One thing you may have recognized – or learned from Charles Craik’s keynote if you are in the US. symposium – that tenure track science jobs are hard to come by. While academic research positions have always been considered the “standard” career path for PhDs in science, they are now considered anything but.
Instead, as Craik explained, there are many great career options for graduate students and graduate students are in high demand in a variety of fields, including law, communications, education and business.
Difficult work atmosphere
Knowledge of the labor market is not encouraging. A recent National Science Foundation report on doctors found that a doctorate takes about eight years. Graduate students have significant debt and over 12% of graduate students have $70,000 in student loans. They often do not have a job after graduating. Nearly 40% of doctoral students had no job offer in 2014.
Those who get tenure-track jobs earn about $60,000 a year. About 39% of graduate students pursue graduate studies, where the average salary is $40,000 per year. That’s less than the median starting salary for a BA graduate, which is $45,478. Some of the PhD holders are part-time or extra-curricular professors in scientific positions.
These positions represent 76% of the university’s workforce. They pay less than $3,000 per class and offer no benefits or job security.
Temporary part-time teaching elsewhere
If there are no permanent full-time jobs, it is worth looking for a part-time job at another university. Your manager can help you with this, as academics often contact each other to find short-term part-time jobs, and these jobs are often not advertised publicly when they have to be paid by the hour. Although you will only be responsible for one unit or class, you will be able to present a broader resume to potential employers, and you will learn a lot by working with new colleagues and seeing how administrative and management issues work. institution.
Taking on a role like this could lead to practical difficulties, such as: B. Travel to and from another facility, often far from your home. It may seem like you are spending a lot of money to get this job and not earning much, but it will pay off in terms of career development in the end, even though it might not be the -financially beneficial and maybe even a little hard.
Something for you postdoc?
Do this if you want to stay in academia and become an independent scientist.
How do you know if you want to be a scientist? Well, there are many ways to get into science. For example, some people use the doctorate or postdoc as a way to advance their careers because they can move to other countries and find other networks where they can get better opportunities. In other cases, good students who work closely with a professor or research group may be given the opportunity to stay on as a postdoc for longer projects.