An Open Letter To Frustrated Scientists Looking For A Job: There Is Hope

Illustration: John Overmyer If you feel anxious and depressed about your prospects for landing a permanent job in science, you are not alone. Reports of a substantial oversupply of science-related Ph.D.'s have been featured in many scientific journals as well as in popular publications such as Newsweek and the Washington Post. In a recent poll of young members of the American Geophysical Union, a 33,000-member scientific society based in Washington, D.C., more than 60 percent describe the current state of the research job market as "lame," "dismal," or "hopeless." This mood seems to cut across all disciplines in the physical and life sciences. Nearly all of us have heard stories of people who have applied for hundreds of positions to no avail. Like most other Ph.D.'s, I didn't think much about gainful employment until I was close to finishing my graduate degree. During my senior year in college, when all my friends were frantically applying for jobs and trying to figure out what they would do for the rest of their lives, my future seemed assured. I was off to graduate school, where I would receive all the training I needed to continue in a research career. Certainly none of my undergraduate advisers told me it would be any more complicated than that, and some assured me that an impending wave of retirements from academia would provide unprecedented opportunities for employment. It all seemed so simple. As I neared the end of my graduate degree, however, I realized that I had not avoided the painful career search my college friends had fought through five years earlier; I had only deferred it for a while. I found myself increasingly troubled by the grim prospects of finding employment in academia, the only career I saw for myself and for which I had been training for the past five years. Instead of walking out of graduate school and into a permanent job, as many of my professors had done, I could look forward to years on a job hunt. More worrisome was my realization that there were some aspects of the academic career that I really didn't like. Even if I did get a coveted faculty appointment, would it be the right career for me? Most important: Would I be happy? It was about then that an acquaintance of mine, a recent graduate from another department, stopped by our lab and announced that he was leaving his research career in acoustics to take a job with a prestigious management-consulting firm. We were shocked. Incredulity turned to speechlessness when he told us the staggering sum he would be earning: nearly three times a starting faculty salary! Granted, this guy was extremely smart and articulate, but he wasn't much different from the rest of us. And this guy was not alone; at least nine other Ph.D.'s had received similar offers. I found myself asking one question repeatedly: "What did these people learn in graduate school that is so valuable?" I took this question to the head recruiter for the company that had hired my friend. She told me that, while all the Ph.D.'s her firm had hired were excellent scientists, it was not their particular scientific expertise that landed them their jobs. Rather, what made them attractive and valuable to business (and a wide range of other career fields) was a variety of broader skills and "traits" that they used and developed while in graduate school. Many science and engineering graduate students, I was told, not only have exceptional intelligence and analytical skills, but also know how to apply those skills in new ways. To succeed in graduate school, one must be creative, independent, organized, and a self-starter. One must develop excellent communication, computer, and time-management skills. The ability to work in a team as well as independently also is essential. One person summarized these traits perfectly. "Graduate school," she said, "taught me the courage and ability to approach a problem I didn't know how to solve yet." To me, these skills and traits just seemed like requisite survival skills for graduate school. In the outside world, however, they were both rare and extremely valuable. Since then I have talked to Ph.D.'s in a wide array of fields. They included computer programmers, a politician, teachers, investment bankers, writers, policy analysts, journalists, even a rodeo star. Many found the transition from a science career path to another career to be difficult and, at times, emotionally wrenching. However, nearly all of them find great satisfaction in their work, and some feel they are making a far more meaningful contribution to science and society in their present careers than they ever would have in research or academia. There are huge obstacles for scientists who wish to explore nontraditional job options. Graduate schools, especially the most elite institutions, still focus primarily on training students for research science careers. It is hard for them to do otherwise; many advisers have little or no contact with their contemporaries in non-research careers and are often even less informed than their students about the breadth of options available. A few advisers are actively hostile to the concept of their students "abandoning" their training to pursue a nontraditional career, and the negative attitude of a few can cast a pall over an entire department. The greatest barriers, however, appear to be internal. It is difficult for anyone-scientist or nonscientist-to open his or her mind and heart to the possibility of drastic change, especially when the change seems to involve the abandonment of a field in which one has invested so many years of training. Worse still, because most graduate departments focus specifically on research, students have little exposure to non-research careers and the people who pursue them. This ignorance can be one of the most frightening aspects of a career change and can leave extremely talented people with the false impression that their only alternative to science is a job in a fast-food restaurant. I see some encouraging trends for the future. With the increasing competition for federal research funding, more colleges and universities are forging research partnerships with the private sector. These programs can play a critical role in broadening the career perspectives of graduate students by placing them in research teams with science professionals from industry and government. Ideally, these partnerships will produce two products critical to the future economic growth of the United States; scientific and technological advances, and a work force of creative technical professionals who can continue making new advances in a variety of employment settings. A number of funding agencies and private foundations also are becoming increasingly concerned about the future growth of the technical work force. Some organizations are calling for colleges and universities to refocus on education, rather than scientific research, as their primary product. An active dialogue is well under way among the stakeholders in graduate science and engineering education and has helped identify some areas of graduate training that need improvement. Will academia, especially the elite research universities, modify or supplement their programs to prepare scientists for a larger range of careers? Will funding agencies assess the educational output as well as research output of grant applicants when making funding decisions? It is too soon to tell. If they ever existed at all, the "good old days," when people could emerge from graduate school and fall effortlessly into a faculty job, are long gone. Science and engineering graduates, and all professionals, must learn to be proactive about their careers and their future. Science is a career and, like other careers, must be individually maintained and developed by acquiring new skills, exploring new career opportunities, and networking with other professionals. Unlike graduate students in business and law, science and engineering graduate students are seldom taught career survival skills and as a result are at a significant disadvantage in today's job market. In an increasingly technological society, the value of a technical background is growing enormously. A Ph.D. degree is far more than a certificate to be a scientist-it is a certificate that you can both think and learn independently. We scientists have much to offer the world beyond scholarly research, and there are a wealth of fields in which we can apply our training in new ways. Exploring nontraditional careers can be a liberating, empowering, and enjoyable experience. It certainly has been for me. Who knows? Maybe your exploration will confirm your original career goals. No matter what the outcome, you will be better off for the experience-in terms of your own career as well as the advice you may give to your colleagues or your students in the future. Peter Fiske is a geophysicist from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and a current White House Fellow at the Department of Defense. He is the author of To Boldly Go: A Practical Career Guide for Scientists (Washington, D.C., American Geophysical Union, 1996). It can be accessed online at http://www.agu.org/careerguide.

An Open Letter To Frustrated Scientists Looking For A Job: There Is Hope

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