A career in academia?

[appianway]

http://wuphys.wustl.edu/~katz/scientist.html

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=122106

http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science

This sort of belongs in the university section, as academics work at universities and it requires a lot of study to actually become one...

What do people think about the above articles? They mostly pertain to science, but the same arguments can probably apply to those aspiring as academics in the humanities. Working as an academic was once my dream - I planned to get my PhD from a big name institution as soon as possible - but the reality seems to be that there's no job security and that you often conform to the prevalent ideas in the scientific community. As a consequence, I'm leaning further and further away from academia.

In addition, does anyone think the problems facing academics have flow on effects in the university system?

[Gloamglozer]

I believe this thread would be interesting to Quantum_JPG.

[acinod]

I'm in Year 12 and was thinking of eventually getting a PHD in Maths or Physics or something but after reading that, I'm not actually sure anymore.
Those above articles are based on American scientists but would it be the same for Australia? I went on Wikipedia (here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professor) and it says that an Australian full professor has a salary of $128K a year which is the highest in the world for professors (around 65% more than US professors). So wouldn't a career in academia be better in Australia? Or is the pretty much the same

[Russ]

I'll read the articles when I get back from work and comment on what's actually relevant but this

you often conform to the prevalent ideas in the scientific community

is extremely true. The scientific community is (hypocritically) intolerant of ideas that aren't the established norm or are contradictory to established ideals. Think Kuhn, but paradigm shifts are very difficult to get started

[slothpomba]

This is mainly relevant to America but it makes a lot of good points - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ph.D.#Value_and_criticisms .

Particularly the opportunity cost thing. Click it and read about that too, it really helps in thinking about these things.

I too lately have been thinking about academia but i did a bit of a hunt around and the salaries are in the range of 70-~125k. I mean that’s certainly not a bad wage but it is a lot lower than i expected. Considering the 8 or 9 possible years you spend preparing for that particular job, the pay-off isn't all that high. Unless you can score some kind of quasi management job later. Like head of the school of biology or something.

You could do a 3 year bachelor, get a job and within those 6(9-3) years you probably would of got a decent job and probably moved up the ladder a little. Of course there is a breakeven point and a point where the PH.D surpasses the salary you would of earned in those 6 years but that point is a depressing 7 or so years until it surpasses it. That is a bloody long time to see it pay off.



Also, don't forget the fact a Ph.D is a fairly hard slog as well. You might get a stipend of 25k a year or something but that’s pretty much all you got to live with. Most programs I’ve seen only allow you to work a maximum of x hours a week. It's usually a fairly small number as well, like 8 for example. Unless you are still living at home at that point or have rich parents, it is going to be a bit of a financial struggle on that kind of money.


I'm also worried about the job thing, especially if you're in a rather obscure field or something like that. Sometimes there isn't a lot of places for these things either you might have to wait for someone to retire or die... It seems the government here is also a fan of slashing research budgets anytime it needs some extra cash as well.

As for the idea thing, i can’t comment on other kinds of science but this has been very prevalent in the history of biology/medical science type things. The first doctor who suggested doctors wash their hands before delivering babies was laughed at. Many of the times, some of the best theories we have today were considered batshit insane by the scientific community of the time. Sure, it might be the right answer and damn revolutionary but if it seems wacky at the time, many journals will not publish it and no one will see your idea. It kind of damns us to mediocrity. A lot of other great ideas have only been rediscovered, that’s right, rediscovered like 40 years after they were first postulated. I'd wager there’s still an good idea or two out there that everyone pretty much forgot.

If i do decide to go onto pharmacology though it might be a bit of a better outcome since drug companies basically have money cannons.

[appianway]

Thanks kingpomba for that information on salaries My only concern about basic evaluations concerning PhDs vs BA/BSc/Bwhatever is that they don't take into account the earning potential of people who would be capable of PhDs. To get into reputable PhD programs, you need pretty decent grades (in the US English PhD programs have 2% acceptance rates), and often people who achieve highly can do so in more than just academia. You might find that these individuals would be able to earn $120,000 with simply a BA/BComm after shining in the work force. I'm not sure whether it takes into account individuals who are unemployed, and it certainly doesn't take into account the earning potential if these individuals had pursued postgraduate law, medicine, engineering or business instead of PhDs. I'm pretty sure the Stanford law starting salary is $160,000...

In addition, although the salary for tenured professors in Australia is high, it's incredibly difficult to get tenure - you need to be brilliant, and you need to be super lucky with how things pan out... and then there's the question of whether the field is even rewarding anymore. During my work experience, I worked alongside someone who'd gained a PhD years ago, who spent most of her time labelling test tubes.

[appianway]

Also http://chronicle.com/article/Graduate-School-in-the/44846 is interesting...

[Eriny]

Career-wise, academia is going to get interesting. At them moment in Australia, something like 400 academics leave per year and they are being replaced at around 260 academics per year. By the time the baby boomers retire, it is going to be a real skills shortage area (and a PhD isn't exactly an easy qualification to get!), and the cash will likely follow.

I'll read the articles when I get back from work and comment on what's actually relevant but this

you often conform to the prevalent ideas in the scientific community

is extremely true. The scientific community is (hypocritically) intolerant of ideas that aren't the established norm or are contradictory to established ideals. Think Kuhn, but paradigm shifts are very difficult to get started

Yeah, those guys from Perth who discovered that ulcers arent actually caused by stress went through years of alienation from the scientific community until they were (finally) ready to accept that their research was good (and then they got the Nobel Prize). Science has a really weird culture.

[appianway]

Career-wise, academia is going to get interesting. At them moment in Australia, something like 400 academics leave per year and they are being replaced at around 260 academics per year. By the time the baby boomers retire, it is going to be a real skills shortage area (and a PhD isn't exactly an easy qualification to get!), and the cash will likely follow.

I thought supply of PhD graduates far exceeded the number of positions in the US/many other countries... is it likely that there'd be an influx of skilled immigrants?

[Eriny]

This is what Ive been told by a member of the tertiary education union. I would imagine that it wouldn't apply to the US where there is a huge influx of people going to graduate school because of the recession. Maybe skilled migration to Australia would come as a result. Equally, it is unclear how individual disciplines would be affected.

This makes for interesting reading on this matter  - http://www.capa.edu.au/media/2008/byebye-boomer-professors

[Mao]

Not sure about others, but I plan to pursue an academic career in science simply because I enjoy it. That's gotta be a good enough reason. (That and y'know, making some contribution to our society is kinda nice too)

[gemgem49]

I work for Swinburne uni faculty of life and science doing telephone interviewing and spoke to someone whose profession was in 'academia' (philosophy) and he said he earnt 150k+ a year. Pretty damn impressive considering I consider philosophy to be useless, lol.

[slothpomba]

Really? That much? I googled a bunch of jobs one night and none of them i saw got that high...Wow.

[Neo]

I thought I would share a couple of relevant articles i found. Both are Australian, so they should provide a clearer insight in to the options/possibilities of any prospective PhD student.

The Good Universities Guide:

http://www.gooduniguide.com.au/Postgraduate-Students/Research-Degrees/Life-after-graduation

This one is a lengthy albeit informative thread between current and prospective PhD students that i found on the whirlpool forums:

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1370939


I have the ambition to one day complete a PhD. Just the thought of being able to contribute to the field that I love and research with distinguished scientists is exciting.

I completely agree with Mao in that you should only pursue it if you have a passion for what you're studying but things like poor job security, poverty-line income (I intend to raise a family) and the inability express or work on your ideas really kills all that excitement and hope one might have had initially.

Sorry for resurrecting a 6 month old thread but with the amount of academics on here i thought it would be a relevant  issue/point of discussion.

Is anyone on here currently completing a PhD program or are there people that intend to ? 

[humph]

So I am currently one year through a maths PhD, but that's about to change - I'm going to convert it to a Masters, and then do my maths PhD overseas (probably at Princeton). Here's my thoughts:

In Australia, the standard postgraduate scholarship is an Australian Postgraduate Award, which is $22,800 per year for three years (the standard length of a PhD), plus six months more if needed. I also got an $8,000 per year top up on top of that (my department just hands them out for no reason... weird), and I tutor some courses, which also gets me a bit more money. Overall, I probably earned a bit more than $35,000 last year, with only the tutoring income being taxed. This was certainly more than enough to live on (I definitely could've survived on just the $22,800), and I paid $200 a week rent and bought my own food and all that jazz.

Academia is probably not a career you want to do if you really value earning as much money as possible. The income at the top is more than enough to live on (full professors earn $130,000 or so a year, department heads etc even more), though it takes a while to get there (and obviously you don't earn very much at all while doing a PhD or a postdoc). It's certainly more than you'd get as a teacher, say, but a lot of industry jobs would be higher. On the other hand, you have a bit more freedom in what you can work on as an academic compared to working in the industry.

Job security depends on your area of study and where you work. In the US, academics want tenure track jobs so they can get tenure and hence have strong job security - if you're in a tenure track job (i.e. assistant professor), then you want to do as much research as possible and publish lots. In Australia, it's a bit different: we don't exactly have tenure like they do in the US, so the job security at the top probably isn't quite as good, but you earn more at the bottom. Once again though, you have to publish lots to move up.

This last point is a big reason why most people don't research things that aren't in vogue (unless they have tenure, in which case they're less afraid to work in less popular areas) - you want to have well-received publications so you can get promoted, and the best way to do that is work in areas that have lots of people who'll read your stuff. That being said, this seems to be less of a problem in mathematics, because it's much less likely that publications will be controversial and shunned - in (pure) maths, proofs are either right or wrong (and to be published, they're nearly always right), so the worst that can happen is that someone can find your paper boring.