Endurance->permanent academia position?

[Arsenic&Lace]

There's a lot of pessimism about academic work here on physics forums which is probably legitimate. However, what I find odd is that it would seem that somebody with a lot of endurance and time, doing several post-docs, assistant professorships or research professor positions would eventually, by accruing experience teaching and publishing papers, become the ideal candidate for a faculty position.

Why does it take more than mere patience to get a faculty position?

 

[Lavabug]

Because it's a game of luck? AIP publishes a lot of statistics on academic employment. There are several times more graduating phd's than available permanent positions at research universities. In an ideal world everyone would end up in the job they wanted, but there just aren't enough positions available for everyone who did a thesis and/or research on a given subject X.

 

[f95toli]

There's a lot of pessimism about academic work here on physics forums which is probably legitimate. However, what I find odd is that it would seem that somebody with a lot of endurance and time, doing several post-docs, assistant professorships or research professor positions would eventually, by accruing experience teaching and publishing papers, become the ideal candidate for a faculty position.

Why does it take more than mere patience to get a faculty position?

There is some thruth in this, patience does help.
However, you quite quickly (towards the end of your 2nd postdoc or so) reach a point where you will be required to secure funding to pay not only for your salary but also your research; and the competition for grants is almost as fierce as the competition for postitions, and without monety you can't do research, which in turn means you can't publish papers which in turn means that you stand 0% chance of success of getting a new grant or finding a permanent position.

Note that most universities would be more than happy to hire a researcher that can bring in money, and it is not at all unusual for univerisites and institutes to create positions for succeful researchers.
Hence, if you are successful enough you can always find a position somewhere, but creating the conditions for that success is far from trivial and also requres a great deal of luck.

 

[George Jones]

There is some thruth in this, patience does help.

Yes. I don't know of any statistics, but it does seem from anecdotal evidence that the average length of time between getting a Ph.D. and securing a first tenure-track position is substantially longer than, say, 30 years ago.

Even if one has patience, competition is so fierce, that the odds are still below 50%.

Another reason for not using this method for too long: the two (or more)-body problem. Suppose Smith successfully defends a physics Ph.D. today. If Smith is in the U.S., Smith is probably about 28 (maybe younger in Britain).

There's a lot of pessimism about academic work here on physics forums which is probably legitimate. However, what I find odd is that it would seem that somebody with a lot of endurance and time, doing several post-docs, assistant professorships or research professor positions would eventually, by accruing experience teaching and publishing papers, become the ideal candidate for a faculty position.

After doing all this, how old will Smith be? Each new position likely will involve a substantial change of location. Would a spouse/signicant other let this continue, particularly, if (eventually) kids are involved? I have seen a number of cases where spouses gave ultimatums: "Get a permanent job (of any kind), and stay with the family; take a new temporary position and quit the family. Your choice."

 

[Sheets]

I find odd is that it would seem that somebody with a lot of endurance and time, doing several post-docs, assistant professorships or research professor positions would eventually, by accruing experience teaching and publishing papers, become the ideal candidate for a faculty position.

You would think that would be the case but it isn't what I've observed. I know of several people that continue on with soft money positions at universities after doing everything you talk about.

But I think the university looks at such an individual and thinks, "This sucker has stayed around no matter how poorly we treat him[her]. Why should we do anything different?"

 

[Arsenic&Lace]

This is quite fascinating. Ah well, I'm still going to give it a shot, since plan B with a physics PhD doesn't seem so bad :P

 

[daveyrocket]

I think there's a sweet spot somewhere around 2-3 postdocs where someone has maximum chance of getting permanent university employment. After that it starts to look like "if this person is so good, why has he done five postdocs and not found a permanent position?"

 

[Arsenic&Lace]

That's slightly sad, I feel like a lot of talented people are going to get screwed because they'll be passed their prime when all of the current old foagies start retiring.

Well, here's to hoping I'm in the right place in the right time! Or that I can somehow get a job with my newly minted Physics PhD.

 

[ParticleGrl]

That's slightly sad, I feel like a lot of talented people are going to get screwed because they'll be passed their prime when all of the current old foagies start retiring.

The old foagies have largely retired- physics retirements peaked in the late 90s and dropped dramatically after the mid 2000s.

And yes- many more very talented people leave physics than get to stay.

 

[Arsenic&Lace]

Fascinating! What are the odds of obtaining stable, middle class employment with a physics PhD?

 

[ParticleGrl]

Fascinating! What are the odds of obtaining stable, middle class employment with a physics PhD?

Very high- people who can get through phd programs can generally figure out ways to get by. I made solid middle-class money bartending at the height of the economic crisis, and eventually moved into data mining. I've worked for an insurance company and now work for a consulting company, and I've had a steady trickle of other job offers in the field. Other phds I know have done similar things, moving into finance, etc. Some did a masters post phd (engineering, econ) to ease the transition.

What are the odds you use any physics in your career? Probably very low, though it probably depends on your phd specialty. I occasionally use some of the statistics I took in undergraduate, but other than that I've had to learn an entirely different skill set.

I use myself as an example, but I seem fairly typical compared to the other physics phds I know. After the phd+ maybe some postdocs, some time was spent bouncing around before retraining for some non-STEM, but still somewhat technical positions.

 

[Arsenic&Lace]

That's heartening, it's just that I want to get my PhD in spite of the odds stacked against me of putting it to use. So it sounds like I can get a job, which means I don't have to get a masters in engineering and skip the PhD

 

[Vanadium 50]

Why does it take more than mere patience to get a faculty position?

You can ask the same question about professional football players and symphony orchestra musicians. I suspect the answers are similar.

Yes. I don't know of any statistics, but it does seem from anecdotal evidence that the average length of time between getting a Ph.D. and securing a first tenure-track position is substantially longer than, say, 30 years ago.

I don't know about 30, but I would agree with 40 or 45. But the nature of the job has changed. Forty years ago, junior faculty were more like postdocs - they were less independent and the expectations of them getting their own funding was also less. You can see some of this in the duration people spend as associate professors: it's usually only a few years. The reason, I believe, is there is no longer a need for this distinction. In a department today, everyone has their own funding, and the only difference between an assistant and a full professor is tenure.

Now, as far as taking a bunch of postdocs goes. If you are DoE OHEP funded, this won't work. After 8 years post-PhD, irrespective of your job title, you are classified as a research scientist, and the grant proposal is expected to justify why they need a research scientist and not a postdoc. For many people, this is not a problem. For some, it is - but it's the opinion of the Office that these people are not cost-effective and they are blocking the path of freshly minted PhD's by taking up a slot. Actually, 1.5-2 slots, because they are more expensive (getting back to the cost-effective argument).

The people who are doing tasks that a postdoc can't aren't in much better shape, because these are typically jobs that do not lead to faculty positions: e.g. experts in detector operations. They can (and sometimes do) lead to National Lab positions. My point is that the career path for these individuals is different than that from that of university faculty.

So, at least in HEP, the postdoctoral position is set up in an "up or out" fashion - it's not supposed to be a holding pattern where people spend a decade waiting to get a permanent job.

For what it's worth, in my cohort, people got permanent job offers typically mid-way through their second postdoc: e.g. PhD+5. That's not too different than today. PhD+4 enters the market to practice, PhD+5 or 6 are in it seriously, and by PhD+7 the odds are starting to drop.

 

[Arsenic&Lace]

For what it's worth, in my cohort, people got permanent job offers typically mid-way through their second postdoc: e.g. PhD+5. That's not too different than today. PhD+4 enters the market to practice, PhD+5 or 6 are in it seriously, and by PhD+7 the odds are starting to drop.

So, what happened to the people who don't get a permanent offer by their second postdoc? Were they simply unlucky? Is this a timing window where you need x publications by y timeframe to land a job? Or did they not try hard enough?

 

[ParticleGrl]

So, what happened to the people who don't get a permanent offer by their second postdoc? Were they simply unlucky? Is this a timing window where you need x publications by y timeframe to land a job? Or did they not try hard enough?

Its a combination of a lot of things, many of which are totally outside your control. The time from start of phd to end of two postdocs is 10+ years! Think of everything that's changed, especially in the high-tech world in the last decade. If you happen to have timed a boom in a subfield, great. If you happen to have timed a bust in a subfield, you are SOL. My cohort finished phds and postdocs in a terrible economic crisis that saw big international science cuts- no one could have seen that coming.

Being talented and hardworking buys you a ticket- the rest is just a lottery.

 

[Vanadium 50]

So, what happened to the people who don't get a permanent offer by their second postdoc?

Same thing as happens to NFL and symphony orchestra hopefuls when they haven't been picked up by a team or an orchestra. They find something else to do. Telecom seems to be gobbling up many of them at the moment.

Each professor graduates ~10 students in his career, and ~1 is needed to replace him. Either 9 find something else to do, or we will become hip-deep in professors.

 

[Arsenic&Lace]

To rephrase my question, why does Sally become a professor whereas Fred does not? Is it really a total lottery?

Maybe I'm going off topic, but producing a supply 10x the demand smells like the system is broken!

 

[atyy]

To rephrase my question, why does Sally become a professor whereas Fred does not? Is it really a total lottery?

Maybe I'm going off topic, but producing a supply 10x the demand smells like the system is broken!

It isn't necessarily. In the NFL and musician cases, the limited number of jobs is well known to all entering the system. In the case of musicians, they also know it's going to take a lot of luck, and not merit. I just read Judi Dench's advice to aspring actors, and one of the things she said was that the best actors are not always employed. Perhaps the question is one of honest advertising - whether the system makes it known that pursuing a career in science is more like pursuing a career in music than on engineering. (I think the odds in music are much worse, but just to continue the analogy.)

 

[chill_factor]

Perhaps the question is one of honest advertising - whether the system makes it known that pursuing a career in science is more like pursuing a career in music than on engineering. (I think the odds in music are much worse, but just to continue the analogy.)

Many physicists think that the only real science is theoretical cosmology or particle physics. That is a pretty damn big limit on what is science.

 

[ParticleGrl]

Many physicists think that the only real science is theoretical cosmology or particle physics. That is a pretty damn big limit on what is science.

I don't know anyone in a phd program who thinks that. A lot of undergrads do, but 4 years with nary a particle particle physics class tends to dissuade them. And condensed matter theorists seem to fair about as well as particle theorists in the job market.

Experimentalists might have more jobs available, but there are also a lot more of them (some labs at my undergrad had 12-13 gradstudents AT A TIME), so its not clear to me how that scales. Most experimentalists I know left STEM after the phd + a postdoc or so, just like most theorists.

 

[chill_factor]

I don't know anyone in a phd program who thinks that. A lot of undergrads do, but 4 years with nary a particle particle physics class tends to dissuade them. And condensed matter theorists seem to fair about as well as particle theorists in the job market.

Experimentalists might have more jobs available, but there are also a lot more of them (some labs at my undergrad had 12-13 gradstudents AT A TIME), so its not clear to me how that scales. Most experimentalists I know left STEM after the phd + a postdoc or so, just like most theorists.

From the alumni reports at my particular undergrad institution the experimental groups in optics and condensed matter are doing fine in terms of landing STEM jobs with the title "____ engineer".

It is true though that the physics curriculum and research interests, especially at the grad level, is not so good in terms of preparing people for jobs. The amount of professors doing fundamental studies on materials that may be forever inapplicable to any technological advancement is staggering. Indeed, many professors actively resist putting a more applied spin on their research; hell, that's what my professor does.

Until that changes, the employment situation will not change.

 

[Vanadium 50]

It isn't necessarily. In the NFL and musician cases, the limited number of jobs is well known to all entering the system.

It's certainly known to graduate students - and if it's not, it should be. If you want to be a scientist, you should understand the exponential growth argument and be able to asses whether an order of magnitude increase every 30 years is reasonable. You should also be able to observe and compare the average number of graduates in your department per year with the average number of faculty hires per year.

And it's not a "limited number of jobs" - it's a limited number of jobs as a professor at a research university. Every student I have worked who wanted one had no trouble getting an industrial job (the exception was one who wanted to become a stay-at-home mom and did). Like I said, telecommunications seems to be gobbling them up as fast as they can.

You should have no illusions about this - the reason HEP is funded is not because Congress has a deep-seated interest in the Higgs Boson and electroweak symmetry breaking. It's because CEO's trek up The Hill to say "keep the flow of scientists coming". Discovery of the Higgs Boson was a fortunate byproduct of creating better antenna designers for Motorola and better lightning specialists for Boeing.

 

[Rika]

I think you should be happy - physics is non practical, academic degree and yet there are industry jobs conncected with physics (even if they are engineering positions).

Literature or archerology students (even musicians) don't have this kind of luxury.

 

[atyy]

Every student I have worked who wanted one had no trouble getting an industrial job (the exception was one who wanted to become a stay-at-home mom and did). Like I said, telecommunications seems to be gobbling them up as fast as they can.

Do you think this is true of physics PhDs in general, or do your students have better industry contacts through you? Also - even if anecdotally - was the situation during the recession any different?

 

[Dr Transport]

Fascinating! What are the odds of obtaining stable, middle class employment with a physics PhD?

Pretty high, all of my friends have gotten stable jobs in industry as PhD physicists whether they be experimentalists or theoreticians.

You should have no illusions about this - the reason HEP is funded is not because Congress has a deep-seated interest in the Higgs Boson and electroweak symmetry breaking. It's because CEO's trek up The Hill to say "keep the flow of scientists coming". Discovery of the Higgs Boson was a fortunate byproduct of creating better antenna designers for Motorola and better lightning specialists for Boeing.

Well put, industry capitalizes on basic physics knowledge, fleshes out the issues with manufacturing and turns that into a profit margin. Think about this, for every paper published in The Applied Physics Journal, there is on the order of 2-3 internal documents written by scientists and engineers in industry trying to exploit that phenomenon.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Do you think this is true of physics PhDs in general, or do your students have better industry contacts through you?

I think it's true for experimental HENP. Can't say about other subfields, although the lore is that the situation is even better for those in condensed matter.

 

[bcrowell]

What are the odds you use any physics in your career? Probably very low, though it probably depends on your phd specialty.

I don't think this is quite right. What's low is the probability of getting a permanent job doing fundamental research in physics. I was in a group of four friends who were physics majors at Berkeley in the 80's. All four of us went on to get PhD's. None of us got a permanent job doing fundamental research in physics. However, two of us have jobs where we use our physics every day: I'm a community college physics teacher, and one of my friends runs a small aerospace engineering firm. A third member of the group has worked in the semiconductor industry in the past, and in that job he certainly used his physics. (The company went out of business, and he now works in finance.) The fourth guy works at google, and AFAIK doesn't use any physics in his work.

 

[ParticleGrl]

I don't think this is quite right. What's low is the probability of getting a permanent job doing fundamental research in physics. I was in a group of four friends who were physics majors at Berkeley in the 80's

Even in your list, only half of the phds use their physics (assuming finance and google don't). And that's a group that was looking for jobs during the best job market in recent American history (mid 90s).

My experience is probably colored by the fact that my cohort finished their phds around 2008, when things headed south economically.

Of the five physics majors from undergrad (early 2000s) I've kept in touch with, all did phds at good schools, two did postdocs, only 1 is still doing anything related to physics (high school physics and bio teacher). Of my phd cohort, its all over the board, but the ones who still do physics studied silicon in grad school and work in the semi-conductor industry.

The plurality of my phd cohort seems to be doing statistical/big data type work. After that, there is some finance, some IT, some programming,etc. The people who come close to using their physics seem to be doing patent law and grant review.

Maybe the moral of the story is that when times are good (the 90s job market), and engineers are scarce physicists are decent utility players so they'll get hired into some engineering spots. When the job market is worse, and there are engineers available, no one wants a physicist.

 

[Arsenic&Lace]

Bottom line for me is that I won't starve if I get my PhD in physics.

I'm still going to try the whole research faculty route though, maybe I'll be the lucky one :/

It's sad too, I just seriously got into research and I love it!

 

[StatGuy2000]

The plurality of my phd cohort seems to be doing statistical/big data type work. After that, there is some finance, some IT, some programming,etc. The people who come close to using their physics seem to be doing patent law and grant review.

ParticleGrl, you had mentioned (both in this thread and in another thread where I had asked what happened to the physics PhD students you knew personally) that the plurality of your PhD cohort were working on statistical or big data type work. I am curious as to whether their working in this field depended to any great degree on their area of specialty.

One reason I'm asking this is that there are a number of research areas in physics which have embraced "big data", such as experimental particle physics or astronomy (Jerry Friedman, a renowned statistics professor at Stanford specializing in machine learning, was originally a particle physicist). So conceivably a physics PhD student specializing in such areas will have developed an appreciation for and understanding of large-scale inference without spending a great deal of time retraining themselves to work in big data type work.

(I know you mentioned in your case that you spent some time retooling your skill set while working as a bartender).

Another reason I'm asking is that in discussions that I've followed with other statisticians, there is much lamenting the perceived lack of understanding or appreciation of statistics on the part of physicists. See, for example, the following amusing comment on the blog from physicist-turned-statistician Cosma Shalizi, currently a professor at CMU.

http://masi.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/297.html

 

[ParticleGrl]

ParticleGrl, you had mentioned (both in this thread and in another thread where I had asked what happened to the physics PhD students you knew personally) that the plurality of your PhD cohort were working on statistical or big data type work. I am curious as to whether their working in this field depended to any great degree on their area of specialty.

It doesn't appear to be the case- I know a biophysicist, a particle theorist (me), an applied math guy who studied stochastic diff-eq who all retrained, as well as some HEP experiment guys. However, by the time we talk about physics phds who are doing big data, people I know get small quickly.

Another reason I'm asking is that in discussions that I've followed with other statisticians, there is much lamenting the perceived lack of understanding or appreciation of statistics on the part of physicists. See, for example, the following amusing comment on the blog from physicist-turned-statistician Cosma Shalizi, currently a professor at CMU.

I would say that there is very little formal statistical training for physicists- everyone I've talked to, even HEP experiment have had to learn a great deal of the statistics as they go.

 

[Locrian]

Quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics made so much more sense to me after the preliminary actuarial exams.

 

[Vanadium 50]

It is true that formal statistics is not part of the standard physics curriculum, and it's also true that HEP has reinvented the wheel more than once (and often not a particularly round wheel at that). I had three courses in probability and statistics in college, which was enough to make me wince at the way statistics is handled.

That said, one of the secrets of industrial statistics is that the textbook is not of much help. If it's in the textbook, chances are it's already in SPSS or SAS and they don't need your help. I made a few extra grand moonlighting as a statistical consultant when I was a postdoc, and my bread and butter was figuring out and explaining what to do when the book doesn't say what to do.

Which is a lot like they way statistics is done in HEP.

 

[ParticleGrl]

That said, one of the secrets of industrial statistics is that the textbook is not of much help. If it's in the textbook, chances are it's already in SPSS or SAS and they don't need your help. I made a few extra grand moonlighting as a statistical consultant when I was a postdoc, and my bread and butter was figuring out and explaining what to do when the book doesn't say what to do.

You would be surprised- in order to know what to do in SPSS or SAS, you have to know what a method is called and how it works, etc. Often having this sort of 'mental decoder ring' is quite valuable for smaller companies who don't have a lot of statisticians.

That said, because my statistics is so spotty (my self-study was and is heavy on machine learning and light on many other things), I've found myself reinventing the wheel on quite a number of occasions (I have a few functions I built in R that later turned out to be less-efficient clones of existing functions).

 

[George Jones]

As a physics student, I took loads of (mainly pure) math courses that were not required, but I only took the one required statistics course.

Cosmologist/astronomer Peter Coles wrote some interesting things about statistics in his blog post
http://telescoper.wordpress.com/2012/12/06/society-counts-and-so-do-astronomers/

 

[StatGuy2000]

It is true that formal statistics is not part of the standard physics curriculum, and it's also true that HEP has reinvented the wheel more than once (and often not a particularly round wheel at that). I had three courses in probability and statistics in college, which was enough to make me wince at the way statistics is handled.

That said, one of the secrets of industrial statistics is that the textbook is not of much help. If it's in the textbook, chances are it's already in SPSS or SAS and they don't need your help. I made a few extra grand moonlighting as a statistical consultant when I was a postdoc, and my bread and butter was figuring out and explaining what to do when the book doesn't say what to do.

Which is a lot like they way statistics is done in HEP.

First of all, I would disagree with your characterization above about statistics. In order for someone to apply a method built into SPSS or SAS, you need to know about the method, how to use, and most important of all, under what circumstances does it apply or not.
Part of the reason why one hears about "lies, damned lies, and statistics" is due to non-statisticians applying the wrong method blindly without understanding what circumstances
such methods would apply to e.g. blindly fitting linear regression without validating the model. These are things that a good statistics course -- in particular a good course on linear models/regression analysis or applied statistics -- should teach (and a good statistics textbook should cover).

Furthermore, the very fact that in HEP (as well as in other fields of physics) that there is a need to reinvent the wheel at least in terms of data analysis suggests to me that either more formal statistical training needs to be offered, or that there needs to be greater interdisciplinary participation between statisticians and research physicists (perhaps in the form of consulting, similar to what statisticians often provide to other faculty members in fields as diverse as medicine, biology, psychology, engineering, etc.)

 

[Vanadium 50]

StatGuy, I am not arguing that that's not the way things should be. (ParticleGrl makes a similar point) I am instead discussing how thing actually are - or at least were. Certainly experimental HEP could do a better job than it does.

My point was that there is - or at least was - an opportunity to help businesses (and making money doing it) using the same kind of statistics as used in experimental HEP.

 

[StatGuy2000]

StatGuy, I am not arguing that that's not the way things should be. (ParticleGrl makes a similar point) I am instead discussing how thing actually are - or at least were. Certainly experimental HEP could do a better job than it does.

My point was that there is - or at least was - an opportunity to help businesses (and making money doing it) using the same kind of statistics as used in experimental HEP.

Fair enough. And I agree with you that the kind of statistics that were used in experimental HEP are the same as that can be used in businesses for data mining/analytics -- one of the reasons why I asked ParticleGrl whether those physics PhD graduates who she knew of that transitioned to statistics/data analytics type work often come from a background in HEP or astronomy.

 

[ParticleGrl]

I agree with you that the kind of statistics that were used in experimental HEP are the same as that can be used in businesses for data mining/analytics

Just to be clear what I tend to think of as the skill Vanadium is talking about isn't actually KNOWING statistics- its having the ability (and perhaps the arrogance, to use the word from Shalizi's blog) to reinvent the wheel to solve the problem.

 

[DarrenM]

This has been a very interesting discussion.

If I may venture a very small detour, I'd like to ask how much of this information also applies to Mathematics/Applied Mathematics PhDs? I know this forum has significantly fewer "math folk" than physics--still, any information would be helpful.

 

[ParticleGrl]

If I may venture a very small detour, I'd like to ask how much of this information also applies to Mathematics/Applied Mathematics PhDs?

This is just an educated guess, but most of the math phds I know were seriously considering the faculty job market after only 1 postdoc, and all of the physics phds I know did two postdocs before approaching the faculty market. This suggests to me that while its still very difficult, its a tad easier.