PhDs Can't Find Work as Boston's Biotech Engine Sputters
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Re: PhDs Can't Find Work as Boston's Biotech Engine Sputters
#2Re: PhDs Can't Find Work as Boston's Biotech Engine Sputters
#3Plenty of unemployable PhDs here Australia. I know one who is tutoring high school students to earn a living. His thesis was on phycology and the production of sustainable fuels. A nuclear physicist with a PhD is unemployable and is retraining as a data scientist. Another phycologist is retraining as a counsellor. A molecular biologist is running a plant shop.
The first phycologist is charming but a century ago, he would have been a charming but very average greenkeeper or a gardener.
Bright people in Australia head into finance, medicine or law not into dead end PhDs. The problem is that universities sucker too many into PhD programs for the sake of the departmental government funding. This leads to indiscriminate entry into virtually all the PhD programs in Australia. When they graduate they are often underemployed or unemployed.
The ultimate harm to society is the production of research slop that worsens the SN ratio in published work.
Re: PhDs Can't Find Work as Boston's Biotech Engine Sputters
#4The university pipeline seems to me totally broken as a way to gain employment. It's still effective for prestige. You should stay in school as long as you're still climbing the world university rankings, but once you start falling down this ladder leave and join industry. You will get paid more and do more interesting and valuable work.
Re: PhDs Can't Find Work as Boston's Biotech Engine Sputters
#5Plenty of unemployable PhDs here Australia. I know one who is tutoring high school students to earn a living. His thesis was on phycology and the production of sustainable fuels. A nuclear physicist with a PhD is unemployable and is retraining as a data scientist. Another phycologist is retraining as a counsellor. A molecular biologist is running a plant shop. The first phycologist is charming but a century ago, he w…
Personally I wouldn't have posted this. It has tones which can only be hurtful, to somebody you presumably know.
Re: PhDs Can't Find Work as Boston's Biotech Engine Sputters
#6The university pipeline seems to me totally broken as a way to gain employment. It's still effective for prestige. You should stay in school as long as you're still climbing the world university rankings, but once you start falling down this ladder leave and join industry. You will get paid more and do more interesting and valuable work.
As far as I know, the data says otherwise: A college degree leads to much higher lifetime income.
> do more interesting and valuable work
It depends what you find interesting. Research is very interesting to a lot of poeple.
Re: PhDs Can't Find Work as Boston's Biotech Engine Sputters
#7[dead]
Re: PhDs Can't Find Work as Boston's Biotech Engine Sputters
#8The university pipeline seems to me totally broken as a way to gain employment. It's still effective for prestige. You should stay in school as long as you're still climbing the world university rankings, but once you start falling down this ladder leave and join industry. You will get paid more and do more interesting and valuable work.
As far as I know, the data says otherwise: A college degree leads to much higher lifetime income. > do more interesting and valuable work It depends what you find interesting. Research is very interesting to a lot of poeple.
Pretty sure they’re talking about graduate degrees and academia as an occupation, not getting a bachelor’s in order to join the white collar workforce.
Re: PhDs Can't Find Work as Boston's Biotech Engine Sputters
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
As far as I know, the data says otherwise: A college degree leads to much higher lifetime income. > do more interesting and valuable work It depends what you find interesting. Research is very interesting to a lot of poeple.
Pretty sure they’re talking about graduate degrees and academia as an occupation, not getting a bachelor’s in order to join the white collar workforce.
> they’re talking about graduate degrees and academia as an occupation
PhDs have the lowest unemployment rate of any education bracket, and roughly match the earnings of professional-degree holders (e.g. MBAs) [1].
[1] https://www.bls.gov/careeroutlook/2025/data-on-display/educa...
Re: PhDs Can't Find Work as Boston's Biotech Engine Sputters
#10Plenty of unemployable PhDs here Australia. I know one who is tutoring high school students to earn a living. His thesis was on phycology and the production of sustainable fuels. A nuclear physicist with a PhD is unemployable and is retraining as a data scientist. Another phycologist is retraining as a counsellor. A molecular biologist is running a plant shop. The first phycologist is charming but a century ago, he w…
Would you think it would be better for "society" to allow more people to go into finance and law? Or that advanced knowledge should be gate kept by only the select cognitive elite that are most adept at playing the "glass bead game" by age 18? Would you change any of your opinions if AI renders most High IQ practical/technical tracts obsolete? Perhaps, a more sane society would be one where curious people could develop themselves in whichever way they so choose: if they want to study the mating habits of marmots in the Central Asian steppe then so be it.