<p>So I've been surfing this forum this morning and seeing a lot of griping about how useless a degree in science is right now. I can't speak for the other sciences, but anecdotaly I think chem is getting a bad rap.</p>
<p>Argument/Response
1. BS chemists can't get any good jobs:
Yes the job prospects for a BS chemist right now are absolutely terrible. But that is to be somewhat expected because the market sucks. More importantly I think to most people interested in science is higher education... a place where majoring in chemistry really shines. I have several friends with mediocre GPA's hovering in the 2's that are going off to grad school with all expenses paid and a stipend of 20+k a year. Yes this isn't a ton of money, but free grad school sure as hell isn't something your getting offered in non science majors. And excellent students are getting stipends near 30k.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Your better off getting a degree in buisness, accounting, etc:
The only basis for this argument would have to be that of saturation. Admitably in the current market theirs more PhD chemists than good PhD jobs. But when the market gets better that will be a thing of the past. Conversely is everyone starts majoring in buisness, accounting, and law then those fields will quickly become saturated. And keep in mind that the current political climate for medical practice is up in the air as we dont know how strongly the gov will restrict it in the upcoming years.</p></li>
<li><p>Companies are trying to higher scientists on visas instead of US citizens:
The supply and demand curve is ready to nip that problem in the butt. The international chemistry market is actually growing very robustly... to such an extent that foreign chemists can get better paying jobs in foreign countries. In fact at this years ACS meetings several companies from china were here trying to recruit chemists to come to china to work for them. I talked to a few and the pay and benefits are extremly lucrative in comparison to most sectors of work in china.
This shows a lot of long term promise for PhD chemists.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Honestly though, dont major in chemistry for the money. Chemistry is a fun and meaningful job for those that enjoy lab work and want free higher education... its not a job to jump into the work force and get rich with.</p>
<p>Ahhhhh the ACS, masters of propaganda and spin when it comes to employment stats and figures in the chemical industry. The ACS doesn’t elaborate employment stats when it comes to things like differentiating chemists with merely temp jobs and low paying post doc positions vs. those actually employed in real positions. The salary data is also grossly inflated in their figures since ACS survey response is low and more likely than not the people responding to the surveys are the one making more, which isn’t representative of the norm</p>
<p>What does that say when the vast majority of ‘chemists’ working in industry are those with less than 10 years experience? I’ll tell you what it says, it says that chemistry is a dying profession. After 10 years moving around from temp job to temp job with little or no health care people get fed up and leave the industry. It doesn’t matter though because every year there is a brand new fresh batch of BS, MS, ad PHD grads who have never had a real job in their life and think that doing temp work for $15/hr is the greatest thing in the world. Someone really needs to start collecting U-6 employment data for scientists and someone really needs to start pushing for the unionization of scientists. The exploitation needs to stop.</p>
<p>The problem is not the lack of a union or exploitation, maybe there is some of that, but that is not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is the lack of funding. The government says they are going to fund more research and that will create more jobs. But where is that money? That money is going to redundant and wasteful spending. No, science will be going down the drain for a while until we get people into the government that realize that we need to put money back into r&d to create more jobs in the public sector. After all, R&D does start in the public sector(gov’t labs and military) and I seriously doubt they have enough people in the field.</p>
<p>Not just the govt. Pharma has failed for many years to do adequate R&D on new drugs and now that their blockbusters are coming off patent they have their heads between their legs and are kissing their butts good-bye. They are losing their revenue streams and are being slaughtered. Unfortunately the brilliant MBA’s who came up with this business model are now laying off their R&D staff and think that doing so will solve the problem. When will the idiocy end.</p>
<p>The reason why grad school is free in the sciences is noone would pay money for it. It is a very exploitative system. The university gets really cheap TA’s to teach all the premeds undergrad chemistry and biology and the PI’s get really cheap lab techs. If you are any good the PI has every incentive to keep you there as long as possible to wring out as much research from you as he can. They all know the chances of you getting a decent job when you graduate grows worse every year so we have the Post-Doc system. We have Ph. D grads getting paid less than Janitors moving arround the country laboring for sometimes 70 hours a week without benefits. </p>
<p>The private sector is equally exploitative with the new perma-temp scam and wages also at the level of janitors without benefits. If anyone questions them at it all they have to do is point to academia and say see they do it too. </p>
<p>It is just unbelievable exploitation at every level. I often wonder how many great scientific discoveries have been lost because the would be discoverer decided to go into finance and be able to pay the groceries rather than suffer in poverty in science. Most of the most brilliant scientists I know have dumped the field and no one can blame them.</p>
<p>BTW out of curiosity about the ACS meeting:</p>
<p>What strategies do they intend to use to sucker the next generation of bright Americans into wasting a decade or more of their life studying chemistry especially since word is getting out more and more that they and American companies are full of crap.</p>
<p>With regards to grad students being cheap labor, I found this quote(by a prof.) to be thought-provoking:</p>
<p>"This is a common sentiment, but after thinking for a bit, I don’t see how grad students are “cheap” labor. A full-time grad student costs me (figuratively; it’s all through research grants) about $36k/year direct costs (tuition and salary), and another $10k/year (or so) indirect costs (health insurance, etc). $46k/year could buy me a full-time technician with much more skill and ability than a grad student.</p>
<p>I know of several strategies to shift the costs around (grad student fellowships or tuition costs passed to the department/school are two), but financially, graduate students are expensive."</p>
<p>What grad school provides health insurance? Also, at many programs the tuition waivers and stipend come mostly from TAing. The PI’s pay almost nothing. The stipend at my school was ~ $15K Some professors give RA ships where they pay your stipend directly. I taught every semester I was there, even summer so the PI paid nothing though he still felt though he owned me.</p>
<p>Yeah, but at the same time, how much money do grad students make for their respective universities? Any discovery or invention they come up with is completely owned by the university and professor and students receive no profit from it.</p>
<p>Why would you not do chemical engineering or materials science if you were interested in chemistry?</p>
<p>I’ve learned that the major in Chemistry is not for people interested in Chemistry, the study of matter and its changes. That’s for Chemical Engineers and Materials Engineers. Instead it is memorizing how to make molecular orbital diagrams, reading endless NMR spectra and looking crap up in tables. The study of things vitally important to chemistry, such as reaction kinetics, materials physics, mass transport, heat transport, separation processes, AFM/SEM/TEM are all not taught in actual chemistry programs. Instead you’re taught a bunch of worthless biochemistry memorization garbage and worthless instruments like the NMR that no one actually uses.</p>
<p>All the schools I was accepted to for grad school provided some form of subsidized health insurance. I now pay around $100 a quarter for my health insurance, and if you go back four years it would have been free.</p>
<p>I know at my school grad students cost roughly $100k a year after stipend, tuition, and overhead (often over 50%). What’s kind of absurd to me is the fact my advisor is paying $30k a year for me to be enrolled at my school even though I’m taking no classes, not living on campus, and essentially not deriving most of the benefits of being a student here.</p>
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<p>This also depends on the school. I know at my undergrad institution 25% of profits from any patent was given to the inventors (50% to the university, 25% to the department), and (under)grad students were on patents as long as they were actually involved in the initial ideas in a project. I know back in the 90s in my current research group a number of grad students eventually saw a couple hundred thousand dollars each after the IP rights were sold off to a company.</p>
<p>Chemistry has been my favorite subject in HS and I may be going off to major in it in college next year (not at some extraordinary places but decently good like BU or SUNY Stony Brook) but I have no idea what I’m getting myself into. I dont know what Chemistry research is… all I know is that it is a subject I enjoy learning about in my HS class. Is it totally normal for someone to go into college like this or should I be looking for a different major…?</p>
<p>The chemistry you learned in high school is closer to chemistry in chemical engineering. Things like reaction kinetics, thermodynamics, electrochemistry, crystal structures, etc. are on the engineering side of chemistry. There’s alot of math though.</p>
<p>The chemistry in Chemistry at the college level is far more theoretical and focused on biological applications, quantum theory and analytical chemistry. There’s either no math, or there’s horrendously hard and theoretical math.</p>
<p>If you are at all interested in chemistry, you learn more “real” chemistry in chemical engineering than you do in chemistry.</p>
<p>NMR is used by companies doing a lot of organic synthesis including pharma. However,in most of industry FTIR, GC/LC mass spec, Inductive coupled plasma or atomic absorption are the most common instruments.</p>
<p>"What school are you at where students with GPAs under 3.0 are getting fully funded PhD positions? "</p>
<p>KU, and purdue amongst undoubtedly others are putting out grads with such gpas and getting them fully funded. Dont get me wrong, they aren’t going to awesome schools… but thats exactly the point its a good deal. Alot of majors can’t go to school at all after such GPA’s.</p>
<p>My whole argument is that although chemists dont get awesome pay after graduation, they do have educational security. This is not a major for people wanting to make a ton of money, this is a major for people who enjoy chemistry, working with their hands, and higher education.</p>