Worrying about career options… from some googling online I’ve uncovered horror stories about people who got their PhD’s in neuroscience and regretted it due to lack of jobs/low salary/unhappiness. Although I’d love to study neuroscience in grad school, I also want to make a living and have a decent, happy life in general. Is it really as bad as people are making it out to be? I’m getting worried.
Thanks
This is a personal question that really only you can answer.
Everyone has a different story about getting their PhD and how they feel (regardless of the area). One’s feelings are going to be largely tied to one’s success in academia and how much they enjoy the endeavor. People who get good postdocs, publish frequently and find their way to tenure-track jobs usually feel like they have made the right decision; people who leave academia/research and do something unrelated to their PhD sometimes regret it. It also changes over time - I don’t regret getting my PhD now that I am a postdoc, but if you had asked me 2-3 years ago, I might have given you a different answer. At this point, I don’t think I would regret it even if I chose to do something non-academic, because doing the doctoral degree has shaped the way I think and write and communicate with others, and has imparted some really important skills that I can use anywhere.
What I’m about to say is going to sound contradictory, but here it is:
- Your goal shouldn't be to "study neuroscience in graduate school," your goal should be a research career answering questions that intrigue about neuroscience (that begins with graduate school, an apprenticeship in that career). In my opinion, that's the only way to do it and not come out bitter about it. What drives you should not simply be an interest in the topic of neuroscience, but a passion to *answer new questions and investigate new areas of neuroscience*. If you simply want to learn more about neuroscience or use the techniques in your work, you can do that in lots of other kinds of positions. You want to be on the cutting edge; you want to push the field forward with new knowledge. You want a high level of autonomy and independence to answer your own questions about some specific aspect of neuroscience, and you want to share that research with the world. And you don't mind following government research priorities to do that work.
- At the same time, your career aspirations should be open and flexible. It's fine to determine that what you would really like is a career as a tenure-track/tenured professor at a top research-intensive university, but those jobs are so increasingly rare that having that as your *only* goal is setting yourself up for disappointment. But if you are open to a variety of jobs that involve research as a neuroscientist (maybe work in a DoD lab, or for a think tank, or a pharmaceutical company) you'll be happier. Even better is if you are open to non-academic jobs that can use your scientific expertise without you necessarily doing direct neuroscientific research (like working for Google in HCI or user experience research, or working for a government agency translating research into policy).
If are both really passionate about doing independent research in neuroscience but also content with the knowledge that you might never be a tenure-track professor, value the PhD process as an end in and of itself rather than only as a means to an end, and are willing, mentally, to move on to some other field(s) should you not get a tenure-track job…I think that’s the happiest way to do the PhD, honestly. That doesn’t mean that I think people should do PhDs just because. Quite the contrary, I think people should only do PhDs if they have a real passion and burning desire to do some job that requires a PhD. But the reality of the market is that you should also be okay with the very real possibility that you will spend 5-7 years getting a PhD and not end up a professor.
My other personal advice/opinion is: Don’t adjunct. Adjunct professors are part-time, non-tenure-track professors who, under the traditional model, are contracted to teach a few classes a semester for a fixed fee (anywhere from $2,000-6,000+, although I think the median is right around $3,500). Given the tightness of the job market, many PhDs have tried to stay in academia by doing “full-time adjuncting” - stringing together 4-6+ classes, often at 2-3 different institutions, so they can make some kind of livable salary and remain as a professor with the hopes that they can transition into a full-time job afterwards. Many of the horror stories you are reading probably come from people in this class of academic work, because adjuncts don’t have offices, benefits, or any measure of job protection, and they make low wages (teaching 5 classes a semester in the fall and spring at $3,500 will barely net you $35,000 pre-taxes; by contrast, the average professor probably teaches 2-4 courses a semester and can make twice that plus benefits).
I don’t mean to say don’t teach adjunct courses; I mean to say don’t adjunct as a way of life or a full-time job. Adjuncting was never, ever meant to be a full-time job; it was supposed to be for people with a measure of professional success in the field - but who are NOT full-time academics - to teach a couple of classes on a part-time basis for extra money, or because they like to teach, or whatever. A lot of the recent bitterness about academia has come from people trying to make adjuncting a full-time job, which it simply isn’t, and trying to move into full-time positions after years of adjuncting, which is really really difficult.
I think adjuncting hurts the profession, too. If universities can get cheap contingent labor from PhDs desperate to “stay” in academia and reluctant to find other work, they will continue to cut tenure lines and continue to try to hire people for this piecemeal work. We should reject it; if nobody was willing to do this work, universities and college would have to create more/better positions.
@juillet thanks for the reply! I agree with everything you said, especially with keeping an open mind when it comes to careers. Thank you for your insight, I definitely needed it 