

Ph.D. Bust, Pt. 2: How Bad Is the Job Market For Young American-Born Scientists? - jseliger
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/the-phd-bust-pt-ii-how-bad-is-the-job-market-for-young-american-born-scientists/273377/

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juiceandjuice
Did anyone even bother checking the author's numbers or methods?

My biggest problem with this series of articles is that it's largely based on
the "No commitment" answer to a questionnaire given to postdoctoral students.
His "Nothing" section is actually "No definite commitment for employment or
postdoctoral study" ( here
<http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/sed/2011/pdf/tab42.pdf> )

which:

"Includes respondents who indicated "other" in all years and respondents who
indicated "do not plan to work or study" in 2006 and 2011. Also includes 715
respondents for 2011 who indicated definite plans for "other full-time degree
program."

That 715 is 1.5% total, or 25% of the 6% difference between 2006 and 2011.

I spent nearly all my time between 2006 and 2009 around grad students (mostly
physics, but bio and engineering too). There was a fundamental shift in
thinking in 2008, both for grad students and professors. Professors could keep
grad students working after their PhD was conferred, in a position somewhere
described as between a postdoc and student for a year or two, a longer holding
pattern - because people were having a hard time finding jobs. This goes
double for international students.

According to this ( [https://chronicle.com/article/From-Graduate-School-
to/131795...](https://chronicle.com/article/From-Graduate-School-to/131795/)
), 23000 more doctoral students are receiving some sort of financial aid from
the government than in 2007. Even if those numbers are increasing, the total
percentage of people with a masters or higher is only 1.5% of the apparent
population.

According to BLS, there's ~3.2 million people with a PhD. That means there was
an increase of people, from ~.3% to ~1% of total people applying for aid. (I'm
probably off by a little bit because I'm using numbers from different years
and estimating, but not by a factor of 2)

So, we had an increase of 20,000 people applying for some sort of aid between
2007 and 2011 with a PhD. Cumulatively, if we were assuming that increase was
purely from new grads and accurately portrayed the unemployment of a new grad,
that would mean an increase of 5k year over year, or 11% of new graduates. But
to say that was all new graduates would be doing quite a disservice: There has
been major cuts in research at national labs, universities, and all sorts of
other publicly funded institutions.

I'll admit, finding the right job is probably harder and takes longer today
than in 2006/2007. I agree that we have much more foreign students who have a
harder time figuring out what they will do after graduation, because of
problems with visas and money. But at 2.5% unemployment and a median salary
50% higher than a bachelors degree, (
<http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm> ), I think it's hard to argue
there's PhD bust.

If I had more time I'd delve into this deeper, but I got to get back to
science...

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dr_doom
Would HN recommend grad school for a friend that just graduated with a biochem
degree from a tier 2/3 school?

I ask because he makes it seems like there are hundreds of well paying biotech
and pharmaceutical positions that are easy to get in the Boston area. He
didn't go to a top science school(Georgetown) and his grades are mediocre, so
I imagine he could only get into an ok phd program. But then again what other
options are available for undergrad science majors with no interest in
programming, even though I tell him it could really separate him from the rest
of the biochem pack.

Any insight from ya'll, I don't know anything about east coast research
positions.

~~~
rflrob
There is also always the possibility of being a lab tech in an academic lab
for 2-3 years to boost his application. It typically pays better than grad
school, and the close interaction with grad students will give him a better
idea of whether that's something he actually wants to do.

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mzs
That article is just some graphs almost totally unrelated to the argument.
It's been bad for more than ten years in math, physics, and CS. It's intended
to be bad. You do a bachelors and some internships or REs depending on field.
Then grad school. Then postdoc or private sector again depending on field.
Somewhere in there you start at the bottom with lecturer or so. After years
you might get to tenured prof. It's a process that selectively weeds-out those
that do not have the right mix of dealing with dept BS, funding, writing,
reviewing, and advising. It would be very bad if all the PhDs went on in
academia and not even remotely many go into it wanting that.

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geebee
Interesting, but I wish the author had considered attrition rates rather than
just employment.

A US citizen is free to leave a graduate program without jeopardizing
residency rights (and is also free to pursue career paths that are less likely
to have visa sponsorship). As a result, unsuccessful American PhD students may
be less likely to muddle through and complete a degree (but be difficult to
place). I could see this affecting numbers where it comes to placement after
the PhD is obtained.

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jamesaguilar
One other thing I've been thinking about. At least among the PhDs I've met,
many of them are NOT scientists. That is, they play at science for a while,
but it's no great tragedy that they aren't being employed in the academic
pursuits. One thing I do wonder is how many scientist-PhDs doing solid work
are actually going unfunded, and how many of them are guys and gals
researching the CS equivalent of how many angels can stand on the head of a
pin.

~~~
ank286
In CS/ECE, if there is no application for your research i.e. cannot be
commercialized or patented, you will not have funding. There is very little
room for theoretical-based research where you play around with math (like
counting angels on the head of a pin) to see if it works out with unknown
applications. Everything begins with an application in mind --> funding.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Theoreticians do get funding, just not much, and most CS researchers are not
hardcore theoreticians (theory is a tool to be used occasionally in support of
something else).

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bgalbraith
The initial motivation for these articles - the government says we need more
STEM students, but look how many underemployed PhDs there are! - is flimsy.
The US does not necessarily need more graduate students, what it needs is more
skilled technical workers, especially in manufacturing.

Few students who go into PhD programs anticipate ending up in industry, unless
you goal is R&D. The opportunity cost is so great that you are better off in
most cases going straight into industry if that is your ultimate goal. As a
current PhD student, my advice to anyone considering it is to not do it unless
you are truly passionate about your research field.

~~~
geebee
Couldn't agree more about the need for more general skilled immigration.

But keep in mind, the current legislation in the Senate is about awarding
green cards to all recipients of graduate degrees in STEM fields, so the topic
here is very relevant to public policy.

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socalnate1
This and the previous article are really about the difficulty of finding
tenure track positions for newly minted Phds.

Trying to apply this figures broadly to all hard science education and across
all industries is a mistake.

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bikenaga
The AMS (American Mathematical Society) has done an employment survey for
years --- see [http://www.ams.org/profession/data/annual-survey/annual-
surv...](http://www.ams.org/profession/data/annual-survey/annual-survey) I'd
hope other professional organizations do the same thing, so there should be no
need to guess or extrapolate to get pretty good numbers.

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ekm2
"Law school is bust", "Wall street is dead", "Dont get a humanities Phd",
"There is no meritocracy in Silicon Valley","There is no shortage of
engineers"etc ..if every place looks like hell where is heaven?

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nachteilig
Where's the story here? As education expands all top-tier job markets become
more competitive. Science isn't and shouldn't be any different, particularly
with the reduced levels of funding available.

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jseliger
The first part, and associated discussion, is here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5253747> .

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aheilbut
It really isn't useful to base discussions on the nonsensical graphs in this
series, which seem to be an artifact of how and when people are being
surveyed.

~~~
jbdeboer
Indeed. None of these numbers answer the question "How many graduates who
wanted a job could not find one?".

~~~
bikenaga
(From the 2010-2011 final survey done by the American Math. Society, for new
Math Ph.D.s, which I linked elsewhere)

Unknown (U.S.): 85 Not seeking employment: 18 Still seeking employment: 53
Unknown (non U.S.): 83

If you count all of these as "unemployed" (which is probably a significant
overestimate), that's 239 out of 1653 new Ph.D.'s, or around 14.4%. If you
count only "Still seeking employment" as "unemployed", that's around 3.2%. But
I don't know how the numbers in the sciences or in engineering would be
similar to those in math.

