<p>WOW!! well said sakky.</p>
<p>The one subsection of which I partially agree with Katz is that you shouldn't enter the world of science with high expectations. Just because you want to be a science professor, and even if you do all of the things necessary to become one, doesn't mean that you will actually get to be a science professor. Plenty of people try and don't make it. I think that is what Katz was getting at. </p>
<p>But, frankly, this is true of any profession - most people will not make it to the top jobs of their fields, and being a tenured professor is arguably the top job in the world of science. Katz recommends law school. Well, the fact is, most law students will never get offers at any of the top law firms, or for the best government/non-profit jobs. And even if they do, that doesn't mean they can stay. For example, most of the top law firms are rather brutal when it comes to weeding people out as they progress through the partnership track - if you're not going to make it to partner, you are going to be forced out. Hence, plenty of lawyers end up working at no-name firms or at non-descript government jobs where they don't make that much money, and don't really handle the most interesting cases. He also recommends medical school. The weeding out of med-school generally takes place * before * med-school starts, specifically, in the admissions phase. Something like half of premeds who apply to med-school get rejected from every single med-school they apply to. And that's just talking about those that apply. Plenty of premeds don't even apply because they know they will be rejected. Even if you do get into med-school, it doesn't mean that you're guaranteed to end up with the medical specialty that you really want. </p>
<p>So I agree that if you are thinking about becoming a science professor, you should also carefully consider what you will do if you can't get a tenure-track position, or if you do, what you will do if you are unsuccessful in winning tenure. If you don't consider these things, then you are being foolhardy. </p>
<p>But like I said above, I don't think it's that bad if you don't make it. If your research has any practical application at all, then you should be able to find an industry job somewhere. Yeah, it isn't the job you really want, but hey, plenty of people in plenty of fields don't get the job that they really want, so join the club. Or, even if your work is completely theoretical with no practical applications (i.e. theoretical physics), then, like I said above, your backup plan can be to just become a high school physics teacher, which is a pretty decent job.</p>
<p>Great posts, Sakky.</p>
<p>Well, Katz does seem to be a bit of a nutjob.</p>
<p>See: In Defense of Homophobia, etc.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.physics.wustl.edu/%7Ekatz/%5B/url%5D">http://www.physics.wustl.edu/~katz/</a></p>
<p>
[quote]
Well, Katz does seem to be a bit of a nutjob.</p>
<p>See: In Defense of Homophobia, etc.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Although I disagree with his views, I respect his right to think whatever he wants. He can approve or disapprove of whatever lifestyles he wants to, as long as he doesn't impose on their rights.</p>
<p>According to the US dept of labor website, physicists in general actually make pretty good money, with the average (including all degrees) approaching 6 figures.</p>
<p>Industry does provide many good opportunities for phd's. I know of some chem/bio phd's in high-paying leadership positions, I'm guestimating ~$200k. Phds can definitely be good career investments, just not in research.</p>
<p>By any chance, does anyone know how much of that picture by Prof. Katz can be applied to Phds in philosophy?</p>
<p>I'm pretty sure it's 20x worse for any humanities. At least with sciences you can get a research position in industry. A humanities phd can only be a professor, teach, or write.</p>
<p>Oh, I remember that when I took a philosophy course freshman year, my TA told us that there's a listserv set up to spread the word whenever a philosophy professor dies --- there are that few philosophy professorships.</p>
<p>You don't have to be a professor.
I only found this forum less than a month ago but there seems to be a lot of stereotypes and flat out myths here.</p>
<p>"You don't have to be a professor."
With a PhD in Philosophy, what kind of a career can one regulary and reasonably expect?
I would like to know.</p>
<p>Here's what I found on google:</p>
<p>81 % employed fulltime. Of those 77.1% teaching - most of which were temporary, not tenure-track positions.</p>
<p>
[quote]
With a PhD in Philosophy, what kind of a career can one regulary and reasonably expect?
I would like to know.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Like I said, if worst comes to worst, you can always just become a high school teacher. In the case of somebody with a PhD in philosophy, I am sure he would have little trouble in teaching English or Social Studies.</p>
<p>Although Katz didn't explicitly say this, the spirit of his post leads me to believe that he would support having PhD students also optionally receive a high school teaching credential along the way. This I would agree with. Many PhD-granting universities also have a School of Education, so it wouldn't be that hard for PhD programs to integrate a teaching credential in the program along the way. </p>
<p>In fact, from a public policy standpoint, perhaps state governments should set these programs up, at least at public schools. Right now, we have a situation where a lot of high school schoolteachers don't even have a degree in whatever it is they are teaching. Yet we also have people with PhD's who can't find jobs in their field. It seems to me that an obvious solution is presenting itself.</p>
<p>sakky,</p>
<p>Like it or not, most individuals who bust their tails for almost a decade trying to get into and then succesfully finish a PhD in Science don't want to be told upon graduation "Congratulations! Want to teach at the local high school?"</p>
<p>As the stat above states, almost 20% of PhD's in science are not emplyed fulltime. I'm sure those 20% could have any high school teaching job in the US if they felt like it, but pride probably forbids.</p>
<p>So many assumptions! ugh</p>
<p>I had a high school biology teacher who got a PhD in Biology from Harvard. She absolutely loved her job. I agree with sakky, teaching high school really isn't such a bad thing. If you consider if that person has a family, then the job becomes even better because it will require a lot less stress than a high profile research position in industry or academia.</p>
<p>Sakky, I don't care if I had a degree in Science, wild horses couldn't drag me into teaching in high school. Moreover, while too small a sample size to provide any statistical validity, D's hs science teachers that came from industry (the other place that non-academic PhD's wind up going) were uniformly awful and in at least one case contemptible to the point they had no business being around children, even snotty know-it-all angst-ridden teenagers.</p>
<p>
[quote]
sakky,</p>
<p>Like it or not, most individuals who bust their tails for almost a decade trying to get into and then succesfully finish a PhD in Science don't want to be told upon graduation "Congratulations! Want to teach at the local high school?"</p>
<p>As the stat above states, almost 20% of PhD's in science are not emplyed fulltime. I'm sure those 20% could have any high school teaching job in the US if they felt like it, but pride probably forbids.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Now, see, it is precisely reactions like that that make me, to some extent, agree with the sentiments expressed by guys like Katz.</p>
<p>I agree with you that nobody wants to bust their hump to get a PhD and then end up teaching high school. But like I said, you don't always get what you want. That's life. Plenty of people stake out career goals that they never achieve. There are plenty of people who enter law school with dreams of becoming the next great jurist, but then just end up in some rinky-dink law firm where they just end up fighting traffic tickets for clients. A lot of engineers had dreams of designing and building the next great cool product, but plenty of them just end up in boring engineering jobs where all they end up doing is trying to boost the yield ratings of some manufacturing process by a few percentage points. A lot of software developers dream of writing the next great cool piece of software, like a cool computer game or killer website like YouTube, but plenty of them end up in jobs doing extremely boring tasks like maintaining legacy code or debugging device drivers. Perhaps the most dramatic example is in the world of entertainment. The vast majority of aspiring Hollywood actors will never become movie stars. The vast vast majority of aspiring football players will never make it to the NFL, and even if those that do, the vast majority of them will just be role players, not stars. The vast majority of rappers out there will never become Jay-Z or Ludacris. </p>
<p>Look, the truth of the matter is, many, probably most people, don't get what they want out of their career. I am quite certain that the vast majority of workers at Walmart don't really want to be there. Nobody dreams of working at McDonalds. Nobody dreams of being an office paper-pusher. Heck, the vast majority of jobs out there are jobs that nobody ever dreams of having. People take these jobs because they have to. It's the best they can get. </p>
<p>So why do people with PhD's think they're any different? Just because you have a PhD doesn't mean that you are automatically entitled to get the professor job that you want, just like how slaving away at bit parts in Hollywood for 10 years does not automatically entitle you to become a movie star. Just because you have a PhD does not mean that you're better than everybody else and so you automatically deserve your dream job. Most people don't get their dream job. Most people have to take jobs that they don't really like just to pay the bills. Just getting a PhD does not automatically immunize you from that fact of life. </p>
<p>I agree with you, sadly, that pride probably does forbid those who have science Phd's but can't get academic positions from just becoming high school science teachers. But that's exactly the kind of foolish and counterproductive pride that is so damaging. Thomas Sowell too has written about the phenomenom that sometimes education can sometimes be deleterious if it increases the aversion that people have towards taking certain jobs, and specifically, how the educated unemployed are a continuing political problem in many nations in the world. </p>
<p>Let me tell you a story. I knew a guy who supported himself all through college by doing odd jobs - working in a paper factory, working for a moving company, and so forth. But as soon as he graduated, that all stopped. He now thought he was just 'too good' for those jobs because he had a degree. The problem is, he didn't get a job with that degree either (because it was during the dotcom bust). So he basically just sat around for more than 2 years doing absolutely nothing. He didn't pay his bills because he didn't have any money. He let his credit rating go to hell. And that's sad. His college degree actually HURT him, or more accurately, the pride associated with his getting a degree hurt him. He was actually a LESS productive worker after he graduated than he was before. He could have easily gotten the same odd jobs after he graduated that he had before he graduated. There were and are plenty of those jobs around. But he just couldn't psychologically bring himself to do it. And that's sad. </p>
<p>Don't get me wrong. I do understand it. Nobody really WANTS to do those odd jobs. But like I said, sometimes you gotta do things you don't really want to do. That's life. So getting back to the original topic, for those people with science PhD's who can't get an academic position, why not teach high school? Yeah, it's not what you really want to do, but hey man, lots of people have to do things they don't really want to do. At least it's a decent-paying and stable career by which you can support a family. That's a lot better than jumping from postdoc to postdoc, or from lecturer position to lecturer position hoping to get an academic job that may never happen. </p>
<p>I think aspiring PhD's ought to have some level of self-awareness about what they are capable of. Let's face it. If you don't have a lot of publications, if your publications are not well-regarded/highly-cited, if your research topic is not considered 'hot', then you're probably not going to get an academic position, and you should know that, and it's time to consider other jobs. For example, management consulting or investment banking. Or, working in private industry if your skills are transferable. Or, if worst comes to worst, getting your teaching credential and teaching high school. But at some point, you have to be realistic about your chances. If you can see that an academic career is not going to happen, then it's time to change tack.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Sakky, I don't care if I had a degree in Science, wild horses couldn't drag me into teaching in high school.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Hey man, like I said, sometimes you have to do things you don't like. That's life. I don't want to teach high school either, but if that's what I need to do to support my family, then I gotta do what I gotta do. It's still better than bouncing from lecturer position to lecturer position, in the hopes of getting an academic position that will never happen. </p>
<p>
[quote]
Moreover, while too small a sample size to provide any statistical validity, D's hs science teachers that came from industry (the other place that non-academic PhD's wind up going) were uniformly awful and in at least one case contemptible to the point they had no business being around children, even snotty know-it-all angst-ridden teenagers.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, I'll put it to you this way. I've had plenty of 'homegrown' teachers (that is, straight from undergrad teaching credential programs) who were absolutely awful too. Bad teachers come from the entire spectrum. I see no reason to believe that teachers coming from industry (or from PhD programs) are any worse on this front.</p>
<p>obtaining a tenure-track professorship (at least in math) can't be too dire. my girlfriend is en route to get her phd this semester, yet she's already been flown out to 7 college interviews within the past 3-4 weeks. (all of which are for tenure-track professorships.) of those 7, most have already made her an offer and pretty much begged her to come. she only has 3 publications (2 are co-authored).</p>