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These articles always take the same approach: letting us know how lack of students graduating with science degrees hurts our culture and our competitiveness. T
by menloparkbum 18y ago
These articles always take the same approach: letting us know how lack of students graduating with science degrees hurts our culture and our competitiveness.
These articles would be far more interesting and more of a catalyst for change if they could explain how graduating with a science degree can benefit a young person's life.
I don't mean abstract benefits like "problem solving skills," either. I mean concrete benefits, like getting a job. For example:
Imagine you are 22 and just graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a degree in Physics. You don't have the best GPA, but not bad, either. Let's say a "B" average. You had to program some stuff in one of your classes, but you aren't really a programmer. For whatever reason, you aren't going to graduate school. So, you need to get a job. You'd like to stay somewhere in the upper midwest to be close to your friends and family.
What kind of job do you apply to, and where?
- RK 18y agoIs this where you suggest becoming a bum in Menlo Park (Wisconsin)?
- menloparkbum 18y agoI changed some of the details but I know someone in the position I described and I don't have any good advice. I was hoping perhaps the denizens of HN might have interesting suggestions.
- RK 18y agoSell your "problem solving skills". It's completely vague, but it's supposedly the essential skill you've learned (actually mathematical modeling, testing, and data analysis, hopefully). Apply to any and all entry level engineering type jobs and just try to convince them that you are able to learn what they need as a physicist. Better yet, go back to UW and get an MS in medical physics. They apparently only need a master's and make decent money.
- ovi256 18y agoYou could try doing industrial research. Even without a PhD, talent is sought for industrial research labs. You may have to start as an assistant researcher or even lab technician, but you'll get promoted to researcher in no time if you're good.
- ojbyrne 18y agoI think there's only one choice, and it's the one that the educational system is optimized around, for better or worse - Grad School. Of course they don't tell you up front that when you enter a pure science out of high school, you're signing up for a much-longer than 4 year process. Because an M.Sc. is really optimized for one purpose - to push you into a doctorate program. Then post-grad, then tenure track, and so on. The $100K figure quoted in that article is really misleading because of that - it's not talking about people with a bachelor's - it's talking about people with tenure.