Physics Should only people from elite universities bother with TT (tenure track)?

[TomServo]

I hope my question doesn't sound bitter, it's not meant to be, I'm just a grad student wanting to get some opinions on how things are. I'm especially interested in hearing from people outside academia as well, since I assume people *within* academia might have an unrealistic view of what the career path is like these days vs. what it was like when there were far far more academia jobs.

Given the horrible job market in academia, and the relative over-abundance of physics PhDs out there, is the old-fashioned goal of getting a professorship at a research university something that only people from Caltech, Princeton, etc. should bother with? Or should somebody like me, from a school with no real physics reputation, with an advisor notable in his little niche, set my sights more on industry jobs? What do you think? I'm in my third year, if that helps.

No bitterness intended, hoping for some good answers and discussion. Thanks!

EDIT:

I found this article: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/...et_your_ph_d_at_an_elite_university_good.html

 

[Choppy]

I'm assuming TT refers to tenure track?

 

[TomServo]

Yes

 

[Dr Transport]

Industry, in the time you are slaving away at the possibility of a tenure track position and actually getting tenure, you'll make 1-1.5 million dollars that you'll never ever make up in academia.

 

[Dr. Courtney]

If TT at an R1 university is your goal, apply for post-docs. There are also lots of TT positions whose focus is on teaching rather than research. If you do not have geographical constraints, your odds at those will depend more on your teaching experience than your research record in grad school. If these interest you, these are a viable plan B.

Industry can be your plan B or your plan C, depending on your interests.

 

[Vanadium 50]

First, let's start with the bitterness.

You want to be a scientist, right? How many grad students do you want to have when you're a professor? How many are needed to replace you? Put another way, how many students have graduated since you enrolled in grad school? How many faculty have been hired in the same time frame? The fact of the matter is that it is the normal career path for PhDs to enter industry. Remaining in academia and particularly at an R1 is the exception.

Second, this is the typical steaming pile of crap I have come to expect from Slate, whose only virtue seems to be that it's not Vox. It's true that about half of physics faculty at R1's come from 12 or 15 schools. It's also true that these same 12 or 15 schools generate about half of the PhDs. The most highly ranked schools have large departments.

Now, to answer your question directly. It depends on why you're at your particular institution and not, say, Harvard. If you're there because you could have gotten into Harvard (or anywhere else), but went elsewhere because the program suited you better, that's one thing. If you're there because you couldn't get in anywhere else, that's another thing.

 

[StatGuy2000]

Second, this is the typical steaming pile of crap I have come to expect from Slate, whose only virtue seems to be that it's not Vox.

Vanadium 50, I happen to know of one of the co-authors of this article. Aaron Clauset is an accomplished researcher in the field of complex systems, and have long admired both his personal blog as well as his research work. So your characterization of the article (and thus his work) as crap is unjustified.

http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/~aaronc/

Regarding the article itself, this is a summary based on the following published articles that Clauset had co-written in Science magazine. Judge for yourself whether the article is "crap".

http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/1/e1400005

Here are also links that Clauset has provided on code and visualizations.

http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/~aaronc/facultyhiring/

http://danlarremore.com/faculty/

 

[Crass_Oscillator]

I think it also largely depends on what you are doing. I'm doing theoretical solid state/computational electronics in a 20-30 EE department. 10 of my adviser's students have become professors, 3 at top American EE schools, 1 at a big European EE school, and the remainder at generally large research institutes.

If you are doing quantum gravity, well, I don't know if going to Princeton is enough to save you.

Also, many of my advisers students who wanted to remain in academia retrained in experiment. This is unusual in certain branches of applied/pure physics but clearly happened for them. Only 4 of the 10 are theorists/computationalists. There are also many cases of people switching fields to something that is more funded and interesting during a post-doc. I was at a #1 computer science grad school doing computational biology and many of the scientists there were pure theorists in chemistry, physics, and computer science who retrained for biology (my adviser there was a student of Michael Fisher's, he of renormalization group and critical phenomena fame).

Look at your university. What are the big, well funded experimental projects? Can you work with them? Look in your field. Where are the big projects? Go there for a post doc. If you think your field is going down the tubes (e.g. high energy physics) funding wise, think about what else you can do. For instance, there is enormous demand for quantitative scientists to work in biology. I know nothing about HEP as an example but maybe it's possible to retrain in nuclear theory/experiment? There's demand for that. There are also industrial science roles. My background gives me many opportunities in device physics, which is pretty interesting.

If you want to be a scientist, your grit, flexibility, and ingenuity will play much more of a role than how mature of a student you were when you completed your undergrad, took the PGRE, and applied for grad school.

 

[Vanadium 50]

So your characterization of the article (and thus his work) as crap is unjustified.

I gave a very specific criticism. You can argue my language was too salty, but the whole premise of the Slate article falls apart upon inspection: half of the physics PhDs are produced by the "elite" schools. It's not surprising that about half of the new physics faculty come from 10% of the schools when half of the PhDs come from that same 10%.

 

[StatGuy2000]

I gave a very specific criticism. You can argue my language was too salty, but the whole premise of the Slate article falls apart upon inspection: half of the physics PhDs are produced by the "elite" schools. It's not surprising that about half of the new physics faculty come from 10% of the schools when half of the PhDs come from that same 10%.

First of all, it's worth pointing out that the Slate article wasn't even specifically addressing about physics PhDs -- in fact, the study conducted looked at faculty hiring among those with PhDs in computer science, business, and history programs, and seeking to look at faculty hiring practices in those fields to draw larger inferences about hiring practices across all disciplines.

It may very well be the case, as you argue, that physics may be an outlier because such a large proportion of physics PhDs are produced by a relatively small, select number of "elite" schools, which may not be the case for other fields.

 

[TomServo]

Industry, in the time you are slaving away at the possibility of a tenure track position and actually getting tenure, you'll make 1-1.5 million dollars that you'll never ever make up in academia.

I'm...a little unclear on your point. Would you mind elaborating?

 

[TomServo]

Now, to answer your question directly. It depends on why you're at your particular institution and not, say, Harvard. If you're there because you could have gotten into Harvard (or anywhere else), but went elsewhere because the program suited you better, that's one thing. If you're there because you couldn't get in anywhere else, that's another thing.

I only applied to one school that would be considered elite (in physics), and did not get it. I attribute this to two things, one is that I was going for theory and got a 50th percentile on the PGRE (I had serious health issues that kept me from studying for it, alas), the other is that I specifically said on my statement of purpose that I wanted to do gravity, perhaps quantum gravity. I'm still working in gravity at the institution I wound up at (which I think is a good place adviser-wise for me to be) but in something with a much more applied/experimental side with some newer technology. I had a high GPA, research experience, and great letters of recommendation, so I wonder what would have happened if I'd been healthy enough to prepare properly for the PGRE and had a statement of purpose that wasn't so specific to a generally less-well-funded area.

Are you implying that if I'm not smart enough/good enough to get into a school like Harvard then that indicates I'm unlikely research university material (for a job that is).

 

[TomServo]

Look at your university. What are the big, well funded experimental projects? Can you work with them? Look in your field. Where are the big projects? Go there for a post doc. If you think your field is going down the tubes (e.g. high energy physics) funding wise, think about what else you can do. For instance, there is enormous demand for quantitative scientists to work in biology. I know nothing about HEP as an example but maybe it's possible to retrain in nuclear theory/experiment? There's demand for that. There are also industrial science roles. My background gives me many opportunities in device physics, which is pretty interesting.

Well my adviser is building a collaboration with a university in China where a former post-doc of his works and where the dean has tons of research grant money (can't be spent in my country, the US, darn). It's using things like atomic interferometry and optical clocks to measure gravitational field gradients, detect gravitational waves, geodesy, etc. I'm just starting to read papers about it and it seems to be fairly new in the sense that what work has been done in the field is kind of rudimentary, so it has potential to be a hot new area of physics I suppose (I hope). The other big, well-funded projects aren't my cup of tea.

If you want to be a scientist, your grit, flexibility, and ingenuity will play much more of a role than how mature of a student you were when you completed your undergrad, took the PGRE, and applied for grad school.

That sounds...good? Could you elaborate on that?

 

[etudiant]

Well, if you are hoping to work with China funded researchers, start learning Chinese.
That is what crass_oscillator was driving at imho. You have to break your existing boundaries to emerge.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Are you implying that if I'm not smart enough/good enough to get into a school like Harvard then that indicates I'm unlikely research university material (for a job that is).

I think I wasn't implying it. I think I was stating it, although with the more generic "one" than the specific "you". I don't know your background.

A professor graduates say ten students, one of whom is needed to replace him. Twice as many people take the GRE as enroll in grad school. Putting them together, and one concludes that 5% of grad school applicants go on to become professors. The top 5% of applicants can pretty much go anywhere they want. They may pick Harvard, or they may pick Michigan State, or Utah, or UCSB (three schools with areas where they are world-leading).

 

[Dr Transport]

I'm...a little unclear on your point. Would you mind elaborating?

Maybe my estimate was a little high, but here it goes.

If you take the usual route of 2-3 post-docs and then get hired into academia and the tenure process is approx 5 years, you are looking at anywhere between 10 and 12 years before you have a stable job. I looked at getting back into academia after spending 15 years in industry. In this case I would have had to take a 50% pay cut to take a job teaching and doing research. A post doc pays between 50% and 75% of an industrial position and after 5 years in industry I was making more than my advisor who was a research professor and he had ~30 years experience. So for some nice round numbers, let's say you are getting paid $45K for a post doc and you make $75K in industry for the 6 years before taking a permanent position, you are $180K behind in earning potential and if it takes 5 years to get tenure, let's say you start at $60K and in industry you make $90K , that is another $150K, so by the time you get tenure, you are $330K behind. Academia doesn't give generous raises and bonuses, I got between 4-6% every year in raise and almost a months salary in bonus, in less than 10 years in industry, I made over $1M in salary and bonus, during that time you might have made ~$650K, that is a significant difference and it doesn't get any better, academics make significantly less than their counterparts in industry over an entire career. So over a career, you can make well over $1-2M more.

You might not think that is a lot, but consider this, that money after taxes pays for a nice house.

 

[Choppy]

Maybe my estimate was a little high, but here it goes.

If you take the usual route of 2-3 post-docs and then get hired into academia and the tenure process is approx 5 years, you are looking at anywhere between 10 and 12 years before you have a stable job. I looked at getting back into academia after spending 15 years in industry. In this case I would have had to take a 50% pay cut to take a job teaching and doing research. A post doc pays between 50% and 75% of an industrial position and after 5 years in industry I was making more than my advisor who was a research professor and he had ~30 years experience. So for some nice round numbers, let's say you are getting paid $45K for a post doc and you make $75K in industry for the 6 years before taking a permanent position, you are $180K behind in earning potential and if it takes 5 years to get tenure, let's say you start at $60K and in industry you make $90K , that is another $150K, so by the time you get tenure, you are $330K behind. Academia doesn't give generous raises and bonuses, I got between 4-6% every year in raise and almost a months salary in bonus, in less than 10 years in industry, I made over $1M in salary and bonus, during that time you might have made ~$650K, that is a significant difference and it doesn't get any better, academics make significantly less than their counterparts in industry over an entire career. So over a career, you can make well over $1-2M more.

You might not think that is a lot, but consider this, that money after taxes pays for a nice house.

To add to this there is also the issue of lost investment opportunity. With more income, you can pay down your mortgage faster, contribute to retirement savings, build up your personal savings, etc. Interest rates haven't been very high over the last few years, but you can still invest intelligently if you have money to invest. That's hard to do when you're barely making rent every month.

On the flip side, I would argue that the choice of an academic path is not a financial one. People tend to do it for the love of science.

 

[Dr. Courtney]

To add to this there is also the issue of lost investment opportunity. With more income, you can pay down your mortgage faster, contribute to retirement savings, build up your personal savings, etc. Interest rates haven't been very high over the last few years, but you can still invest intelligently if you have money to invest. That's hard to do when you're barely making rent every month.

On the flip side, I would argue that the choice of an academic path is not a financial one. People tend to do it for the love of science.

Both the love of science and the desire to impart scientific abilities to the next generation.

Let me also mention that an academic career does not preclude outside (often lucrative) work as a scientific consultant. Most academic contracts do not prohibit outside employment or consulting work. Teaching-focused schools often only require 25 hours per week for teaching and preps (especially your 2nd and later times through specific courses) and only have 32 weeks per year of required teaching duties. That leaves lots of time for consulting work.

 

[Crass_Oscillator]

Well my adviser is building a collaboration with a university in China where a former post-doc of his works and where the dean has tons of research grant money (can't be spent in my country, the US, darn). It's using things like atomic interferometry and optical clocks to measure gravitational field gradients, detect gravitational waves, geodesy, etc. I'm just starting to read papers about it and it seems to be fairly new in the sense that what work has been done in the field is kind of rudimentary, so it has potential to be a hot new area of physics I suppose (I hope). The other big, well-funded projects aren't my cup of tea.

China is aggressively attempting to displace the US as the world's scientific superpower, and the US is aggressively attempting to abandon it's scientific superpower status, while Europe seems all but recovered from WWII. So heading across the seas is an example of grit/flexibility in action, either emigrating or connecting yourself to foreign scientific projects in some way. I'm currently looking into completing a master's in the states and then completing my PhD in Europe since Europe as a whole is funding my field far better than the US is (computational materials/electronics/applied solid state).

That sounds...good? Could you elaborate on that?

Well, the unfortunate thing is what I was saying was not that you can do whatever you want if you try hard enough. No matter how hard you try, there's always some chance, large or small, that you don't get what you want. However, if you do really want something, and you're not on the beaten track, grit will help you to correct it. For instance, some people transfer from one PhD program to another. I can't imagine this always helps, and it's very hard, but that's an example of a difficult path you may need to take to work with people who are plugged into your field of interest.

Flexibility and ingenuity are about the revelation that, well, there are lots of interesting ways to do interesting science in industry or academia. What are you really interested in? What elements of what you are interested in are industrially relevant, or relevant to some more applied, in demand field? What ancillary skills have you developed that can allow you to pursue a career doing science you're interested in? For instance, there are many great crystallographers at my home institution. At some point in their careers, they started working on techniques for studying biomolecules, because the government and industry care about that. It's at least as interesting if not more interesting than what they were planning on studying otherwise.

Ingenuity is the fuzziest one. It refers to the fact that rather than switching from one beaten track to another, you can try to do something fundamentally new. In the age of the internet, there are many interesting things to try. There is a YouTuber by the name of Thunderf00t with some strong political opinions who is also a scientist. He created videos using high speed cameras to study alkali-metal/water reactions for fun. In doing so, he noticed some rather odd things. He then proceeded to create more videos, caught the eye of some foreign researchers, and then began a professional scientific collaboration based upon research that started on YouTube. This resulted in a paper which challenged the orthodox view of these reactions which was published in Nature. He's now self-funded by his YouTube videos. I don't know as much about him, but a physics forums-goer by the name of Garret Lisi also went off the beaten track and seems to have an interesting life/career.

It's very risky, but you can try to do something completely new if that excites you.

 

[TomServo]

Maybe my estimate was a little high, but here it goes.

If you take the usual route of 2-3 post-docs and then get hired into academia and the tenure process is approx 5 years, you are looking at anywhere between 10 and 12 years before you have a stable job. I looked at getting back into academia after spending 15 years in industry. In this case I would have had to take a 50% pay cut to take a job teaching and doing research. A post doc pays between 50% and 75% of an industrial position and after 5 years in industry I was making more than my advisor who was a research professor and he had ~30 years experience. So for some nice round numbers, let's say you are getting paid $45K for a post doc and you make $75K in industry for the 6 years before taking a permanent position, you are $180K behind in earning potential and if it takes 5 years to get tenure, let's say you start at $60K and in industry you make $90K , that is another $150K, so by the time you get tenure, you are $330K behind. Academia doesn't give generous raises and bonuses, I got between 4-6% every year in raise and almost a months salary in bonus, in less than 10 years in industry, I made over $1M in salary and bonus, during that time you might have made ~$650K, that is a significant difference and it doesn't get any better, academics make significantly less than their counterparts in industry over an entire career. So over a career, you can make well over $1-2M more.

You might not think that is a lot, but consider this, that money after taxes pays for a nice house.

Oh, okay. I thought that might be the point you were making, but it also seemed like maybe you were trashing industry, I couldn't tell.

 

[Dr Transport]

Oh, okay. I thought that might be the point you were making, but it also seemed like maybe you were trashing industry, I couldn't tell.

Not trashing industry, but academia. In the physics community, the academics that I have interacted with tend to look down their noses at the industrial physicists (I have seen it and can pass it along privately) whereas in industry we accept that you have a degree or an advanced degree as competence. Totally differnt cultures and frankly in academia if you don't completely fit into their mold of what they want you to do they deny you tenure and you are off to the next position, whereas in industry you can move around internally within a company to find a better fit.

 

[Dr. Courtney]

If you take the usual route of 2-3 post-docs and then get hired into academia and the tenure process is approx 5 years, you are looking at anywhere between 10 and 12 years before you have a stable job. I looked at getting back into academia after spending 15 years in industry. In this case I would have had to take a 50% pay cut to take a job teaching and doing research.

My career became much more fulfilling when I focused my joy and satisfaction on having done a good job (on a project, paper, or mentoring a student) rather than having a stable job. Sad to say, I've often had to prioritize doing the job more highly than keeping the job. It occurs in industry also - as a quality control person, test engineer, or customer interface, one puts ones ongoing employment at risk at times being firm and honest about product quality issues.

I took a 60% pay cut when I left my job as a Principal RF Test Engineer at Cisco Systems for a TT teaching position. But the insult the administration added to the (voluntary) pay cut was: FIRST they sent my CV and course syllabus to the big state schools arguing for transfer credit, because our physics courses were (purportedly) just as rigorous as theirs, and THEN they began pressuring me to dumb down the course so students without basic competence in algebra and trig could pass the course. They wanted me to be their shill.

One attractive feature of the position that made me willing to stomach the big pay cut was there was no restriction on outside consulting work. I could get paid for consulting and research done under my private company with no interference from the school as long as I taught the required course load (12 or so hours spring and fall, nothing in summer) AND maintained the office hour requirements (10 when I was first hired, lowered to five hours per week shortly after). Being less than a 2000 hour per year job left a lot of time for paid consulting and research hoping to build a business and return my income back to the levels when I worked in industry.

But then I began to get blowback from the administration, because my research and publications were in the politically incorrect field of ballistics. There was never a hint that my consulting or research was negatively impacting my teaching or performance of academic duties, they just did not want their physics faculty becoming known for research in ballistics. Needless to say, it wasn't too long after that when we parted ways and I found an academic employer more favorably inclined to research related to the profession of arms and more committed to academic rigor.

 

[Dr Transport]

@Dr. Courtney , isn't your degree from MIT, an elite university... you play directly into the OP's hand...

 

[Dr. Courtney]

@Dr. Courtney , isn't your degree from MIT, an elite university... you play directly into the OP's hand...

Yes, my degree is from MIT, but I've seen people without degrees from elite schools do fine in TT positions. All you need to do is sacrifice your conscience and academic rigor on the altar of high retention rates at teaching focused schools.

 

[radium]

I think it depends most on where you did your postdoc, but I have noticed in my field that for the most part, the students getting the best postdocs are coming from a pretty small number of schools (at least in the U.S.) and a small number of research groups. I think advisor clout is pretty important

 

[Work Hard Play Hard]

My 2 cents. When you're reading what's in the journals related to your discipline, is what's grabbing your attention coming from academia or the private sector? That's probably not going to change and might offer some direction.

 

[moontiger]

My own background: Big 5 PhD in abstruse theoretical subfield of physics with no applications. One postdoc, followed by a TT position at a liberal arts college--the position did not work out for me due to geographic and family reasons, so a year in I resigned, left, and went to what is basically a non-science position in "industry."

Yes I have seen several PhDs from non-elite schools go on to become faculty at R1s. That said, those people were very, very good and all of them did go on to postdocs at elite places. It doesn't matter where you get your degree. It matters who you are and what you accomplish there. In some ways it's easier to do something impressive if you come from a Big 5. You have great peers and if you take advantage of that you can get a lot done. In other ways, it's actually harder. There's much more competition. You may get less attention from your advisors. Your advisors are going to be at the top of their field professionally, but the best of the best scientists are not always the best mentors. You may not be able to get in with the best advisors. Sometimes it's better to be a big fish in a small pond. Certainly all is not lost if you are.

Teaching/liberal arts college jobs may in some ways be easier to get than R1 spots, but they are definitely not an automatic Plan B if you cannot get a faculty position at a research university--the selection criteria are different. If you want a teaching job, or even if you want to keep that option open as your Plan B, you are going to need to orient your CV in that direction, starting a few years before you want the job. Mentor some undergrads. Take on some extra or unusual teaching responsibilities. Whatever. Creating a competitive CV for a TT teaching job is easier and more under your control than creating one for an R1 job--but you have to do it, starting years before you want the job.

Just my $0.02.

 

[Dr. Courtney]

Teaching/liberal arts college jobs may in some ways be easier to get than R1 spots, but they are definitely not an automatic Plan B if you cannot get a faculty position at a research university--the selection criteria are different. If you want a teaching job, or even if you want to keep that option open as your Plan B, you are going to need to orient your CV in that direction, starting a few years before you want the job. Mentor some undergrads. Take on some extra or unusual teaching responsibilities. Whatever. Creating a competitive CV for a TT teaching job is easier and more under your control than creating one for an R1 job--but you have to do it, starting years before you want the job.

Just my $0.02.

Great idea. Emphasis added. Could not have said it better myself.

If you think that ship has sailed and you are working in industry, there are things that you can do to open the doors back up to transition back into teaching (at a teaching oriented school). Your best plan is to get an adjunct position and teach a course or two at a local community college to begin accruing additional teaching experience on your cv. Now these adjunct jobs pay pretty poorly, but physics PhDs who can teach the evening classes for adult students tend to be in demand in a lot of places. If you can't get a job teaching an evening physics course, bounce over to the math department and teach a math course. There are usually a lot more evening math courses than physics courses.

 

[Crass_Oscillator]

I've made quite a bit of money private tutoring through one of the tutoring start ups, and I'm sure that will help with a teaching CV if I want it. That's another option to consider.

 

[Corpuscule]

If you want a teaching job, or even if you want to keep that option open as your Plan B, you are going to need to orient your CV in that direction, starting a few years before you want the job. Mentor some undergrads. Take on some extra or unusual teaching responsibilities. Whatever. Creating a competitive CV for a TT teaching job is easier and more under your control than creating one for an R1 job--but you have to do it, starting years before you want the job.

I accidentally ended up doing that because I liked it (didn't really have a plan B) and then accidentally ended up getting a 50% teaching / 50% research TT in R2 three years after a PhD :) Incredibly happy! :) R2/R3 is not R1, but there is quite a bit of cutting edge research in R2/R3 if the topic is right.

Started my TT less than a year ago. My PhD / postdoc experience is from decent but not elite places (not in top 50), and I don't have any high impact papers. 3 of my friends recently got and accepted similar offers in similar circumstances.

Posting it just to mention that not everything in academia is divided into R1 and pure teaching. There are plenty of opportunities between these two extremes.

 

[Crass_Oscillator]

^^The above post is very important. There's a weird assumption that one cannot have a good career outside of R1. However it turns out that the real world is complicated. There are extremely productive faculty at less well known places. There are even not very productive faculty at R1 institutions.

The average value of a dataset doesn't explain the whole dataset, in other words.