(Yeah, yeah, we all know you astro guys got Brian May.)

 

[twofish-quant]

Also twofish has written posts about HR in relation to his field (quant finance/coding for finance) and has outlined the issues of when some HR people (think external hiring companies) don't understand how skills translate or even understand what certain skillsets are at all.

One reason that there are so many physics Ph.D.'s working in finance is that the Ph.D. has already been sold. If a headhunter or HR in an investment bank sees a resume with physics Ph.D., they have no idea what the physics Ph.D. actually does, but since they know that physics Ph.D.'s are already hired, they'll forward the resume rather than dump it.

If you are in another industry where the gatekeeper doesn't see the value of a physics Ph.D., then you are screwed. If you are looking for a job, you are not in a position to convince them of your value, because you won't even be allowed to talk to the gatekeeper.

This is an area in which university departments and professional societies could be useful. They could go to industry groups and try to *sell* physics Ph.D.'s. This is something that MBA schools and AACSB does, and this sets up the groundwork before you arrive at the interview door. If you show up at the HR department of a major company, you won't be allowed in, but if Stephen Hawking shows up, they'll talk with him, and selling Ph.D.'s isn't that much different than convincing Congress to fund science.

 

[twofish-quant]

The thing that's really frustrating is that the bogus idea that we have a shortage makes the job search harder! For several non-technical jobs, the opening question is "how do I know you won't jump ship for the first job in physics that comes along?"

And the problem is that the real answer at least for me is "I would in a heartbeat."

This issue doesn't come up in Ph.D. heavy fields like finance, because if the interviewer is a physics Ph.D., they wouldn't be surprised or upset that you'd jump ship in a heartbeat, because *they'd* do exactly the same thing. Also in finance, corporate loyalty isn't very highly valued, so people think you are weird if you *don't* jump ship at a better offer. It comes at a cost, since the company doesn't expect loyalty from you, you don't expect loyalty from them, so they'll push you out the plane the millisecond you become a liability.

I'm not suggesting the person on the street is stupid because they didn't actively study science. I'm suggesting that being able to think rationally about numbers/basic concepts in science is a more useful skill to teach to the average person than high school level physics.

Then you have to ask the question, why? If it turns out that teaching science *doesn't* generate individual wealth, then why learn anything? You might argue that science is good for society, but if science creates a lot of wealth, and it none of that goes to scientists, then it's logical for someone to decide to become a non-scientist, let science generate the wealth, and then live off the fat.

The people on the other side of the interview table. They aren't scientifically literate, and they decide whether or not you get the job. You can get an MBA or a job in HR, and know *nothing at all* about science. If an HR person or MBA at an interview thinks that the universe is 6000 years old, I'm not going to challenge them.

What I'm saying is that the lies that the NSF tells grad students and post-docs have even more nasty effects. If it turns out that the NSF gets caught in lying about the employment prospects for learning science in graduate school, then why should anyone believe them when they say it's good for high school students and elementary school students to learn science. Just teach them English, basic math, and football so that they can become managers and HR people and order the scientists around.

One thing that was extremely depressing working at University of Phoenix is how *basic* the science and math was. People need to learn algebra and the type of astronomy that my kids can learn in the library. The most depressing thing about that was that *it made sense* why they did that. They basically just teach the minimum amount of science and math to keep their accreditation, and if they could dispense with that, they would.

It teaches everyone else practically nothing. How many people's only memory of high school science is that they hated it?

Strange. I have *excellent* memories of my high school science classes. The more I get into these sorts of conversations, the more thankful I am that I had excellent teachers. One thing about me in high school, is that I did the "bright Asian future scientist" thing. Westinghouse science talent search. Science fairs. I remember meeting Edward Teller, Marvin Minsky, Jane Goodall, Ed Asner, and Sandra Day O'Connor at American Academy of Achievement (http://www.achievement.org/). I got to meet President Reagan and Nobel Prize winners brainwashing me into thinking that science was the future, and that *I* was the future. For someone in high school, this was all really heady stuff. When you are 19 and you find yourself sitting in the White House Rose Garden, and the President of the United States tells you that *you are the future, you are important, you are a future scientist that will change the world* that changes you.

And then at some point in my life, it all ended. The cheering ended, the prizes stopped, and then I was in the garbage heap, just looking for a job just like everyone else, and you get cold looks with people treating you like a rejected failure, that also changes you.

We have the wrong focus- we paradoxically train too many scientists and have a largely scientifically illiterate populace.

But maybe it's better for the masses to be scientifically illiterate. It the masses actually could think, they would be harder to control. Maybe we want passive people, watching TV, working as corporate cogs, until they wear out, so that we can get a new cheap batch of labor. Maybe it's better for people not to think, because thinking is too painful.

Do I really believe this? I don't know. The problem is that I was brainwashed from birth until about age 20 into thinking that science was cool. That science would bring peace and prosperity, and that I would join the scientific elite and be the next Nobel prize winner. Seriously. When I went to Washington for Westinghouse, you meet Congressmen and Nobel prize winners, and they were telling us that we would one day be one of them. They were telling *me* that someday, I would be one of them.

So at the end of all this... I find myself struggling to find work, and wondering what ever happened to my Nobel Prize. I couldn't help get the feeling that I had been lied to, and if they lied to me about this, then what else did they lie to me about. I really don't know.

In any case, if we aren't going to figure out what to do with future scientists, it's better not to expose them to these ideas. It will seriously screw them up.

 

[atyy]

Or biology, or economics, or law.

Biology has good job prospects? What are you reading? Is it propaganda propagated by biologists?

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/top-1-earners-majored-163026283.html

Incidentally, while I can't confirm that biology has good job prospects, I can say that we (or at least I) appreciate how much biology depends on physics, so if for nothing else, I'd like more physicists (and engineers, whom I think of as physicists).

BTW, do you know of Douglas Prasher? He had an idea that revolutionised biology, but was unable to remain in academia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Prasher
http://gfp.conncoll.edu/prasher.html

 

[atyy]

The Numbers That Really Intrigue Physics Majors
The median annual income for a physicist is $94,240. The middle 50% earn between $72,910 and $117,080. The lowest ten percent earned less than $52,070, and the highest ten percent earn $143,570. The average starting salary offer to Physics doctoral degree candidates is $52,460.

And here we have an excellent example of how to mislead with numbers. Every single one of these numbers is totally irrelevant to a physics major with no intention of getting a phd in physics- why? Because physics bachelors don't work as physicists! Its not only irrelevant, its misleading. This seems to suggest that study physics -> work in physics is as normal as something like study engineering -> work in engineering.

Now, for those who DO plan on going to graduate school, many of these still aren't relevant. Many phd holding physicists are never able to get a job as a physicist!

The number that is of some relevance is the average starting salary offer to physics doctoral degree candidates. The average starting salary for an bachelors engineer is between 50 and 60k, depending on the type of engineering. So an engineer makes as much with 4 years of school as a phd physicist does with 10.

Of course, an engineer with an extra 6 years of experience is probably making between 70-80k. By the time the physicist has gotten his job offer, he could have saved an extra 240k had he been an engineer. Even after he gets hired with his phd he is making 20k-30k a year less than he would have been with an engineering degree.

Would something like this be less misleading http://www.payscale.com/best-colleges/degrees.asp? Unless the numbers aren't accurate, it seems physics majors actually do really well! (Conflict of interest declaration: I'm a biologist.)

 

[ParticleGrl]

Would something like this be less misleading http://www.payscale.com/best-colleges/degrees.asp? Unless the numbers aren't accurate, it seems physics majors actually do really well! (Conflict of interest declaration: I'm a biologist.)

It depends on the question being asked- I don't think anyone asserts that physics majors don't do well at the jobs they eventually land- after all, physics majors are hard workers, of above average intelligence,etc. These are valued anywhere.

My assertion, however, is that most science and engineering majors WANT A JOB IN SCIENCE OR ENGINEERING. Those starting salary numbers tell us nothing about that. If you want a job in science or engineering, you are much better off with the engineering degree than the physics degree.

There is a bit of a mislead at the top- "lucrative career exist for the history majors out there, too, they are just harder to find. " Physics majors (and perhaps other science majors) are competing for the same pool of jobs, they are just outcompeting them. Thats different than science majors having the door opened to the engineering/tech job market. The average physics major is more likely to be able to program a computer than the average french major, but that's not because of the major.

 

[atyy]

It depends on the question being asked- I don't think anyone asserts that physics majors don't do well at the jobs they eventually land- after all, physics majors are hard workers, of above average intelligence,etc. These are valued anywhere.

My assertion, however, is that most science and engineering majors WANT A JOB IN SCIENCE OR ENGINEERING. Those starting salary numbers tell us nothing about that. If you want a job in science or engineering, you are much better off with the engineering degree than the physics degree.

There is a bit of a mislead at the top- "lucrative career exist for the history majors out there, too, they are just harder to find. " Physics majors (and perhaps other science majors) are competing for the same pool of jobs, they are just outcompeting them. Thats different than science majors having the door opened to the engineering/tech job market. The average physics major is more likely to be able to program a computer than the average french major, but that's not because of the major.

I see. Actually, my impression from the sidelines was that it was well understood that physics majors don't end up in jobs that use physics directly. Most of the engineers I know started out pretty close to the hands on and design bits then seem to move to managerial positions. Perhaps that's undesirable, but my gut feeling hasn't been that that was bad, except in the case of school teachers having to move to management to get a better salary. I suppose some of it is also a matter of perspective - two-fish seems to consider finance a branch of physics, while you don't.

 

[twofish-quant]

Biology has good job prospects? What are you reading? Is it propaganda propagated by biologists?

Heh, heh, heh.

Come to think of it I hear a lot of gashing of teeth from lawyers.

Also, one thing that's been on my mind is that last year was a *horrible* year for banks. I'm hoping that this year will be better, but anyone that was doing physics Ph.D. to get a high paying job as a quant had better have a backup plan. And I'm annoyed because my "let's make a ton of money on Wall Street and retire to study supernova" plan is looking shaky right now.

Maybe we are all screwed. :-) :-) :-)

That actually makes me feel better. If we are all screwed no matter what we did, then I'm glad I spent ten years of my life doing what I loved and ended up with very little debt, and the person that majored in Art History is looking pretty smart right now. :-) :-) :-)

 

[twofish-quant]

Would something like this be less misleading http://www.payscale.com/best-colleges/degrees.asp? Unless the numbers aren't accurate, it seems physics majors actually do really well! (Conflict of interest declaration: I'm a biologist.)

Numbers like these are *amazingly* misleading. I can tell you first hand that starting salaries for physics Ph.D.'s in finance have gone sharply downward in the last three years, and while it's still a good gig, any statistics for 2007 are useless in 2011, and any statistics even if accurate in 2011 are useless in 2016. The hiring situation is such that information from Q1/2011 turns out to be useless for Q3/2011.

I can think of three ways off the top of my head in which the world could blow up financially (Greek default, China slowdown, another debt showdown in the US) in 2012 which would render 2011 stats useless. Conversely, I can think of three good scenarios (reverse those three situations) which would also render these stats useless.

One thing is that I'm pretty convinced that the idea of thinking in terms of majors is bad and the wrong question. Rather than asking "which major is better" I think the better question is why we are thinking about majors at all.

 

[twofish-quant]

Someone wrote me e-mail asking why I was being so pessimistic and cynical. And part of it is that if after going through all of the crap that I've gone through that I still believe in science, that's hardly a cynical idea.

I see. Actually, my impression from the sidelines was that it was well understood that physics majors don't end up in jobs that use physics directly

1) I don't know if this is true at the age that matters. One reason I mentioned my story is that it's a story about how I was brainwashed. Since the Intel STS still exists and science fairs are still around, I presume that high school students are being taught the same things I was. Would be interested in talking with the Intel STS winners. A lot of the "I want to be a physicist" stuff happens at childhood, so figuring out what elementary school teachers are telling their students is important there.

2) There's also the question of whether the system stinks. One thing that I'm getting is that the system is so screwed up that you are doomed no matter what you do, at which point the only way of winning is to question the system. So if physics majors don't end up in jobs that use physics. *is this a good thing?*

3) Also one of the points I was making was that you get into a nasty situation if you take things to their logical conclusions. If Reagan should have told me "don't go into physics, just learn football" then you have to ask "where does it stop?" Should we be teaching science at all? My answer is *of course* but I want people to think about the question. If the justification for physics is economic, then what happens if physics is a money losing. If physics really does generate wealth, then the whole system is screwed up, and we have to start asking deeper questions.

Perhaps that's undesirable, but my gut feeling hasn't been that that was bad, except in the case of school teachers having to move to management to get a better salary.

People put up with a lot. One thing that got me through both graduate school and work is that I can basically convince myself that the situation "really isn't that bad" but that means that I have a lot of frustration and anger that has to go somewhere. Something that you find is to have a functioning workplace, you have to have a lot of emotional self-control, and if you are profoundly dissatisfied with your situation you have to repress this, and not scream at your boss.

This is something that everyone technical I know has to do and with the rare exception (perhaps Google) there is *profound* bitterness among the technical people at the managers that run things. This comes out in things like Dilbert. You also see this in academia with Piled higher and deeper.

So people put up with a lot if they have no choice, but sense my damn physics training comes in, I have to start asking "is there a better way?"

I suppose some of it is also a matter of perspective - two-fish seems to consider finance a branch of physics, while you don't.

It's because I'm self-delusional.

Since I would cut off my left leg for a job in physics, if I'm unable to convince myself that what I'm doing isn't something "like physics" then I'll go insane. Since definitions are definitions, I'll just redefine things so that I don't go insane, and it helps a lot because the people that I work with have a lot of the same motivations, so we can create our own social reality. The people that I work with are either science/engineering types with the same sorts of psychological issues, or sales people/lawyer types, who are used to redefining things to keep people happy.

If people in this group say "you aren't *really* doing physics" then I don't care. If my boss says "you aren't *really* doing physics" then I have a problem, but since my boss figures out that letting me think I'm doing physics makes him money, he isn't going to contradict my version of reality (particularly since a lot of my bosses have Ph.D.'s too).

But then this brings up the question of *why* I would cut off my left leg for physics, which goes back to things that I was taught growing up.

 

[atyy]

2) There's also the question of whether the system stinks. One thing that I'm getting is that the system is so screwed up that you are doomed no matter what you do, at which point the only way of winning is to question the system. So if physics majors don't end up in jobs that use physics. *is this a good thing?*

3) Also one of the points I was making was that you get into a nasty situation if you take things to their logical conclusions. If Reagan should have told me "don't go into physics, just learn football" then you have to ask "where does it stop?" Should we be teaching science at all? My answer is *of course* but I want people to think about the question. If the justification for physics is economic, then what happens if physics is a money losing. If physics really does generate wealth, then the whole system is screwed up, and we have to start asking deeper questions.



People put up with a lot. One thing that got me through both graduate school and work is that I can basically convince myself that the situation "really isn't that bad" but that means that I have a lot of frustration and anger that has to go somewhere. Something that you find is to have a functioning workplace, you have to have a lot of emotional self-control, and if you are profoundly dissatisfied with your situation you have to repress this, and not scream at your boss.

This is something that everyone technical I know has to do and with the rare exception (perhaps Google) there is *profound* bitterness among the technical people at the managers that run things. This comes out in things like Dilbert. You also see this in academia with Piled higher and deeper.

But in fact that seems to be arguing for physics majors not to use physics directly, at least in conjunction with another idea you've expressed "Politics is a skill". So really I don't think anyone is going to grudge higher pay to a good manager (good from the point of view of shareholders and employees; also I suppose one aspect of being a good manager is to be able to set appropriate pay scales). What we want is managers and politicians who understand physics and technology and society, since all elements are needed. (It does bug me that Saint Jobs seems to show that maybe bad managers are needed - but maybe that's just the media - and Wozniak's incredibly sincere tribute still sounds in my head). Anyway, the engineers seem to have incorporated more social skills into their curricula over time, compared to the scientists.

Maybe like the Jesuits - everyone a priest, but each with their own specialty - but in reverse - everyone a physicist, but each their own "normal" lives.

It's because I'm self-delusional.

Since I would cut off my left leg for a job in physics, if I'm unable to convince myself that what I'm doing isn't something "like physics" then I'll go insane. Since definitions are definitions, I'll just redefine things so that I don't go insane, and it helps a lot because the people that I work with have a lot of the same motivations, so we can create our own social reality. The people that I work with are either science/engineering types with the same sorts of psychological issues, or sales people/lawyer types, who are used to redefining things to keep people happy.

If people in this group say "you aren't *really* doing physics" then I don't care. If my boss says "you aren't *really* doing physics" then I have a problem, but since my boss figures out that letting me think I'm doing physics makes him money, he isn't going to contradict my version of reality (particularly since a lot of my bosses have Ph.D.'s too).

But then this brings up the question of *why* I would cut off my left leg for physics, which goes back to things that I was taught growing up.

I don't think you are delusional. Perhaps there is only one discipline - statistics or machine learning - which consists of two subdisciplines - mathematics, the study of possible patterns or what's learnable - and physics, the determination or learning from data of which patterns occur. Also, statistics requires a "multiple comparisons" correction for independent hypotheses (the HEP guys seem to call this the "look elsewhere effect"), and the way to guard against that is of course to make your hypotheses less and less independent, or more and more unified, which is of course, physics.

 

[cdotter]

Why are there so few physics majors? Because it's easier to get a job with an engineering degree.

 

[twofish-quant]

Well, I suspect the communities could be much larger. I think the biggest revolution in recent years (computing and the internet) was driven by huge communities.

True, but most of them were doing things other than physics theory. There's a person that writes ad copy convincing people to get broadband, and then some person that stands at a street corner signing people up for broadband. They are part of the big community that is crucial for the revolution, but they aren't the theoreticians.

Also, there can be huge advances on old, "well-understood" stuff - like Gabor and holography which only needed classical Maxwell's equations, or Poincare's work on the stability of the solar system which produced the qualitative theory of differential equations and was a forerunner of chaos.

But you still don't need that many people. That's really the problem here. The more breath taking the idea, the fewer jobs there are involved in creating the idea.

That's interesting. At least in the US, shouldn't a labour law prevent this (the same way one isn't supposed to pay a foreigner less than an American)?

The US has very, very weak labor laws (people in other countries are shocked that most people in the US work without formal written contracts), however even this doesn't fix things. Germany has strong labor laws, but people use internships to get around them (so I've been told). It's has to do when economic reality meets bureaucracy. The people that make the decisions will set their own salaries so that they are decent, and if there is any grunt work to be done, they then hire "disposible people" to do it (i.e. graduate students, post-docs, interns).

I'm reminded of the movie Bladerunner in which the "replicant robots" are programmed with four year life spans so that they die before developing feelings. Post-docs are the same way. By the time you've figured out the university, your contract expires and you are replaced with someone new.

Well, I don't mean fleeced in that way. Musicians are mostly poor, but the great musicians are respected for their creativity. Scientists are thought of in the same way too, but I suspect overly so.

I know people in the music industry, and it really doesn't work that way. The musician is probably one of the more disposible parts of the system.

Also, the problem with doing science is that you need time and money. It doesn't matter how good an observational astronomer you are, if you don't have access to a telescope, you can't do anything, and this focus on creativity creates a winner take all dynamic. You publish, you get a reputation, you get grant money, you publish more.

The starving musician might work, but the starving physicist won't.

Now having said that, I'm confused whether physics PhDs should be paid well or not.

I'm more interested in *is* than *should*. Of course, I believe that physics Ph.D.'s should be paid a ton of money. This belief may have something to do with the fact that I'm a physics Ph.D. So saying that Ph.D.'s should be paid a lot is a no-brainer for me. Now the person whose wallet I have to grab to pay myself might have different ideas.

The hard part is to figure out how to make it happen.

 

[twofish-quant]

So really I don't think anyone is going to grudge higher pay to a good manager (good from the point of view of shareholders and employees; also I suppose one aspect of being a good manager is to be able to set appropriate pay scales).

One aspect of being a good manager is that you can convince people to do stuff. Once you have that skill, you'll likely use it to convince people to give you their money. It's not surprising that people who have sales and marketing skills end up on top of most companies, because they are the people that figure out how to use psychology to get people to do things.

So you put people under mass hypnosis saying "you will like drinking this fizzy water" and then "you will like drinking this fizzy water and handing me lots of money for the privilege of drinking this."

What we want is managers and politicians who understand physics and technology and society, since all elements are needed.

Who is "we"? From the point of the view of people running things it makes more sense to understand the minimum amount of physics and technology, and then pay experts in that area peanuts to get the information that they need. If anything goes wrong, then you have some underpaid scapegoats ready to feed to the wolves.

I don't think you are delusional.

I think I am. Part of staying sane involves thinking that you are crazy.

Also, statistics requires a "multiple comparisons" correction for independent hypotheses (the HEP guys seem to call this the "look elsewhere effect"), and the way to guard against that is of course to make your hypotheses less and less independent, or more and more unified, which is of course, physics.

Not sure that this is the situation. One thing that I've found is that different parts of physics involve different philosophical foundations. Whether they are all part of one giant unified foundation, I really don't know. In the case of astrophysics, you are often dealing with historical data and you are also often dealing with unique cases (i.e. how do you run statistics against the big bang?) You also cannot control the environment or do any reasonable experiments in which you influence what it is that you are trying to study.

It turns out that a lot of the philosophical issues in astrophysics turn out to be the same as those in finance. There was only one Big Bang. There is only one Supernova 1987A. There was only one Great Depression. You might find some similarities between 1987A and other supernova, but there are some things are are unique to 1987A, and stars are not like electrons.

So there is a good philosophical fit between astrophysics and some issues of economics.

 

[elkement]

What I was trying to get at was what a shortage of scientists/engineers would look like. If there is a shortage that means that there ISN'T someone out there already trained- so you go with the generalist and train them for the specifics.

It also means that the "selling point" we use to get people into physics is a problem- if no one wants a broad background, being a generalist is a kiss of death.

Hi ParticleGrl,

in middle Europe companies and authorities also declare "shortage" of whatever technical experts where there is none.

Here the trend is as follows: Especially larger corporations rather search for specialized freelancers that do not need to be trained and the market for freelancer agencies is booming. As I understood the job market and business models these freelancers in Europe are "more free" / entrepreneurial (re social insurance etc.) than are "temps" in the US.

Since freelancers are extremely flexible and willing to commute 100s of kilometers every Monday and Friday companies finally find one of those rare experts - this seems to be more effective than training experts inhouse.

So "shortage" simply justifies the replacment of permanent positions by freelancers.

It started out in IT, but the model has been transferred successfully to any engineering discipline. I have seen project requests for "freelance physicists", but those projects usually require very specific skills / experience in specific sectors and physicists compete more than ever with more specialized engineers.

 

[twofish-quant]

Here the trend is as follows: Especially larger corporations rather search for specialized freelancers that do not need to be trained and the market for freelancer agencies is booming. As I understood the job market and business models these freelancers in Europe are "more free" / entrepreneurial (re social insurance etc.) than are "temps" in the US.

There are two things that really annoy me about this:

1) I can't find anyone in control that you can point to and say "stop this." What you'll find in large companies is that these sorts of decisions are decentralized so that there is no single person or small group of people from the CEO on down that can change this. This is where the "invisible hand" hits back.

2) It's also annoying because this is one of those "be careful what you wish for" moments. Way back in the 1990's, the idea was to encourage this sort of freelancing and labor flexibility on the theory that it makes the economy more efficient which would generate enough wealth to make everyone's dreams come true. If you lose one job, no problem, another one would turn up, and way back in 2000, that's really more or less what happened.

One of the things that upsets me is that way back in 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, people really felt as if we were going to enter into a Golden Age of peace and prosperity, and it seemed to be working through out the 1990's and all the way up to the mid-2000's.

So what the heck went wrong?

It started out in IT, but the model has been transferred successfully to any engineering discipline. I have seen project requests for "freelance physicists", but those projects usually require very specific skills / experience in specific sectors and physicists compete more than ever with more specialized engineers.

One thing that is happening is that I'm becoming increasingly convinced that we've managed to not merely create a "zero sum game" but a "negative sum game." You'd think that somewhere, someone would be taking all of this exploited wealth and laughing all, but my observation is that even people that are supposed to be in charge of the system are also terrified of losing their jobs. So it's not the 1% screwing over the 99%. I think we've created a system in which *everyone* manages to get screwed over.

 

[Opus_723]

As a point of trivia, I'm a physics major at Western too. And apparently there has been a sharp uptick in the number of physics majors in recent years. Last year's graduating class was around 12 or 15 people. This year its around 30, and it has apparently stayed around that number. In fact, they just decided to scrap the sophomore atomic and nuclear physics lab that they started a few years ago because they don't have enough resources to provide that class to 30-something kids a year. Which makes me really angry and sad since I won't get to take it, but I suppose I'll have to deal. So whether it's that TV show or not, something caused a sharp influx of Physics students at Western.

 

[DeepSpace9]

How come people who major in physics go into so many different job fields? My major is astrophysics, and I want to do nothing but independent research, working in labs, and being a scientist. Why go into another field of work? Why major in physics if you want to be an engineer?

 

[daric soldar]

How come people who major in physics go into so many different job fields? My major is astrophysics, and I want to do nothing but independent research, working in labs, and being a scientist. Why go into another field of work? Why major in physics if you want to be an engineer?

There aren't enough pure physics research positions in the world for every single physics graduate. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that's just the way the world works. Supply and demand. There are many more positions in engineering to go around. Once you get outside the comfortable halls of academia, sometimes you have to take a job you weren't aspiring for in order to pay the bills.

 

[X-rays]

I read this thread now and I am too bit confused about the job opportunities.I would like some help from sir(PF Mentor).As I am new as a member of PF,I don't how to contact Mentor directly,so I am replying by this thread.Basically, I am also doing BSc in physics(in India) and now I am in second year of it.I am often discouraged by saying that "you won't get a good job",but my parents support me inspite of the comments given by others.I love physics and plan to do my career in research field if I have the opportunity.But incase if I fail to fulfill my dream,I would like to know the job opportunities for an MSc in Physics.I like Astrophysics.I would sincerely need your guidelines,because even if I am a girl,I don't want to be dependent and I want to prove to those who discourage me that, this line is not bad as a career option too.They prefer Engg.to my choice.But I personally like what I have chose and I want to prove myself and make the best of it.Please help.

 

[X-rays]

A large part of it is the uncertain career outlook. If you are an engineer, you can almost certainly get a job in a technical field right out of college. Physics majors, on the other hand, end up all over the place (insurance, finance, teaching high school, programming, etc). If you want a job in a traditional technical field, engineering is a much safer bet. For most people who have an interest in physics, an engineering degree is a better path to their long term goals.

Of course, if your goal is to learn some physics (and who cares if you never get a chance to do anything with your knowledge), then its a great major. Its a good stepping stone to lots of other graduate disciplines (lots of physics majors get engineering or economics masters degrees), and its an interesting field of study.

In later posts you are saying that physicsts don't get a good job and likewise.If you are so negative about physics you rather don't study it.Because after all its the principles of the scientists that you engineers have theory material for your machines. If scientists can discover such brilliant theories they can very well make machines.Also how are institutes like IISC,NASA,IIA(India)etc. running very well.Its all about how you see at the things,if you decide something's not good in your mind,then even the god can't change your opinion let alone humans.
I am just telling that look around yourselves there are vacancies in Universities like IISC,IIST,(INDIA) and also in abroad for professors ,because as everyone is running after Engg. there are no one left to teach .How can you say that there are no jobs.And if you are thinking that the job of a professor is not a good one,you are mistaken.

 

[Karimspencer]

It depends on which school you go to, doesn't it? If you were at Caltech, then the statement would no longer be true.

Glad you are enjoying Newtonian mechanics. Physics didn't get fun for me till E&M and quantum.

I agree with R.P.F , it depends on the colleges, caltech and MIT are full of physics and mathematics majors.