S/O of STEM Pipeline: Stagnant job market for science PhDs?

[Bristayl]

I have been reading a number of articles like this one, which is a more recent article by one of the writers quoted in the "STEM Pipeline" thread:

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2014/07/employment_rates_for_stem_ph_d_s_it_s_a_stagnant_job_market_for_young_scientists.single.html

 

He acknowledges that the unemployment rate for STEM PhDs is very low, but he says, regarding biomedical science PhDs:

"But unlike the computer geniuses, many doctorate holders end up working a bit outside of their fields. Among biomedical science grads, only 59 percent landed in a job “closely related†to their fields of study, down from more than 70 percent in 1997. Among chemists, the percentage was 52 percent, down from 55 percent a decade earlier.

 

"Is this a tragedy? No, especially because Ph.D. holders, in the long term, tend to make good salaries and leave school with low graduate student debt. (Unlike their counterparts in the humanities, their studies are well-funded by all those research grants.) But it’s a sign that all is not exceptionally well in the job market for many scientists. Right now, the system asks students to sign up for around a decade of study and low-paid apprentice work to prepare for research careers that may not be there in the end."

 

How does this jive with the infographic in the "STEM Pipeline" article (http://cerasis.com/2015/04/29/stem-jobs/) that shows a 36% projected growth rate for medical scientists? 

 

My dd is interested in biomedical science--research in particular--and these seemingly contradictory articles are discouraging. But I don't see what else I would encourage her to look at as an alternative. While she has a good intuition for math, I am not sure she would want to go into engineering or computer science. I think she should still explore science/research if that is what she is interested in.

[katilac]

It's rather like the conflicting nutritional information we're always getting, isn't it? 

 

I think you need to follow a path that seems reasonable and interesting, and be ready to zig-zag. 

[regentrude]

 

My dd is interested in biomedical science--research in particular--and these seemingly contradictory articles are discouraging. But I don't see what else I would encourage her to look at as an alternative. While she has a good intuition for math, I am not sure she would want to go into engineering or computer science. I think she should still explore science/research if that is what she is interested in.

 

I would encourage her to follow her heart and not base the decisions for a major on today's employment prospects and projections.

4 years of undergrad, 6 years of grad school - nobody can predict what the situation will be 10 years from now.

It is quite clear that biomedical science is potentially a huge growth field, because modern technology makes many biomedical innovations possible, and because there will always be demand for medicine. How exactly the job market will look depends partly on whether this country will decide to turn around an invest in science again (or whether we only bemoan the loss of low tech manufacturing jobs).

She may not end up working in a research facility, but she will have a solid education that will enable her to adopt different pathways.

 

 

He acknowledges that the unemployment rate for STEM PhDs is very low, but he says, regarding biomedical science PhDs:

"But unlike the computer geniuses, many doctorate holders end up working a bit outside of their fields. Among biomedical science grads, only 59 percent landed in a job “closely related†to their fields of study, down from more than 70 percent in 1997. Among chemists, the percentage was 52 percent, down from 55 percent a decade earlier.

 

The only one of my college classmates among physics majors who got really rich was one who left physics, went to work for an investment consulting firm (where he got hired precisely because he was a physicist), became an entrepreneur, and now trades in energy. He loves it and is doing extremely well. :-)

Going outside one's field does not have to be the end of the world.

 

[Bristayl]

Thank you for those calming words, Regentrude!

[Frances]

My husband used to be a chemistry professor and adviced his students interested in a PhD to pursue it if they loved the field so much they couldn't imagine doing anything else, but to not have expectations that it would necessarily lead to stable employment in their field and financial rewards. That's not to say they might not end up with a high paying dream job closely related to what they spent so many years studying. But if that was the only outcome they would consider acceptable, then a PhD was probably not the best choice. Being open to accepting non-STEM jobs or relatively low pay in exchange for a dream job are important. For example, my husband made the same $ his first year working as an industrial chemist with a B.A. as he did several years later as a new professor with a PhD and 2 year post-doc, and he worked almost twice as many hours per week. Now he is employed outside the field of chemistry and making far more and working significantly less than he did in either of his previous positions. As long as a person is willing to remain flexible, a STEM PhD from a strong school will provide them with a solid education and marketable skills for free in exchange for several years of very hard work and little income.

[Bristayl]

Thanks. I guess I needed to get rid of my assumption that not working in the exact area you prepared for would be automatically a negative thing.

[Woodland Mist Academy]

I frequently have conversations similar to this one with scientists in various fields. Yesterday evening, it was with a physicist. Over and over the refrain is do what you love, stay flexible, be open to change, and seize unexpected opportunities.

[kirstenhill]

My husband has a PhD in Chemical Engineering and thought he would pursue an academic career path. After his post doc research postition ended rather abruptly and early due to a funding cut, we weren't prepared to suddenly move "anywhere" to for him to get another post doc (he most likely didn't have enough experience to get a faculty position at that point). He took a contracting position with a medical device company that was interested in him due to his scientific computing experience. One thing led to another and he was eventually hired full time as a research and development scientist, and he mostly deals with software that runs a particular type of medical device, but is developing hardware as well. He never would have guessed that his career would lead him this way, but he loves solving interesting problems that he faces in making these devices work in more useful ways. He once said, "A PhD is just proof that you have learned how to learn." :-). At this medical device company, his research department has people with PhD's in a huge variety of fields - chemistry, physics, mathematics, various favors of Engineering - I doubt very many of them thought that this would be their career field when they started grad school.

[Bristayl]

Thanks for the encouraging example!

[Grantmom]

I think it all depends on how you define working outside your field.  I mean, to me, what is good about having a PhD in the sciences is exactly because you have so many different job opportunities.  I don't see a lot of those things as really being outside of their field.  I mean, you can be a science writer with a PhD in a science field and still be working in your field, in my opinion.  But I wonder if jobs like that are considered outside your field.  I think that staying in academia and working as a professor is just one of many exciting job opportunities you can have.  Like the article said, science doctorate holders have less than a 2% unemployment rate, so I just don't see this as a bad thing at all.

[Gwen in VA]

My dd will be completing her Ph.D. in engineering in twelve months!!!

 

Things she is mulling that might make her part of the "out of field" statistics before she even starts the job hunt --

 

1) She has been very active in a graduate Christian group. This nationwide organization is always short of folks to lead graduate groups -- and part of the requirement for leading a graduate group is having a Ph.D. (so you can better relate to students going through the process). She is considering going that route -- which requires a Ph.D. but is obviously "out of field".

 

2) She may decide to stay in a particular city for personal reasons. If she does, that will seriously limit her job opportunities and she is much more likely to end up "out of field" even though the decision to stay there is 100% voluntary.

 

3) She went into the field in order to pursue a particular interest in conservation. Many of the jobs in conservation that she is interested in do NOT require a Ph.D., and depending on what jobs are out there, she may decide to pursue a job in her area of personal interest rather than pursuing a job in her official field of interest. (They overlap but are not the same.)

 

So there are LOTS of reasons why a Ph.D. degree holder might not end up in their field -- many of which involve personal choice rather than failure of the job market.

[Bristayl]

Thank you for the personal example!

[MIch elle]

Your dd may want to consider BS in bioengineering instead of the BS/PHD routine in a basic science discipline like biology.

[Bristayl]

That's a thought, but to me she really seems like more of a science type than am engineering type.

[luuknam]

That's a thought, but to me she really seems like more of a science type than am engineering type.

 

 

Does she like *doing* science, or learning about science? Because *doing* science can involve a bunch of troubleshooting technology. For example, in the neuroscience lab methods class I took at some point, a lot of the time was spent fiddling with various machines because we weren't getting the output we were supposed to be getting. Did we stick the electrodes in the right spot in the rat's brain? Are all the machines hooked up correctly? Why isn't this working? Argh... and that was a demo, iirc, rather than an actual experiment. Made you wonder how people ever got reliable data for real experiments, lol.

 

Have you read the "science with Ruth" posts?

 

http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/512190-science-posts-organized-by-topic/

[Bristayl]

I would say she likes both, but that's a good point. Thanks for sharing that.

 

I had seen the beginning of the science posts but had forgotten about them--thanks for bringing them back to my attention so I can go through them!

 

After posting yesterday, I got to thinking about how my dd has always enjoyed created three-dimensional art, such as origami. When she was younger, she would make very detailed tiny creatures (usually Pokemon!) from polymer clay. Not sure if that tells me anything about any possible aptitude for engineering, but I was musing about it.

[flyingiguana]

In the stem fields, a PhD program is kind of a job.  Maybe not super high paying, but there is usually employment attached.  If it's something a student is interested in, at the worst they'll have been paid for a few years to do something they really wanted to do.

 

[Bristayl]

True. Thanks for that perspective.