4 ms·

Interesting article, however I think the main problem is the premise that all, or even the majority, of graduating PhD students wish to continue to work in acad

Interesting article, however I think the main problem is the premise that all, or even the majority, of graduating PhD students wish to continue to work in academia. It will be different across industries, but I work in a pharma R&D company of around 120 people. At a guess, around 40% of the entire staff (admin, management, scientists, technicians) are PhD graduates. They're working in industry and reasonably well paid. The point is that a desire to secure senior academic positions, such as tenured professor, are not the only reasons people decide to pursue a PhD.

npsomaratna 6y ago
True - but isn't this mainly limited to the sciences? (genuine question)
- ggm 6y ago
  No. I think all publishing disciplines seeking grants and tenure tend to the same outcome (not an academic, worked in university research and general staff many years ago in 3 UK and one Australian uni)
chuckleMuscle 6y ago
By contrast I work in a field (experimental plasma physics) where there are relatively few industrial opportunities. For grad students in my field who wish to carry on working in science once they graduate, there are few options outside of academia.
- abhinav22 6y ago
  But they would know that going in. My parents are both PHDs in physics and professors etc, but I knew 15 years ago how hard it would be get a decent job in the field and didn’t pursue sciences. So I don’t really have much sympathy for grad students who complain about having lack of opportunities.
  - nosianu 6y ago
    Yes, because a 25 year old has the same maturity and life experience as a 40 year old (or similar age numbers). How dare the young make decisions that from the point of view of someone with much more experience looks silly? Also, the assumption is faulty that brains are like computers and processing identical information using a non-diseased fully functioning brain should obviously give the same result regardless of age.
  - arethuza 6y ago
    I don't think the average undergraduate has any idea of what is involved in postgraduate work or what working in academia actually involves.
    - abhinav22 6y ago
      They need to though. I wish it wasn’t the case, but largely it is in my opinion.
      - arethuza 6y ago
        Do any career options give recent graduates a realistic idea of what is involved in working in that field? I'm not sure that academia is any worse than a lot of other fields and it does, potentially, have a lot of advantages. [e.g. I co-founded a startup with someone I met in academia]
        abhinav22 6y ago
        In a crude sense, more career options swing the relationship in favor of the employees vs employers, so it can be used as a guideline for whether a career will be rewarding and fairly compensated. I would argue people in academics are on average harder workers than other fields, so overall they have it a bit tougher given all the work they put in. There are successes in every field, I am just making some vast generalizations for our discussion :-)
    - specialist 6y ago
arethuza 6y ago
"of graduating PhD students wish to continue to work in academia" I'd be interested in the number who think they want to work in academia at the start of their PhD and compare this with the number at the end - I certainly went completely off the idea, not so much because I thought getting a job would be difficult but that I really didn't like what academic research encourages. Mind you a pyramidal "up or out" structure can be found in areas like law - relatively few lawyers will make partner or even want to take on what that involves.
- T-A 6y ago
  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0184130 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
- dijksterhuis 6y ago
  I probably fall into this camp, as does a close friend of mine. We actually talked about it recently and she mentioned there's a significant percentage of PhDs that don't continue into academia (something like a quarter or a half,can't remember the actual figure). It's a serious enough issue that it's been nicknamed the "PhD brain drain". Essentially, people burn out during the PhD and don't want to go back. Which is fair enough.

npsomaratna 6y ago

True - but isn't this mainly limited to the sciences? (genuine question)

ggm 6y ago
No. I think all publishing disciplines seeking grants and tenure tend to the same outcome (not an academic, worked in university research and general staff many years ago in 3 UK and one Australian uni)

chuckleMuscle 6y ago

By contrast I work in a field (experimental plasma physics) where there are relatively few industrial opportunities. For grad students in my field who wish to carry on working in science once they graduate, there are few options outside of academia.

abhinav22 6y ago
But they would know that going in. My parents are both PHDs in physics and professors etc, but I knew 15 years ago how hard it would be get a decent job in the field and didn’t pursue sciences. So I don’t really have much sympathy for grad students who complain about having lack of opportunities.
- nosianu 6y ago
  Yes, because a 25 year old has the same maturity and life experience as a 40 year old (or similar age numbers). How dare the young make decisions that from the point of view of someone with much more experience looks silly? Also, the assumption is faulty that brains are like computers and processing identical information using a non-diseased fully functioning brain should obviously give the same result regardless of age.
- arethuza 6y ago
  I don't think the average undergraduate has any idea of what is involved in postgraduate work or what working in academia actually involves.
  - abhinav22 6y ago
    They need to though. I wish it wasn’t the case, but largely it is in my opinion.
    - arethuza 6y ago
      Do any career options give recent graduates a realistic idea of what is involved in working in that field? I'm not sure that academia is any worse than a lot of other fields and it does, potentially, have a lot of advantages. [e.g. I co-founded a startup with someone I met in academia]
      - abhinav22 6y ago
        In a crude sense, more career options swing the relationship in favor of the employees vs employers, so it can be used as a guideline for whether a career will be rewarding and fairly compensated. I would argue people in academics are on average harder workers than other fields, so overall they have it a bit tougher given all the work they put in. There are successes in every field, I am just making some vast generalizations for our discussion :-)
  - specialist 6y ago

arethuza 6y ago

"of graduating PhD students wish to continue to work in academia" I'd be interested in the number who think they want to work in academia at the start of their PhD and compare this with the number at the end - I certainly went completely off the idea, not so much because I thought getting a job would be difficult but that I really didn't like what academic research encourages. Mind you a pyramidal "up or out" structure can be found in areas like law - relatively few lawyers will make partner or even want to take on what that involves.

T-A 6y ago
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0184130 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
dijksterhuis 6y ago
I probably fall into this camp, as does a close friend of mine. We actually talked about it recently and she mentioned there's a significant percentage of PhDs that don't continue into academia (something like a quarter or a half,can't remember the actual figure). It's a serious enough issue that it's been nicknamed the "PhD brain drain". Essentially, people burn out during the PhD and don't want to go back. Which is fair enough.