Biology vs Geology

[aebeard]

I am a current 5th year senior at a small public university. I’m straddling the fence between majoring in Biology or Geology with ~30 hours left if I major in one and minor in the other. I have heard that job prospects after graduating biology are terrible if you are not planning to teach or go to med, pharmacy, or vet school and I am not planning to do either. I am $24,000 in student loan debt which I will have to start paying back as soon as I graduate also, so I want a job that I can enjoy but also make enough to live off of and not stress over it. I cant seem to find my niche and keep changing my mind on what I want to do. I think if I majored in biology Id be interested in botany and maybe own a nice flower shop one day but I don’t want to graduate with a 2.5 gpa and not find a job and I know I wouldn’t be able to afford graduate school either… Im stuck between a rock and hard place… UGH Im not sure what to do. Any advice would be appreciated!

[TheDidactic]

Wanting to own a nice flower shop should steer you towards the business major direction with a minor in biology.

[aebeard]

@TheDidactic‌ Thats true but its too late to switch now

[JustOneDad]

Geology seems like it might be even less employable than Biology.

[evermom1]

I hate to say it, but we have three people with degrees in Biology working the front desk of our medical lab. Medical office work, not lab work. Seems like Biology is not a terminal degree, it’s more of a degree for launching to a higher degree. I actually majored in Biology and Chemistry. Chemistry took me farther than Biology. Maybe Geology would be a better choice.

[JustOneDad]

I have a biology degree and I rarely meet biology majors who think it would lead to a job. They are almost all headed to professional school or graduate school. Why would someone want to major in anything without being aware of the job outlook?
The few exceptions were;

The occasional future teacher.
A couple “wildlife biologists” who wanted to be game wardens.
A specialist in Marine Mammals.

Maybe I’m overlooking some, but that’s all I can remember right now.

[warblersrule]

Geology has much better job prospects than biology – much better than most sciences, in fact. I’ve posted these blurbs many times before.

@Nature 473

Despite the recent economic downturn, job prospects for geoscientists are excellent and are set to get even better. The latest data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics suggest that in 2018 there will be some 323,000 positions for geoscientists in the United States, about 23% more than in 2008. “If you have a degree, you’d have to be dead or dead lazy to not get a job,” says Christopher Keane, AGI’s director of technology and communications.

Yet there’s even more room for optimism, says Leila Gonzales, a workforce analyst with the AGI. The BLS data only project changes in the number of jobs, she notes. They don’t account for increased opportunities in the United States due to retirements, which will strike government, academia and the private sector alike during the next 10-15 years. This window of opportunity is the result of a collapse in commodity prices in the mid-1980s that was followed by a precipitous decline in geoscientists’ salaries, which in turn triggered a drop in academic enrolments. In the next decade or so, many of those graduates from the early 1980s will be nearing the ends of their careers, boosting job availability upon their retirement.

And the number of retirements could be substantial, says Gonzales. About 12% of today’s geoscientists are expected to retire by 2018, meaning that net job availability for geoscientists in the United States should have increased between 2008 and 2018 by around 35%, she says.

Demand for geoscientists is expected to rise worldwide, not just in the United States. Statistics compiled by the AGI for the International Union of Geological Sciences indicate that the three regions that produce the most geoscience graduates each year – the United States; Europe and Russia combined; and China – aren’t even meeting their own domestic needs, much less global requirements.

The number of geoscience degrees granted in the United States each year (about 1,060 master’s and 650 PhD degrees) has remained relatively stable for the past 15 years or more, says Gonzales. That steady, yet inadequate, pace of new entries into the field, paired with the wave of retirements during the next 10-15 years, almost guarantees that demand for skilled geoscientists can only increase.

@Environ. Sci. Technol.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects an overall 19% increase in all geoscience-related occupations between 2006 and 2016, which is 9% faster than the growth rate for all U.S. occupations. The highest growth rates in geoscience jobs will be in the management, scientific, and technical consulting (78%) which includes the majority of natural resource and hazard mitigation opportunities, waste management and remediation (37%), and finance and insurance (35%) sectors. Considering that a graduate degree is required for the majority of geoscience occupations, and that the number of geoscience graduate degrees conferred per year from U.S. institutions has averaged 1700 since 1995, the supply of new geoscience graduates to the workforce does not meet current demands, much less the projected increase in demand over the coming years.

Additionally, the aging geoscience workforce, with approximately 50% of geoscience professionals within 10-15 years of retirement, is cause for major concern within geoscience-employing industries.

@Science

“I can’t think of any unemployed hydrogeologists,” says Roy Haggerty, an associate professor of hydrogeology at Oregon State University, Corvallis. It’s easy to see why. Water is essential, irreplaceable, and, as populations and economies grow, increasingly in demand and endangered.

Environmental consulting companies, which employ about 80% of hydrogeologists in the United States, currently report four jobs for every qualified graduate, according to the American Geological Institute (AGI). Government regulatory agencies, national laboratories, and mining and oil companies also need them. New niches open regularly as hydrogeologists team up with scientists in other disciplines to grapple with huge environmental challenges, such as forecasting how changing climate will affect water resources and aquatic life. And signs are that the future will hold more of the same. As Richelle Allen-King, a hydrogeology professor at the University at Buffalo in New York, puts it, “Water problems are not going away.”

@Science

Geologist Amy Simonson loves her work. She spends her days in the countryside around Charlottesville, Virginia, measuring stream flow and groundwater levels for the state’s Department of Environmental Quality. The job, she says, is exactly what she wanted.

Simonson, 25, began her job hunt in 2007 after getting a master’s degree in geology from the University of Delaware, Newark. She had one condition: She wanted to spend as much time as possible in the field, not in front of a microscope or a computer. Taking a scattershot approach, she applied for jobs in geophysics, engineering, environmental consulting, and geographic information system mapping. She didn’t have to wait long. “I got offered a lot of stuff,” she says.

Simonson’s experience isn’t rare. For many young geoscientists now embarking on careers, the job outlook is very good. The current federal research funding situation means it’s less rosy for those on an academic research track. But for those in industry, the number of geoscience jobs will grow by 22% from 2006 to 2016, much faster than the projected total of a 10% increase for all occupations, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“In general, the market is hot,” says Cindy Martinez, who analyzes geoscience workforce issues at the American Geological Institute (AGI) in Alexandria, Virginia. “Functionally, there’s no unemployment of geoscientists right now.”

[JustOneDad]

Please note that nearly all the jobs discussed have graduate level degrees.

[warblersrule]

^
While a MS is increasingly the desired terminal degree, people can and do get jobs with just a BS. I had several very good offers back in 2009 at the height of the recession. Your job prospects improve if you have training in GIS.

That said, a lot of what makes a student competitive is prepping in advance – taking advantage of internships, field programs, and the like. Prepping for the job market in your senior year is rather late.

[juillet]

Geology probably does have better job prospects than biology.

But people have increasingly been saying “that major is worthless, you need a graduate degree” about every major other than computer science and engineering these days. It’s simply not true. People with biology majors get jobs after college, and they aren’t all working the front desk at a pharmaceutical company or serving up coffee at Starbucks. The statistics show that biology major recent grades with less than 5 years of experience have unemployment rates (7.7%) that are on part with business administration (8.1%), computer science (7.8%) and electrical engineering (7.3%), and make, on average, $31,000 - not a lot, but about average for college graduates. (Data are for 2009-2010, so averages may have risen since then.) After 5 years, that unemployment rate goes down to 4.6%, and the average salary is $56,000. (There’s no data for recent geology and earth science grads, but their rates and salaries for experienced workers >5 years out of college are similar.)

Most jobs don’t require a specific major. It’s like @warblersrule says - what makes you competitive are internships, field programs, part-time jobs, skills workshops, etc.

Source: https://georgetown.app.box.com/s/og6p8y9x1yeacejk1ci0