<p>My cousin is a physics major with a BS from MIT and PhD from Harvard and works in industry and makes over $300k a year after only 2 years working and several internships before that.</p>
<p>If you are smart and motivated enough, you will not have trouble finding a science job. If you are not at the very top, it is better to do some type of engineering, or accounting, as there are more jobs in those areas.</p>
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<p>Seriously, sschoe2, find a post where I said things are rosy for PhD’s. I mean a real post where I actually say it, not some creative reinterpretation of something I said to try and fit the data to the curve. Include a quote so everyone can see that I really did say it.</p>
<p>My point all along, repeated ad nauseam but still not often enough to penetrate your skull, is that people are getting jobs in chemistry every day. There aren’t as many jobs as we would like, but the situation isn’t nearly as dire as you make it out to be. The new PhD’s I know who have left the university and gone directly into chemistry jobs are intelligent, capable, and self-motivated. That’s the kind of person employers are looking for. What they’re not looking for is whining complainers who won’t lift a finger to improve their own situation, but will instead try to spread their misery to anyone who gets close. I’ll bet you’re glad you don’t have to work with anyone like that!</p>
<p>And my point all along ad nauseam is that not many are. In fact a great many are losing jobs as the onslaught in big pharma continues, in academia research grants are continuing to decline, chemical plants shutdown and environmental regulations are too strict and expensive to make opening new ones in the US viable, and many industries are moving to a permatemp model where scientists are brought in for a short to medium duration project and are then tossed back out onto the streets with the temp/contract agencies getting fat and not giving benefits.</p>
<p>My point all along and in answer to the title to this thread is no, anyone smart enough for science would be a fool to pursue a science degree/career. The pay, job security, and employment stats are not commensurate with the intellectual challenge, the workload, the cost of tuition, and the duration of studies especially at the PhD + post docs level. It is a recipe for extreme underachieving in life. You might as well study business and enjoy the Animal House Experience in college rather than spend long hours in the lab.</p>
<p>sschoe2, my friend, the more I think about it, the more I have to concede that you are in fact providing a valuable service by your endless predictions of misery for anyone who majors in science. Not because you’re correct, but because anybody who believes you lacks sufficient mental capabilities to succeed in science anyway. So in effect, you are steering the rest of the dead wood away from making the same mistake you did, while those who can think critically and examine the situation from all sides will reach a more realistic conclusion, and those are the only people who should major in science anyway.</p>
<p>So I apologize. Keeping people like you away from science does everybody a favor and it was wrong of me to point out the fallacies of your crusade. Carry on.</p>
<p>I think there are more factors to be considered. I know many people who went into science and ended up doing very well, I know physics PhDs who got government jobs and went to work for Intel as well as undergraduates who went into jobs in programming, engineering, and even in finance. No one said it was going to be easy to succeed in science, in order to do so one must really have the dedication and resilience to be able to push forward and constantly reinvent themselves when things are not working. These are the people who will do great things, not the people who take the easy route.</p>
<p>I am pretty sure all the arguments have been made</p>
<p>Mine:
-ACS indicates 40% of chemists are employed and 1/2 of those are in dead end academia jobs
-the net is filled with horror stories about science careers
-the news is filled with layoffs/off-shoring from pharma and most other industries that employ chemists/biologists are in decline
-In academia NIH, NSA grants are being cut to the bone
-the job ads indicate that most jobs are temp/contract and have no benefits and pay in the range of $15-20 per hour
-Training for science is hard work, expensive, and difficult intellectually compared to easier majors that have much better pay and job prospects with just a BS.</p>
<p>sschoe2, which majors at the BS level with better job prospects are you referring to?</p>
<p>Nursing is the obvious
engineering (I know it is harder than science)
accounting and several other business majors including economics, HR, finance, computer science (about on par with science in terms of how hard it is)</p>
<p>Also medical technology although low on the list would be better than getting a science degree and being unemployed or a permatemp.</p>