Hard Times for Ph.D.s
Once there was a time when graduating with a Ph.D. in the hard sciences meant a one-way ticket to a successful career that offered intellectual satisfaction and prestige. A graduate education—requiring diligence, patience, and lots of commitment—was well worth the hard work. But it is a seller's market no more. Students graduating with hard-earned doctoral degrees in the hard sciences these days are faced with a thinning supply of research grants and jobs. Yet the number of students getting accepted into, and graduating from, advanced programs remains fixed. Despite the harsh realities of the job market, research universities are contributing to the Ph.D. job crisis by neglecting to adjust the number of students being trained and failing to alter their curricula to make Ph.D.s better prepared for today's economy.
Physicists were some of the first Ph.D.s to be impacted by the new and unfriendly economic environment. With the end of the Cold War came defense cutbacks that quite suddenly ended an era during which demand for scientists trained in physics and engineering was high. The news of grim job prospects has finally reached undergraduates; now enrollment into graduate physics programs is starting to decline. But while physicists have begun to adapt to the new realities, other fields are producing more scientists than the market will be able to bear. Moreover, academia has become a popular target for cutbacks in government spending. If federal support—constituting 60 percent of all university research spending—dries up, tough times can be foreseen for scientists as leaner budgets result in fewer jobs.
The Stanford Institute for Higher Education Research 1995 report, "The Production and Utilization of Science and Engineering Doctorates in the United States," (William F. Massey, ed.) states that the "natural production rate" of science doctorates exceeds the demand from all sources by 22 percent. Underemployment has become a huge problem, with many Ph.D.s remaining in transient, transitory post-doctoral positions that offer modest salaries. Fewer Ph.D.s are getting the stable tenure-track research positions in academia for which they first hoped. Cornell Biochemistry, Molecular and Cell Biology Professor John T. Lis explained that only a limited number of positions exist in educational research institutions, but many opportunities are becoming available at highly-funded universities and especially in private sector biotechnology companies. "It depends on the science and on the flexibility of the applicant. I'm very excited about current opportunities. New biotechnology companies are showing up every day, and if there are not a lot of jobs after all these new developments, it's a sad thing."
Science (10/6/95) reported that the American Chemical Society has called for a reduction in the number of Ph.D.s being trained. For the most part, however, the scientific establishment has resisted such suggestions. Instead, institutions like the National Science Foundation have proposed a broadening of Ph.D. training so that scientists are better prepared for non-traditional careers for which they may have to opt due to the scarcity of academic positions. R. Chris Wilkins, a Ph.D. candidate in Genetics and Development at Cornell University, recognizes the importance of considering alternative careers: "There aren't a lot of jobs opening up in academia [and] there are a lot of Ph.D.s. These people are all trained in universities and feel that that's the place to get a job, but more jobs are opening up in the private sector. Businesses, biotechnology companies, and the like are springing up every day, and Ph.D.s have to realize that [positions with these companies] are alternatives to the classic job in academia."
Some argue that such alternative career opportunities can readily absorb graduates. What is not being considered is that for a student who dedicates five to eight years of life to intensive training and laborious work, not being able to do what he or she was trained for could be five to eight years wasted.
Alternative careers can sometimes be as difficult to enter as traditional research careers. For example, teaching at a public high school, a profession many with doctorate degrees consider pursuing and one that would greatly benefit from the skills and expertise of scientists, is often out of reach for many graduates. Most states require at least a year of additional course work in education followed by unpaid student teaching. Not even a Ph.D. degree can substitute for these requirements. This prospect is often economically unfeasible for scientists who have families to support in addition to themselves.
Though cutting back on graduate admissions has been recommended by some, this tactic can cause problems of its own. Professors at research universities are usually very dependent on graduate students for the work they do as teaching assistants, graders, and research assistants. Downsizing can create problems in staffing labs and maintaining diverse and high-quality classes. Lowering the number of students in a department can also lower a program's prestige or ability to get research funding.
If universities are not going to respond to the job market by restricting admissions, then they must accept the responsibility to train their graduate students in a way that prepares them to be more flexible and more attractive to a wide variety of employers. Cornell is one school which has taken note of this responsibility; the university requires graduate students to minor in areas outside of their major field of study and also encourages interdepartmental study. Sara Acharya, a graduate student at Cornell, expressed her support for these policies: "I feel that taking minors in other fields not only makes one more marketable to employers, but actually helps you along your thesis research by giving you a broader perspective." Employers in the private sector sometimes complain that scientists think too narrowly as a result of their very specialized graduate education. Scientists who are flexible and who have the ability to adapt to new projects and to work in a team are what industry employers desire. Interdisciplinary study exposes students to a broader range of approaches that can help them tackle problems in both their graduate research as well as in the workplace.
Despite the need for schools to heed the call from the private sector to train scientists so they are better prepared for nonacademic careers, it would still be unwise to tailor academic training with the sole intent of making scientists employable in private sector. Most of the practical scientific applications that industry focuses on have their foundations in the basic research that goes on at universities. Graduate schools cannot become vocational schools. High degrees of specialization are still necessary for scientists and scholars to carry on society's most precious secular knowledge from one generation to the next. Thus graduate schools have an obligation to preserve their roles as institutions that provide the resources and the training for those who seek discovery, expertise, and knowledge in the fields they love.
Additional contributions by Michael A. Seidman