The average trajectory for a successful scientist is the following:
* age 18-22: paying high tuition fees at an undergraduate college
* age 22-30: graduate school, possibly with a bit of work, living on a stipend of $1800 per month
* age 30-35: working as a post-doc for $30,000 to $35,000 per year
* age 36-43: professor at a good, but not great, university for $65,000 per year
* age 44: with (if lucky) young children at home, fired by the university ("denied tenure" is the more polite term for the folks that universities discard), begins searching for a job in a market where employers primarily wish to hire folks in their early 30s
This is how things are likely to go for the smartest kid you sat next to in college. He got into Stanford for graduate school. He got a postdoc at MIT. His experiment worked out and he was therefore fortunate to land a job at University of California, Irvine. But at the end of the day, his research wasn't quite interesting or topical enough that the university wanted to commit to paying him a salary for the rest of his life. He is now 44 years old, with a family to feed, and looking for job with a 'second rate has-been' label on his forehead."
That's for a scientist staying in academics. I used to work as a scientist in a science-focused industry and the salary trajectory is much better. As a newly minted PhD, you can pulled $120K + bonus (20%) right out of your post-doc. You'll probably hit a ceiling of $200-250K/yr relatively quickly (10 years) if you don't move into management.
Of course, that doesn't take into account the fact that as R&D person you'll be viewed as a cost center and a target for cost cutting if the time comes.
I read Greenspun's article. It's certainly sobering, and that's coming from a PhD with a decent industry job. Still, one concept struck me:
>>> Consider taking the same high IQ and work ethic, going into business, and being put on the fast track at a company such as General Electric.
My concern is that "work ethic" is not an independent, immutable trait, but is instead situational. If so, then a high work ethic, transplanted to General Electric, could become a low work ethic. Some folks may need their motivation to come from what they are doing, more than others. Those folks aren't helped much by a simple list of what jobs pay the most.
- Because you get paid to investigate some of the most interesting things in the world, in the company of mostly great people.
Science is awesome. Scientific careers right now are shitty, but that's because the current system is broken, not because of anything intrinsic to science. We should try to fix it.
Dunno about other fields, but atleast if you're doing a PhD in CS/math/stats, the industrial options (tech, finance, data scientist, etc.) are great enough that this article posts too bleak a picture imo of doing a PhD and trying out a career in science.
If one wants to stay in science, then there are many other options than being a prof including but not limited too industrial or government labs, research scientist positions at universities, etc.
Also the majority of assistant professors actually do get tenure and I feel this article is implying that they don't. And salaries are definitely higher than 65K a year. Though again, a CS perspective.
It's certainly a bit grim. To offer a personal perspective...
> * age 30-35: working as a post-doc for $30,000 to $35,000 per year
You can earn more than that (and younger) if you're prepared to travel outside the US, though it's still not great. I'm hesitant to share personal details, but I'm personally in my mid-twenties and just starting a "postdoc" (in a sense; still waiting to defend my thesis), and I'm earning quite a bit more than that, albeit in an expensive city and with a large tax/student loan burden.
I'd like to do a postdoc in the US next year, but I'd have to take a large pay cut to do it, which is something I'm on the fence about–I figure you're only young once, and money isn't everything, but I can't help but feel I'd be being taken advantage of just because I happen to enjoy doing science, and the additional opportunity cost would be high too. Is it worth it? I'm not sure.
Beyond that... I wrote a much longer comment but deleted it. The fact is, academia is in an unhealthy place right now, and there's quite so much wrong with it that it's very difficult to articulate. Where do you begin? Whether to even stay in academia or leave is a question that seems to be discussed a lot lately, certainly among my colleagues, and I expect to see a lot more threads like this in the future.
Edit: Actually, I should add, that despite being in a decent place now, I had to unexpectedly work without pay for a time last year due a (ahem) 'funding hiccup.' This experience was so very terrible at the time that I'm surprised I didn't just give up on the PhD right then. To explain: in the UK, STEM funding is typically 3 years, and when that runs out you're in trouble: you can't go and get another job because you need to finish your thesis to get your PhD. Most people can't finish a PhD in 3 years (unsurprisingly). Some people manage to get extra funding from somewhere or start postdocs while still technically writing-up, but most people don't. Some people are told there will be extra funding which never materialises, or doesn't arrive on time. Several of my friends ended up going back home to live with their parents to write-up (and are still there); this is not uncommon. I know someone else who ended up living in a hostel. Once you've started the PhD you're invested, and the longer you do it the harder it is to walk away. The real kicker to me is that a lot of people accept this and think it's okay.
Maybe that's the average trajectory in the US (and not for a successful scientist since she fails in the end!).
But let's not forget that the US is not the only place where a scientists can find a job. There are many research institutes or universities in the world where someone with a PhD from Stanford and a postdoc from MIT (and less than that) could find a stable position.
Besides, one has to consider the other options available. Would the person in your example be happier had she taken a different path? who knows.
I wouldn't discourage people to try and work in that field if that's what they want to do.
I'm 27, skipped postdoc, and make $60K in a staff scientist position. I am able to get away with this because bioinformatics is in huge demand. At my institution this also does not preclude a later tenure-track position.
Basically, you have to play it smart, find a niche, and you can beat the averages.
>wanted to commit to paying him a salary for the rest of his life.
Sounds like to me like this is the problem. Its a lot to ask for lifetime employment, pension, etc. The tenure system causes this. A more fluid employment system would provide more opportunity as recruitement wouldn't be this overly neurotic thing.
That said, I know people in this exact situation. They bounce from university to university. They eventually ended up somewhere, at least most of them, with a couple scragglers who always came off as hugely unlikeable trust fund kiddies, so I'm not surprise they can't convince anyone to keep them or that they feel motivated to work hard.
The people I mentioned above were mostly U of C grads. Salaries there:
>The average salary for a full-time professor at the U of C during the 2007-08 academic year was $170,800—the fifth highest in the nation
170k 5 years ago is nice scratch. Even in "poor" public schools like the University of Illinois, you're looking at 110-120k for entry level professors. Oh, and usually that's without working any of the summer months.
I'm not sure why there's so much hang-wringing over these jobs, many of which pay a decent wage. Yet there's no hang-wringing over the millions who are just as smart and talented in the private sector who have no tenure protections, no publishing rights, no patent co-ownership rights, no royalty rights, and fear layoffs all the time.
that only happens in the US, in Mexico, you get scholarships from the State, If you're studying a Master Degree, first of all, most of the PNPC degrees are free (the best degrees indexed by conacyt), the mexican state gives you a scholarship for about $8000 pesos monthly, (most people fresh out of the bs earns about that so it's ok), for a Phd, they pay you about 12k which is ok too, and for a postdoc pays about 18k. All good science programs are free, on top research centers like Cinvestav, Cimat, UNAM, you name it. you have mobility (that means that the mexican state pays you for making and internship on a university abroad), and well, maybe in the industry is hard to get a good with such credentials, and if you are a very good prospect you could top about 100k pesos in a top white collar job, but, lets be fair, is very hard to get one of those jobs. So getting a PhD is basically a very easy and good route to have financial stability. Also, there are a lot of opportunities on the state universities around the country for people with PhDs.
Sad fact, there is no will in the general population for this programs. I'm studying right now a master degree on applied statistics and we are a generation of 6 persons.
Wow, this is sad. I knew the situation wasn't great, but it makes Breaking Bad look much more realistic than I thought.
I guess the people who do it, don't do it for the money, I hope that those 8% who make it to tenure, do it because they love what they do. I just hope they have enough energy to keep things up once they get there.
There has to be a better way. I liked the mention of DIY scientists, if people could have done hobby medicine research the same way they can 3D print, start a SaaS company, built a home automation solution using an Arduino and some stuff from ebay, if doing DIY lab research would be as easy as launching a mini delorean style quadrocopter (search on youtube), I'm sure a lot of the community here in HN would have been working on the next cure for cancer.
I don't think that anyone really thinks science is a good job.
You rarely talk to anyone who says "I want to make a lot of money so I'm going to be a researcher!"
Normally people (want to) become scientists because they are passionate about science.
The problem is that science is not highly valued, especially academically. We live in a society that values trading commodities, and science isn't easily commoditized. The closest thing we can come to a commodity in science is papers, and maybe patents in the commercial world.
The shame is that science is a public benefit. In our whole history, nearly everything is ephemeral, but the things we have learned and understood and documented have persisted. Technology can be good or bad, but (well founded) science is knowledge, and it's only ever good as it lets us better understand.
We live inefficiently as long as we focus on letting people live comfortable lives only when they have something they can restrict access to and barter in exchange for that opportunity.
There are people out there that would like to do science, who would like to further our understanding of the world and universe we live in, who don't do so only because they need to
help produce something that people will pay for.
In my opinion, we should pay for education and a fair income for any person who wants to practice academics. Sure, you can save luxurious salaries and budgets for the superstars, but make it such that everyone who has the capability and desire to do so can work in science, or possibly other academic pursuits, that they will have a wage that will let them have a home, healthy food on the table, support a family and live a comfortable, if modest life. The condition being that all of your results are made available to the public for free and you might get called to teach.
I think of it kind of like being in the military. Enough money gets spent on the military, TONS of money gets spent on the military, and for much of it, the public sees minor benefit. But you know that when you join, that at least while you're serving, you are going to be guaranteed to have a place to stay, food to eat, health care, education options. Nearly anyone who is fit can join.
If you could do the same for science, I think that would be great. Our governance would need to change first though, and our culture. I don't trust that government employed scientists give good results over lies to promote an agenda. At least in our current private economy you have conflicting interests that can act as oversight.
But as automation and technology supply more of our needs with less labour, we're losing more and more jobs. This leads to people without jobs. If there are people in that group that are smart enough to be scientists, there's always room for more science.
My mother is nagging me to join a masters degree so I can get a job as professor in a public university.
She does not think it is a good job, she thinks it is a easy job, her words were: "I think you are smart enough to pass the tests to get the position."
That is because in a public university, after some time tenured you can't be ever fired unless you commit a serious crime, so it is a "good job" in the sense you will never be unemployed again...
These figures might be correct for the US, but the UK is much better about things. As a PhD student (a teaching assistance) I received a tax-free income that was equivalent to earning about £20K a year, which is about USD30K. I think post-docs are in the range £25-35K. We also don't have the brutal tenure system.
I read this article a year ago and my google-fu wasn't good enough to find it again! Thanks for posting it, and thanks for posting it originally if this is something you post periodically. I will now bookmark it and send it to all of my relatives.
I've had friends whose careers have followed more or less that trajectory. It seems to me that there's an arbitrage possibility here, tremendously undervalued intellectual capital.
> age 36-43: professor at a good, but not great, university for $65,000 per year
Podunk U in the midwest gets filled with MIT/Harvard degreed profs, who couldn't wait for existing profs to die off at their alma maters. It also captures the Harvard rejects with 4.0 GPA's, 2300 SAT's, 12 AP courses. Extreme selectivity at the elite institutions improves the quality of the non-elite schools. Better profs, better students. Does Podunk U have the potential to churn out some great students then? Even if its prestige isn't as good as an elite.
I think it's important to consider that maybe scientists aren't worth paying that much. The average scientist is probably moving society forward, but I'm not so sure the median scientist is. Having been to a 'top 10' PhD program in a 'hard science' (chemistry), I am not sure 75% of the professors there were worth a dime. I am not sure 50% of the thesis defenses were, either (mine included).
This is in contrast to the doorman example, or in my case, being a Lyft driver (which pays more than being a postdoc). Every night, I help society out by providing a service that someone wants, and if you want to be more abstract, by keeping drunk people off the road.
I was able to raise $56,000 for an experiment in anticancer research. That doesn't seem like much (it isn't) but in retrospect it's about right. I asked for money for one experiment, and that's what I got. It doesn't pay my salary, but I probably don't deserve it (yet) until I've proven myself at least at one stage. Drug development is risky, why should society pay much more than the bare minimum to get it done?
I only did a Master's and avoided the academic route (wasn't interested). My lab peers at the time were 5 PhD students. Of that group at a good Canadian University, 3 are still post-docs (4-6 years after graduation), 1 has a decent-paying research position (non-teaching) and 1 is a faculty member... in the Middle East. Meanwhile, I work in an R&D field alongside many current faculty members, a surprising number of whom are 65+ and will die before they retire.
In general, my observation has been that the students that quit after a Masters tend to do better financially than those who continue on. That's not to say that Master's graduates are hitting the big time; they just tend to end up getting their market value.
It seems strange to me that people assume that more education in any field they want will necessarily result in more money.
Schools are producing too many Biology Phds. Or Forensic Science undergrads. Such is life. There's no way to predict 100% what the market will be like, so we make do. There's no intrinsic right to a job in the field that one chooses to study, and most people work in fields outside of their major.
It's also true that your choice of first (or second or third) job is no guarantee. GM used to be a job for life. Now it isn't. As individuals we make our best choices, and then have a small safety net to fall back on if we're wrong.
The only thing we should push for schools to do is show transparency on where the alums wind up, because unfortunately their incentives in producing Phds (and JDs and Russian literature degrees) differ from ours in receiving them.
yeah i guess it strikes me as odd that these silos are painted as such dire straits when describing a scenario that includes the backdoor of "unless you choose to go into industry and immediately make 100k+".
I and the other people in my graduate program don't have that option... I studied music technology, degree was pretty expensive. no stipends, literal you pay for degree, BA-style, but are not going into a six-figure business field.
These are the choices you make in life, and being presented with an opt-out like that is as they say "a good problem to have". It would be cool if every field could make intelligent people rich as they improved the world but, you know.... its life.
If I had chosen a different field maybe I would be making 6-figures instead of doing boring enterprise work (decent money but most of my research peers were less programming focused, didn't even have this type of out), but I also would be even further from my goals. I wouldn't have the foundation of knowledge that I'm hoping to return to / build from in the future.
I guess the point of this comment is that the author should be thankful that people in science are valued by industry (even many programmers are only considered "labor", basically). There are lots of fields people devote themselves to that have no industrial use & they are relegated to lower-paying dayjobs regardless of who they are willing to sign on with. As for whether or not academia should be more lucrative, well.... should people be paid to learn? is academia the most efficient way of learning? is it an antiquated social construct? many open-ended questions.... got my masters but didn't go back for PhD, waiting to see whether or not there is a better way to make it happen out on the pavement.
Yup - "STEM jobs pay well" is just wrong at this point. Neither Science nor Mathematics pays worth a damn, what people actually mean when they say this is "go work in technology or engineering".
Maybe it's just me, but I've never really thought getting a PhD had to do with money, but instead the result of either extreme curiosity or a very strong passion about a more granular complex topic.
I never understood it to mean a path with a defined cost to equal a defined salary. This scientific equation of years of school to salary just feels foolish.
I see where you're coming from, and yes, I do agree that having more education does not automatically qualify someone to a better salary or benefits, which seems to be the undercurrent in this article. However, its not about earning "lots" of money, but enough to at least sustain yourself and maybe a family. That is not possible if one has to be a postdoc for 6 years. The point is basically that the system is misleading bright young kids into thinking that they can have reasonable expectations of having a "regular" life when doing interesting work.
You're completely right, but the main problem is that there's no longer any sort of guaranteed end-game for academics. A relatively low income really isn't that much of an issue if you're guaranteed that income for life and don't have to worry about finances and you're doing something you love.
But today's young scientists and researchers aren't guaranteed anything -- they're lowly paid and most likely will not get any decent lifelong faculty position. And settling for being, say, an adjunct lecturer means you'll be paid less than a high school teacher in many cases (with no pension and very minimal benefits to boot).
Part of it still feels exploitative to me. It vaguely reminds me of back in the early days of web sites where people thought they were doing a web developer a "favor" by letting them make their web site for them. "You can put your name on my site! What great press!"
Oh yeah, sure, while I'm young and learning maybe it's okay but at some point you realize you're just being scammed out of money
This is why working in a lab as an undergraduate is absolutely key, as it sets expectations.
Through various internships and part time jobs, I worked both in industrial and academic labs as an undergrad, and while I enjoyed the work it helped me realize that it was more about dedication to the love of a subject than actually forging a balanced, lucrative career.
I don't know about that; I think perhaps it is the opposite. Psychologically, at least: if you got another degree, shouldn't you be worth more than you were previously? Aren't two degrees better than one? (I know that sounds stupid, but these are thoughts that can flicker through one's mind.)
An informal polling of the students in my PhD program showed a large fraction (~90%) that came directly out of undergrad. Without setting foot in the real world I believe one can see believe this distorted reality. And in the economic "long term" (salary per addition year of schooling) most PhDs are probably better off than their Bachelor's counterparts, but this belies the opportunity costs.
I've now put science degrees in the same bucket as liberal arts. There is a crazy amount of knowledge available, but unless you're gifted or lucky it won't pay, and you do it because you love it.
Excellent post. Even more depressing, the author didn't discuss the fact that when this young researcher—who just finished a PhD and postdoc training in a specific research area—applies for her first grant, she is effectively required to submit a grant for whatever topics are "hot" at that moment. These topics may not be directly related to her field of interest, and may be something she has very little expertise in. However, by writing a proposal in simply whatever area she finds interesting, she is taking her already dismal chances of obtaining funding and decreasing them further.
Even MORE depressing, once our young female scientist has done a good job, built her lab, and is now in her mid-forties, if she really wants to improve her pay at that point she will have such attractive options as "department chair", which adds a lot of non-research administrative work to an already overworked person. What fun!
Certainly a depressing perspective, but as a Stanford PhD student (neuro), my thoughts have always been that pursuing science was a decision to work on the problems that interested me at the _expense_ of not receiving good financial compensation. The particular things I'm interested in studying happen to exist primarily within academia (and non-university academic institutions like Allen Brain and Janelia), because the neuroscience work being done in industry (today) is far more primitive (e.g. EEG). This may change in the near future, and I'll reconsider my options then, but for now, I'm under no delusion that my salary (~30k) is anywhere near what it could be for an EE/CS in industry. That being said, if the amount of bullshit and politics becomes so burdensome that it kills the attractiveness of the science, then I'd leave.
Passed on a career in science when I was 17 and noticed after interviewing professors that it was mostly full of politics and money stress and precious little science. Fact is there are a lot of fields that are "desirable" and enjoy and endless supply of willing young and talented recruits. These fields always pay terribly for all but the elite and offer tremendous competition. Publishing seemed to be another one. It was common knowledge or at least patently obvious to me that you should not attempt a career in publishing (editing and evaluating manuscripts for major publishing houses) in NYC without a trust fund and or a magic credit card paid by daddy. Science is like that. I hope my children can do science.
>Frankly, everything about the career, the business of science, is constructed to impoverish and disenfranchise young scientists, delaying the maturation of their careers beyond practicality.
That's because way, way too many people want to be scientists. Lots of people want to be actors, too, and most of them end up working as waiters for the same reason.
I've never run across such a smart group of people who are so dumb. Even if you win the lottery and get that coveted tenured position you're not going to be doing much in the way of research - you're going to spend all your time filling out grant applications and managing grad students.
If it weren't for our current economic system, having a glut of lawyers, doctors, scientists, engineers, etc, would be an incredibly good thing. For everyone.
This hits just way too close to home to keep a straight face :-(
If anyone on HN has any questions/doubts/need details, AMA. I'm a Life Sciences Post-Doc at a major US university. I'll try my best to answer (no personal details please).
I know it's N of 1 but I did grad school with a wife and kid both at home, all of us supported on my typical student stipend. Then lived in one of the most expensive locales in the country as a postdoc, again, wife was at home with the kid(s). Started making $45k, 2.5 years later was at $55k (you do know that postdocs can ask for raises, right?). Now in a tenure-track faculty position, have federal funding, and making $125k/year. It's not impossible to make it work, and I'd do it all again.
I don't have a PhD, and won't be getting one. While it's something I'd love to do for the sake of knowledge, it simply isn't workable money wise, family wise, or time wise. The postdocs and graduate students work 6 days a week for 10 hours each day for a pittance.
I'd like to think that all these gripes about science are reaching some sort of boiling point, and that some solution is right around the corner-- except that I'm here in the trenches, so I know there is no such thing happening. People suffer through it, grumbling once in a while, but refusing to attempt to better their own circumstances in any way other than more work.
Many of them lead outwardly lonely or empty lives spent slaving away at their lab benches or tissue culture rooms. They cannot afford to replace their old clothes, phones, or bicycles. They live in houses with 4-6 other people, even into their 30s. When they publish their paper, it is their supervisor's name that is noticed. The bitterness and beatdown demeanor they express suffuses many of their non-work conversations.
Science is a pretty bad life in academia. Industry scientists still need to muddle around in academia for at least some period of time, but on the whole they seem much better off... except that most people from the academic side don't consider them to be scientists at all.
I got my PhD in Math from Harvard in 1979. Based on http://abel.harvard.edu/dissertations/index.html, it seems that 5-10 folks per year did that in those days. Perhaps 20% went on to research careers big enough to have Wikipedia articles now -- mainly in academia, although there's one in industrial cryptography (Don Coppersmith) and another in finance. Most of the rest have had decent careers in academia or business.
However, I don't recall grants -- beyond grad school fellowships or whatever -- playing a major role in pure math at that time.
No I am not exaggerating. I would have been #3 at a very successful tech company had I chosen it over grad school and that's about half what #1 and #2 are worth these days.
That said, over a decade after I tripled my salary in a day by fleeting my post-doc for the dotcom boom, everything I learned in academia suddenly became relevant and continues to increase in relevance every year.
I have never heard of a professor "forgoing their own salary" to keep the lights on. I'd be surprised if this was allowed, actually.
Also, for what it's worth, I did a PhD and a post-doc and have a nice biotech job that pays well. It's not an easy road (what is?) but it's not as bleak as all-that, if you enjoy doing science.
I have a PhD in CS from a highly ranked school (systems) and work for an industrial lab (6 years out of school). I make the same as a fresh graduate from Waterloo from recent empirical evidence. It is just dressed up differently ... the fresh grad in question has a salary at the 100K mark salary with 25K-ish in guaranteed bonus for a few years (plus some stock options). I make that in guaranteed salary with no bonus or options. My work week just ended (easily 10 hours a day doing very cool stuff but not science). I'm juggling reading some papers out of true interest (deep belief nets), reviewing some crappy papers for some journal that were due two weeks ago, and spending time with my wife. Clearly I made some very bad career decisions.
"Why do we do this to ourselves?" She asked me. "We train forever and ever, live in near poverty, work insane hours—all of it to get jobs that don’t exist, as tenure track faculty. Why do we suffer this way?"
Because it's fun and fulfilling. My lab has had people who left banking and consulting gigs, at extraordinary financial cost, measured in dollars. Neither seemed to regret the switch much, but many who go the other way feel the same.
Planning on a tenure track job isn't very reasonable, it's like planning for a successful startup, I suppose. But right now I get to do exactly what I want to be doing. The 'premium' economists would say I pay is worth it to me, for now.
[+] [-] wwweston|11 years ago|reply
The average trajectory for a successful scientist is the following:
* age 18-22: paying high tuition fees at an undergraduate college
* age 22-30: graduate school, possibly with a bit of work, living on a stipend of $1800 per month
* age 30-35: working as a post-doc for $30,000 to $35,000 per year
* age 36-43: professor at a good, but not great, university for $65,000 per year
* age 44: with (if lucky) young children at home, fired by the university ("denied tenure" is the more polite term for the folks that universities discard), begins searching for a job in a market where employers primarily wish to hire folks in their early 30s
This is how things are likely to go for the smartest kid you sat next to in college. He got into Stanford for graduate school. He got a postdoc at MIT. His experiment worked out and he was therefore fortunate to land a job at University of California, Irvine. But at the end of the day, his research wasn't quite interesting or topical enough that the university wanted to commit to paying him a salary for the rest of his life. He is now 44 years old, with a family to feed, and looking for job with a 'second rate has-been' label on his forehead."
http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science
[+] [-] refurb|11 years ago|reply
Of course, that doesn't take into account the fact that as R&D person you'll be viewed as a cost center and a target for cost cutting if the time comes.
[+] [-] analog31|11 years ago|reply
>>> Consider taking the same high IQ and work ethic, going into business, and being put on the fast track at a company such as General Electric.
My concern is that "work ethic" is not an independent, immutable trait, but is instead situational. If so, then a high work ethic, transplanted to General Electric, could become a low work ethic. Some folks may need their motivation to come from what they are doing, more than others. Those folks aren't helped much by a simple list of what jobs pay the most.
[+] [-] Fede_V|11 years ago|reply
- Because you get paid to investigate some of the most interesting things in the world, in the company of mostly great people.
Science is awesome. Scientific careers right now are shitty, but that's because the current system is broken, not because of anything intrinsic to science. We should try to fix it.
[+] [-] letitgo12345|11 years ago|reply
If one wants to stay in science, then there are many other options than being a prof including but not limited too industrial or government labs, research scientist positions at universities, etc.
Also the majority of assistant professors actually do get tenure and I feel this article is implying that they don't. And salaries are definitely higher than 65K a year. Though again, a CS perspective.
[+] [-] ttflee|11 years ago|reply
http://kentridgecommon.com/?p=4962
Even if you had been successful for 16 years, it could still turn bad.
[+] [-] Osmium|11 years ago|reply
> * age 30-35: working as a post-doc for $30,000 to $35,000 per year
You can earn more than that (and younger) if you're prepared to travel outside the US, though it's still not great. I'm hesitant to share personal details, but I'm personally in my mid-twenties and just starting a "postdoc" (in a sense; still waiting to defend my thesis), and I'm earning quite a bit more than that, albeit in an expensive city and with a large tax/student loan burden.
I'd like to do a postdoc in the US next year, but I'd have to take a large pay cut to do it, which is something I'm on the fence about–I figure you're only young once, and money isn't everything, but I can't help but feel I'd be being taken advantage of just because I happen to enjoy doing science, and the additional opportunity cost would be high too. Is it worth it? I'm not sure.
Beyond that... I wrote a much longer comment but deleted it. The fact is, academia is in an unhealthy place right now, and there's quite so much wrong with it that it's very difficult to articulate. Where do you begin? Whether to even stay in academia or leave is a question that seems to be discussed a lot lately, certainly among my colleagues, and I expect to see a lot more threads like this in the future.
Edit: Actually, I should add, that despite being in a decent place now, I had to unexpectedly work without pay for a time last year due a (ahem) 'funding hiccup.' This experience was so very terrible at the time that I'm surprised I didn't just give up on the PhD right then. To explain: in the UK, STEM funding is typically 3 years, and when that runs out you're in trouble: you can't go and get another job because you need to finish your thesis to get your PhD. Most people can't finish a PhD in 3 years (unsurprisingly). Some people manage to get extra funding from somewhere or start postdocs while still technically writing-up, but most people don't. Some people are told there will be extra funding which never materialises, or doesn't arrive on time. Several of my friends ended up going back home to live with their parents to write-up (and are still there); this is not uncommon. I know someone else who ended up living in a hostel. Once you've started the PhD you're invested, and the longer you do it the harder it is to walk away. The real kicker to me is that a lot of people accept this and think it's okay.
[+] [-] jacquesm|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yodsanklai|11 years ago|reply
Besides, one has to consider the other options available. Would the person in your example be happier had she taken a different path? who knows.
I wouldn't discourage people to try and work in that field if that's what they want to do.
[+] [-] xaa|11 years ago|reply
Basically, you have to play it smart, find a niche, and you can beat the averages.
[+] [-] drzaiusapelord|11 years ago|reply
Sounds like to me like this is the problem. Its a lot to ask for lifetime employment, pension, etc. The tenure system causes this. A more fluid employment system would provide more opportunity as recruitement wouldn't be this overly neurotic thing.
That said, I know people in this exact situation. They bounce from university to university. They eventually ended up somewhere, at least most of them, with a couple scragglers who always came off as hugely unlikeable trust fund kiddies, so I'm not surprise they can't convince anyone to keep them or that they feel motivated to work hard.
The people I mentioned above were mostly U of C grads. Salaries there:
>The average salary for a full-time professor at the U of C during the 2007-08 academic year was $170,800—the fifth highest in the nation
170k 5 years ago is nice scratch. Even in "poor" public schools like the University of Illinois, you're looking at 110-120k for entry level professors. Oh, and usually that's without working any of the summer months.
I'm not sure why there's so much hang-wringing over these jobs, many of which pay a decent wage. Yet there's no hang-wringing over the millions who are just as smart and talented in the private sector who have no tenure protections, no publishing rights, no patent co-ownership rights, no royalty rights, and fear layoffs all the time.
[+] [-] sebastianavina|11 years ago|reply
Sad fact, there is no will in the general population for this programs. I'm studying right now a master degree on applied statistics and we are a generation of 6 persons.
[+] [-] eranation|11 years ago|reply
There has to be a better way. I liked the mention of DIY scientists, if people could have done hobby medicine research the same way they can 3D print, start a SaaS company, built a home automation solution using an Arduino and some stuff from ebay, if doing DIY lab research would be as easy as launching a mini delorean style quadrocopter (search on youtube), I'm sure a lot of the community here in HN would have been working on the next cure for cancer.
[+] [-] cryoshon|11 years ago|reply
Some of the schools around here (Boston) have stipends which work out to be about 18,000 per year.
[+] [-] zeidrich|11 years ago|reply
You rarely talk to anyone who says "I want to make a lot of money so I'm going to be a researcher!"
Normally people (want to) become scientists because they are passionate about science.
The problem is that science is not highly valued, especially academically. We live in a society that values trading commodities, and science isn't easily commoditized. The closest thing we can come to a commodity in science is papers, and maybe patents in the commercial world.
The shame is that science is a public benefit. In our whole history, nearly everything is ephemeral, but the things we have learned and understood and documented have persisted. Technology can be good or bad, but (well founded) science is knowledge, and it's only ever good as it lets us better understand.
We live inefficiently as long as we focus on letting people live comfortable lives only when they have something they can restrict access to and barter in exchange for that opportunity.
There are people out there that would like to do science, who would like to further our understanding of the world and universe we live in, who don't do so only because they need to help produce something that people will pay for.
In my opinion, we should pay for education and a fair income for any person who wants to practice academics. Sure, you can save luxurious salaries and budgets for the superstars, but make it such that everyone who has the capability and desire to do so can work in science, or possibly other academic pursuits, that they will have a wage that will let them have a home, healthy food on the table, support a family and live a comfortable, if modest life. The condition being that all of your results are made available to the public for free and you might get called to teach.
I think of it kind of like being in the military. Enough money gets spent on the military, TONS of money gets spent on the military, and for much of it, the public sees minor benefit. But you know that when you join, that at least while you're serving, you are going to be guaranteed to have a place to stay, food to eat, health care, education options. Nearly anyone who is fit can join.
If you could do the same for science, I think that would be great. Our governance would need to change first though, and our culture. I don't trust that government employed scientists give good results over lies to promote an agenda. At least in our current private economy you have conflicting interests that can act as oversight.
But as automation and technology supply more of our needs with less labour, we're losing more and more jobs. This leads to people without jobs. If there are people in that group that are smart enough to be scientists, there's always room for more science.
[+] [-] speeder|11 years ago|reply
My mother is nagging me to join a masters degree so I can get a job as professor in a public university.
She does not think it is a good job, she thinks it is a easy job, her words were: "I think you are smart enough to pass the tests to get the position."
That is because in a public university, after some time tenured you can't be ever fired unless you commit a serious crime, so it is a "good job" in the sense you will never be unemployed again...
At least this is the situation in Brazil.
[+] [-] noelwelsh|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] civilian|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hudibras|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dougabug|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lotsofmangos|11 years ago|reply
It is a calling.
Which is why the insincere find it so easy to take them for a ride.
[+] [-] nether|11 years ago|reply
Podunk U in the midwest gets filled with MIT/Harvard degreed profs, who couldn't wait for existing profs to die off at their alma maters. It also captures the Harvard rejects with 4.0 GPA's, 2300 SAT's, 12 AP courses. Extreme selectivity at the elite institutions improves the quality of the non-elite schools. Better profs, better students. Does Podunk U have the potential to churn out some great students then? Even if its prestige isn't as good as an elite.
[+] [-] dnautics|11 years ago|reply
This is in contrast to the doorman example, or in my case, being a Lyft driver (which pays more than being a postdoc). Every night, I help society out by providing a service that someone wants, and if you want to be more abstract, by keeping drunk people off the road.
I was able to raise $56,000 for an experiment in anticancer research. That doesn't seem like much (it isn't) but in retrospect it's about right. I asked for money for one experiment, and that's what I got. It doesn't pay my salary, but I probably don't deserve it (yet) until I've proven myself at least at one stage. Drug development is risky, why should society pay much more than the bare minimum to get it done?
[+] [-] kohanz|11 years ago|reply
In general, my observation has been that the students that quit after a Masters tend to do better financially than those who continue on. That's not to say that Master's graduates are hitting the big time; they just tend to end up getting their market value.
[+] [-] mathattack|11 years ago|reply
Schools are producing too many Biology Phds. Or Forensic Science undergrads. Such is life. There's no way to predict 100% what the market will be like, so we make do. There's no intrinsic right to a job in the field that one chooses to study, and most people work in fields outside of their major.
It's also true that your choice of first (or second or third) job is no guarantee. GM used to be a job for life. Now it isn't. As individuals we make our best choices, and then have a small safety net to fall back on if we're wrong.
The only thing we should push for schools to do is show transparency on where the alums wind up, because unfortunately their incentives in producing Phds (and JDs and Russian literature degrees) differ from ours in receiving them.
[+] [-] fat0wl|11 years ago|reply
I and the other people in my graduate program don't have that option... I studied music technology, degree was pretty expensive. no stipends, literal you pay for degree, BA-style, but are not going into a six-figure business field.
These are the choices you make in life, and being presented with an opt-out like that is as they say "a good problem to have". It would be cool if every field could make intelligent people rich as they improved the world but, you know.... its life.
If I had chosen a different field maybe I would be making 6-figures instead of doing boring enterprise work (decent money but most of my research peers were less programming focused, didn't even have this type of out), but I also would be even further from my goals. I wouldn't have the foundation of knowledge that I'm hoping to return to / build from in the future.
I guess the point of this comment is that the author should be thankful that people in science are valued by industry (even many programmers are only considered "labor", basically). There are lots of fields people devote themselves to that have no industrial use & they are relegated to lower-paying dayjobs regardless of who they are willing to sign on with. As for whether or not academia should be more lucrative, well.... should people be paid to learn? is academia the most efficient way of learning? is it an antiquated social construct? many open-ended questions.... got my masters but didn't go back for PhD, waiting to see whether or not there is a better way to make it happen out on the pavement.
[+] [-] paulmd|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] carlmcqueen|11 years ago|reply
I never understood it to mean a path with a defined cost to equal a defined salary. This scientific equation of years of school to salary just feels foolish.
[+] [-] pm90|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nilkn|11 years ago|reply
But today's young scientists and researchers aren't guaranteed anything -- they're lowly paid and most likely will not get any decent lifelong faculty position. And settling for being, say, an adjunct lecturer means you'll be paid less than a high school teacher in many cases (with no pension and very minimal benefits to boot).
[+] [-] debacle|11 years ago|reply
Being a scientist offers nearly none of those things.
[+] [-] scottious|11 years ago|reply
Oh yeah, sure, while I'm young and learning maybe it's okay but at some point you realize you're just being scammed out of money
[+] [-] bduerst|11 years ago|reply
Through various internships and part time jobs, I worked both in industrial and academic labs as an undergrad, and while I enjoyed the work it helped me realize that it was more about dedication to the love of a subject than actually forging a balanced, lucrative career.
[+] [-] DaveWalk|11 years ago|reply
An informal polling of the students in my PhD program showed a large fraction (~90%) that came directly out of undergrad. Without setting foot in the real world I believe one can see believe this distorted reality. And in the economic "long term" (salary per addition year of schooling) most PhDs are probably better off than their Bachelor's counterparts, but this belies the opportunity costs.
[+] [-] sosuke|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justnotsure|11 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] eykanal|11 years ago|reply
Even MORE depressing, once our young female scientist has done a good job, built her lab, and is now in her mid-forties, if she really wants to improve her pay at that point she will have such attractive options as "department chair", which adds a lot of non-research administrative work to an already overworked person. What fun!
[+] [-] djoshea|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stalcottsmith|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tsotha|11 years ago|reply
That's because way, way too many people want to be scientists. Lots of people want to be actors, too, and most of them end up working as waiters for the same reason.
I've never run across such a smart group of people who are so dumb. Even if you win the lottery and get that coveted tenured position you're not going to be doing much in the way of research - you're going to spend all your time filling out grant applications and managing grad students.
You may as well get an MBA instead.
[+] [-] debacle|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway-4321|11 years ago|reply
If anyone on HN has any questions/doubts/need details, AMA. I'm a Life Sciences Post-Doc at a major US university. I'll try my best to answer (no personal details please).
[+] [-] greymeatball|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cryoshon|11 years ago|reply
I'd like to think that all these gripes about science are reaching some sort of boiling point, and that some solution is right around the corner-- except that I'm here in the trenches, so I know there is no such thing happening. People suffer through it, grumbling once in a while, but refusing to attempt to better their own circumstances in any way other than more work.
Many of them lead outwardly lonely or empty lives spent slaving away at their lab benches or tissue culture rooms. They cannot afford to replace their old clothes, phones, or bicycles. They live in houses with 4-6 other people, even into their 30s. When they publish their paper, it is their supervisor's name that is noticed. The bitterness and beatdown demeanor they express suffuses many of their non-work conversations.
Science is a pretty bad life in academia. Industry scientists still need to muddle around in academia for at least some period of time, but on the whole they seem much better off... except that most people from the academic side don't consider them to be scientists at all.
[+] [-] fiatmoney|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CurtMonash|11 years ago|reply
However, I don't recall grants -- beyond grad school fellowships or whatever -- playing a major role in pure math at that time.
[+] [-] varelse|11 years ago|reply
No I am not exaggerating. I would have been #3 at a very successful tech company had I chosen it over grad school and that's about half what #1 and #2 are worth these days.
That said, over a decade after I tripled my salary in a day by fleeting my post-doc for the dotcom boom, everything I learned in academia suddenly became relevant and continues to increase in relevance every year.
[+] [-] roadnottaken|11 years ago|reply
Also, for what it's worth, I did a PhD and a post-doc and have a nice biotech job that pays well. It's not an easy road (what is?) but it's not as bleak as all-that, if you enjoy doing science.
[+] [-] throwaway1979|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevinalexbrown|11 years ago|reply
Because it's fun and fulfilling. My lab has had people who left banking and consulting gigs, at extraordinary financial cost, measured in dollars. Neither seemed to regret the switch much, but many who go the other way feel the same.
Planning on a tenure track job isn't very reasonable, it's like planning for a successful startup, I suppose. But right now I get to do exactly what I want to be doing. The 'premium' economists would say I pay is worth it to me, for now.