Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums GT Research Glut of PhDs means less chance of a job

I possibly know more people with PhDs than without. All academics following the traditional route. And I'm very glad I am not one of them!

The PP who said people are postdocs for seven years is possibly in some sort of biology? The field I'm most familiar with you get two post docs/four years to prove yourself. If you don't have a tenure track job by then you need to bail. But it's one of those fields where (as I understand it) it's very clear who is good and who is not good enough, and anyone who is merely mediocre doesn't get that far. I can only think of think two post docs I've known well who don't have jobs. Not necessarily in the sort of place they'd choose to live, but employed nonetheless.

I don't think it always has to based on how many and to what caliber degrees you have. My sister has a BD in Conservation Biology and makes very little in that area. I barely made it through highschool and no college degree yet I make good money in finance and mortgage working for the biggest bank there is. Its not all gloom...you can make it without years in post education you just work hard with common sense.

I have spent a great deal of time looking for better ways to support research training (I do a lot of work for health research funders). While individual results may vary, the above article is, if anything, a somewhat rosy portrait as far as health/ life sciences go.

Canada and the US are producing PhDs by the bucketload, with limited skills to make it in modern uber-competitive academia, almost none to go anywhere else, and thoroughly indoctrinated in the belief that "anywhere else" is failure for second-rate scientists - despite it being where 90% go. To add insult to injury, a life sciences PhD will get you a salary cut around here.

The horrific part is that increasingly, people scramble through 8, 10, even 12 years of post-docs, providing the barely-paid labor necessary to keep the grant mill productive and NIH grants cheap. And no chance in there to pursue an original idea during their creative years, and mostly, there's no actual training going on. Then finally the candidate scrapes up a soft-funded adjunct role and a first grant - on a super-conservative, low-risk idea, of course. And only THEN, after all that, they don't get renewed and get the boot out of academia. After 20-something years invested in creating an academic career that was never going to exist for 90% of them. (Double the attrition rate if you're female).

Of course there are exceptions - but the data is clear and this trend has been inexorably ramping up for 40 years. Unfortunately, there's huge incentives for funders, universities and profs to encourage more doctorates/ PDFs. Everybody wins - except the trainees.

It's broken and unethical.

Michelle, it also cuts out the job market for people with a plain bachelors who in other systems would be employed as research assistants. And with no job prospects after their first graduation they are funnelled into grad school. They'd be better off treating themselves as post docs and emigrating then and there to somewhere they can get a job.

I agree with you.

My kids are 16 and 13 now. Whenever the topic of work comes up, I tell them to pick something that they would enjoy doing for a long time.

But I also tell them that there are many things they would likely enjoy, and it is far easier to succeed in some fields than in others, both professionally and financially. If they still want to become a professor, I will strongly encourage them to have a Plan B and Plan C.

Well-stated, Michelle. It is unethical.

Great thread! The Economic Policy Institute writes about this problem all the time. I come from a family of college professors, so I know how hard it is to secure research grants in Science just to hold on to your job. The jobs are scarce.

The media perpetuated the myth that engineering is the best most solid career. It's not. High school and colleges are pumping out STEM students. The majority of these students will not get a job on their field, or will have a very unstable career path, with lay offs etc. it's frightening.

I dropped out of a PhD psychology program and switched programs because I didn't WANT to be an academic (not to mention the terrible job market for that), yet there was no training in the program for other kinds of careers. I went into the wrong kind of psych program. It was basically "social psychology." The whole thing was a big mistake. I always wonder how many of my classmates "made it" and ended up with the kind of academic job they wanted.

My brother did end up with an academic/research/teaching job in physics, and he started as an associate professor right after graduating, but I don't think it was easy. It wasn't clear to me from the article if the academic job market is like this in all/most areas. A very large number of his classmates came from other countries, so if there are already so many applicants, why are colleges recruiting from other countries? Are they really that much more qualified? I think even with the program I was in, the large majority of applicants are rejected. Many people did not get teaching/research assistantships.

So for those of us with math/science/computer "geeks", I wonder what a good career path is? My kids are 8/9 so things will change a lot, but I'd still like to get an idea.

Not all degrees provide proportional financial return.

College Board offers a web page on " Matching Careers to Degrees ".

Parents and students can check the Occupational Outlook Handbook ( OOH ) of the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, as part of their college and career planning. This can be an important and valuable resource.