Rewarding career after physics graduation - Mysterious money?

[Carphysics]

Rewarding career after physics graduation - Mysterious money ?
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Thanks for your response to my threads. This is an interesting forum to seek an insight on this subject.

I am surprised by recent piece .

Physics professor mysteriously sent $180,000 to help students

I find many Physics BS/MS/Phd folks settle in IT career upon completion of their academic endeavor in Physics .

What could be the long, productive, immensely rewarding” career after earning physics degrees from City College of New York this anonymous donor got ?

I know the persons applied for many jobs in various labs /institutions to find physics oriented position to pay his bills after
graduating with Physics Major & astronomy minor with respectable GPA/credentials/research.

Nothing showed up to respect his academic achievement, but a door opened for him in IT consulting company.

He is wondering about his participation of going after Physics passion and the street outcome.

Where/what is the problem?

What are the things the Physics graduates should do to gain productive, immensely rewarding career to pay their bills?

What are the responsibilities/accountability of Physics departments of colleges to make this happen ?

Did City College of New York do something that other colleges did not do ?

Thanks for your guidance/insight.

 

[CrysPhys]

What are the responsibilities/accountability of Physics departments of colleges to make this happen ?

None whatsoever. That's up to each individual student. And remember, making lots of bucks is not everyone's top priority. I'm sure that if the anonymous donor were ever identified, you would find that his/her classmates had a wide spectrum of financial outcomes [maybe some even dropped out and became filthy rich, à la Bill Gates]. A lot of variables involved; and don't overlook personal penchant and serendipity.

Years ago, my undergrad alma mater held a funding drive to endow a physics fellowship in honor of a physics professor who was retiring. He had been one of my best undergrad professors, and I donated. Another former student (not my class) had made it big. In addition to his personal donation, he issued a challenge: he pledged to match dollar-for-dollar the amount others donated, up to a maximum of $9M. Donations by others exceeded $9M, and he chipped in the full max match. Certainly waaay out of my league.

 

[Office_Shredder]

I think people have a slightly toxic view of what kinds of careers are permissible agree they graduate. The normal cycle looks something like
- university offers a somewhat arbitrary selection of degree topics that are analytical in nature
- pick one of them
- enjoy your time doing it
- think that means you need to keep doing it to keep enjoying your time.

Like, if you got a degree in physics, do you think you would have hated college if you got a degree in chemistry or math instead? Probably not. The choice of physics to begin with was probably a bit arbitrary to begin with. Similarly there are a lot of jobs that are not doing physics, but that you would also enjoy, some of them even more than doing physics. There's probably also some sunk cost fallacy here, that you spent all that time learning physics, so you should probably do something with it.

 

[Choppy]

What are the things the Physics graduates should do to gain productive, immensely rewarding career to pay their bills?

There's no magic formula that will guarantee a fulfilling, highly paid job when you graduate. But there are some things you can do to improve your chances.

1. Recognize that a university education in physics is just that. They're going to teach you physics, and generally prepare you to go on to graduate school. Many schools today are well aware that students are also hoping for some kind of vocational training or a means to transfer their education into the workforce, and there are lots of efforts to set students up with marketable skills, but the fundamental purpose of a physics degree is to teach the students physics.
2. Physics is more than just astrophysics and quantum mechanics. There are, for example, professional sub-fields of physics. These include medical physics, geophysics, engineering physics, health physics and radiation protection, nuclear physics, etc. These fields have employment options outside of academia and can pay quite well.
3. Take advantage of internships and/or cooperative education programs. These will allow you to get your foot in the door, gain experience, and help you to figure out what kind of vocational environment you are likely to thrive in.
4. Part-time and summer jobs can help do the same thing. Don't look down on basic customer service jobs either. Developing the skills to deal with people, particularly the difficult ones, can pay bigtime dividends in the long run.
5. Figure out early how you're going to market yourself. A lot of physics graduates will go on into data science-type jobs. If this appeals to you, it will pay to bolster your education with courses in data science, statistical methods, machine learning, coding, etc. On the other hand if you're more of a hands-on kind of person, you might want to get involved with a local maker's club, or join/start a robotics team at your school and enter some competitions.