Physics Article from Physics World on a pathway to industry

[StatGuy2000]

Hi everyone. I found the following article from Physics World on the pathway to industry.

https://physicsworld.com/a/your-pathway-to-industry/

I was curious about what you think about the article, and if there is anything any of you would like to add in regards to career paths for physics graduates.

 

[CrysPhys]

Hi everyone. I found the following article from Physics World on the pathway to industry.

https://physicsworld.com/a/your-pathway-to-industry/

I was curious about what you think about the article, and if there is anything any of you would like to add in regards to career paths for physics graduates.

About 20 yrs ago I volunteered as a mentor for a mentoring program that matched technical professionals in industry with STEM students. The linked article (from Oct 2017) is substantially similar to several I read in 1998 at the launch of the mentoring program. One possible conclusion is that there's not been much progress over the past ~20 yrs.

 

[Dr Transport]

There hasn't been. I've been trying to mentor having worked in both industry and government. APS news this month has a good article https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201902/backpage.cfm and I know some of the authors and I know the past chair of FIAP.

One of the issues I have with articles of this type is that for the most part the authors are not practicing industrial physicists, they are well meaning APS or IOP employees with little or no external experience and just connections which do not have any real pull in their organizations. I have raised the issue for years that the industrial physicist isn't being represented very well and certainly not at the top leadership when a vast majority of the degreed physicists in the US and for that matter the world work in industry and not academia. Sure, you can say, Dr Transport is a govt employee at a national lab, and you are correct, but I worked in the trenches in industry for almost 20 years prior to taking a civil service appointment. When I was in industry, a faculty member at one of the local universities wanted me to advise them on a new STEM MBA (masters program that has the technical coursework along with some MBA style courses (accounting, finance, marketing etc...) ) to give it come credence. He pitched my resume to the physics dept for an adjunct appointment and their response was "we don't want anything to do with him, he has been in industry and we can't have that on our staff". I've kind of given up on mentoring lately since I can't get responses from academia when I try to offer internships to their students.

 

[StatGuy2000]

There hasn't been. I've been trying to mentor having worked in both industry and government. APS news this month has a good article https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201902/backpage.cfm and I know some of the authors and I know the past chair of FIAP.

One of the issues I have with articles of this type is that for the most part the authors are not practicing industrial physicists, they are well meaning APS or IOP employees with little or no external experience and just connections which do not have any real pull in their organizations. I have raised the issue for years that the industrial physicist isn't being represented very well and certainly not at the top leadership when a vast majority of the degreed physicists in the US and for that matter the world work in industry and not academia. Sure, you can say, Dr Transport is a govt employee at a national lab, and you are correct, but I worked in the trenches in industry for almost 20 years prior to taking a civil service appointment. When I was in industry, a faculty member at one of the local universities wanted me to advise them on a new STEM MBA (masters program that has the technical coursework along with some MBA style courses (accounting, finance, marketing etc...) ) to give it come credence. He pitched my resume to the physics dept for an adjunct appointment and their response was "we don't want anything to do with him, he has been in industry and we can't have that on our staff". I've kind of given up on mentoring lately since I can't get responses from academia when I try to offer internships to their students.

One (extreme) conclusion that can be drawn from your example and from @CrysPhys is that a physics degree (whether undergraduate or graduate) is useless for a career in industry, at least in most physics departments in the US, and you're better off with an engineering degree instead.

 

[CrysPhys]

One (extreme) conclusion that can be drawn from your example and from @CrysPhys is that a physics degree (whether undergraduate or graduate) is useless for a career in industry, at least in most physics departments in the US, and you're better off with an engineering degree instead.

Not sure how you come to that conclusion. In particular look at the APS News article cited by Dr. Transport. Many physicists do have successful careers in industry. The key takeaway is that professors and other advisors within universities cannot or do not offer proper career guidance and resources for the vast majority of physics students; alternative mentors and resources are needed; programs attempted so far overall have not been an overwhelming success.

 

[StatGuy2000]

Not sure how you come to that conclusion. In particular look at the APS News article cited by Dr. Transport. Many physicists do have successful careers in industry. The key takeaway is that professors and other advisors within universities cannot or do not offer proper career guidance and resources for the vast majority of physics students; alternative mentors and resources are needed; programs attempted so far overall have not been an overwhelming success.

I admit I was being somewhat facetious by my conclusion above, which I admit is extreme. The point I was trying to highlight was that many physicists do have successful careers in industry in spite of rather than because of resources provided by their professors and advisors within universities. Whereas engineering programs by and large have built-in resources that provide their students the capacity to consider careers in industry.

 

[Vanadium 50]

The key takeaway is that professors and other advisors within universities cannot or do not offer proper career guidance and resources for the vast majority of physics students

I think this overstates the case. Some professors are good at this, others are bad, and yet others are horrible.

 

[StatGuy2000]

I think this overstates the case. Some professors are good at this, others are bad, and yet others are horrible.

I think it would be safe for students to assume that their professors are not capable of providing proper career guidance to prepare them for careers outside of academia. After all, most physics professors have no experience whatsoever with working in the private sector and have few connections to the industrial sector, so they may not have the requisite knowledge or expertise in providing such career advice.

 

[CrysPhys]

I think it would be safe for students to assume that their professors are not capable of providing proper career guidance to prepare them for careers outside of academia. After all, most physics professors have no experience whatsoever with working in the private sector and have few connections to the industrial sector, so they may not have the requisite knowledge or expertise in providing such career advice.

Yes, that was the context in which I wrote my response. I also didn't include a key fact because I thought it too obvious: the vast majority of physics students do not end up with careers in academia.

There are of course some professors who have previously worked in industry, government, business, or other sectors.