Physics PhD Success: 1 in 10 or 1 in 4?

[twofish-quant]

Many university professors are getting within about 10 years of retirement age. If you look at the demographics for many research institutions you will see that there will necessarily be a large turn over of positions.

People have been saying that for thirty years. It doesn't happen.

1) there is no mandatory retirement age for professors, so professors keep on teaching until they are physically unable to continue which can happen when someone reaches their 80's.

2) there's no rule that says that when a professor retires that the school has to hire a new one, and more often than not they don't

for students beginning their study I think they will be facing a situation that is not remotely close to the 1/10 statistics quoted today and as of late.

I wouldn't count on it. People have been saying that since the 1970's, and unless you give a reason why this time its different, then it's likely not going to happen.

 

[diggy]

1) there is no mandatory retirement age for professors, so professors keep on teaching until they are physically unable to continue which can happen when someone reaches their 80's.

2) there's no rule that says that when a professor retires that the school has to hire a new one, and more often than not they don't

There are valid aspects to both of those points, but they aren't the full story either.

1) When a professor becomes 80 they are typically given emeritus status, which often comes with a TA salary. This frees up money for new professors.

2) Departments tend to want to fill as many slots as possible. Its budget constraints from above that limit the number. Typically a faculty spot is established money, and once the position is vacated there is little conflict to maintain the money and begin a candidate search.

There isn't some conspiracy.

Regardless of all of the details and 10-20% more or less slots opening up on a yearly basis, the "odds" of becoming a professor start around zero, go to 1/10 upon getting a Phd, and probably go to about 1:2-3 after doing a postdoc or two.

I've seen people get teaching positions straight out of grad school, but yes, you (y'all) are correct that a PhD doesn't come with a complementary teaching position (or job for that matter).

 

[ParticleGrl]

Typically a faculty spot is established money, and once the position is vacated there is little conflict to maintain the money and begin a candidate search.

In my experience, this is not the case. Academia as a whole is contracting. In the departments I am directly familiar with the ratio of retirements to new hires is 3:1. Obviously this won't continue forever, but academia is heading towards a new model where more teaching is done by adjuncts, and more research is done on soft money. This requires less full time faculty.

 

[twofish-quant]

There are valid aspects to both of those points, but they aren't the full story either.

Are you guessing or do you really know?

The reason I'm asking is that the "oversupply" in Ph.D. started in the late-*1960's*, and since they people have always been talking about the shortage of professors that have never arrived. We have several decades of experience as to why that shortage has not happened.

1) When a professor becomes 80 they are typically given emeritus status, which often comes with a TA salary. This frees up money for new professors.

Not true. Typically senior professors are money-makers for the department, and when a professor retires, they are no longer sponsoring grants or lobbying Congress, and so the income to the department goes down.

2) Departments tend to want to fill as many slots as possible. Its budget constraints from above that limit the number. Typically a faculty spot is established money, and once the position is vacated there is little conflict to maintain the money and begin a candidate search.

None of that is true. Departments have no reason to want to fill spots, and have good reasons for not wanting to fill spots. Faculty money is rarely established money. The other thing is that the costs of hiring a tenure-track professor goes way, way beyond salary. The TT professor will need funding for the next several decades, and there is a lot of overhead in spending on the equipment and support for the professor to do their thing.

Department budget happens year to year. whereas if you hire a tenure track professor, you are looking at substantial funding that will last for years if not decades. You just can't fire a tenured professor when money is tight (which is the definition of tenure). So in considering whether or not to offer a position, you have to think ahead at the funding situation for at least the next decade or two, and if funding looks like it is static or shrinking, people would prefer to just not hire.

Regardless of all of the details and 10-20% more or less slots opening up on a yearly basis, the "odds" of becoming a professor start around zero, go to 1/10 upon getting a Phd, and probably go to about 1:2-3 after doing a postdoc or two.

It really doesn't work that way.

I've seen people get teaching positions straight out of grad school, but yes, you (y'all) are correct that a PhD doesn't come with a complementary teaching position (or job for that matter).

So have I, but we are talking about research professors. It's not particularly difficult for a Ph.D. to get a permanent community college position, and it's trivially easy to be an adjunct teacher at a community college if you have a Ph.D. (basically you just show up). Small liberal arts colleges do have some hiring, but they hate hiring people that look at SLAC's as "the best I can do because I couldn't get a job at Princeton."

Something that made working as an adjunct a lot less attractive was when I was in a supermarket and the person bagging the groceries mentioned that he needed some time off the next day, because he had to teach a class at Austin Community College. (Dead serious, this actually happened.)

 

[twofish-quant]

Academia is heading towards a new model where more teaching is done by adjuncts, and more research is done on soft money. This requires less full time faculty.

And this is part of a general social trend in which people that have stuff get more stuff, and people that don't have stuff get less stuff.

Also, being an adjunct is great *if you regard it as paid charity work*.

 

[diggy]

Something that made working as an adjunct a lot less attractive was when I was in a supermarket and the person bagging the groceries mentioned that he needed some time off the next day, because he had to teach a class at Austin Community College. (Dead serious, this actually happened.)

That's sadly both funny and believable. Incidentally UT is hiring a new theorist as we speak. I don't know if its from replacement money or the new chair they are getting (thanks to espn), though.

 

[diggy]

...
None of that is true. Departments have no reason to want to fill spots, and have good reasons for not wanting to fill spots. Faculty money is rarely established money. The other thing is that the costs of hiring ...

I'm not looking to make long drawn out back-and-forths on this, but I can, off hand, think of three people I know that are leaving/left their positions (in the last few months) and now the departments are doing candidate searches. I know through either work or family several heads of departments or faculty-search-committee-chairs. Universities are currently in a crunch and departments not expanding, but replacement positions are still generally being filled.

What I'm saying is simply personal experience, and represents one data point. YMMV.

 

[twofish-quant]

I know through either work or family several heads of departments or faculty-search-committee-chairs. Universities are currently in a crunch and departments not expanding, but replacement positions are still generally being filled.

The problem with these sorts of searches is that they often end up being a game of musical chairs. Prof A takes up the seat vacated by prof B. Prof B takes up the seat vacated by prof C. Prof C takes up the seat vacated by prof A.

See http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/reports/awf08turnover.pdf

What's interesting is that you have 57% of departments have a vacancy, but these vacancies don't translate into new hiring. AIP also says that there was a peak in retirement around 2000, but retirement rates are going down.

Unless the total number of new seats increases, life is hard for anyone outside of the game, and I haven't seen anything to suggest that there is any new hiring or there is likely to be any.

It's very much like Major League Baseball, except that there are fewer spots for new people.

http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/highlite/acad06/awf06high.htm

In a typical year, you have 360 tenure track faculty hired. By contrast in a typical year, you have 1500 major league baseball players drafted.

Also http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/emptrends.html is a wealth of statistics...

Something that I think would be kind of cool is if someone starting printing physics professor trading cards. Also it puts things in perspective. It's great to play baseball, but if you have a student that thinks that they are likely to be a professional major league baseball player, it would be wise for them to have some sort of backup plan. The difficulty in getting a research professor position is on the same order of difficulty.

 

[lisab]

Something that I think would be kind of cool is if someone starting printing physics professor trading cards.

Awesome idea! The back of the card would list papers, classes taught, major achievements...when they made tenure. And imagine if you have the next Nobel Prize winner's card...:!)!

 

[jhae2.718]

Something that I think would be kind of cool is if someone starting printing physics professor trading cards.

Like this? http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1417

 

[diligence]

Something that I think would be kind of cool is if someone starting printing physics professor trading cards. Also it puts things in perspective. It's great to play baseball, but if you have a student that thinks that they are likely to be a professional major league baseball player, it would be wise for them to have some sort of backup plan. The difficulty in getting a research professor position is on the same order of difficulty.

Haha, yeah. Good thing earning a PhD comes with a sort of "built-in" backup plan that's certainly not inherent in professional sports. Worrying about a backup plan while searching for a professorship with a PhD doesn't seem to warrant the same concern as certain other pipe-dreams might.

By the way, do the statistics you quote apply strictly to physics PhD's, or are these across the board? Regardless, I know that any area of academia is cutthroat, but I don't seem to catch the same vibe coming from, say, the math community, which is where my aspirations are beginning to lean (maybe partly due to the grim outlook you provide, but mostly because i don't truly enjoy experimental physics. i find writing proofs infinitely more enjoyable than accounting for uncertainty). Of course, math is super competitive also, but I'm getting the impression that the "gauntlet" is traversed a little earlier than physics (i.e. grad admissions vs post-postdoc job searching).

 

[Geezer]

Question regarding this statistic:

I've read on here a lot that if you complete a physics PhD you have a 1 in 10 chance of obtaining a research professor job. 1 in 4 chance if you graduate from a top school.

This is after an average of 6 years of postdoc'ing (for the top school, 1 in 4 chancer). No idea what it is from the set of all schools.

Yeah, that seems right to me.

 

[l-1j-cho]

I thought getting a tenured professorship is 1/25 or so if you graduate from the top tier school. Where did you get the statistics