Hey everyone,
I’m considering entering grad school right after undergrad. From what I’ve heard, PhD holders are struggling to find jobs and are usually underpaid and over experienced for their jobs. Would it be a good idea to pursue a PHD in Chemical engineering? My goal is to become a professor, so would it be better to work right after getting my undergrad and after five years reapply for a PhD?
The numbers game makes it hard to get a tenure track college faculty job, since the number of PhD graduates greatly exceeds the number of new tenure track faculty needed to replace those who retire or otherwise leave.
However, chemical engineering PhD graduates should have more possibilities for industry jobs than PhD graduates in some other fields.
^In addition to the above, different academic fields have different levels of competition for jobs. English or history PhDs really are struggling to find tenure-track positions, because there are far more of them AND there are fewer non-academic job options for them to go instead. But because far fewer people get PhDs in chemical engineering, AND because there are so many non-academic job options for PhDs in chemical engineering, the competition is lower for tenure-track professor jobs. That doesn’t mean they’re easy to get, but they’re certainly less tight than the humanities.
From the looks of it, you’re a high school student, so I would say definitely don’t worry about this now. You can make decisions about whether and when to get a PhD once you get closer to the end of college. You may change your mind about your career goals or you may decide to pursue other things first.
This.
Since about 60% of people who start PhDs in STEM fields end up as ABDs who never finish, the percentage of high school students considering PhDs who end up never even starting a PhD program has to be somewhere north of 95%