Jonathan I. Katz
Professor of Physics
Washington University, St. Louis, Mo.
[my last name]@wuphys.wustl.edu
Are you thinking of becoming a scientist? Do you want to uncover the mysteries
of nature, perxxxx experiments or carry out calculations to learn how the
world works? Forget it!
Science is fun and exciting. The thrill of discovery is unique. If you are
smart, ambitious and hard working you should major in science as an
undergraduate. But that is as far as you should take it. After graduation, you
will have to deal with the real world. That means that you should not even
consider going to graduate school in science. Do something else instead:
medical school, law school, computers or engineering, or something else which
appeals to you.
Why am I (a tenured professor of physics) trying to discourage you from
following a career path which was successful for me? Because times have
changed (I received my Ph.D. in 1973, and tenure in 1976). American science no
longer offers a reasonable career path. If you go to graduate school in
science it is in the expectation of spending your working life doing
scientific research, using your ingenuity and curiosity to solve important and
interesting problems. You will almost certainly be disappointed, probably when
it is too late to choose another career.
American universities train roughly twice as many Ph.D.s as there are jobs for
them. When something, or someone, is a glut on the market, the price drops. In
the case of Ph.D. scientists, the reduction in price takes the xxxx of many
years spent in ``holding pattern'' postdoctoral jobs. Permanent jobs don't pay
much less than they used to, but instead of obtaining a real job two years
after the Ph.D. (as was typical 25 years ago) most young scientists spend
five, ten, or more years as postdocs. They have no prospect of permanent
employment and often must obtain a new postdoctoral position and move every
two years. For many more details consult the Young Scientists' Network or read
the account in the May, 2001 issue of the Washington Monthly.
As examples, consider two of the leading candidates for a recent Assistant
Professorship in my department. One was 37, ten years out of graduate school
(he didn't get the job). The leading candidate, whom everyone thinks is
brilliant, was 35, seven years out of graduate school. Only then was he
offered his first permanent job (that's not tenure, just the possibility of it
six years later, and a step off the treadmill of looking for a new job every
two years). The latest example is a 39 year old candidate for another
Assistant Professorship; he has published 35 papers. In contrast, a doctor
typically enters private practice at 29, a lawyer at 25 and makes partner at
31, and a computer scientist with a Ph.D. has a very good job at 27 (computer
science and engineering are the few fields in which industrial demand makes it
sensible to get a Ph.D.). Anyone with the intelligence, ambition and
willingness to work hard to succeed in science can also succeed in any of
these other professions.
Typical postdoctoral salaries begin at $27,000 annually in the biological
sciences and about $35,000 in the physical sciences (graduate student stipends
are less than half these figures). Can you support a family on that income? It
suffices for a young couple in a small apartment, though I know of one
physicist whose wife left him because she was tired of repeatedly moving with
little prospect of settling down. When you are in your thirties you will need
more: a house in a good school district and all the other necessities of
ordinary middle class life. Science is a profession, not a religious vocation,
and does not justify an oath of poverty or celibacy.
Of course, you don't go into science to get rich. So you choose not to go to
medical or law school, even though a doctor or lawyer typically earns two to
three times as much as a scientist (one lucky enough to have a good
senior-level job). I made that choice too. I became a scientist in order to
have the freedom to work on problems which interest me. But you probably won't
get that freedom. As a postdoc you will work on someone else's ideas, and may
be treated as a technician rather than as an independent collaborator.
Eventually, you will probably be squeezed out of science entirely. You can get
a fine job as a computer programmer, but why not do this at 22, rather than
putting up with a decade of misery in the scientific job market first? The
longer you spend in science the harder you will find it to leave, and the less
attractive you will be to prospective employers in other fields.
Perhaps you are so talented that you can beat the postdoc trap; some
university (there are hardly any industrial jobs in the physical sciences)
will be so impressed with you that you will be hired into a tenure track
position two years out of graduate school. Maybe. But the general cheapening
of scientific labor means that even the most talented stay on the postdoctoral
treadmill for a very long time; consider the job candidates described above.
And many who appear to be very talented, with grades and recommendations to
match, later find that the competition of research is more difficult, or at
least different, and that they must struggle with the rest.
Suppose you do eventually obtain a permanent job, perhaps a tenured
professorship. The struggle for a job is now replaced by a struggle for grant
support, and again there is a glut of scientists. Now you spend your time
writing proposals rather than doing research. Worse, because your proposals
are judged by your competitors you cannot follow your curiosity, but must
spend your effort and talents on anticipating and deflecting criticism rather
than on solving the important scientific problems. They're not the same thing:
you cannot put your past successes in a proposal, because they are finished
work, and your new ideas, however original and clever, are still unproven. It
is proverbial that original ideas are the kiss of death for a proposal;
because they have not yet been proved to work (after all, that is what you are
proposing to do) they can be, and will be, rated poorly. Having achieved the
promised land, you find that it is not what you wanted after all.
What can be done? The first thing for any young person (which means anyone who
does not have a permanent job in science) to do is to pursue another career.
This will spare you the misery of disappointed expectations. Young Americans
have generally woken up to the bad prospects and absence of a reasonable
middle class career path in science and are deserting it. If you haven't yet,
then join them. Leave graduate school to people from India and China, for whom
the prospects at home are even worse. I have known more people whose lives
have been ruined by getting a Ph.D. in physics than by drugs.
If you are in a position of leadership in science then you should try to
persuade the funding agencies to train fewer Ph.D.s. The glut of scientists is
entirely the consequence of funding policies (almost all graduate education is
paid for by federal grants). The funding agencies are bemoaning the scarcity
of young people interested in science when they themselves caused this
scarcity by destroying science as a career. They could reverse this situation
by matching the number trained to the demand, but they refuse to do so, or
even to discuss the problem seriously (for many years the NSF propagated a
dishonest prediction of a coming shortage of scientists, and most funding
agencies still act as if this were true). The result is that the best young
people, who should go into science, sensibly refuse to do so, and the graduate
schools are filled with weak American students and with foreigners lured by
the American student visa.
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