Math Math PhD Bubble: What % Get Tenure?

[hamster143]

I'm curious, is there a "Ph.D. bubble" in math that is similar to the one in physics? Specifically, what percentage of graduating math Ph.D.s end up getting tenure?

 

[Newtime]

What do you mean by "bubble"?

 

[98whbf]

I think the OP might be referring to there being more people being awarded with Ph.D's every year than there are jobs opening.

 

[Vanadium 50]

I think the OP might be referring to there being more people being awarded with Ph.D's every year than there are jobs opening.

Yes, but that's hardly a "bubble". A model where every faculty member has 5-10 students who then all graduate to become faculty members with 5-10 students is clearly unsustainable. It's simply not realistic to expect that a PhD means a faculty job at a research university. Most PhD's move on to industry - which, IMO, is a healthy sign: it means that a PhD has value to other parts of society.

Saying there is a bubble in physics is like saying there's a bubble in major league baseball players. Not everyone gets to be one, but that's not the same thing.

 

[hamster143]

Yes, but that's hardly a "bubble". A model where every faculty member has 5-10 students who then all graduate to become faculty members with 5-10 students is clearly unsustainable. It's simply not realistic to expect that a PhD means a faculty job at a research university. Most PhD's move on to industry - which, IMO, is a healthy sign: it means that a PhD has value to other parts of society.

I can't agree with that. The whole point of getting a PhD is to do research for a living. There's no law that says that every professor in a research university must teach 5 students during his lifetime. Does Grigory Perelman read lectures and train postgrad students? How many postgrad students could call Albert Einstein their primary advisor?

There's no immediate reason to conclude that a PhD in physics or math has any value whatsoever outside academia. If you have a system that produces 100,000 virtuoso violin players a year, but only 20,000 of them find jobs playing violin for a living, and others move on to unrelated jobs in industry - is that healthy, and does that indicate that violin mastery has value to other parts of society?

 

[f95toli]

There's no immediate reason to conclude that a PhD in physics or math has any value whatsoever outside academia.

That is simply not correct. One of the main reasons why governments are willing to fund the training of so many PhDs (via funding agencies) is because they are needed in industry. Where I did my PhD the vast majority of the PhD students had no intention of ever going into academia. Most of them ended up working in the telecom industry, some went into finance etc.
Even if you do your PhD working in an "exotic" field you still pick up a lot of useful skills. One large company which had an R&D facility near my university were actively recruiting PhD students that had worked in string theory, not because they were interested in Branes etc but because they had found that they were really good at calculating various properties of radar systems.

 

[D H]

I can't agree with that. The whole point of getting a PhD is to do research for a living.

No way! The whole point of getting a PhD is to open doors to interesting, challenging, rewarding, and stable jobs.

There's no immediate reason to conclude that a PhD in physics or math has any value whatsoever outside academia.

That governments and industry provide the funding needed to make it possible to produce many times more PhDs than are needed by academia belies your claim.

 

[hamster143]

That is simply not correct. One of the main reasons why governments are willing to fund the training of so many PhDs (via funding agencies) is because they are needed in industry. Where I did my PhD the vast majority of the PhD students had no intention of ever going into academia. Most of them ended up working in the telecom industry, some went into finance etc.
Even if you do your PhD working in an "exotic" field you still pick up a lot of useful skills. One large company which had an R&D facility near my university were actively recruiting PhD students that had worked in string theory, not because they were interested in Branes etc but because they had found that they were really good at calculating various properties of radar systems.

I see this as a big problem. This is like training lots of people to play violin, because the ones that succeed will be proven to have agile fingers and keen sense of hearing and thus could be retrained to do jobs that require either (or both), even if they don't touch the violin for the rest of their natural lives. It makes no sense to study string theory and then go calculate properties of radar systems for a living - it's better to get a 6 month course on radiolocation followed by hands-on training. It makes no sense to study condensed matter and then end up working quant in an investment bank - it's better to get a B.S. in finance, once again followed by hands-on training.

If you invest 5 years into a Ph.D. and perhaps 4 more years into a post-doc, you should spend that on knowledge and skills that you will need for the 30 years that follow.

My question is, is the same in math as it is in physics.

That governments and industry provide the funding needed to make it possible to produce many times more PhDs than are needed by academia belies your claim.

Governments provide non-directed science funding that is available to all qualified applicants to spend more or less as they please. NSF budget is X, the share of this budget that is allocated to physics is Y, and X and Y are determined by the state of national economy, by the whims of politicians, and by historical trends. Unlike, say, in medicine, where all med students are pretty much guaranteed employment in their primary field of study (because there's a centralized cartel called AMA that keeps a tight leash on the number of spots in med schools nationwide), no one ever bothers to count PhD's or tenured professors.

A further proof is that physics students have to be paid to work on their PhD's. if PhD had significant weight in the industry, we'd have people piling up into physics programs and taking on sizable student debt, like they do in medicine and law. Instead we have to provide free tuition, pay stipend, and even so we end up filling half the slots in physics grad programs with Chinese nationals (for whom the PhD carries an added non-monetary benefit - path towards US citizenship).

 

[f95toli]

I see this as a big problem. This is like training lots of people to play violin, because the ones that succeed will be proven to have agile fingers and keen sense of hearing and thus could be retrained to do jobs that require either (or both), even if they don't touch the violin for the rest of their natural lives. It makes no sense to study string theory and then go calculate properties of radar systems for a living - it's better to get a 6 month course on radiolocation followed by hands-on training.

The difference is that when you work as a PhD student you learn how to do research which is a skill in itself. Moreover, you also learn (and demonstrate the ability) how to plan your time etc for a long-term project; something you are usually unable to do in industry if you work as e.g. an engineer since R&D projects are usually much shorter then that.
Also, if one were to follow your line of reasoning to its logical conclucsion everyone that does a PhD in a certain field should then continue in that field. It is not at all unusual for people to move to a complettely different field of reseach after a PhD even if they stay in academia. In the research group I belong to there are people who did PhDs working neutron scattering, astrophysics, theoretical optics, semiconductor physics etc. I even used to have a colleague who had PhD in chemistry (who was orignally hired as a chemist, but "drifted" over to physics by working on carbon nanotubes).
We all work more or less on the same things. Some of them also work in two very different fields at the same time; e.g. our in-house expert on STM also works on optical experiments (frequency references).

Governments provide non-directed science funding that is available to all qualified applicants to spend more or less as they please. NSF budget is X, the share of this budget that is allocated to physics is Y, and X and Y are determined by the state of national economy, by the whims of politicians, and by historical trends.

This is not always true. The systems differ from country to country, but when you write a grant applications you usually have to specificy if you plan to hire a PhD student.
It is also not uncommon for governements to direct money specifically to the training of PhDs. This is what happened in my case, there were a lot of PhD students starting at the roughly same time as me; the reason being that the funding for students had gone up that year as the result of the telecom companies complaining about the lack of PhDs.

A further proof is that physics students have to be paid to work on their PhD's. if PhD had significant weight in the industry, we'd have people piling up into physics programs and taking on sizable student debt

I think the main reason for this is that the starting salaries for people with PhDs when they go into industry is usually not that much higher than for someone with an MSc. But having a PhD can certainly "pay off" later on in you career, most of the people I meet who e.g. manage R&D projects in industry are PhDs. But yes, it is true that for you as an individual it might not make financial sense to do a PhD, but that does not change the fact that society as a whole (not to mention companies) can benefit.

 

[f95toli]

It makes no sense to study string theory and then go calculate properties of radar systems for a living - it's better to get a 6 month course on radiolocation followed by hands-on training.

I guess I should address this point more specifially. I don't know exactly what these guys are working on (military radar, most of it is classified) but I am quite sure it is something that involves a LOT of that math. There is no way someone with just a BS would be able to do their job. Presumably the same place also hire people with e.g. a PhD in math, although I imagine some knowledge of electromagnetics and physics in general might come in handy in this case.

I think the same thing applies to quants. The reason why people with PhDs in physics or math end up in that job is that we are the only ones that know enough about math and modelling. There is no way somone who has only graduated from busines school have learned enough math.

 

[twofish-quant]

I can't agree with that. The whole point of getting a PhD is to do research for a living. There's no law that says that every professor in a research university must teach 5 students during his lifetime.

Yes there is. If you don't have teaching and research assistants, you don't get funding. If you don't get funding then your salary doesn't get paid. Both the people that you mention (Einstein and Perelman) are funded by systems that are very, very different from the system that most university professors get funded.

I wouldn't say it's a "bubble" as much as a "ponzi scheme."

There's no immediate reason to conclude that a PhD in physics or math has any value whatsoever outside academia.

But there *is*. One reason I think that Ph.D.'s need to be encouraged to look at life outside the university is that the world becomes a much nicer place, once you realize that academia is not the only option.

 

[twofish-quant]

It makes no sense to study string theory and then go calculate properties of radar systems for a living - it's better to get a 6 month course on radiolocation followed by hands-on training. It makes no sense to study condensed matter and then end up working quant in an investment bank - it's better to get a B.S. in finance, once again followed by hands-on training.

No it's not. People with bachelors in finance just don't have the mathematical or research skills to do quant work. One thing that makes the Ph.D. different from the bachelors is that you are *creating* knowledge. I have no clue what mathematical techniques are going to be used in finance next year, neither does anyone else. Ph.D.'s are used to situation where there isn't a textbook. Most people with bachelors are not.

The fun thing about working in an investment bank is that it's like graduate school. Only with more money.

If you invest 5 years into a Ph.D. and perhaps 4 more years into a post-doc, you should spend that on knowledge and skills that you will need for the 30 years that follow.

Which is why jobs in investment banks or medical imaging or whatever are perfect. I'm basically writing the same sorts of programs that I am in Wall Street that I did in graduate school. Only with more money.

 

[kote]

The situation with philosophy PhDs can shed some light on this I think. Philosophy programs graduate PhDs in proportions similar to those of physics programs. Of the 50% who don't drop out, most never get jobs in academia. If they get jobs in academia the pay is equivalent to undergrad engineering pay. If they don't get jobs in academia the degree itself is worthless.

There is an institutional problem in academia that is causing an oversupply of PhDs. PhD students are basically free labor. Schools want as many as possible. Professors are relatively expensive labor. Schools want as few as possible. The demand for graduate degrees is inflated for a number of reasons, one of which is the fact that students' advisors for the most part have only ever known academia and going that route worked out for them. The supply of graduate positions is driven by how cost effective they are for the institution. Notice at no point has the good of society or the student been mentioned. It's simple economics and it's uniform across specializations that are and are not useful in the work force.

 

[twofish-quant]

Also, if one were to follow your line of reasoning to its logical conclucsion everyone that does a PhD in a certain field should then continue in that field. It is not at all unusual for people to move to a complettely different field of reseach after a PhD even if they stay in academia.

Also the fields aren't quite is different as they might seem. There are only so many ways of writing a parabolic partial differential equation, so if you get good at simulating parabolic PDE
s with neutrino diffusion, and a bank needs someone to simulate a parabolic PDE involving stock option pricing...

 

[twofish-quant]

People with master's degrees generally do know enough math to do modeling, however where people with master's degrees can run into trouble is if the rules change if it turns out that you need to teach yourself some math that no one has ever taught you.

 

[twofish-quant]

There is an institutional problem in academia that is causing an oversupply of PhDs.

I really don't think that society has an oversupply of Ph.D.'s. There is a huge problem in that Ph.D.'s are being taught that the "normal" thing for a Ph.D. to do is to get a job in academia, but that's something different.

If you look at unemployment rates for Ph.D.'s. I don't know of any physics/math Ph.D. that has had any problem looking for a job, once they looked outside the academy.

Notice at no point has the good of society or the student been mentioned. It's simple economics and it's uniform across specializations that are and are not useful in the work force.

The problem is that if the solution is "make society less educated" its probably not going to cause good things to happen. The only real solution I can see is to make Ph.D. students and their advisors more aware of life outside the academia.

What I think is going to be really interesting is that if you have more Ph.D.'s outside the academia than inside, this will likely change the power structures within the academia.

 

[kote]

I really don't think that society has an oversupply of Ph.D.'s. There is a huge problem in that Ph.D.'s are being taught that the "normal" thing for a Ph.D. to do is to get a job in academia, but that's something different.

It's a relative thing. Only a few hundred people even apply to philosophy phd programs each year, so you don't have a ton of unemployed philosophers wandering around everywhere. I was just pointing out that the same factors that are driving the definite oversupply in philosophy are driving the numbers in other majors. It's an institutional business decision that is only in the interest of the school. In many majors this works out for the students too, but not in all.

There is no different path for philosophy phds. It's academia or trying to write a novel. Yet state branch college X that placed one student in a community college in the past decade isn't going to scrap their program because they are underfunded and desperate for TAs and status. The reason I blame the schools and not the students in these cases is the wholly inadequate advising of undergraduates when it comes to choice of major or career path.

 

[kote]

It's also interesting to take a look at a non-academic focused environment - med school. In academia you have an oversupply of cheap labor keeping salaries low and competition high. In the medical profession where students aren't that valuable to the school and training them is expensive, you have an artificial undersupply of graduates that keeps salaries and employment high.

Even looking at business school, assistant professors of accounting make over twice the salary that new philosophy professors make. Students actually realize that they have other options when they are considering business school and you don't get the oversupply that you do in other fields. What students going to top philosophy programs, for example, don't realize, is that on average they are just as competitive on the job market as students applying to business schools - even more so if you go by GPA and GRE scores.

Edit: For the record I'm not a bitter philosophy grad student or anything, but I considered it and did my research . I'm not as familiar with other concentrations. I know philosophy and physics are similar in many ways, so I think it works.

 

[98whbf]

As a philosophy major with plans on graduate school and no desire to enter the business world this thread makes me very uneasy.

 

[kote]

As a philosophy major with plans on graduate school and no desire to enter the business world this thread makes me very uneasy.

http://www.philosophicalgourmet.com/perspective.asp
http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/advice_for_academic_job_seekers/
http://aidan.mcglynn.googlepages.com/adviceforwannabephilosophers
http://lemmingsblog.blogspot.com/2007/01/should-i-become-professional.html

 

[98whbf]

Thanks, I'd read the first one before but the others are new to me.

 

[twofish-quant]

As a philosophy major with plans on graduate school and no desire to enter the business world this thread makes me very uneasy.

I think it's sort of a shame, since one of the purposes of philosophy is to answer the questions "why?" What should be the goal of academia? How should academia interact with the business world? How does academia interact with the business world?

I've found that reading philosophy was pretty critical in my staying somewhat sane. One thing that I figured out was that academia is a business, and when people start talking about "job markets" then you by definition are dealing with the world of business.

 

[hamster143]

Yes there is. If you don't have teaching and research assistants, you don't get funding. If you don't get funding then your salary doesn't get paid. Both the people that you mention (Einstein and Perelman) are funded by systems that are very, very different from the system that most university professors get funded.

I wouldn't say it's a "bubble" as much as a "ponzi scheme."

Right, the system is set up in such a way that one side effect is overproduction of Ph.D.s. Since Ph.D.s don't really bring any money into the system (NSF & other federal funding excluded), it is perfectly possible to produce fewer Ph.D.s and employ more research professors on the same budget. Since an experienced full-time researcher is probably several times more productive than a typical Ph.D. who spends most his time acquiring knowledge that the researcher already possesses, overall quality of physics research would go up.

Ponzi scheme is a good description.

No it's not. People with bachelors in finance just don't have the mathematical or research skills to do quant work. One thing that makes the Ph.D. different from the bachelors is that you are *creating* knowledge. I have no clue what mathematical techniques are going to be used in finance next year, neither does anyone else. Ph.D.'s are used to situation where there isn't a textbook. Most people with bachelors are not.

It's still a massive misallocation of resources to have people study things they won't need in real life. Science has gotten a lot more complex in the last century and people need to know a lot more just to do basic research. Which is why real science nowadays is done by people in their 40's and 50's, and people like Witten (58) or Georgi (62) are still very much on top. A string theory Ph.D. would spend 2 years just learning basic tools of the trade up to and including QFT, and then 2 more years getting a partial picture of the more recent developments, which leaves him one year to write a thesis, i.e. "create knowledge". And then he gets a job in an investment bank, learns a lot of new stuff, and forgets all about QFT and string theory.

Someone who gets a Ph.D. in finance instead, studying financial tools and models and trying to create knowledge there, would probably become a better quant in less time than someone whose brain is loaded with conformal field theory and other esoteric stuff with narrow scope of application.

<off-topic>
Out of curiosity, is there still demand for quants on Wall Street nowadays? I'd have expected that field to shrink significantly.

 

[twofish-quant]

Right, the system is set up in such a way that one side effect is overproduction of Ph.D.s. Since Ph.D.s don't really bring any money into the system (NSF & other federal funding excluded), it is perfectly possible to produce fewer Ph.D.s and employ more research professors on the same budget.

Also there is student tuition which requires massive number of teaching assistants. I really don't think its possible to have fewer Ph.D.'s and more research professors since you end up needing a lot of graduate students to do grunt work. A lot of astrophysics research (and for that matter financial programming) involves staring at one hundred thousand lines of source code trying to figure out why energy doesn't balance. For this type of work, you need lots of highly skilled warm bodies.

A string theory Ph.D. would spend 2 years just learning basic tools of the trade up to and including QFT, and then 2 more years getting a partial picture of the more recent developments, which leaves him one year to write a thesis, i.e. "create knowledge". And then he gets a job in an investment bank, learns a lot of new stuff, and forgets all about QFT and string theory.

Most physicists aren't string theorists. Also QFT and string theory are like riding a bicycle, you don't forget how it works once you learn it, and presumably if you can do QFT, then someone can give you a book on stochastic differential equations which you can read over the weekend.

Someone who gets a Ph.D. in finance instead, studying financial tools and models and trying to create knowledge there, would probably become a better quant in less time than someone whose brain is loaded with conformal field theory and other esoteric stuff with narrow scope of application.

Conformal field theory really has less a narrow scope of application than you think.

Also with some exceptions, the quantitative research divisions of most investment banks just don't hire finance Ph.D.'s because they don't have either the mathematical or the computationu canal experience to run the systems. If you can handle QFT, then presumably you can handle stochastic differential equations and mortgage default models.

Also you are in a better position to get a position as a quant nowadays if you do something very heavily numerical. Condensed matter and astrophysics is more likely to land you a job at a IB than string theory. If you've done computational fluid dynamics, this is a big, big positive. The problem with most finance Ph.D.'s is that very few of them have ever programmed a supercomputer, which is a problem when it comes to running the grid that's at the heart of every investment bank or major hedge fund.

There are IB jobs for which do fit what finance Ph.D.'s do (portfolio management and algorithmic trading), there are also a set of jobs in finance that happen to hit skills that physics Ph.d.'s have. One other thing is that physics and math Ph.D.'s are willing to work relatively cheap. You give a physics/math Ph.D. a $160K job, and they will kiss your feet whereas most finance Ph.D.'s from big name schools will laugh at such small piddling sums.

Out of curiosity, is there still the job market for quants on Wall Street nowadays? I'd have expected that field to shrink significantly.

This year has been bad, but hiring is picked up enormously in the last two months. Personally, I think there is going to be a huge number of openings because you now have regulators that are totally paranoid about risk management and counterparty default.

 

[hamster143]

Also there is student tuition which requires massive number of teaching assistants. I really don't think its possible to have fewer Ph.D.'s and more research professors since you end up needing a lot of graduate students to do grunt work. A lot of astrophysics research (and for that matter financial programming) involves staring at one hundred thousand lines of source code trying to figure out why energy doesn't balance. For this type of work, you need lots of highly skilled warm bodies.

I doubt that many Ph.D.s do teaching assistance. For starters, you can't be a good TA unless you're a native English speaker (the best you can do is grade homework). When I was in grad school (a top 40 university), less than half of all students in my class were native speakers. A shift towards 1:1 student-teacher ratio would involve more grunt work for professors, but that's all for the better.

Also with some exceptions, the quantitative research divisions of most investment banks just don't hire finance Ph.D.'s because they don't have either the mathematical or the computationu canal experience to run the systems. If you can handle QFT, then presumably you can handle stochastic differential equations and mortgage default models... The problem with most finance Ph.D.'s is that very few of them have ever programmed a supercomputer, which is a problem when it comes to running the grid that's at the heart of every investment bank or major hedge fund.

That's an interesting perspective, though a lot of it seems to reflect deficiencies in finance Ph.D. training rather than the inherent value of physics Ph.D.

One other thing is that physics and math Ph.D.'s are willing to work relatively cheap. You give a physics/math Ph.D. a $160K job, and they will kiss your feet whereas most finance Ph.D.'s from big name schools will laugh at such small piddling sums.

Physics/math Ph.D.'s do tend to be a little out of touch with the real world. Eventually they'll realize that $160K in Manhattan for a married couple with children buys worse quality of life than, say, 100K in Charlotte...

 

[twofish-quant]

I doubt that many Ph.D.s do teaching assistance. For starters, you can't be a good TA unless you're a native English speaker (the best you can do is grade homework).

So grade homework. It has to be done. The problem with academia is that people are so concerned with goddamn stars that no one sees the grunt work that has to be done to run a department.

A shift towards 1:1 student-teacher ratio would involve more grunt work for professors, but that's all for the better.

You're talking about something that's economically unsustainable at this point.

That's an interesting perspective, though a lot of it seems to reflect deficiencies in finance Ph.D. training rather than the inherent value of physics Ph.D.

My perspective comes from the fact that I work in an investment bank. There are about one hundred or so physics and math Ph.D's working here. I don't know of any finance Ph.D.'s, but rumor has it that they exist somewhere. It all makes sense if you see a physics degree as a degree in numerical modelling.

Physics/math Ph.D.'s do tend to be a little out of touch with the real world. Eventually they'll realize that $160K in Manhattan for a married couple with children buys worse quality of life than, say, 100K in Charlotte...

Well no one I know with $160K has a house in Manhattan, everyone lives in either New Jersey or Queens. Also you can work in Manhattan and fly to Charlotte on the weekends. Also $160K is something of a basic salary for a quant. There is a long tail for how much money you can make. If you have a physics Ph.D. there's probably a 1 in 50 chance you'll end up making $1M/year in finance, but that's higher odds than in any other field.

 

[hamster143]

Well no one I know with $160K has a house in Manhattan, everyone lives in either New Jersey or Queens. Also you can work in Manhattan and fly to Charlotte on the weekends.

As far as I know, there are basically no good public schools in Manhattan, which is why people end up commuting to Manhattan from NJ and White Plains and other remote places, 40 minutes one way ... whereas you could live in Charlotte or Portland or some other backwater city, have a job as an engineer that pays 100k, and live in a big house on a half acre lot within a 15 minute drive from work.

If you're going to live in Charlotte, rent a studio in Manhattan, and fly back and forth four times a month, that might cost more than the difference between 100k and 160k after-tax. Ditto sending kids to a private school in NY ...

Also $160K is something of a basic salary for a quant. There is a long tail for how much money you can make. If you have a physics Ph.D. there's probably a 1 in 50 chance you'll end up making $1M/year in finance, but that's higher odds than in any other field.

Hmm, maybe I should send around some resumes ...

 

[twofish-quant]

As far as I know, there are basically no good public schools in Manhattan, which is why people end up commuting to Manhattan from NJ and White Plains and other remote places, 40 minutes one way ...

Manhattan has some decent public schools, but you are not going to be living in Manhattan with $160K/year. Upstate is also pretty much out of reach.

If you're going to live in Charlotte, rent a studio in Manhattan, and fly back and forth four times a month, that might cost more than the difference between 100k and 160k after-tax.

Rent the studio in some very low rent part of NYC ($1000). Plane tickets are $1200/month, with a 40% marginal tax rate, that works out to about $37000. You're still $20K ahead. At that point it's a quality of life/career advancement issue.

whereas you could live in Charlotte or Portland or some other backwater city, have a job as an engineer that pays 100k, and live in a big house on a half acre lot within a 15 minute drive from work.

You could, but you'll pretty quickly hit the glass ceiling, at which point you get the depressing "is this all there is to the world" feeling. There is a glass ceiling in finance, but it's much, much higher than in other fields. Charlotte and Portland are nice quiet, pleasant cities, and if your goal in life is to lead a nice, quiet pleasant, stress-free life, then you probably don't want to end up anywhere near NYC or banking.

Both physics departments and investment banks are massive exploitative bureaucratic hierarchies in which the people at the top leach off the work of the people at the bottom leaving only crumbs for the people doing the grunt work that keeps the system going. The difference is that the amounts of money in finance is so much larger, than you can be ruthlessly exploited and still end up leaving a pretty nice life.

 

[Locrian]

Most PhD's move on to industry - which, IMO, is a healthy sign: it means that a PhD has value to other parts of society.

I don't think you can actually back this statement up. All you can say is that most don't get into academia, and some move to industry.

Nobody really knows the proportion of the people who get a PhD that move to industry.

 

[kote]

I don't think you can actually back this statement up. All you can say is that most don't get into academia, and some move to industry.

Nobody really knows the proportion of the people who get a PhD that move to industry.

http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/highlite/emp3/table3.htm

60% of the potentially permanent positions taken in 05 / 06 were in industry if I'm reading this correctly.

You could also count the number of professors and compare to the number of phds.

Also many schools will have data like this from the princeton site: http://gradschool.princeton.edu/about/docs/ratestable/tablea/PHY.pdf - 2 phds out of 91 made it directly to research universities in the past 5 reported graduating classes from princeton.

 

[twofish-quant]

Nobody really knows the proportion of the people who get a PhD that move to industry.

I do have some hard numbers from my alma mater since there is a professor there that keeps track of what every single astronomy Ph.D. does after they graduate. About 15% get some tenure track position, 70% do something astronomy related, and about 30% to into industry. The good thing is that no one is unemployed and everyone has a decent job.

Also if it is the case that "no one really knows" then this is really alarming and frankly irresponsible.

 

[Vanadium 50]

The AIP keeps statistics on exactly this sort of thing.

In fact, here is one of the bulleted points from Findings from the Initial Employment Survey of Physics PhDs, classes of 2005 & 2006:

An academic position at a college or university remains the prevailing long-term employment outcome to which most new physics PhDs aspire. Although this is considered by many as the traditional career path for physics PhDs, in fact the private sector and the government historically employ the majority of physics PhDs. Twenty-four percent of the new PhDs aspired to careers in the private sector and 10% had a long-term goal to work in a civilian government or national lab position.

 

[union68]

Uh...what exactly is a quant? Can anybody refer me to some information on this?

I like this thread. It gives me hope that if I attend graduate school there are more options than trying to get tenure after graduation.

 

[kote]

Uh...what exactly is a quant? Can anybody refer me to some information on this?

The short answer...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_analyst

Education
Quants often come from physics or mathematics backgrounds rather than finance related fields, and quants are a major source of employment for people with physics and mathematics Ph.D's. Typically, a quant will also need extensive skills in computer programming.​

 

[Locrian]

http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/highlite/emp3/table3.htm

I'm sorry, I couldn't find the paper/data that's based off of, and it would be helpful in interpreting the numbers.

 

[Locrian]

http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/highlite/emp3/table3.htm

60% of the potentially permanent positions taken in 05 / 06 were in industry if I'm reading this correctly.

My bad, Vanadium had the link. You're interpreting it correctly, but it doesn't support Vanadium's conclusion. That 60% of potentially permanent positions were in industry in no way supports the notion that "Most PhD's move on to industry", since the number that are in temporary positions and then move to permanent ones (in either Uni or Industry) is not measured there. It's a subset of a subset, not of the later total.

 

[Locrian]

The AIP keeps statistics on exactly this sort of thing.

Sort of - they typically keep track of their member statistics, which doesn't always support peoples conclusions, since it's a select group. However, I do think I was clearly wrong when I suggested no one knew what percentage of physicists move to industry. I didn't think that through before I wrote it and apologize.

Strange as it may sound though, I still hold that the statement that "Most PhD's move on to industry" isn't actually supported by anything anyone has linked to here.

 

[Locrian]

Also if it is the case that "no one really knows" then this is really alarming and frankly irresponsible.

Maybe, or maybe it's just a very hard thing to keep track of. The problem is that there is tendency for extreme selection bias in dealing with students after their graduation. Those for whom things go well tend to be much more likely to respond to surveys, etc., and are also easier to track down.

My school also kept track of their graduates. However talking with the older PhD's, it became clear to me that many names were not on the list. People who couldn't get a job often disappeared. Maybe they got one, but no one knew. Your school may not have this problem, but this type of selection bias plagues post graduation data.

Typically what I find is that physics PhD's are dealt with this way: any percentages given are the percentage of those people who got a PhD in physics and stayed in physics. This is especially true of AIP stats, and it's why I'm deeply suspicious of claims that "most" physics PhD's did almost anything, because I think it's not an easy thing to know.

The particular AIP stats people are pointing to here are graduation surveys, and so differ from their member surveys. Maybe it gets past these problems. . . but note that they only had a 53% response rate to their survey. . .

 

[vanesch]

I really don't think that society has an oversupply of Ph.D.'s. There is a huge problem in that Ph.D.'s are being taught that the "normal" thing for a Ph.D. to do is to get a job in academia, but that's something different.

If you look at unemployment rates for Ph.D.'s. I don't know of any physics/math Ph.D. that has had any problem looking for a job, once they looked outside the academy.

I fully agree with you here. Although when one enters a PhD. programme, one is "still young and naive" in many cases, and as "good student" one has a kind of admiration for one's professors and would like to walk in their tracks, doing a PhD. is still a good education all by itself, independently of one's professional ambitions, but just on the grounds of personal, intellectual devellopment. It's an opportunity in your life, and in many cases (although indeed not always) it is an asset for one's professional life.

The problem is that if the solution is "make society less educated" its probably not going to cause good things to happen. The only real solution I can see is to make Ph.D. students and their advisors more aware of life outside the academia.

What I think is going to be really interesting is that if you have more Ph.D.'s outside the academia than inside, this will likely change the power structures within the academia.

Again, I agree. I think it is a good thing that high-level knowledge "diffuses" outside of academia, into civil society. There's no point locking up knowledge in some self-replicating little world called academia, where the only reason to learn something is to become a professor so that you can teach it to someone else who will learn it to become a professor to...

I think it is very healthy that, say, amongst politicians or administrative agents, there are some PhD. in philosophy.

Of course, a totally different question is whether for the student it is a good *investment* to go for a PhD. to "help diffuse" knowledge into society. I think it is, on the condition that you see it as a personal opportunity of intellectual enrichment, and not just as a career investment solely.

 

[twofish-quant]

My school also kept track of their graduates. However talking with the older PhD's, it became clear to me that many names were not on the list. People who couldn't get a job often disappeared. Maybe they got one, but no one knew. Your school may not have this problem, but this type of selection bias plagues post graduation data.

Yes. This is why the data that I have is useful since the professor that I knew tracked down every single graduate that had gotten a Ph.D. in the last ten years and found out what they were doing. In two cases, she couldn't get in contact with the Ph.D. holder, but was able to contact friends and find out what they were doing.

 

[mathador79]

Interesting discussion. I believe that there is indeed an oversupply of math phds. There are, simply put, many more phds being produced than there are available academic jobs. There are also many more postdoctoral opportunites than tenure track opportunities. And the bottom line is that the phd program is structured as a training program for an academic job.

I got my math phd a few years ago from a top university, got a research postdoc, published some papers, was awarded a government grant (PI), and still have not been able to get a regular position anywhere. I'm currently doing a second postdoc abroad, and needless to say am quite discouraged.

It's true that there are jobs other than academia which require people with mathematical skills, but they have little relation to phd programs, which usually provide close to zero practical training of any sort.

I've been looking into becoming a quant, but all the job ads I've seen want people with industry experience and a strong programming background. I know, I know, I should've prepared for this earlier, but I hadn't realized my "successful" academic career was about to reach a dead end. Now I'm thirty and looking at starting a new career with no practical skills or experience.

In my opinion, if graduate schools wish to continue overproducing phds, they should do a better job of preparing their students for the reality that many of them will not find suitable academic employment, and should provide alternative career counseling and job placement services.

Just my two cents.

 

[twofish-quant]

Interesting discussion. I believe that there is indeed an oversupply of math phds. There are, simply put, many more phds being produced than there are available academic jobs.

The system is pretty screwed up. One thing that I think will help a lot is if you force people to sign a piece of paper saying that they realize that if they finish the Ph.D. program, it is rather unlikely (i.e. 1 chance in 10) that they will end up getting a tenure track position.

If you go into the program realizing the real situation, then you can figure out what to do so that you have marketable skills when you get out. (Hint: Learn to program C++).

In some ways I was lucky because I figured out pretty early that the people running the system were either clueless or lying or a bit of both.

In my opinion, if graduate schools wish to continue overproducing phds, they should do a better job of preparing their students for the reality that many of them will not find suitable academic employment, and should provide alternative career counseling and job placement services.

I'm not that optimistic that the system will be able to do anything formally, because they'd be basically cutting their throats if they did, and systems of power simply to not cut their own throats. One thing that is interesting in looking at the Ph.D. surveys that I've seen is that most of the people with astronomy Ph.D.'s actually do end up doing science teaching and research even without a tenure track position. This is rather dangerous since if it turns out that you can get people to do teaching and research without being a formal professor, this sort of makes professors obsolete, so there is a very strong interest on the part of people with power to make it seem like the tenure track is the only track, but it isn't.

If you really want to see what the future of the university looks like. Look at University of Phoenix.

But I think the most useful thing to do is to just let Ph.D. graduate students know that there is a problem. You have some of the smartest people in the world, and once people realize what the real odds are, and that yes, the system is lying to them, most of them will figure out something rational.

Personally, I'm not asking the powers that be to do anything, except stop lying.

 

[vanesch]

The system is pretty screwed up. One thing that I think will help a lot is if you force people to sign a piece of paper saying that they realize that if they finish the Ph.D. program, it is rather unlikely (i.e. 1 chance in 10) that they will end up getting a tenure track position.

Well, when you're 25 - 30 years old, and in a PhD program, you might be considered intelligent enough to find out your job opportunities for yourself, no ? PhD students aren't mentally retarded people who need a protected work place. When you open a restaurant, nobody requires you to sign a paper that you realize that if you don't have customers, you might end up out of business. They didn't sign you a paper that you would end up with tenure either, did they ?

Of course, making some information of the real job market available can always help, but one shouldn't flee one's own responsibilities in the choices for one's career path. With kids, I agree, but not with intelligent adults.

 

[twofish-quant]

Well, when you're 25 - 30 years old, and in a PhD program, you might be considered intelligent enough to find out your job opportunities for yourself, no ?

No you aren't, if the people that you are trusting to provide that information can't be trusted to give it, and are actively lying about what jobs are available.

PhD students aren't mentally retarded people who need a protected work place.

But they are very socially isolated people living with a community in which they have very little real power, and they *do* need some protection because the people that are making crucial decisions are not unbiased. Everyone is an idiot savant. The fact that I know something about radiation hydrodynamical models doesn't mean that I have a clue about accounting, mutual funds, law or medicine. That's why I have to put some trust in people when I do certain things. In the case, of graduate schools, most students get their information about the job market from faculty, and I'd argue (with some personal experience) that this is a seriously bad thing.

When you open a restaurant, nobody requires you to sign a paper that you realize that if you don't have customers, you might end up out of business.

If you sign a restaurant franchise agreement or bank loan, you end up signing quite a few documents saying pretty much just that. Restaurant franchise agreements are pretty heavily regulated because people that sign those agreements have an overoptimistic change of them succeeding.

Of course, making some information of the real job market available can always help, but one shouldn't flee one's own responsibilities in the choices for one's career path. With kids, I agree, but not with intelligent adults.

I think this is non-sense. The problem is not that the physics community is merely not providing no information. The problem is that the community has in a number of situations been *ACTIVELY LYING* about the actual job market. Look at all of the white papers in the 1990's that predicted massive numbers of job openings in astronomy. When is the last time you heard someone testify before Congress saying 'we'll I think we have too many Ph.D.'s and we got to think about what to do about that before you give us several billion dollars." Anytime, someone leave the tenure track, people whisper that that person was just "not good enough."

There are huge amounts of subtle and not so subtle brainwashing that keeps the system in place, and the fact that senior faculty benefit from that system is why. It's very easy to design or evolve a system in which people benefit from something morally repugnant without having to accept any personal responsibility for it, and I think that's what has happened.

The attitude "It's not my problem that you believed my lies" is something that I'd expect from used car salesmen and peddlers of subprime mortgages. It's not something that I'd expect senior physicists to do. I personally expect the community to have more decency, integrity, and self-respect.

PROFESSORS ARE NOT USED CAR SALESMEN. Personally, I think that one of the *DUTIES* of a professor and a physics department is to make sure that their students have the skills to prosper. PROFESSORS ARE TEACHERS, and IMHO the skills that you need to do well in the job market is as much an important part and responsibility of the Ph.D. graduate education as technical skills.

The power relationship between graduate student and professor is profoundly unequal, and it's unequal because the professor presumably has more knowledge and experience and is passing down that experience.

If we go with the attitude the professors are merely used car salesman and the student has to just look out for themselves and can't trust professors to act somewhat in their own interests, that's fine...

We then really have to ask why professors have as much power and status as they do.

 

[Vanadium 50]

This is quite different from my experience. When I was a student we certainly didn't expect a permanent job in academia. Even if the faculty didn't tell us what reasonable expectations were, which they did, we could tell:

• We could see professors who didn't get tenure.
• We could see postdocs who couldn't get faculty jobs.
• We could see students graduate with the PhD equivalent of the "gentleman's C" - granting a doctoral degree for some work that wasn't the best, with the understanding that the student would not ask anyone for letters of recommendation for postdoctoral postions.

That said, there was an attitude among the grad students that "this can't happen to me" - they would believe that half of them would move to industry (which is about what it is) but they wouldn't believe that they would be in that half. And as it happens, 50% of them were right.

 

[twofish-quant]

This is quite different from my experience. When I was a student we certainly didn't expect a permanent job in academia.

We may be from different generations (gee, that makes me feel old). I started my Ph.D. in 1991 and finished in 1998. You can see lots of stuff from the early 1990's about the NSF going crazy because of the supposed shortage of scientists and engineers. Also this was at a time before the web and there were simply no forums like these. (You had USENET and sci.astro, but the discussion there wasn't very careers oriented.)

Part of the problem is not so much the statistics was that you ended feeling "dirty" and "inferior" if you didn't get a permanent job in academia. It took a few years for me to overcome that. It's a shame really, since if I hadn't gone through that, I probably would have stayed more in contact with the community, and would have ended up getting some more research done. The other thing was that actively thinking about ways of making my Ph.D. useful without an academic job was also something that was quite unusual.

It's stuff like this that makes me want to hit someone

http://www.upenn.edu/almanac/v44/n18/phd.html

We could see students graduate with the PhD equivalent of the "gentleman's C" - granting a doctoral degree for some work that wasn't the best, with the understanding that the student would not ask anyone for letters of recommendation for postdoctoral postions.

This is part of the "subtle brainwashing." If you didn't go for the postdoc, you were inferior, and the thought that someone with decent research might go for something other than a postdoc was something that was rather unthinkable. Also it's important for people within a power structure to mark anyone outside the structure as a "loser" (and if possible have the people on the outside think of themselves as "losers"). If you have people outside a power structure that are willing to challenge it, then you have the threat of revolution.

Part of the reason I enjoy industry better than academy is that it's possible to fail, fail very, very badly, and still find your way back into the game.

That said, there was an attitude among the grad students that "this can't happen to me" - they would believe that half of them would move to industry (which is about what it is) but they wouldn't believe that they would be in that half. And as it happens, 50% of them were right.

I think the industry/academia distinction is rather misleading.

The numbers I've seen (from a complete survey of astronomy graduates) is that the number of people that go into fields that are totally unrelated to academia is about 30%. However only about 15% of the people that graduate get into tenure track research positions. What happens with the remaining 55% is that they get into positions that aren't "industry" but also aren't "academia." For example, there are people that end up working as system administrators at national labs with the understanding that they will be able to do part time research. There are people that work as supercomputer center support staff at a university. It might be "academia" but it's not what people normally think of. There are also people doing science journalism, teaching community colleges, etc.

It's curious that most of the people that end up in "academia", don't end up as tenure-track professors.

It's rather good news, because it really means that what people end up doing with a Ph.D. is far, far more diverse than what people except. The really, really good news is that no one I know with a Ph.D. ended up with a dead end job. Unemployment for Ph.D.'s right now is far, far lower than the national average. On Wall Street, people with physics Ph.D.'s tended to be the last fired and the first hired, which caused some friction with people with masters degrees.

One reason that I think that it's important for faculty to tell students that they probably *won't* get a permanent faculty position, and that a professorship is not "normal" but one option out of several is that if people told the truth about the Ph.D. job market, then it makes the Ph.D. much more attractive and the life of a Ph.D. more pleasant. You end up hating yourself less.

However, the problem is that if it were accepted that the professorship was not the "gold standard" for Ph.D.'s and that "industry isn't just for losers" then we are talking about some very, very massive and threatening power shifts. If tenured professors aren't smarter or better than "industry losers" then why do they have tenure and are immune from layoffs. Why not hire some people from outside the priesthood to teach intro calculus?

The fact that people within the academic power structure are rather afraid of asking some deep questions is why there is so much misery and hopelessness, but personally I don't think the system as it exists now is economically sustainable, and since I ended up on the outside, I'm not going to shed any tears to see it collapse.

 

[twofish-quant]

The reason I think the academic system is going to collapse is because a lot of the spending in the academy has been driven by the real estate bubble. You either had massive endowments which went to private universities or booming tax receipts that went to the public ones. This created a system that for a time allowed universities to avoid difficult questions and cuts.

That's gone... I've looked at the numbers and if you assume "standard growth" in the stock market, then universities are going to end up with big, big holes in their balance sheets. You can fix this with money from alumni and state and federal sources, but this means that professors are going to have to answer to alumni, corporate sponsors, and politicians in ways that most of them aren't used to.

And that's not even taking into account competition from for-profits like University of Phoenix. University of Phoenix scares me because unless someone comes up with some alternative, it's where higher education is moving toward, and it's not a vision that I think is appealing.

It's going to be interesting...

 

[symbolipoint]

twofish-quant wrote:

And that's not even taking into account competition from for-profits like University of Phoenix. University of Phoenix scares me because unless someone comes up with some alternative, it's where higher education is moving toward, and it's not a vision that I think is appealing.

Would employers of graduated candidates have an influence on this trend?

 

[twofish-quant]

Would employers of graduated candidates have an influence on this trend?

Not really. The problem with University of Phoenix is that as an educational institution, it's pretty decent, and I'd say that from a student point of view, the experience at UoP is better than at most traditional academic institutions.

That's the problem...

UoP is like McDonalds. From a student standpoint, it's pretty decent. You end up with a nice hot meal. From a worker stand point, it's total hell. What UoP has figured out is that you don't need many professors to run a university and you can do pretty much everything with adjuncts. The business model of UoP is to pay instructors chickenfeed, get large amounts of money from tuition, which students are willing to pay because the believe (usually correctly) that they will make more money from the education, and then put most of the difference in marketing and money for shareholders.

The problem is that it's a wildly successful model, and it's likely to dominate higher education unless people come up with competing models.

I think that the power of intellectuals and academics is that intellectuals and academics ask pretty tough questions and finding the truth no matter how uncomfortable it might be. The trouble with academia as it now stands is that for the system to work, you have to avoid asking tough questions and put everyone in a state of denial.

 

[mal4mac]

Which is why jobs in investment banks or medical imaging or whatever are perfect. I'm basically writing the same sorts of programs that I am in Wall Street that I did in graduate school. Only with more money.

How can you say working in an investment bank is perfect after recent happenings? Look at all the people who lives have been damaged because of the machinations of quants who never really knew what they were doing.