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Many junior scientists need to take a hard look at their job prospects

nature.com

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Re: Many junior scientists need to take a hard look at their job prospects

#41

Post by aqsalose »

harry8 wrote: post #27

Data so absent that they have to draw an analogy to a different data set without any supporting evidence that such is valid. This is Nature not the daily Mail. What is the statistic? How many PhD students have jobs in Academia 5 Years after being awarded? Surely they have /something/ that might be indicative they can publish that's better than footballers? Surely..?

Article cites one hard number:

>Global figures are hard to come by, but only three or four in every hundred PhD students in the United Kingdom will land a permanent staff position at a university. It’s only a little better in the United States.

Re: Many junior scientists need to take a hard look at their job prospects

#42

Post by lbeltrame »

chriskanan wrote: post #20
nopinsight wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From your [3] above, do theory PhD graduates usually have more or fewer publications? What would be your guesstimates of the mean/median number of first author publications of faculty candidates at a top school? "Number First Author Publications (excluding theory folks) Mean: 12.8±6.5 Median: 14.5 Range: 2 – 25"

In other areas of computer science, first author counts for a lot. It indicates a person did the majority of the implementation work, probably wrote the first draft of the paper, etc. Typically the last author is the PI that came up with the idea, mentored the first author, and funded the work. The contributions of those in the middle are less well defined. In CS theory (and math), they go by alphabetical author orde…

This is true in life sciences as well although IIRC this is more of a tradition than something written and defined.

Re: Many junior scientists need to take a hard look at their job prospects

#43

Post by ageofwant »

chriskanan wrote: post #6

The longer students stay in a PhD program, the less likely they want to be professors. Typically many first year students say this, but the numbers quickly drop off in later years. When I was a PhD student, I gave a few talks and blogged about this issue. I would present all these statistics in my talks about what they needed to do to be competitive, and people just absolutely hated me for it. One person said she wan…

'Professor' is a job description, you usually need a PhD to apply for the job, but it's not always a hard requirement. There are many more people with PhD's than Professor jobs. In my experience its the politically astute that get the job, its much less of a meritocracy than one would assume.

Re: Many junior scientists need to take a hard look at their job prospects

#44

Post by kensai »

jstewartmobile wrote: post #10
kensai wrote: post #3

The hard truth. I wonder if a new scheme of collaborative research (to share costs) out of academia can possibly pop out. But this is hardly possible given the high costs of equipment and consumables, especially in the natural and technical sciences. Bygone are the days (in the 18th-19th century) when a single brilliant scientist could singe-handedly revolutionize his field in his home lab (the "garage" of the day).

I think you've got it from the wrong end. Most academic research I've seen has been so tainted by corporate funding, publish-or-perish haste, over-formalization, misuse of statistics, egos run wild, or some mixture of them all. Then there have been cases where novel research has been stomped into the ground by professional groupthink, like in Yudkin's case. At the same time we had guys like Shulgin being incredibly p…

This has nothing to do with what I said. I just implied sharing the costs for expensive equipment and consumables, what the out-of-academia scientists then do is up to them. I did not imply they are not independent.

But it is certainly close to impossible to coordinate without some kind of sci-funding.

Re: Many junior scientists need to take a hard look at their job prospects

#45

Post by lbeltrame »

A question: how it is for people doing research but not in traditional academic settings (e.g. no profit foundations)? As far as I understand, you're tied to grants anyway to get money, but there's no clear concept of "tenure": I work in such a place, but it's outside the US, so I was wondering about what happens there.

Re: Many junior scientists need to take a hard look at their job prospects

#46

Post by l5870uoo9y »

dnautics wrote: post #16
l5870uoo9y wrote: post #9

Doing a PhD thesis these days doesn't necessarily makes you cut out to be a scientist. One can speculate if job prospects differs across disciplines.

Just because one is a good scientist doesn't necessarily mean one is cut out to be a professional scientist.

I would argue the opposite is more plausible; if one is a good plumber, one is likely also a good professional plumber. I would like to see if this trend is cross disciplinary or say it is mainly within say social sciences or humanities. Personally, I have meet many university students and PhDs whose intellect at best was ordinary.

Re: Many junior scientists need to take a hard look at their job prospects

#48

Post by Realist1337 »

disinterred wrote: post #29
chriskanan wrote: post #6

The longer students stay in a PhD program, the less likely they want to be professors. Typically many first year students say this, but the numbers quickly drop off in later years. When I was a PhD student, I gave a few talks and blogged about this issue. I would present all these statistics in my talks about what they needed to do to be competitive, and people just absolutely hated me for it. One person said she wan…

When you become a tenured professor, the amount of work you do is far less than the vast majority of other jobs with a similar salary. The only real commitments are the classes you have to teach and if you minimize the amount of teaching you do, you'll barely be working at all. I knew a history professor that would come into the university for his 1 or 2 classes per week and then would go home for the rest of the day…

>> When you become a tenured professor, the amount of work you do is far less than the vast majority of other jobs with a similar salary.

There is another benefit (of course, understanding with all the dues you have to pay along the way.) JOB SECURITY While I make more than a professor, as with most tech jobs I can lose it anytime. When the economy is bad, even great job performance is no guarantee for continued employment. Sometimes entire companies disappear. It is difficult to understand this if you havent been thru a downturn (I've been thru 2) and it is difficult to appreciate this until you have hard responsibilities in live (mortgages, family to support.)

This is another reason why many jobs which pay less (government jobs, k-12 education, police forces, etc) are still attractive -- because they offer relatively more job security. It means you can commit to liabilities -- a higher mortgage, etc without having to sock away funds for rainy days.

Re: Many junior scientists need to take a hard look at their job prospects

#49

Post by jstewartmobile »

kensai wrote: post #44
jstewartmobile wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you've got it from the wrong end. Most academic research I've seen has been so tainted by corporate funding, publish-or-perish haste, over-formalization, misuse of statistics, egos run wild, or some mixture of them all. Then there have been cases where novel research has been stomped into the ground by professional groupthink, like in Yudkin's case. At the same time we had guys like Shulgin being incredibly p…

This has nothing to do with what I said. I just implied sharing the costs for expensive equipment and consumables, what the out-of-academia scientists then do is up to them. I did not imply they are not independent. But it is certainly close to impossible to coordinate without some kind of sci-funding.

Mostly picking at your last sentence. Even so. Once money starts sloshing around, the middlemen swoop in, the costs explode, what started as collaborative becomes institutional, and all of the institutional pathologies reinstate themselves.

Re: Many junior scientists need to take a hard look at their job prospects

#50

Post by wiz21c »

What about starting a PhD at 45 ? I mean, just for the fun of being a student again, the fun of working on your own little project . Does it open possibilities, in the sense of a career reboot ? (I'm totally OK with earning much less money than I do right now)
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