Don't Become a Scientist!
Jonathan I. Katz
Professor of Physics
Washington University, St. Louis, Mo.
[my last [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Are you thinking of becoming a scientist? Do you
want to uncover the mysteries of nature, perform 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 form 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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