The Real Science Gap: An Overview

[caffenta]

Nobody was telling me that academic jobs were "better" or even the norm. I also looked around to see where the graduates were going, and discovered that most were going into industry.

I also don't remember ever being told that academic jobs were better. In fact, the prevailing view was that those who stayed in academia were those who couldn't find real jobs.

 

[twofish-quant]

Nobody was telling me that academic jobs were "better" or even the norm. I also looked around to see where the graduates were going, and discovered that most were going into industry.

So who exactly is lying?

Well, one thing that you find in working in the financial industry is that people end up being very skilled liars. One problem with lying is that if you have one person responsible for the lie, then that one person feels guilty, and you have an obvious person to blame.

So you end up with systems that lie, in which it's cleverly set up so that no one has to accept responsibility or feel guilty.

Let's say you want to sell sub-prime mortgages to people. You want their money, but you don't want the guilt. So one person just shows pictures of white picket fences and houses, one person talks to the person at the bank. In the end the sucker signs the papers, gets into a ton of debt, people collect their fees, and when it all falls apart, then everyone can say "who me? I didn't do anything."

But the cool thing is that you get money, without the guilt. After all, no one person convinced the sucker to hand over their wallet, but you get the money the same.

I would think that anyone smart enough to get a PhD could figure out that if each professor creates 10 new professors who create 10 new professors and so on and so on it won't be long before we are hip-deep in physics professors.

That's an easy one. Like Las Vegas and stock scams, you can get around that by thinking that you are smarter/luckier/better than the other losers. You are in the middle of an obvious housing bubble, but the person at the bank convinces you that you are "special" and that you'll get out before it all comes crashing down.

People who get PhD's in physics are used to being the smartest person in the room, and conclude "the odds are low, but they don't apply to me - I will beat the odds".

Sure, and if we were talking about used cars salesman or people peddling life insurance, and you insist on buying a car that you can't afford or buying life insurance that doesn't make sense, then we'd expect that used car salesman to take advantage of one's ignorance.

But I'm old fashioned and silly since I thought that professors had a higher standard of morality and duty to their students.

 

[twofish-quant]

I also don't remember ever being told that academic jobs were better.

I was, but fortunately for me, I didn't really believe much of what I was told.

 

[twofish-quant]

Twofish, again, I think you are letting your bitterness get away from you.

But that's a little scary if you think about it. Things turned out for me as well as they possibly could have, and I'm still incredibly bitter and angry. One wonders what happens to someone that ended up with a less good career path.

 

[twofish-quant]

Least anyone thinks I'm delusional.

An Emerging and Critical Problem of the Science and Engineering Labor Force
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsb0407/

Neuroscience for Kids
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/short.html

http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2002_10_25/noDOI.9805709845991966162

And here is a paper from *1959* talking about how the then claimed shortages are false

http://www.jstor.org/pss/1883726

 

[Vanadium 50]

But I'm old fashioned and silly since I thought that professors had a higher standard of morality and duty to their students.

Name two professors who have (recently - Sputnik doesn't count) told that to their students and a reference that one can look up.

 

[Vanadium 50]

That NSB report says "the number of jobs in the U.S. economy that require science and engineering training will grow". It does not say, "get a PhD in physics and you are likely to get a professorship".

 

[D H]

Least anyone thinks I'm delusional.

An Emerging and Critical Problem of the Science and Engineering Labor Force
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsb0407/

Neuroscience for Kids
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/short.html

http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2002_10_25/noDOI.9805709845991966162

All of the above directly contradict the article (IMO, terrible article) cited in the original post, which opened with

It’s not insufficient schooling or a shortage of scientists. It’s a lack of job opportunities. Americans need the reasonable hope that spending their youth preparing to do science will provide a satisfactory career.​

While some of the points raised in that article are valid, that intro paragraph completely invalidated the entire article to me. They authors drove that invalidation home when they narrowly defined scientists as people who work in universities and national labs. What about industry and government?

The reason those schools can train more scientists than are needed to sustain academia is because industry, and benefactors who went into industry, give huge endowments to schools to pump out people with advanced degrees in technical fields. There is a problem here in physics. Physics departments for the most part don't know (and don't appear to care) why they are getting all that money, and both students and teachers in some fields in physics very much look down on those who go into industry.

This perception is not nearly so strong in chemistry, biotech, and engineering. Those schools work in close collaboration with industry. Students in those fields who get a job in industry as opposed to academia are not looked down upon by their peers.

And here is a paper from *1959* talking about how the then claimed shortages are false http://www.jstor.org/pss/1883726

Thank goodness President Kennedy paid no attention to those idiots. Thanks to the programs started by the Kennedy administration, I had the opportunity to study, as a high school student, non-Euclidean geometry between my freshman and sophomore years in one NSF-sponsored summer program and then to study digital electronics and nuclear physics between my junior and senior years in another NSF-sponsored summer program. These programs still exist, but not nearly to the extent they did in the 1960s to mid 1970s.

 

[FroChro]

All of the above directly contradict the article (IMO, terrible article) cited in the original post, which opened with

It’s not insufficient schooling or a shortage of scientists. It’s a lack of job opportunities. Americans need the reasonable hope that spending their youth preparing to do science will provide a satisfactory career.​

Well, I may be wrong, but it seems to me that that "contradiction" was exactly the point of the post.

 

[ParticleGrl]

Which poster, ParticleGrl?

Diracula, who was the poster G01 was quoting.

Physics, chemistry, engineering, computer science, and math departments crank out a lot more PhDs than academia can bear because our modern technological society needs those PhDs out in industry.

But we are also cranking out more phds than industry can bear! In my experience, with few exceptions, theorists simply aren't getting jobs in the technical world. Yes, we can command high salaries in other fields, but we want to be doing some physics- its why we got the degree.

Its not the lure of high salaries drawing theorists into finance, its the lack of other work.

As you have noted, this situation has been well known for decades. So who is doing the lying here?

It isn't being publicized- its a lie by omission. In the climate I grew up in, everyone said America was facing a scientist and mathematician shortage. Look at the recent State of the Union address- it was all about America losing its competitiveness because of a lack of STEM graduates. Most of my undergraduate students who asked about my career options were surprised- they still bought the myth of the shortage and they'd been physics majors for 4 years.

My own advisor (not out of malice, but of ignorance) was confident that a transition out of academia to the technical world would be easy. "There are lots of technical jobs out there that need theorists." I bought it. As an academic particle physicist, I have no contact with technical industry, so no one can point out the incorrectness.

There is a serious moral hazard in the existing advising system- the scientists that students have the most contact with are academic, and the academic scientists NEED talented graduate students to stay afloat.

That NSB report says "the number of jobs in the U.S. economy that require science and engineering training will grow". It does not say, "get a PhD in physics and you are likely to get a professorship".

But it does imply "get a PhD in physics and you are likely to get some technical work." For a large chunk of physicists, this isn't true- we are cranking out more phds than industry can bear. The APS's own data suggests that pre-recession 17% or more of recent phds are underemployed, and that's likely to skew low due to the nature of the way surveys are done.

The chemistry societies are all worried that (due to the contraction of pharma), there graduates aren't getting work.

 

[Dale]

From this discussion it seems to me like the markets are working. We don't really need more physics professors, and there is a relatively large supply of people applying for such jobs, so those jobs are poorly paid. We do need more financial analysts with a physics background, and there is a relatively small supply of people applying for such jobs, so those jobs are highly paid. Sounds like a functioning free-market to me.

The cultural and psychological environment mentioned by twofish quant is an important factor that contributes to the current supply and demand situation. Changing that would change the market, but is that necessary or even beneficial?

 

[kanato]

It isn't being publicized- its a lie by omission. In the climate I grew up in, everyone said America was facing a scientist and mathematician shortage.
...
My own advisor (not out of malice, but of ignorance) was confident that a transition out of academia to the technical world would be easy. "There are lots of technical jobs out there that need theorists." I bought it. As an academic particle physicist, I have no contact with technical industry, so no one can point out the incorrectness.

Even as a theoretical condensed matter physicist, I have few industry contacts. Most of them are physics PhD's who now have jobs as software engineers and don't do any physics. Those are the jobs I'm applying for now. And yeah, they're not unemployed, but I could have had a job as an SE after my bachelor's degree was done. More than once during my PhD I had a friend from undergrad call up and offer me a job as a software engineer. The PhD adds some extra experience in that field to my resume, although it's much less than I would have had if I had worked as an SE for those years. Someone with a PhD in theoretical physics going into software engineering is the definitive example of underemployment for physicists IMO.

Like particlegrl, I was fed the same lines and I believed them. People kept telling me how versatile my degree would be, because "I could learn anything." Probably true, but most technical positions in industry want specific skills, and can find individuals that already have skill sets that better match the job descriptions. There are not many jobs out there in industry doing density functional theory calculations.

The cultural and psychological environment mentioned by twofish quant is an important factor that contributes to the current supply and demand situation. Changing that would change the market, but is that necessary or even beneficial?

Changing the system from something that is built upon dishonestly attracting individuals would be ethical. Would changing the system to just be upfront and honest about job prospects cause it to collapse? If so, are you happy being part of that system? I wouldn't be.

Here's another thing to think about. Many of the people who are grad students and postdocs in physics are foreigners. They have an easy time getting a visa but an even harder a time getting a job since industry doesn't usually want to sponsor visas. So after they live here for a few years becoming highly skilled in their fields, they end up leaving back to their home countries for permanent positions. It seems to me like a rather short-sighted way to use US tax dollars is to bring in foreigners, train them for a few years, then send them home, all just to get a few research papers published while they are here.

 

[D H]

Someone with a PhD in theoretical physics going into software engineering is the definitive example of underemployment for physicists IMO.

That is exactly the "looking down one's nose upon industry" attitude that I have been talking about. This same attitude does not apply in other fields. I very recently interviewed a PhD aerospace engineer who was (rightfully so) quite proud of his abilities to work adeptly in the scientific/mathematical modeling, software engineering, and analysis worlds. This is not something the typical aerospace engineer armed only with a BS can do. This is something to be proud of, not ashamed of. It is not beneath you.

Here's another thing to think about. Many of the people who are grad students and postdocs in physics are foreigners. They have an easy time getting a visa but an even harder a time getting a job since industry doesn't usually want to sponsor visas. So after they live here for a few years becoming highly skilled in their fields, they end up leaving back to their home countries for permanent positions. It seems to me like a rather short-sighted way to use US tax dollars is to bring in foreigners, train them for a few years, then send them home, all just to get a few research papers published while they are here.

This a very recent, post-9/11 turn of events. A lot of those industry jobs are now closed to foreigners because of ITAR restrictions. My current and former employers used to employ quite a few foreigners with advanced degrees and student visas. They sponsored their H1-B visas and even their permanent residency and citizenship applications. No more. There isn't enough non-ITAR restricted work to justify having someone onboard with only an student visa on hand.

 

[Ryker]

People kept telling me how versatile my degree would be, because "I could learn anything."

Yeah, that's probably the biggest ******** statement there is. Don't get me wrong, I'm now a second degree first-year Physics student, and I do hope that there is some versatility to my degree, but I don't think saying one "could learn anything" describes a Physics major any more than it does your average Arts major. I come here and sometimes see people asking such ridiculous questions that are so out of step with reality that I really have a hard time imagining any of my previous fellow students (I guess you could consider my first degree falling under Arts) would be so confused. So I don't really think this "look at me and look at what I've learned during my undergrad" is something that the employers buy in. I can always hope I'm wrong, though, as it would certainly benefit me when I'll be looking for a job

 

[kanato]

That is exactly the "looking down one's nose upon industry" attitude that I have been talking about. This same attitude does not apply in other fields. I very recently interviewed a PhD aerospace engineer who was (rightfully so) quite proud of his abilities to work adeptly in the scientific/mathematical modeling, software engineering, and analysis worlds. This is not something the typical aerospace engineer armed only with a BS can do. This is something to be proud of, not ashamed of. It is not beneath you.

A software engineering position which utilizes scientific/mathematical modeling would be a great position for someone like me... I'd *love* to have something like that. Hell, I'd be happy to do tech support answering the phones and helping grandmas write email to their grandchildren if I could do some kind of mathematical modeling on the job. And it doesn't have to be physics, it could be any science, or economics, or other kinds of data. The vast majority of software engineering positions that I'm finding are not like that though. They're web development jobs, database admins, applications developers, iPhone developers, etc.

And I'm not saying it's beneath me, I'm saying I had the necessary skills before I got a PhD. The skills I developed during my PhD are minimally applicable. As far as career development goes, the PhD in theoretical physics is good for going into academics, or a small handful of industry jobs that require those specific skills (like quants). Beyond that, the opportunity cost of the skills and career development forgone to spend the time getting the PhD catches up.

But the situation could be better. I've never heard of anyone in physics being encouraged to develop other skills that might be helpful for career development. I've definitely heard cases where established physicists were actively discouraging young physicists from having other interests, because having other interests interferes with their research output.

Oh and you've got me pegged wrong. I'm not "looking down [my] nose upon industry," I'm irritated at how when I was considering going to grad school I was told that it would be a good choice, a versatile degree, etc. And now what I'm seeing is it's much less useful for transitioning to industry than spending that time getting a PhD in EE, or working in industry getting experience. If anything I'm looking down my nose upon the academy because of what I perceive as a complete disconnect from the real world. Especially since the production of PhD's is so much higher than academic jobs available, I feel that they should take more responsibility in helping students transition to industry.

 

[kanato]

Yeah, that's probably the biggest ******** statement there is. Don't get me wrong, I'm now a second degree first-year Physics student, and I do hope that there is some versatility to my degree, but I don't think saying one "could learn anything" describes a Physics major any more than it does your average Arts major. I come here and sometimes see people asking such ridiculous questions that are so out of step with reality that I really have a hard time imagining any of my previous fellow students (I guess you could consider my first degree falling under Arts) would be so confused. So I don't really think this "look at me and look at what I've learned during my undergrad" is something that the employers buy in. I can always hope I'm wrong, though, as it would certainly benefit me when I'll be looking for a job

I think for the most part they mean, if you can learn physics then you are smart enough to learn any other technical field. I think that's true, but there's a often overlooked caveat that employers would often rather not spend the extra time training someone without the specific experience they're looking for, even if they're really smart, particularly in the current market situation.

 

[D H]

The vast majority of software engineering positions that I'm finding are not like that though. They're web development jobs, database admins, applications developers, iPhone developers, etc.

You're looking in the wrong place.

Look instead at developers of scientific software packages, the developers of scientific and medical instruments, at biotech companies, aerospace companies, and weapons manufacturers (particularly, things that go BOOM). Those companies need engineers and physicists. While you can't compete with the typical computer science major when it comes to web development and databases, the typical computer science major can't compete with you when it comes to scientific software.

But the situation could be better. I've never heard of anyone in physics being encouraged to develop other skills that might be helpful for career development. I've definitely heard cases where established physicists were actively discouraging young physicists from having other interests, because having other interests interferes with their research output.

I know first-hand that some advisors can be complete jerks. However, a lot more are just clueless about what is valuable outside of academia. ("Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.")


This issue often does come up here at PhysicsForums, particularly from those who go into the deepest of theoretical physics. It doesn't come up nearly so often with other physicists, and hardly ever from engineers. Most of our members who are in a graduate engineering program tend to vanish after four years or so. No complaints, they just vanish. It's as if they got an overly demanding job in industry. Perhaps physics departments need take a lead from engineering departments rather than classics languages departments.

 

[Dale]

Changing the system from something that is built upon dishonestly attracting individuals would be ethical. Would changing the system to just be upfront and honest about job prospects cause it to collapse? If so, are you happy being part of that system? I wouldn't be.

I think this is an inaccurate portrayl. Even before I picked a field, let alone an advisor, I examined and thought about the job prospects and that was a factor in my choice. It is not as though the information were unavailable or even difficult to obtain. If a person makes a critical life choice like their field of study out of ignorance or whim then it is not really "the system" that is at fault if it turns out to be a suboptimal choice.

Now, there may be a few dishonest people in the system, and there are certainly many ignorant or biased people, and those people may even hold positions of power within the system. But the system itself is fundamentally not capable of hiding information about job prospects. If an individual enters the system without that knowledge then that individual made an important choice rather carelessly.

Here's another thing to think about. Many of the people who are grad students and postdocs in physics are foreigners. They have an easy time getting a visa but an even harder a time getting a job since industry doesn't usually want to sponsor visas. So after they live here for a few years becoming highly skilled in their fields, they end up leaving back to their home countries for permanent positions. It seems to me like a rather short-sighted way to use US tax dollars is to bring in foreigners, train them for a few years, then send them home, all just to get a few research papers published while they are here.

I don't know the statistics, but anecdotally my company sponsors visas and green-cards quite often, including several I have hired and others that I didn't hire but are on my team. The cost of sponsoring a visa is relatively minor if the employee is worth it.

 

[twofish-quant]

That NSB report says "the number of jobs in the U.S. economy that require science and engineering training will grow". It does not say, "get a PhD in physics and you are likely to get a professorship".

Again, I've dealt with enough liars in finance that this just doesn't hold water. This is liar trick #344. You have a written contract that explicit states X but implies Y, and then you have a nice person that reassures you that Y is true. Then when things blow up, the liar collects the money, and then says you have no proof that anyone ever offered Y.

It's a cool trick. It's cool enough so that people have spent decades figuring laws around this, and they still don't completely work.

Look, if you ask people when they first get interested in science, it's usually around age eight or nine, and at that age, kids really can't make these sorts of fine distinctions.

The thing that I can't figure out is why people keep defending things. You can argue that this is the best people could think of, and that's fine, but sometimes people can think of better things.

One thing that helped me a lot was when I gave myself "permission to be angry and bitter."

 

[Dale]

if you ask people when they first get interested in science, it's usually around age eight or nine, and at that age, kids really can't make these sorts of fine distinctions.

I agree completely with this. We definitely should stop admitting 8 and 9 year olds into physics PhD programs since they are incapable of making these fine distinctions.

 

[twofish-quant]

But we are also cranking out more phds than industry can bear!

Personally, I don't think we are. The US puts out 1000 new Ph.D.'s per year. If you ask a caterer to host a party for a 1000 people, they won't break a sweat wrong.

If you can't think of a way of hiring 1000/year new people, then something is seriously wrong. Consider that the US puts out 100,000 new MBA's a year, and I think the world would be better if we could figure out a way of using 100,000 new Ph.D.'s a year.

In my experience, with few exceptions, theorists simply aren't getting jobs in the technical world.

My experience is different. Ph.D's are getting jobs, but it's a really, really painful process. The trouble isn't employment. The trouble is psychological. To get myself to the point where I could be an effective person in industry, I had to work past *decades* of conditioning. When you have an elementary school science teacher that encourages students to study science, it's all part of the system.

The weird thing is that it could have been a lot easier. Getting a Ph.D. is hard and painful, but you get a lot of psychological support telling you that it's OK to be feeling what you are feeling. When you are doing a Ph.D., you have awful days when you wonder whether it's worth it, and part of the reason that advisers are important is so that you have something that can say "yeah, I've had those days too."

What's hard about getting a technical position is that people suddenly get totally unsympathetic for reasons that I don't completely understand. It's somehow "OK" and "normal" to be depressed when the experiment has go haywire and you have to spend three months to totally rewrite your dissertation, but when you get angry and bitter, then you are an idiot. It's *YOUR* fault for not reading the instructions, sucker.

Getting to the point when I no longer really believed that took a few years. Everything that people are telling me right now is a thousand times more effective when I tell myself those things. And while it is a "bad thing" to punch someone else in the face to tell them to shut up, it's not a bad thing to punch that little voice in your head to get it to shut up. Took a few years.

Yes, we can command high salaries in other fields, but we want to be doing some physics- its why we got the degree.

One thing I like about finance, is that it's really the closest thing to theoretical physics that I could find. Also, the reasons that I got into finance are more than money. I literally make a lot more money than I know what to do with, so I just put everything into a bank, and I should be able to within ten years or so, just do whatever I want with my money.

The thing that I like about finance is that there is a lot less hypocrisy. Basically, people are exploiting you so that they can make totally insane amounts of money, but people aren't shy about admitting that. No one is pretending that they are doing anything for your good, and I find that refreshing.

Its not the lure of high salaries drawing theorists into finance, its the lack of other work.

Exactly. Which worries me. I don't worry for me. I worry for society, since I wonder if working in an investment bank is actually the most socially productive work that I can do.

The weird thing is that if someone wanted me to work at a national lab to build electric cars for free for a few months, I could do it. Money is not the problem. The problems are elsewhere.

The other thing that worries me is that mono-cultures are bad. It's a bad thing if graduating Ph.D.'s all do one thing, whatever that one thing is.

In the climate I grew up in, everyone said America was facing a scientist and mathematician shortage. Look at the recent State of the Union address- it was all about America losing its competitiveness because of a lack of STEM graduates. Most of my undergraduate students who asked about my career options were surprised- they still bought the myth of the shortage and they'd been physics majors for 4 years.

And what makes me bitter and angry is that I still believe.

Personally, I think that the US and the world would be better off if you had more physics Ph.D.'s. The fact that Ph.D.'s have difficulty getting into industry is a problem with the educational system, and it's something that I'm trying to help fix. The reason that I'm trying to fix the problem is that I'm going out and brainwashing the next generation of kids that they should go into science, but the difference is that I'm trying to be honest that there is stuff that I haven't figured out.

My own advisor (not out of malice, but of ignorance) was confident that a transition out of academia to the technical world would be easy. "There are lots of technical jobs out there that need theorists." I bought it.

There are but...

Also the transition from academia into the technical world was *PAINFUL* for me. Again the problem isn't that the jobs weren't there, but changing my mindset was a horrendously difficult process. Take someone age 25 that was brought up to be a devout Catholic since age 5 and then suddenly tell them that they have to convert to Islam.

There were a lot of things that helped me. But I had to fight the system to do certain things.

But it does imply "get a PhD in physics and you are likely to get some technical work."

You are, but...

In my case, the catch was that I had to move to NYC. I tried for two years to avoid moving, but finally I got the hint and moved.

 

[D H]

Thread locked pending moderation.

 

[D H]

Thread reopened.

Let's try to make the discussions that follow constructive rather than a slew of complaints. Some questions to be answered:

Is there a problem with employment amongst PhD physicists, astrophysicists, and astronomers?
Is the problem physics-wide or is it concentrated in a certain domains?
What needs to be done to mitigate the problem?

With respect to students,
- Is an attitude adjustment in order?
- Are students learning skills that will help them land a job after they get their PhD?
- Do students have the foggiest idea regarding what is in store for them post-PhD?

With respect to PhD advisers,
- Are they making the "right" trade off in getting the job done versus helping their students?
- Are they looking out for their students' interests? Should they be?

With respect to department administrators,
- Are they out-of-touch with the outside world?

With respect to non-academic employers,
- Are they ignoring an incredibly talented pool of potential employees?With respect to all of the above, what can be done to fix this?Try to be constructive, please. Quoting another mentor in the discussion on this thread, "We can't change the past; we can only reflect and learn from past mistakes, and hopefully make corrections or improvements."

 

[Diracula]

Is there a problem with employment amongst PhD physicists, astrophysicists, and astronomers?
Is the problem physics-wide or is it concentrated in a certain domains?
What needs to be done to mitigate the problem?

Depends on what you consider a "problem". From my perspective, it is a problem if a relatively large % of physics PhDs cannot find a reasonable position that they are happy with shortly after graduation. It is also pretty important that the job could NOT have been obtained with just their bachelor's degrees, otherwise it could be argued they wasted ~5 years of their lives.

With respect to students,
- Is an attitude adjustment in order?

What on Earth could you possibly mean by this?

- Are students learning skills that will help them land a job after they get their PhD?

From what I gather, it depends on what they specialize in and the nature of their work in graduate school. Which, IMO, is a HUGE issue because it seems like they don't know whether the skills are useful or not until they start applying for jobs. And it seems like a lot don't even know what jobs their skills would be useful for. Certainly it's an issue when a PhD has to ask, "so where should I be applying, exactly?" I mean these are physics PhDs, not high school dropouts, right?

- Do students have the foggiest idea regarding what is in store for them post-PhD?

Some apparently do not judging by posts on here. I don't know if this is representative of the PhD population as a whole though. I would imagine those that specialize in the "right" area and have a job after graduation don't care too much though, and probably aren't representative of those that "oops! worked on the wrong problem the past 6 years... guess I got to work retail".

With respect to PhD advisers,
- Are they making the "right" trade off in getting the job done versus helping their students?
- Are they looking out for their students' interests? Should they be?

The students are there to get an education and earn a degree. If they were simply there to "get the job done" shouldn't they be paid technicians/research assistants instead? Isn't the whole point for the PhD student in going to school to help their career in some way? (unless they just want the letters PhD after their name) Given the way the relationship between the university, advisor, and student is presented to applicants, shouldn't the university have SOME interest in seeing their students succeed?

With respect to non-academic employers,
- Are they ignoring an incredibly talented pool of potential employees?

I guess it depends on who they are hiring in their place. I will say that I bet a physics PhD is incredibly talented relative to the average worker, and if they are chronically undermployed then it has to be a huge waste by just about any measure you can imagine.

 

[Diracula]

With respect to all of the above, what can be done to fix this?

Depends on what the goals are. And once you pick one (of many potential) directions to take to reach the chosen goal, you could probably write a book about how to fix it.

I'll start off simple: When people ask questions about career outlook for a specific area of physics, with associated expected salary and career progression, please, for the love of god, don't tell the person "Do what u luv! Salury should not matter 2 u! Do what u luv and the $$$ will follow!" Seriously, that is like some life ruining advice right there people, especially when it comes from a place of authority; from someone supposedly "in the know".

And it is mind-boggling dumb to look down your nose at people who inquire about salaries. You can see it in new posters on here when they have to qualify their questions with, "I know I shouldn't ask about salary and should be doing physics simply because I love it so much... but I got to ask: Will I be living in a studio apartment and eating ramen noodles til I'm 40 if I get my PhD in this area of physics?" Followed by a bunch of people posting about how they aren't cut out for physics if they have to ask that question.


In summary: there is no question there are at least some vocal people who actively encourage people to study physics WITH NO REGARD to career and salary outlook. And they actively discourage people from even inquiring about such things. I've seen it on here, and I've only been a member for some months. This needs to stop, as it's ridiculously dumb and since it sounds all lovey-dovey and wonderful (do what you love and you'll be happy no matter what!) it's actually quite convincing and thus incredibly dangerous advice. It seems there is some sub-culture of physics where wanting anything else out of life besides doing physics is looked down on and makes you not cut out for the field. It's like some weird hipster thing for people that like equations.

 

[twofish-quant]

Is there a problem with employment amongst PhD physicists, astrophysicists, and astronomers?

I don't see any problems in Ph.D. physicist, astrophysicists, and astronomers getting jobs. There's not even a particular problem with Ph.D.'s getting science-related jobs.

The problems are:

1) An expectations issue - There is a very strong message in theoretical astrophysics that being a research professor is the only job that matters and if you get anything else you've failed. (I should note that this doesn't seem to be true in other areas of physics).

Getting rid of these expectations is quite difficult because a lot of the messages are implicit. Also "talk is cheap". You can say all you want that going out of academia isn't a sign of failure, but that means nothing.

If you really think that people that go into industry is "just as good" as being in academia, then that means putting non-academic Ph.D.'s on tenure review/search/admissions committee, putting non-academics in curriculum committees, hiring non-academics in positions of authority in universities and policy committees. If universities aren't willing to do that, then "talk is cheap", you can say that you aren't a failure, but they don't really believe it.

If you have some a professor that is willing to say "I think that you are good enough that I'm willing to let you decide whether I still have a job or not" then I know they respect me. (There's also "I hate the fact that you are deciding whether I still have a job or not, but there's unfortunately nothing I can do about it." situation.) Otherwise, it's just talk.

2) A curriculum issue - The Ph.D. program is extremely unsuited for getting people into industry. I'm quite happy about my job. I'm not happy about the fact that I had to fight the system in order to get where I am. People were telling me to do X, and I thought it was good to do anti-X. One fortunate thing is that I had a set of teachers that were good enough so that when everyone around me was telling me to do X, I remember the one person that told me to do anti-X.

Just as a example. I spent a ton of my time as an undergraduate studying economics, C++, and poetry. I got B's where I could have gotten A's, and I didn't get into my top choices of graduate school, which was painful because I had friends, who I didn't think were smarter than me, that were getting into Harvard and Princeton. When you are in a study group, and everyone is congratulating your friend for getting into Harvard astronomy, and you've just gotten your third rejection letter, it hurts, and you wonder whether it was a good thing to have studied C++ or not.

And it still doesn't stop. I have an old rival that is now the dean of a major university. You can't open a science journal without reading about her research and she is a major star in her field. Right now, it doesn't look too bad, because I'm looking at what I have, and what she has, and what I have isn't that bad. However, a few years ago, she just won a major science award, and I was stuck in a dead end job basically flipping burgers...

Now you can tell me that I shouldn't be so competitive. Hmmmm... That's interesting. I've been competing for grades since I was five years ago. Science fairs, talent searches, undergraduate admissions, graduate admissions, post-docs. Everything revolved around being better than everyone else, and if you are get better grades, then people write newspaper articles about you. And now after all of that, after an entire life based on competition, you tell me that it doesn't matter...

Screw you. :-) :-) :-)

Fortunately, my education was good enough so that at that point I could say a big "screw you, I'm not messed up, if you don't like how I turned out then you are messed up." Also we get into the "talk is cheap" thing. If you really believe that something is wrong with the way I turned out, then change the system so you aren't producing more people like me.

With respect to students,
- Is an attitude adjustment in order?

You can tell who has power since the person with power doesn't have to change, whereas the person without power does. If we talk about how students need to change their attitudes and we aren't also talking about how tenured faculty need to change their attitudes, we can see who has power and who doesn't.

Part of the problem I get pretty emotional is that the *stated* power structures don't match the actual power structures. In my job, the CEO has more power than I do. He can fire me more easily than I can fire him, but he doesn't pretend otherwise.

One problem with academia is that people in charge don't like to talk about how much power they have, which is a bad thing because they can avoid the responsibility that comes with that power. If you are a teacher, you have a lot of power. You can change what a person thinks, and what they feel, but if you just say "well it's the student's fault" then that's power without responsibility that that doesn't work well.

If students have bad attitudes, then we have to ask were those attitudes come from.

With respect to PhD advisers,
- Are they making the "right" trade off in getting the job done versus helping their students?

What about the structure of academia forces them to make these trade-offs? There are universities that are 100% student focused and if you aren't helping the student, then you aren't "getting the job done." I think the better question is what is the "job" that needs to be gotten done.

- Are they looking out for their students' interests? Should they be?

Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity... But... If you get punched in the face, sometimes you really don't care if it was due to malice or stupidity...

I don't think that a Ph.D. adviser that has spent all his life in academia *can* adequately advise students with job searches, and it's probably better for everyone if they don't try.

What I think can be done is:

1) Admit ignorance
2) Don't make things worse. If a student thinks that they want to study plumbing or get an MBA while taking their physics Ph.D. let them. This goes to point #1. The professor might think that the student is an idiot for wanting to study plumbing, but it may be that the student has better information than the professor.

Also, part of the problem with this is that professors are under their own constraints. Professors, even senior ones, have publish or perish constraints.

The other thing is that if there is a conflict, we need to ask why. In research, professors put a lot of effort into getting their students to publish great papers, because if your student published great papers, then that gets you reputation points. We'll know that something has changed when a professor goes to his friends and says "I've got GREAT news! My student has just turned down a Harvard post-doc to teach at a community college. Isn't that WONDERFUL!"

With respect to department administrators,
- Are they out-of-touch with the outside world?

Yes. Again, we have to ask why.

With respect to non-academic employers,
- Are they ignoring an incredibly talented pool of potential employees?

Well... I think that's the wrong question. There's no lack of talented recruits out there and talking about how smart Ph.D.'s are won't help them get jobs, since that's not the problem.

The first thing is that there aren't that many physics Ph.D.'s out there. Most employers and HR people haven't met a physics Ph.D., and if you do it's like meeting a space alien. They don't know what to do with you. If you have a high school graduate applicant for a burger flipper, there is a standard procedure. There aren't enough Ph.D.'s to have a standard procedure. The thing that MBA's have going for them is that they have "salespeople" that are willing to sell MBA's.

Second, the problem isn't the pool of talent. If you have a physics Ph.D., the odds are good that you can very quickly learn the skills needed to do most MBA work. The trouble is that you can do the work with six weeks of training. There are twenty other people that can also do the work with zero training, you aren't going to get the job.

Third, there is the problem with being overqualified. The problem with physics Ph.D.'s is that sometimes they are too smart. If you have someone with a IQ of 110, you may feel more comfortable hiring people with IQ's of 100 than someone with IQ's of 200, because deep down you are terrified that if you hire someone with an IQ of 200, they will kick you out and take your job.

There are also problems if you think you are smarter and better than your boss. Either you are or you aren't, and either one causes big issues.

It requires a *huge* amount of interpersonal skill to deal with this, which is one thing that physics Ph.D'.s don't have particular talent in. One thing that I did at a previous job, is that I acted stupid. I have this "absent minded professor" or "Sheldon" act which I've used in previous situations when it was dangerous to be too smart. It went on for about two years, before I got tired of it, and when I took off the mask and it was obvious that I wasn't an "absent minded professor" I lost the job after about a week.

Fourth, sometimes physics Ph.D.'s just have the wrong attitude for the job. I worked as an adjunct teacher at the University of Phoenix. It was great work. I learned a lot.

But I was just the wrong person to do the work for an extended period of time. The problem is that the UoP education model is a good model, but it requires people that can do routine work, over and over again. After you correct the same algebra mistake for the 1000th time and graded the same papers over and over again, I was getting frustrated. I want to do new stuff. The trouble is that UoP works with an assembly line, so I had to remember that even though I'd seen the same mistake and graded the same paper for the 1000th time, the student that I was dealing with was doing it for the first time.

The first time I did the work, I got shockingly low teacher ratings because the students weren't interested in quantum mechanics. They just wanted to learn algebra so that they could make more money. So I put together a curriculum that did that. "Here are some tricks that you can learn that you can take to work the next day and make more money." That was fine.

But then I was doing the same talk for the third time, it got boring, and UoP doesn't encourage teachers to talk to each other. If I talk to another teacher about better ways of teaching algebra, next thing you know, I'll be talking to them about how underpaid we are, and how we should form a union.

Another example. I don't mind "acting stupid" at least for a while. It's sort of fun for me to do an impersonation of "Sheldon" from the Big Bang. A lot of physics Ph.D.'s would hate it, and so they tend to do less well at jobs that require you to act. One reason I love finance is that I don't have to act like Sheldon all of the time. Sometimes I have to do a Gordon Gekko impersonation, other times I have to act like Batman or Bill Clinton. Sometimes to be an effective salesman, you have to look like a salesman. Sometimes to be an effective salesman, you have to look as far as you can from an effective salesman as you can.

But I like this stuff. Many people don't, and if you don't like acting and drama, finance is a really bad fit.

We can't change the past; we can only reflect and learn from past mistakes, and hopefully make corrections or improvements.

But there is value in "non-constructive" venting. The thing that you have to realize is that some things cannot be fixed. It may be that it's impossible to break the light barrier, and it may be equally impossible to fix the Ph.D. "problem."

But non-constructive venting is sometimes useful. Sometimes you can't change the world, and the problem is not going insane while dealing with it. One thing that hurt a lot in looking for work was the sense of "being alone." If you are desperately looking for a job and failing, it helps to talk to other people that are desperately looking for a job and failing. Even if you can't find a job, it helps with the loneliness.

Also, maybe academia can't fix the problems. The thing that makes me upset is less that there are problems, but some of the attitudes of people within the academy. It would help a lot if I when I say "the system stinks" someone in authority says "yes it does, sorry we can't do anything about it" and really means it. But if when I say "the system stinks" the response is "I'm not the problem, you are the problem" it just increases the anger.

But anger is not a bad thing for me. Anger gets me out of the bed in the morning. I have bad days when everything looks hopeless, and I'm tired and depressed, and feel like giving up. I don't want to write my resume. I don't want to deal with another interview that I'm going to bomb at. But I just think about my "old friend" and I tell myself that if I stay in bed and sleep through the day, she wins. That gets me up.

 

[twofish-quant]

It is also pretty important that the job could NOT have been obtained with just their bachelor's degrees, otherwise it could be argued they wasted ~5 years of their lives.

I disagree strongly with the last sentence, and one of the "attitude" things that I think needs to be fixed is this idea that a degree is worthless if you doesn't help you get a higher status job.

The problem is that the fact of the matter is that most jobs that you can get with a physics Ph.D., you can get without a physics Ph.D. If you encourage the attitude that the only jobs that matter are those that require a Ph.D., then this practically guarantees emotional trauma, and it removes options rather than adds to them.

The analogy that works for me is that finishing a Ph.D. is like being able to finish the iron man triathlon or being able to climb Mount Everest. There are few jobs out there for professional triathetes, and there are no jobs that I can think of for which being a triathete is the only way of getting the job.

Yet people spend years or training to be able to finish a triathlon, and I'd argue that it's great for society if more people could be triathetes rather than couch potatoes.

Again we need to question the question. I'd be interested to see if someone can *justify* the notion that you've wasted your life with a Ph.D. if you can't find a Ph.D. specific job. The reason I'd like to see someone justify it is that I don't believe it, and the reason I don't believe it is that it gets in the way of actually making the Ph.D. useful.

From what I gather, it depends on what they specialize in and the nature of their work in graduate school. Which, IMO, is a HUGE issue because it seems like they don't know whether the skills are useful or not until they start applying for jobs.

Any sometimes it's because that's an unknowable question. The really cool thing about my job is that it didn't *exist* when I got my Ph.D. One paradox is that the fast growing fields and cool jobs are in areas in which people didn't expect for there to be job. When I got my physics Ph.D., no one knew that neutrino physics happens to be useful for calculating stock options, and I argue that no one could have known. In fact, none of my interviewers knew that neutrino physics and stock options have the same equations, and it was a point that I made in my resume.

If you know the answer, it isn't research, and if it isn't research, then I'm not that interested.

I can say that I've never applied for a job in which the employer was looking for my exact skill set. What I had to do was to "sell" and point out that my skills was what they were looking for, even if they didn't know it.

I would imagine those that specialize in the "right" area and have a job after graduation don't care too much though, and probably aren't representative of those that "oops! worked on the wrong problem the past 6 years... guess I got to work retail".

Some of it is luck. I had the luck of graduating right at the start of the dot-com boom, so it wasn't that hard to find the first job.

But the weird thing about me is that I'm totally satisfied with my current job. I'm not satisfied with what I had to do to get here.

The students are there to get an education and earn a degree. If they were simply there to "get the job done" shouldn't they be paid technicians/research assistants instead?

Maybe but if you had a system in which the work was done by specialists rather than graduate students, you'd have to redo the entire system. What this would look like is nursing. Nurses get paid pretty decent amounts of money in comparison to graduate students.

Also once you put in a glass ceiling, then you change the social dynamics. Graduate students don't form unions because they think that they'll be professors someday. If you have a glass ceiling in which the work that goes into making the university work goes into people that aren't going to be managers, then you'll have unions and strikes.

Not that this is a bad thing, but it's different.

Isn't the whole point for the PhD student in going to school to help their career in some way?

One thing that I tell people is you absolutely, absolutely should not go into a Ph.D. program for career reasons. Outside of being a research professor, anything you can do with career with a Ph.D., you can do more easily without it, and you assume going in that you won't be a research professor. In talking about careers, my role isn't to change people do their Ph.D. so that it can help their careers. It won't. My role is to set thing up so that astrophysics Ph.D.'s don't starve.

But this doesn't impact people that want to study theoretical astrophysics much. Someone that wants to understand the big bang is most likely not doing it mainly to earn $10K a year more. When I tell people that it's a good thing to go into astrophysics is so that you can catch a glimpse of the face of God, I can say that without irony.

Unless they just want the letters PhD after their name.

Some of us do. That's why I think I've done well. I might be unemployed and eating cat food someday, but I got a Ph.D.

There's a lot of family and world history that got me to that point, but I digress enough as it is. One reason I got my Ph.D. is that it was just the "thing to do" in my family. Pretty much in my family has a post-graduate degree, and part of it is that the Ph.D. is socially equivalent to passing the Confucian examinations.

I started to understand people a lot more when I figured out that in some places and in some families, American football has the same role that astrophysics has in mine.

Given the way the relationship between the university, advisor, and student is presented to applicants, shouldn't the university have SOME interest in seeing their students succeed?

Define success.

I will say that I bet a physics PhD is incredibly talented relative to the average worker, and if they are chronically undermployed then it has to be a huge waste by just about any measure you can imagine.

It might be, but you then have to understand why "overqualified" is a problem. I've never met a physics Ph.D. for which being underqualified was a problem. If you don't know something you can learn it. It's more often the case that a physics Ph.D. is overqualified, and I've had a large number of jobs in which I was turned down because I just was too good for the job. (This isn't my arrogance talking, the employer told me that they weren't hiring me because I was too qualified.)

Then you have to ask what society are we trying to build. Whether people realize it or not, most people are trying to reconstruct the ideal society in Plato's Republic with philosopher-kings. We may have to ask whether that's the best way of organizing a society.

Look at the United Kingdom. The person on top is the Queen, and it doesn't matter how smart you are or how good you are, you aren't going to be Queen or King unless you happen to be named Charles or William. It works great for them. I've seen companies that work the same way (i.e. you are never going to be CEO because that job is for the bosses kid).

This sometimes works pretty well. The Queen is not afraid to let the smartest guy be Prime Minister because he knows that the Prime Minister isn't going to be Queen.

 

[twofish-quant]

Seriously, that is like some life ruining advice right there people, especially when it comes from a place of authority; from someone supposedly "in the know".

That's exactly what I say, because that's what I did and it worked out well for me. Part of the reason I post is that I seem to be one of the few people that went into theoretical physics and is pretty satisfied with how things turned out.

If you are primarily concerned about salary and career progression, *DO NOT GO INTO ASTROPHYSICS*. But that's not the real question, because I've never had an MBA ask me whether they could make more money going into astrophysics. You will make more money with less effort with other thing. But everyone pretty knows that, and that's not the real question.

The real question is "will I starve if I study astrophysics" and the answer is no. Part of the reason I can say that with some confidence, is that if you are smart enough to finish an astrophysics Ph.D., I'm pretty sure that you can learn truck driving or bartending or whatever it is that you have to do to keep from starving to death.

And it is mind-boggling dumb to look down your nose at people who inquire about salaries.

And salaries is not the real problem. I've never had a problem with the salaries I've gotten.

Followed by a bunch of people posting about how they aren't cut out for physics if they have to ask that question.

It depends on why they are asking that question, and what question they are asking. If you want salary information...

If you get a astrophysics Ph.D. and you are willing to move to NYC, then you can get a job making $150K total comp without too much trouble. With three years of experience, you can get $200-$300K total comp.

Next question?

This needs to stop, as it's ridiculously dumb and since it sounds all lovey-dovey and wonderful (do what you love and you'll be happy no matter what!) it's actually quite convincing and thus incredibly dangerous advice.

And it is. I try not to give advice. I tell stories. I tell you want happened to me.

I did want I loved without too much concern about salary and career, and it worked out *REALLY, REALLY, REALLY* well for me.

It seems there is some sub-culture of physics where wanting anything else out of life besides doing physics is looked down on and makes you not cut out for the field. It's like some weird hipster thing for people that like equations.

Because it is.

Again if you want salary information...

If you get a astrophysics Ph.D. right now and you are willing to move to NYC, then you can get a job making $150K total comp without too much trouble. With three years of experience, you can get $200-$300K total comp.

The problem with that information is that it's dangerous, because if you have a million people getting Ph.D.'s because they think that they can get $300K, then no one will get anything once they all graduate. The reason that astrophysics Ph.D.'s make so much money is that there aren't very many of them. There are about 400 that graduate each year, and if you increase that to 500, then all the numbers change. (And if there are a million Ph.D.'s and they all go into banking, then my salary goes down, so I have a personal interest in not getting everyone into banking.)

If you ask me about salary information in five years or even next year, I'm sorry, I don't know. I *don't* want people entering the field to make $200K because I simply cannot guarantee that salary, and if lots of people enter expecting to make $200K, I can guarantee that they won't.

I *can* provide some reasonable assurance that people that get astrophysics Ph.D.'s won't starve, and I *can* promise you the universe. If you want the universe, I can promise you that. If you want the money, then I can't promise you anything.

Also the problem with the prediction changing the outcome isn't unique to astrophysics Ph.D.'s. Law schools are having a huge problem now.

 

[Ryker]

If you really think that people that go into industry is "just as good" as being in academia, then that means putting non-academic Ph.D.'s on tenure review/search/admissions committee, putting non-academics in curriculum committees, hiring non-academics in positions of authority in universities and policy committees. If universities aren't willing to do that, then "talk is cheap", you can say that you aren't a failure, but they don't really believe it.

If you have some a professor that is willing to say "I think that you are good enough that I'm willing to let you decide whether I still have a job or not" then I know they respect me. (There's also "I hate the fact that you are deciding whether I still have a job or not, but there's unfortunately nothing I can do about it." situation.) Otherwise, it's just talk.

I agree with a lot of stuff you say, and if I don't, you argue your side well, so I see where you are coming from and I can respect that. But doing what you're suggesting here would, in my opinion, be a terrible idea. It would completely destroy the autonomy of universities and the business world would get a formal influence on how universities are run, as well. I agree with the equality of academic and non-academic jobs, but it's one thing encouraging people to choose what they think will fit them best in terms of the lifestyle they wish to have and the goals they have, but it's quite another to have "outside" people deciding upon what goes on in universities. Sure, you should have representatives of the "economy" at the highest level where general decision are being made, but not on tenure and admissions committees, that's just getting too specific.

And I don't think not doing what you're suggesting falls under the "talk is cheap" category, because I think that's just taking the extreme to prove the point. But this point can be proven otherwise, ie. what your goal, with which, again, I agree with, is can be reached by other means, but here's where institutions other than universities need to step in, as well. But just as you're not going to convince some hot-shot investor earning millions upon millions that he should've gone into academia and work his *** off for what he now makes in a day, you'll be hard-pressed to convince people that love the academia lifestyle to stop presenting it in a good light. So there's always going to be bias, and you just need to fight it with some other means of informing people.

 

[twofish-quant]

It would completely destroy the autonomy of universities and the business world would get a formal influence on how universities are run, as well.

It would.

But why would it be a bad thing?

One thing that you have to realize is that business and government already have a lot of influence over how universities are run, and whether you think it is a good or bad thing depends on what you think universities should be doing.

So what should universities be doing?

I agree with the equality of academic and non-academic jobs, but it's one thing encouraging people to choose what they think will fit them best in terms of the lifestyle they wish to have and the goals they have, but it's quite another to have "outside" people deciding upon what goes on in universities.

Those statements are inconsistent. If you think that academics should run universities and non-academics shouldn't, you can't consistently argue that the jobs are equal. Ideas have consequences, and it's when you think about the consequences of the ideas that you realize whether you really like them or not.

Also, I can be an insider. I can be an outsider. Most of the time, I've gotten to be an insider, because I'm too dangerous as an outsider.

Sure, you should have representatives of the "economy" at the highest level where general decision are being made, but not on tenure and admissions committees, that's just getting too specific.

If you believe that the Ph.D. program should be made more relevant to industry, then it's a consequence of this that you want people in industry on tenure and admissions.

Also, I'm not offended if you don't want to hand over the crown jewels. If you are saying "I don't want non-academics deciding tenure and admissions because I don't trust them, and I think they may fire me" that's fine. But we are talking about why Ph.D.'s want to be research professors, and this is why.

One problem with tenure and admissions is that if you have more people outside of the system then inside of it, then you have revolution. If I get enough people on my side, then I can force you to hand over the crown jewels, even if you think otherwise.

But just as you're not going to convince some hot-shot investor earning millions upon millions that he should've gone into academia and work his *** off for what he now makes in a day

For physics Ph.D.'s that end up in Wall Street, money doesn't mean very much. It's just numbers on a computer. In a few years, I'll have enough money to self-fund my research. I'll have enough money and connections so that I can get myself into the center of most research universities if they want me, and if all else fails, I'll get some like-minded people to start my own university.

If you want me on the inside and put me on tenure or admissions, I'll fight for you. If you want me on the outside, I'll fight against you. I don't care what you all decide, I'll get what I want, either way.

Do you want me to be an insider or an outsider? Because if I'm an outsider, I don't have any reason not to defend the system.

You'll be hard-pressed to convince people that love the academia lifestyle to stop presenting it in a good light. So there's always going to be bias, and you just need to fight it with some other means of informing people.

If I have enough money and power on my side, then I don't have to convince you. I can just take what I want. The thing that senior faculty have to realize is that they don't have junior people on their side, and that means revolution.

The reason I'm angry is that I was sold a dream. I love the academic lifestyle. I want to spend the rest of my life living the academic lifestyle. I was denied the academic lifestyle, but being someone that doesn't quit, I'm going to get what I want, one way or another. If I thought that the tenure system was something that helped me or had some social usefulness other than job protection, I'd fight for it, but that not being the case, I don't care if it burns, if it means getting myself to the academic dream.

I'm mad because I believe in the *ideals* of academia, but not the reality. I'm not the only one.

Be careful what you teach the kids, it will come back and haunt you.

 

[twofish-quant]

Seriously, that is like some life ruining advice right there people, especially when it comes from a place of authority; from someone supposedly "in the know".

Sometimes the truth is scary.

The fact of the matter is that I can't tell you want degree will make you money. I'm doing fine right now, but I can't tell you what my job or what my salary will be in five years. What my salary is in five years is dependent on factors that are outside of my control, and which I can't predict.

In late 2007, the world came pretty close to an economic collapse. Had the people made slightly different decisions, you, I and everyone else would be out of a job, and I'd either be selling apples on street corners or I'd be part of a mass protest demanding a job so my kids don't starve. It didn't come to that, but it could have, and over the next five years, something like that could happen, and over a lifetime something odd almost certainly will.

You are asking me to give you the number of the winning lottery ticket, and I just can't do that. Since I like asking deep questions, let me ask you why it matters what job you get?

You can come up with your answer, but my answer is that in the United States, job means social status. If you are unemployed, you are a *LOSER* that no one would pay attention to. The only reason people put up with that is that they think that they will end up a *WINNER*. Hey, I'm smart. I work hard. I'm not a dead beat welfare mom. If I make the right choices, I can be a *WINNER* and look down at the lazy, stupid *LOSER*S.

But guess what. There aren't enough jobs. There isn't enough stuff. You can play all your cards right, do everything the right way, and you still end up a *LOSER*. People are looking for a way of beating the WINNER/LOSER lottery. Maybe if I go to the right school, get the right job, do the right things, I'll be a winner.

But I've looked at that game. I've lost. So I'm trying to figure out how to play a game that I can win at. When everything was falling apart and I didn't know whether I would have a job, I knew that whatever happened, I'd be studying physics. Maybe I'd be in a street corner selling apples or begging for quarters, but I'd have an astrophysics book in my hand.

I'm telling you that with an astrophysics Ph.D., I can't guarantee that you'll be a WINNER. But that's the same with other jobs. Switch from astrophysics to engineering. If the economy goes bad, you'll still be out on the street.

In summary: there is no question there are at least some vocal people who actively encourage people to study physics WITH NO REGARD to career and salary outlook.

Hey, I'm not encouraging you to study physics. I'm saying that if you are mostly concerned about career and salary outlook, it's a ******seriously******* bad idea for you to get a Ph.D.

Now, if you've already decided that you want a Ph.D., you just don't want to starve to death, that's a different situation.

 

[chronon]

So it's a myth that all PhD students can expect to become research professors and so get to work on whatever takes their fancy. The question is, is this surprising? I can't help thinking that only a very small number of people might expect to have such a job.

Of course, being a research professor isn't about working on whatever takes your fancy, even if you have freedom as to what research you do, much of the working week is likely to be taken up with teaching and administration. Even the research part might be more about managing incompetent PhD students. (I can't help wondering whether those in other jobs who would take a significant salary cut to become an academic have really thought about this)

Looking at Big Science, such as the Manhattan project, or the Moon landings, it certainly wasn't the case that the participants were each working on what they felt like. And in the case of the Human Genome sequencing, I can't help thinking that Venter's approach of doing it all in one place gave an advantage over splitting it between a consortium of independent academics.


Historically, basic science was often done by amateurs, i.e. people who made their money doing something else. Is it reasonable to expect to go work in the same independent way but to be paid for doing it?

 

[D H]

1) An expectations issue - There is a very strong message in theoretical astrophysics that being a research professor is the only job that matters and if you get anything else you've failed.

That expectation is what I was alluding to when I asked whether an attitude adjustment is in order. Do the math. As Vanadium 50 noted back in post #50, that one will get a job in academia after getting a PhD in astrophysics is a false expectation. The job openings just aren't there. Demand for physics professors is rather flat. Demand for such people outside of academia has risen dramatically.

(I should note that this doesn't seem to be true in other areas of physics)

What is it that makes students in other areas more realistic, less arrogant?

If you really think that people that go into industry is "just as good" as being in academia, then that means putting non-academic Ph.D.'s on tenure review/search/admissions committee, putting non-academics in curriculum committees, hiring non-academics in positions of authority in universities and policy committees. If universities aren't willing to do that, then "talk is cheap", you can say that you aren't a failure, but they don't really believe it.

You missed one: Put non-academic PhDs on research grant evaluation boards. It is these research grants that fuel the technical PhD programs. This glut of astrophysicists, if it exists, results largely from a glut of research grants in that area.

So, another question: Does our system as a whole have the right balance of research being done in graduate schools, and what is the "right balance"?

What about the structure of academia forces them to make these trade-offs? There are universities that are 100% student focused and if you aren't helping the student, then you aren't "getting the job done." I think the better question is what is the "job" that needs to be gotten done.

Good question. You're working in economics, so I assume you know that there is no way to simultaneously maximize multiple competing criteria. A trade-off is needed. A subfield of decision theory, multi-criteria decision making, is devoted to addressing this problem.

Those 100% student-focused schools for the most part don't grant PhDs and they don't do research. They have decided to opt out of the research business. Some schools have rethought this decision, and as soon as they do this they cease to by 100% student focused.

 

[twofish-quant]

That expectation is what I was alluding to when I asked whether an attitude adjustment is in order. Do the math. As Vanadium 50 noted back in post #50, that one will get a job in academia after getting a PhD in astrophysics is a false expectation. The job openings just aren't there. Demand for physics professors is rather flat. Demand for such people outside of academia has risen dramatically.

But then what you *could* do is to find a job that pays a lot of money and work there for a few years and then semi-retire to be an astrophysicist. Also, it would be possible to change the structure of the system so that people could work say six months a year doing something else, and then work as an unpaid researcher for six months.

The economic constraints that you have (X professors produces X students that become X professors) exist only if you make certain assumptions, and if you question those assumptions then the problem disappears. One assumption is that you have full time professors. Economically, there is no reason why you couldn't have a Ph.D. get a job making 70-80K a year, and instead of working full time, you spend three months a year working in a national law for free. You'd still make more money than being a post-doc, and you end up with a more economically sustainable system.

There are structural reasons why that doesn't happen, but they aren't because of lack of money. One idea I've been toying with is the idea of a "Science Corp" or "National Science Reserve". Something like the Army Reserve but with scientists. All that would really take is for Obama to make a speech, and if I can't get Obama to make that speech, maybe I can get Hu Jintao to do it.

What is it that makes students in other areas more realistic, less arrogant?

It takes a certain about of arrogance to think *I WILL DISCOVER THE SECRET TO THE COSMOS*. For most people, if you tell them "you aren't Einstein", they'll believe it, but if you work in particle physics or cosmology if someone tells you that you aren't Einstein" then part of you thinks "well yes I am."

Also the type of arrogance that you find in theoretical physicists is quite ingrained. Since kindergarten, I've had people tell me either explicitly or implicitly that I was going to be the next Einstein.

Finally, there is a cool scene from Doctor Who

DW: We may be in a dream or not. Quick, look for anything unusual.
Companion: Umm... We are in a box that's bigger in the inside than the outside, and traveling with a space alien with a bow tie.
DW: Errr... I mean really unusual...

If you spend your days thinking about 11 dimensional space time and non-Euclidean geometry, it's sort of hard to figure out what is "realistic." That may not be a bad thing.

 

[twofish-quant]

You missed one: Put non-academic PhDs on research grant evaluation boards. It is these research grants that fuel the technical PhD programs. This glut of astrophysicists, if it exists, results largely from a glut of research grants in that area.

One thing about research grants is that the really big battles are already decided by non-Ph.D.'s (i.e. Congress). Also the reason that astrophysicists get funded as much as it does is that it's the astrophysicists that know how to build a hydrogen bomb, and there are a lot of people interested in making sure this knowledge doesn't get lost.

One problem with astrophysics is that the big employers tend to be extremely quiet. It turns out that building a H-bomb is a lot like building a car or an Ipad. You need a large number of skilled people. The difference is that people that build H-bombs are very quiet. Even the number of people that design nuclear weapons and exactly what they do is highly classified. You don't want North Korea or Iran to know that you have X people working on Y.

Finance isn't quite as bad, but it's still secretive. Which means that most astrophysics students don't know that the jobs exist.

Good question. You're working in economics, so I assume you know that there is no way to simultaneously maximize multiple competing criteria. A trade-off is needed. A subfield of decision theory, multi-criteria decision making, is devoted to addressing this problem.

But then you ask whose criteria wins, and then you get into issues of political power. I think that we ought to hire professors with more undergraduate teaching experience. My friend thinks otherwise. But she is a dean, and I'm nobody so what I think just doesn't matter.

Those 100% student-focused schools for the most part don't grant PhDs and they don't do research. They have decided to opt out of the research business.

On the other hand you have to ask what does it mean to be student-focused. Take MIT. The classroom instruction is not great. There are good teachers, there are lousy ones, and the average teaching skill is a lot less than in most community colleges.

But... For a certain type of student, that's great. I don't need much classroom help, and in fact, sometimes I think that helpful teachers are a nuisance. I learned stuff at MIT that I couldn't learn elsewhere, because they just drop you in the ocean and let you swim to shore. That's being 100% student focused for a certain type of student.

 

[Diracula]

Since I like asking deep questions, let me ask you why it matters what job you get?

Some jobs pay more than others, some jobs have better lifestyles than others (work hours, flexibility, schedule, stress, etc.), and some jobs are more interesting than others. Status has very little to do with it for me. Most people don't really know what the heck a physicist really does, anyway.

But I've looked at that game. I've lost. So I'm trying to figure out how to play a game that I can win at. When everything was falling apart and I didn't know whether I would have a job, I knew that whatever happened, I'd be studying physics. Maybe I'd be in a street corner selling apples or begging for quarters, but I'd have an astrophysics book in my hand.

I do agree with you that it often helps to view these types of things as a a "game" we're all playing.

I'm telling you that with an astrophysics Ph.D., I can't guarantee that you'll be a WINNER. But that's the same with other jobs. Switch from astrophysics to engineering. If the economy goes bad, you'll still be out on the street.

Right. But it depends on "how" the economy gets bad. And if it doesn't get bad at all, I might do really well with an engineering PhD but terribly with a physics PhD even if I think physics is more interesting.

Hey, I'm not encouraging you to study physics. I'm saying that if you are mostly concerned about career and salary outlook, it's a ******seriously******* bad idea for you to get a Ph.D.

FWIW I wasn't referring to you. I can see how you thought that because in my other threads you've probably given the most/best advice. I think you're actually pretty clear in that a physics PhD is generally poor in improving ones career and income.

What irks me are those that discourage others from even asking about career/salary when discussing physics careers. The kind of people that make posters qualify their questions with, "Now, I know I shouldn't be asking this, but..." when asking about career/salary. The fact is there is often a balance between interest and the sacrifices you are willing to make to get a PhD. For instance, I am leaning towards getting a PhD in biophysics or medical physics because I find those fields interesting and I think I will pick up skills while doing a PhD that will allow me to get an R&D or clinical job that I will really like and will pay reasonably well. I'm leaning away from doing particle theory because I doubt I could get a job I'd like as much as I would in the medical/biophysics fields EVEN THOUGH I find particle physics more interesting. Weighted probabilities of finding a job multiplied by interest, roughly speaking. If you told me I had to work 100 hours a week for 6 years to get a PhD and I'd be working retail when I was done because no one likes physics PhDs I probably wouldn't get it no matter how much I liked it.

 

[twofish-quant]

Right. But it depends on "how" the economy gets bad. And if it doesn't get bad at all, I might do really well with an engineering PhD but terribly with a physics PhD even if I think physics is more interesting.

If the economy is good, then you'll do well regardless of what degree you get. I entered the job market in 1998 and during the dot-com boom, it wasn't hard to convince people to hire a physics Ph.D. as a computer programmer because they were hiring real estate brokers and physical therapists as computer programmers.

Also, what degree you get becomes unimportant if the economy is really bad. In that situation you won't find jobs even with the "perfect degree."

One reason I try to "tell stories" rather than "give advice" is that there are no eternal truths here. "Do what's fun", worked for me in large part because I got my degree at the right moment. People that are entering the job market in 2011 are facing a very different situation, and once you figure it out, it changes.

For instance, I am leaning towards getting a PhD in biophysics or medical physics because I find those fields interesting and I think I will pick up skills while doing a PhD that will allow me to get an R&D or clinical job that I will really like and will pay reasonably well. I'm leaning away from doing particle theory because I doubt I could get a job I'd like as much as I would in the medical/biophysics fields EVEN THOUGH I find particle physics more interesting.

But that is rather dangerous, because job predictions are notoriously inaccurate and the prediction changes the outcome. For Ph.D. jobs we are talking about very small numbers of jobs. Maybe a thousand. If people think that biophysics is hot, and you have an fifty extra biophysics Ph.D.'s, then you suddenly have a glut. If there are suddenly fifty fewer particle physics Ph.D.'s, then suddenly you have shortage.

The reason biophysics has had a lot of jobs is because biophysics funding has been continuously growing, but that's definitely not going to continue.

The cool part for me is that I've found that if I think of the job market as "just another system that I can use math to think about" that I come up with some useful insights. One insight that I've come up with is that if everyone is telling you invest in X, then that's the time you should get out of X, because you are marching into the bubble.

Weighted probabilities of finding a job multiplied by interest, roughly speaking.

That doesn't work. One thing that I like about physics is that you think about deep questions. One question that you should think deeply about (and which I think very deeply about) is "what is a probability?" If I say that the probability of X is Y, what does that mean? Something that is cool about markets is that you have "reflexity". If people think something will or won't happen, that affects the likelihood of it happening. If everyone thinks that biophysics is a hot job, that pretty much guarantees that it won't be.

The other question that you should be asking is "if you multiply X by Y do you come up with a meaningful answer?" Maybe it doesn't make sense to multiply X by Y. Maybe the function that you should be using is X times the logarithm of Y. One thing that you frequently find in finance is that log(money) is more important than money.

If you told me I had to work 100 hours a week for 6 years to get a PhD and I'd be working retail when I was done because no one likes physics PhDs I probably wouldn't get it no matter how much I liked it.

I'm telling you that there is a pretty good likelihood of that happening, and if that risk is unacceptable, then you shouldn't get a physics Ph.D.

The "good" news is that every Ph.D. that I know of has ended up with a decent job that allows them to live at upper middle class levels, but for a good fraction of them, what they ended up doing has nothing particularly to do with the Ph.D. For most Ph.D.'s (including myself), the job that they ended up with could have been gotten without the Ph.D.

The situation is that if you get a Ph.D. that means that you are smart enough and willing to work hard enough so that you'll get something decent, and if you start working at the counter at Walmart within two or three years, you'll find yourself district manager, and I know of a few people that had career tracks that looked like that, and financially they are doing decent.

Next question?

 

[Diracula]

If the economy is good, then you'll do well regardless of what degree you get.

Define 'doing well'. Because I'm pretty sure I disagree.

Also, what degree you get becomes unimportant if the economy is really bad. In that situation you won't find jobs even with the "perfect degree."

In a "really bad" economy, do all degrees perform equally well with regards to finding a job? Like would I be equally likely to get a job with a BS in engineering vs. a BS in sociology? Do you have a reference to support this?

But that is rather dangerous, because job predictions are notoriously inaccurate and the prediction changes the outcome. For Ph.D. jobs we are talking about very small numbers of jobs. Maybe a thousand. If people think that biophysics is hot, and you have an fifty extra biophysics Ph.D.'s, then you suddenly have a glut. If there are suddenly fifty fewer particle physics Ph.D.'s, then suddenly you have shortage.

I'm not really basing it on economic predictions, although that plays a tiny role. I'm basing it on the fact that there are a lot of problems to be solved in biophysics and medical physics that are, in general, immediately applicable to other areas of research, helping people, providing economic growth, etc. Basically, it's a lot easier to find funding because there is an immediate benefit to people if you do something that leads to the development of better cancer treatments vs. finding funding to come up with a new test for string theory.

And if there's a ton of people thinking the same way I do and there ends up being a huge glut of biophysicists in 5 years, oh well... that's why I have to be flexible. I can't really see and predict how everyone thinks. But I can try to do work that I think will give me sufficient funding. I'm not confident I'll find that with particle theory. I'm somewhat more confident I'll find it with biophysics or medical physics.

The reason biophysics has had a lot of jobs is because biophysics funding has been continuously growing, but that's definitely not going to continue.

How do you know this? I thought you couldn't predict this stuff?

The cool part for me is that I've found that if I think of the job market as "just another system that I can use math to think about" that I come up with some useful insights. One insight that I've come up with is that if everyone is telling you invest in X, then that's the time you should get out of X, because you are marching into the bubble.

At the extremes, yes. Like if you start seeing articles on news sites saying "Get a PhD in biophyiscs!" you might want to be careful. But I don't see that happening for biophysics or medical physics, yet.

That doesn't work.

I wasn't deriving a rigorous equation... Just giving a rough idea of my thought process.

One thing that I like about physics is that you think about deep questions. One question that you should think deeply about (and which I think very deeply about) is "what is a probability?" If I say that the probability of X is Y, what does that mean? Something that is cool about markets is that you have "reflexity". If people think something will or won't happen, that affects the likelihood of it happening. If everyone thinks that biophysics is a hot job, that pretty much guarantees that it won't be.

There are a lot of different intepretations of "what is probability". Well, at least 2 big ones that I can think of. And I don't think everyone thinks biophysics is a hot job right now. And if it turns out that way, I'm willing to be flexible. I just think biophysics skills will be more useful that particle physics skills for the type of jobs I will want.

The other question that you should be asking is "if you multiply X by Y do you come up with a meaningful answer?" Maybe it doesn't make sense to multiply X by Y. Maybe the function that you should be using is X times the logarithm of Y. One thing that you frequently find in finance is that log(money) is more important than money.

Yeah... like I said I'm not being rigorous about it (see my example below at the end of the post).

I'm telling you that there is a pretty good likelihood of that happening, and if that risk is unacceptable, then you shouldn't get a physics Ph.D.

You think the risk of putting in 100 hours a week for 6 years and THEN working retail afterwards because everyone hates physics PhDs is good? What do you mean by 'good'? Because I've never heard anyone claim anything close to this, or seen any stats which support this. Unless by "good" you mean a fraction of a percent?

The "good" news is that every Ph.D. that I know of has ended up with a decent job that allows them to live at upper middle class levels, but for a good fraction of them, what they ended up doing has nothing particularly to do with the Ph.D. For most Ph.D.'s (including myself), the job that they ended up with could have been gotten without the Ph.D.

Well that's fine. When I said "work retail" I meant like working at a department store selling stuff. I was being hyperbolic. I don't absolutely have to continue work in an area that has to do with the PhD. As I mentioned, I'm willing to be flexible. I would just take something decent, and "upper middle classs" is more than decent, imo.

The situation is that if you get a Ph.D. that means that you are smart enough and willing to work hard enough so that you'll get something decent, and if you start working at the counter at Walmart within two or three years, you'll find yourself district manager, and I know of a few people that had career tracks that looked like that, and financially they are doing decent.

But I don't particularly want to manage a Walmart. Which is a problem if that's all I can get after spending 6 years at 100 hours a week getting a phd in particle physics.

Next question?

Take two 22 year old kids. Both ~50K in debt from undergrad.

Kid 1:
Talent level of Albert Einstein in physics. Immensely successful in undergrad in both grades and undergrad research. Gets accepted to a very top physics PhD program, already set up to work with a top advisor in his chosen field (and a field that is hugely in demand right now), and also is set up with funding and has won a lot of outside awards, etc. He really really really likes physics.

However, his true love is basketball. He's a 5'7" white guy who hasn't played basketball competitively since 6th grade. Has bad knees too. But, he find playing basketball more interesting than any other thing in the world and he wants to play in the NBA.

He's trying to decide whether to go to graduate school for physics, or spend in the next 6 years training 100 hours a week to try to make the NBA.

Kid 2:
Talent level of LeBron James in basketball. Decided to stay the whole 4 years of college to complete his physics degree because he loves it so much. Immensely successful playing NCAA basketball. He's pretty much an automatic #1 pick in the NBA draft and everyone thinks he's going to be wildly successful in the NBA. Once in a decade type talent. And he really really likes basketball, but...

He likes physics more than anything else in the world and he wants to get a PhD in theoretical particle physics; and apparently it's really likely he'll spend the next 6 years of his life at 100 hours a week working on completion of his PhD.


What should these 2 kids do, respectively?

 

[cdotter]

"Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low."

 

[mayonaise]

Take two 22 year old kids. Both ~50K in debt from undergrad.

Kid 1:
Talent level of Albert Einstein in physics. Immensely successful in undergrad in both grades and undergrad research. Gets accepted to a very top physics PhD program, already set up to work with a top advisor in his chosen field (and a field that is hugely in demand right now), and also is set up with funding and has won a lot of outside awards, etc. He really really really likes physics.

However, his true love is basketball. He's a 5'7" white guy who hasn't played basketball competitively since 6th grade. Has bad knees too. But, he find playing basketball more interesting than any other thing in the world and he wants to play in the NBA.

He's trying to decide whether to go to graduate school for physics, or spend in the next 6 years training 100 hours a week to try to make the NBA.

Kid 2:
Talent level of LeBron James in basketball. Decided to stay the whole 4 years of college to complete his physics degree because he loves it so much. Immensely successful playing NCAA basketball. He's pretty much an automatic #1 pick in the NBA draft and everyone thinks he's going to be wildly successful in the NBA. Once in a decade type talent. And he really really likes basketball, but...

He likes physics more than anything else in the world and he wants to get a PhD in theoretical particle physics; and apparently it's really likely he'll spend the next 6 years of his life at 100 hours a week working on completion of his PhD.


What should these 2 kids do, respectively?

Gee, these cases are quite unfortunate.

What I think is, neither will do well in either physics or NBA. Shouldn't there be some kind of overlap of interests AND abilities to go far enough? And overlapped with market demand, too. Lacking any is not going to be good, I think.

 

[twofish-quant]

Define 'doing well'. Because I'm pretty sure I disagree.

Doing well means that getting a some that gets you a middle class standard of living without too much effort.

In a "really bad" economy, do all degrees perform equally well with regards to finding a job? Like would I be equally likely to get a job with a BS in engineering vs. a BS in sociology? Do you have a reference to support this?

I'm making a guess based on what I've read about the Great Depression. One problem with looking for references and statistics is that getting references for something that hasn't happened yet is pretty hard.

Basically, it's a lot easier to find funding because there is an immediate benefit to people if you do something that leads to the development of better cancer treatments vs. finding funding to come up with a new test for string theory.

It is, but if funding gets cut anyone, you are pretty much screwed. If you want to see that happen, just read the news. It's not a prediction, its what's happening right now.

You think the risk of putting in 100 hours a week for 6 years and THEN working retail afterwards because everyone hates physics PhDs is good?

Yes. See the posts by ParticleGrrl. The problem is that the location where physics jobs are is very dependent on location, and if you have a constraint that prevents you from moving, then you may well have to find a job that doesn't use a physics Ph.D.

You are thinking too much in terms of statistics and probabilities. What you'll often find is that there is some special issue that keeps those from applying. If I tell you that most physicists can make a lot of money, and those jobs are in NYC, but you have to stay in San Diego, then the statistics are pretty useless for you.

But I don't particularly want to manage a Walmart. Which is a problem if that's all I can get after spending 6 years at 100 hours a week getting a phd in particle physics.

It's easier to get what you want, if you are flexible about what you want. It helps a lot if people keep an open mind about what's out there.

What should these 2 kids do, respectively?

Sorry. It's not my place to tell people what to do. I try *very* hard not to tell people what they should do, because I'm not them. What I can do is to provide information and then people can make their own decisions on what to do.