<p>And now I think you’re starting to understand why many engineering (along with natural science) PhD students don’t really want to take academic careers. Postdocs are indeed ridiculous, but what are you going to do? Hiring is a competitive process, and postdocs are an established method for people to boost their CV’s relative to other job candidates, albeit while making little money. Given the choice between hiring somebody with a postdoc (and the accompanying better pub record), and somebody without that postdoc (and hence worse pub record), university engineering/science departments are going to hire the former person every time, ceteris paribus. So, unless you’re that rare superstar graduate, the fact that other people in science/engineering are taking postdocs basically forces you to do the same. Eng/sci departments have (unwittingly) engaged in a brilliant strategy to force budding new PhD’s to spend years producing faculty-caliber research, but without actually receiving faculty-level pay. {Frankly, given the attention that economists pay to market power and bargaining, I’m amazed that economics departments have not colluded to evolve the same structure - forcing most young economists to endure years of low-paid postdoc-hood or else not be hired.} </p>
<p>But this is all a tangent issue, and in fact speaks to the notion of why engineers should perhaps instead become economists.</p>
<p>We are talking about the destination of the MIT engineering PhD graduates, not the destinations of all of MIT’s PhD graduates, across all majors. For example, I would guess without even looking at the data that not very many MIT biology PhD’s go to finance or consulting.</p>
I didn’t say that profs don’t get a high enough salary. I take issue with the years of slave labor as a grad student, further years of poorly-paying postdoc work, and finally extensive academic politics required for a tenure track position. And while tenure is attractive for the profs I think it’s a somewhat questionable idea anyway.
<p>Among engineers, the % PhDs going into finance and consulting is actually much LOWER than for non-engineers. This is large part due to the fact they get excellent academic, industry and startup options on graduation. </p>
<p>If one is to look at the EECS PhDs which represent by far the largest group of engineers at MIT, a recent survey of the career destination of all Course 6 PhDs over the past 5 years found the following distribution:</p>
I was simply comparing apples to apples, using the link you provided for a counterexample. Interestingly, the survey you attached references 112 doctoral graduates, and engineering graduates make up just more than half, so the maximum possible percentages are roughly double what I noted.</p>
<p>Of course, cellar noted that EECS seems to send few to finance and consulting, and as freecell asked, why would other MIT grads eschew finance and consulting? However poor you think prospects for engineers may be, non-engineers certainly have it worse, and the appeal of finance and consulting must seem even more attractive!</p>
<p>Actually, as I explained before, the maximum possible percentages - at least from an effective standpoint, are nowhere near to being ‘double’ what you thought. One of the largest sources of braindrain from engineering, particularly from the academic ranks, are those PhD graduates who take postdocs and then decide to enter finance or consulting. Many - almost certainly the vast majority of - engineering PhD’s who take postdocs do so for the hope of eventually landing a desirable tenure-track academic position, as only a tiny fraction are hired for such jobs immediately upon graduation. Unfortunately, many of them will be disappointed at the academic offers they will obtain, and some will not even obtain any at all. Given the choice of a tenure-track position at a low-tier engineering school, many postdocs will surely instead choose a career in finance or consulting. I can think of numerous people who did exactly that.</p>
<p>Do they? They seem rather finance/consulting intensive to me. 5% is far from a negligible figure. Again, keep in mind that these are EECS PhD’s from MIT - arguably the most prominent EECS program in the world. Nobody survives this program - heck, few are even admitted to the program - without truly passionately loving, living and breathing EECS. So why would any of them head to finance or consulting? </p>
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<p>Well, it’s not always so much a matter of certain MIT grads eschewing finance/consulting but rather that consulting or (especially) finance might eschew certain MIT grads. Somebody with a quantitative, mathematically-oriented PhD from MIT could well garner a high-level position at an Ibank or quant hedge fund. But somebody with a PhD in biology - a science that tends to utilize relatively few rigorous mathematical techniques - probably could not do the same, unless he was willing to start at the Ibanking analyst level.</p>
And no doubt you have some actual measure of this, rather than anecdotes and assumptions. And what does “low-tier” engineering school mean, anyway? Considering the number of MIT PhD’s I have studied under at my schools, it would seem that many choose just that path. I think you have made the assumption that because you would “surely” choose to leave engineering that this is the normal path.</p>
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That is a matter of opinion. Considering the number of EECS PhD grads in the survey, realize that this lofty number represents about one person a year - not exactly a stampede. The return is so low that we cannot even be confident that the number is that high (it could be lower, but it is statistically less likely).</p>
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Why would you expect every single one to stay? Perhaps they burn out on engineering while at MIT. Perhaps they have financial or other pressures that push them into the big money job despite their passion. Perhaps they entered the program for the challenge and now want a new one. Perhaps they grew embittered after being told repeatedly how mistreated they were in engineering, and decided to go where they would be treated “right”.</p>
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And there are lots and lots of those fields at MIT beyond engineering. Maybe biologists are not quantitative enough (except for biophysicists and computational and quantitative biologists, of course), but there are still mathematicians, physicists, economists, astronomers, and a whole host of other mathematically rigorous PhD’s graduating from MIT who have every reason you mentioned before to leave their fields for finance or consulting. Actually, they have more reason, since the vast majority of those fields will see fewer rewards in their own fields than they would in engineering.</p>