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

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171–180 of 292 posts

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

#171
post #78
post #54

Its a bit unfair for professional football to be portrayed as an unreasonable aspiration pursued by naive working class kids. In actual fact the UK currently has around 4000 professional footballers, many of whom will play for a couple of years before moving on, and some of whom will play for a couple of decades. The UK currently has 14,000 professors the vast majority of whom will fight tooth and claw to hang on to…

True, but there's probably 10 times more young men who would like to be professional footballers than professors.

But both are probably strongly determined by genetics, so the size of the people that "want" something probably isn't entirely relevant. It's the people that have the natural talent under the people that can do the work.

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

#172

Hey, so I'm a PhD student (in Physics) at Harvard that has been looking into these issues (as graduate council president in the department), and I really don't like the bickering that occurs between (roughly speaking) die-hard academia pursuers and the others that feel there is a lack in support for non-academic jobs. Here are by far the most compelling issues that I think need to be fixed that both sides should be a…

Curious, what did a physics PhD think of software development/research in industry in comparison to the wonders of equations and abstract beauty?

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

#173

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…

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

#174

When deciding to do my PhD I did so under the assumption that I wouldn't work in academia afterward. I evaluated it like a any other job offer at the time and decided that the tax free pay, coupled with the freedom to run my project how I wanted and work on what I wanted (within reason) for a fixed period of time was a better offer than a grad scheme with BAE, Nissan, Seimens etc. Doing a PhD built a large array of s…

> the freedom to run my project how I wanted and work on what I wanted (within reason) for a fixed period of time was a better offer than a grad scheme with BAE, Nissan, Seimens etc. Don't know where you're doing your PhD (based on your comment about tax-free pay, I gather you're not in the States). That's not how things work in most places. You enter grad school with a vague idea of what research you want to do, and…

"BAE, Nissan, Seimens"

I'd guess UK and in my experience your description is correct - people can only have a very vague idea when they start a PhD and you've got to work out the detail of what exactly you are doing with your supervisor over the first 6 months to 1 year.

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

#175
Are there junior scientists who don't know how dim the prospects are for an academic position are?

I've been hearing this for two decades. Seems like the sort of thing that any mildly educated person would be aware of, let alone smart people in the field.

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

#176
post #22

Academia nowadays is a high-tech bureaucracy; you are forced to churn out documents (papers) that need to cite other documents, and you're evaluated based on your position in the inter-document citation network. Then you have to write other documents (grant proposals) to grab money to write more documents (papers) by gaming the inner mechanics of some comittee. If partner-track investment bankers are overworked, depr…

Actually, I see the same problems, but in my opinion those are symtoms. I do not know whats the real problem behind it, but it seems related to financing.

Something must have change in recent years, which changed the way scientists work nowadays. While I left academia too, I wish scientists would have the freedom to work on larger/long term subjects again.

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

#177
During my PhD studies, most students I talked to were aware of the lack of professorships available. The issue, however, was that certain departments/professors really frowned upon PhD students exploring jobs in industry (some departments were great though). I was in engineering and the professors were generally helpful with trying to connect you to people they knew in industry. Departments like Psychology were the opposite though. Some students would search for industry jobs without telling their advisor because they feared they would be ignored and not supported throughout the rest of their PhD if they said they were going into industry. Some of the tenured professors only cared about increasing the number of academics who studied in their lab. They didn't care much about whether the students were happy or were following their interests.

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

#179

During my PhD studies, most students I talked to were aware of the lack of professorships available. The issue, however, was that certain departments/professors really frowned upon PhD students exploring jobs in industry (some departments were great though). I was in engineering and the professors were generally helpful with trying to connect you to people they knew in industry. Departments like Psychology were the o…

I agree with most of this. However, I might take issue with the motivation you ascribe to professors: "only car[ing] about increasing the number of academics who studied in their lab." Another explanation, one that I find myself feeling sometimes, is simply mismatched incentives. Practicing academics and students headed to industry simply have different incentives, and that can add friction to the relationship.

I think it would be helpful and useful for departments to consider other ways to facilitate industry pathways that don't so heavily rely on the advisor.

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

#180
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).

> 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).

The rate of major paradigm shifts needs to decrease over time. If it doesn't, then we're working in a scientific livelock or chasing after a moving goalpost.

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