A few years ago, a physics professor from Washington University in St Louis published a rant online about how it doesn’t pay to be an academic scientist anymore, not just in pay, but career prospects as well.
Today, it’s still touching off some pretty interesting discussions in the science blogosphere, the latest one being here from a blog by a postdoc from Harvard Medical School (one of my favorite local science blogs so far). Lots of debate in the last week about what type of person should pursue academic science, whether young scientists whine too much about how hard their job/life is, and whether “big biology” is a useful area of research.
The question to you: would you advise a young student to get a PhD in science and pursue academia as a career?
Hi Corie. I think that is a really good question. The answer depends on their motivation…I knew a guy during my PhD who thought he would be the next big thing in research and gain the ‘admiration of men and the love of women’. BAD reason. And it didn’t go well for him. There is only one good reason to do a Ph.D. and that is love of it! Nothing else will get you through. So potential PhD students be warned, especially if you are at all interested in money/status/ever buying a house.
I agree with Samia, it is definitely a matter of motivation. Unfortunately it is true that a great many students ‘fall’ towards doing a PhD off the back of having “sort of enjoyed the degree research project”. A year or so ago, I was invited to sit on a careers stand as an ‘experienced’ post-doc, with the brief of providing balanced advice to any students looking to go down the PhD route. During my session I made a point of asking the “why?” question of each visitor, and was baffled in most cases by the lack of a coherrent answer. The majority thought it seemed “the thing to do next?”, only one out of 15 or so absolutely ‘loved’ his research area and provided a confident answer (he in fact looked somewhat affronted that I had questioned his potential career path).
Would I advise a young student to get a PhD in science and pursue academia as a career?… My advice would depend entirely upon the answers I received to the twin questions of “Why do you wanted to do a PhD?” and “Where do you see yourself going?”. Just these two questions reveal just about everything about motivation. Some of the low points in my career have been during conversations with students who had taken the ‘fall’ rather than the decision to do a PhD, and did not know where they were going next or why.