noimagination

I hate to give you more ammunition, but there is an updated version of the C&EN survey out, and the numbers are worse not better:
Starting Salaries | June 4, 2012 Issue - Vol. 90 Issue 23 | Chemical & Engineering News

dheldreth

sschoe2 - Maybe you aren't thread hijacking, but you're not helpful, because there are posters here who really like science, and want some possibilites, not just the negativity you espouse.

"There seem to be a lot of parents and students that have joined this thread and are parroting propaganda and optimism when they have no real world knowledge of the science job market."

You say people just don't like your answers, but claiming that those that disagree with you are "parroting propaganda and optimism" is quite adversarial, and based on an unfounded opinion of where other people are coming from.

No real world knowledge? I have worked in hospital microbiology laboratories, the HIV/hepatitis lab at the American Red Cross, the Dairy Microbiology Laboratory at a state Department of Agriculture lab, I have taught a variety of science courses from middle school to college level. My husband is a veterinarian who has worked with small animals, large animals, ostriches when ostrich farming was all the rage, and zoo animals. He teaches in college herpetology, mammology, parasitology, A&P. Are we rich? No, but very comfortable financially, and have both truly enjoyed our professional lives. No propaganda here, just reality. it IS possible to have a satisfying career in science.

For those who would like a little positivity, the following is a great TED talk by E.O. Wilson, a quite renowned professor of Biology at Harvard, on "Advice to Young Scientists". As he says, "We need you badly", and he is talking about at all levels of scientific work, not just the PhDs.

E.O. Wilson: Advice to young scientists | Video on TED.com

scout59

It seems fashionable here to beat up on sschoe2, but he is pretty dead-on correct WHEN IT COMES TO JOBS IN CHEMISTRY.

As ucbalumnus said, not all science careers are created equal. Career prospects in the science are wildly uneven, and you do "science" majors a disservice to treat all prospects in all fields as interchangeable.

In sschoe2's defense, the job market in climate science or neuroscience is not the same as it is in chemistry. In some subspecialties of chemistry - I'm thinking organic or medicinal chemistry - the prospects are horrible, mainly due to outsourcing and layoffs in the pharma industry.

This is not negativity - it's pretty much the truth FOR CHEMISTS. If you are a potential CHEMISTRY MAJOR, then you need to look at those links to the ACS job numbers or read Derek Lowe's and Chemjobber's blog.

I used to be a lab chemist whose job (heck, our entire research site!!) with a Major Pharmaceutical Company was eliminated and outsourced. (Oh, and Classic Rocker Dad -I was actually an excellent chemist. I won national awards for my work, but that didn't help much with the job hunt.)

I miss that work every day. Oh, well, live and learn! My only points are these: someone's experience in one branch of science may not apply to another branch. And just being good in something is no guarantee that you will be successfully employed in it, especially over the long term. Just go into a science career (well, ANY career, actually) with your eyes wide open.

dheldreth

Scout59, this is really off topic, but I think I saw in a thread I read yesterday that you are completing certification to teach high school Chemistry. I did this 15 years ago (teach Biology, not Chemistry), and I still love it. I get excited to start each new school year! I hope you enjoy teaching. Because of your real world experience in Chemistry, you will have a lot to offer students. I weave my previous work experiences into many of our topics (infectious disease is particulary fascinating to me) and it really makes a difference to students. Good luck!

tobeducated

There are tons of science jobs. In fact, at the state public health lab the discussion was ongoing regarding the huge numbers of those about to retire. As a hiring manager in biotech I was always looking for the rare bio major with cell culture experience.

So, my suggestion is to find specialty courses like molecular bio and bacteriology and then get a part time college job/full time summer job in a lab. Develop those skills even if you are making very little money. Then the state lab or biotech will hire you.

Or obtain a Med Tech degree. These are always in demand. And there is nothing wrong with working on an MS degree in the sciences. Often, with lab experience, you will be in a stronger position for being hired and for promotion. Quite often Ph.D.s are over qualified.

If you are willing to go where the jobs are, I say follow your passion.

sschoe2

The State labs are low paying and they are doing away with the nice pensions and job security that used to be the one feature that attracted people to work for them. Also there are tons of biologists with cell culture experience, including myself. I cultured E. Coli, sf9 (insect), yeast, and mammalian cells (HEK, NIH 3T3, COS 7, Jurkat T cells and many others over several years. It is not a skill in high demand. I sought out such jobs but I had more success pursuing jobs related to my chemistry training which as I said isn't a whole lot better. Biology is significant;y worse than chemistry for jobs despite what the BLS says.

Med Technologist requires a BS, a year of rotations where you aren't earning anything and in many states a certification. After all that the pay is from $38-55k pretty mediocre. Med techs are at the bottom of the health care totem pole, the doctors treat them like crap very often, the job involves a lot of shift, weekend, and Holiday work, there is not much room for advancement. Med techs with 20 years of experience don't earn a whole lot more than fresh grads. Many hospitals in states without certification requirement hire technicians rather than technologists which cost much less. There are many medical fields that require less training and have better pay and conditions. There is a good reason hospital have difficulty recruiting for the position.

Anytime you hear someone complain about a shortage of labor it is typically a result of poor pay and benefits, poor working conditions, or insane hiring standards.

sschoe2

dheldreth I don't know what to tell you. I have worked in industry for many years now and interact with a lot of industry scientists. Noone who is actually in the field would make statements along the lines that it is a great or even decent paying position nor that it is anything other than insanely hard to get a good job in the field. My previous company new that full well as do many of the other companies. That is why they were able to get away with keeping them on contract with no benefits year after year. They contractors typically stayed 2-4 years until they gave up the field and went back to school or career changed or yes once in a blue moon they got a good job with benefits and it was like they won publishers clearing house it was such an accomplishment just to get a stinking job as it was with myself.

The stats I posted previously also illustrate this. Less than 40% of graduates have full time jobs and less than 20% have decent ones.

Your Husband has a professional degree and as I have always maintained that is the only worthwhile reason to get a science degree
to go to professional school. As for yourself, have you had to search for a job lately other than teaching? Things have rapidly deteriorated over the past decade with outsourcing.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion...ZsmTh1sGmtVr8L

dheldreth

sschoe2, I don't doubt that times are tougher out there now than the last time I looked for a job. But it isn't only tough in science, I guess that is what I think students choosing a career path should know. It will be much harder to find a good job in many different fields, so you may as well choose something that you like, because typically you are going to be better at and therefore a preferred employee in something you have a passion for. My older D graduated from UG in 2010, and many of her classmates who did not go on to graduate school struggled to find a well paying job right out of college in their selected field, no matter what it was. My older D went to law school - now there's a career that gets hammered more than science! There are droves of posters on CC that would tell her she is crazy. However I KNOW her, and suffice it to say it is what she was meant to be.

BTW, my undergrad degree was in Medical Technology! While I would agree with some of the things you say about med techs, my personal experience was very positive. For me, the salary was sufficient, and rather than staying the same almost tripled over 14 years. I don't know if you have ever worked in a hospital, but med techs aren't "the bottom of the totem pole". Most employees understand the expertise of different allied health professionals, and use that. The physicians in the hospitals I worked in never treated me or my colleagues like crap. They would come to the lab, talk to us about cases, invite us to lectures on various medical topics. Now there were some old school doctors who treated everybody who wasn't an MD like crap, but those dinosaurs are disappearing. And working shift work, holidays, weekends? That goes with the territory in health professions that are needed 24/7, and if someone didn't know that going in, they really didn't do any research!

What was great about being a med tech is that you have a set of skills that are valued by a lot of different employers, not just hospitals. Anywhere we moved or anytime I just wanted to change jobs, I was able to find one immediately. We moved to the middle of nowhere for a couple of years, not a hospital around, but the Dept of Agriculture lab hired me to work as a dairy microbiologist. I did not know how to do any of the tests they did, but they felt that I could do the job because of my background. I recently took a course at a genetic testing center that is located in a rural area. The geneticists there said they prefer to hire a med techs because of their lab skills, but they are hard to find out there. If I had wanted to quit teaching and move, I would have had a job.

It seems you've had a hard time professionally, and you make some valid points. I agree it is more difficult for a PhD in research, and going in with that knowledge and eyes open is important But if you look around CC, you'll see posters quoting statistics saying almost every field is crappy! One could be completely immobilized from ever choosing a career if they focus only on the statistics. Maybe I am "parroting optimism", but I'm not interested in the alternative. Negativity radiates like a toxin from those attached to it, and I have seen first hand that given a choice, employers would much rather hire a person who has a positive outlook rather than negative.

soccergurl7988

The pharma market IS atrocious right now...I gave up trying to find a job in that specific area with my M.S. in Biotech after getting 0 bites. However, there are people hiring out there, but it may not be what you feel you're 'entitled' to get. That's the problem with my generation, everyone feels they are entitled to start off at a 6 figure salary with a glut of vacation days, no holidays, no shifts. Guess what...you're not.

Being a science major means getting creative with your job search. I got an interview with a financial services consulting firm despite having 0 financial experience and not even having had an accounting class because they felt that technical majors were more able to learn on the job and could adapt to their changing needs. I chose not to take that job because I had better offers, but getting creative works.

hostgames

I am a current PhD-track graduate student in a Biomedical related field and here is my opinion on the matter. If you graduate undergrad in biology science related field and you do not want to pursue medical school you have 2 options.

1) Apply to Graduate school
2) Work for a biotech/pharma company for an hourly wage job for 3 - 7 years and EARN a promotion

If you apply to graduate school for a PhD, and you are accepted into a good program, you get PAID to go to school. Generally you take home 23k to 30k per year. If you include not having to pay for classes then you could say 40k - 50k per year.

After your PhD, you generally do a post-doc for 2-6 years and earn ~40k - 60k.

After that, you can apply for higher level positions within biotech/pharma making ~80k -100k, or try to find a position as a professor.

Funding for master degrees varies. Some might not get any assistance in paying for school and others might get scholarships and research fellowships as well (take home of usually 12k - 18k). After your masters, you can apply for a PhD program, or begin joining the work force within biotech/pharma.


If you graduate with an undergrad degree and begin working within biotech and pharma, you are probably going to be earning ~30k per year with an hourly wage. You can work your way up to senior level positions, but you need to work hard and prove you are smart. Just like in most businesses. Also location matters, IMO you need to live in a state where there are a lot of biotech companies in order to find a job. The entry level positions are hourly paid, so companies are not going to be flying people in for interviews.

Also, if you join the work force right from undergrad, then decide to pursue a higher degree, most graduate schools appreciate that you have real world experience in a related field and look at it as a bonus.

Kel2012

I don't think people on this site have something against science. In my first and only thread, I mentioned how on this site, every major/degree is criticized by a lot of people. That was just my observation from simply lurking the site before signing up. Though I admit I changed my major from Criminal Justice to Accounting because of this site and another forum, with some research of my own as well. You will read a thread about how a Business major is terrible and worthless, and that a degree in Economics is the way to go. Then you look for Economics threads, and you see people criticizing an Economics degree, and telling you to go with Finance, and guess what, you look up Finance and then it's also deemed worthless. It's just an example, this didn't really happened.

In the end, the majority of members on this site, have a problem against almost every major, you would think college is worthless as a whole, reading through this site. Not just science majors. Read the opinions, conduct your own research, and don't just go by what you read here. With that said, this is a very helpful site despite the amount of critique many majors get. I guess it's a good site if you want to read about the negatives of every major?

hostgames

After going through some of the posts, I thought it would be helpful to post some statistics from some sources. Knowing that people generally do not get good information from anecdotal stories, blog posts, or second party sources. For fun, I included statistics for chemistry specific majors as well.

Sources:
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf10318/pdf/nsf10318.pdf
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf09317/pdf/nsf09317.pdf

Data comes from 2006 (Most Current)

----Employment Data for B.S. Degree Holders----
Percentage of science graduates employed within science field who are not pursuing more schooling: 25%
Chemistry Specific: 48%

Percentage of science graduates employed, but not in a science field, who are not pursuing more schooling: 67%
Chemistry Specific: 40%

Science Graduates who are still full time students: 26%
Chemistry Specific: 44%

Unemployment Rate for science graduates: 9%
Chemistry Specific: 11%

Median salary of all employed: 35k
Chemistry Specific: 35k
-------------------------------------------------

----Employment Data for Master Degree Holders-----
Percentage of science graduates employed within science field who are not pursuing more schooling: 49%
Chemistry Specific: 69%

Percentage of science graduates employed, but not in a science field, who are not pursuing more schooling: 43%
Chemistry Specific: n/a

Science Graduates who are still full time students: 23%
Chemistry Specific: 30%

Unemployment Rate: 8%
Chemistry Specific: n/a

Median salary of all employed: 50k
Chemistry Specific: 50k
--------------------------------------------------

----Employment Data for Science Related PhD Degree Holders----
Employed Full Time: 86%
Chemistry Specific: 88%

Employed Part Time: 11%
Chemistry Specific: 8%

Unemployed/Not-Seeking Work: 3%
Chemistry Specific: 4%

Involuntary out of Field Work: 3.1%
Chemistry Specific: 4%

Salary of Full-Time Workers: 85k
Chemistry Specific: 96k
----------------------------------------------

Here is another good statistical survey with data from 2009: http://www.ascb.org/newsfiles/ASCBSa...yReport_08.pdf

This source does not contain unemployment info though

bluebayou

And there will be hundreds of persons saying that majoring in French Lit is a huge mistake. It's all relative.

Given the economy, (nearly) ALL traditional liberal arts majors find job opportunities to be scarce. (Econ still does relatively well, as many in applied math/stats.) The difference is that it has finally caught up to sciences. Bio has always had a glut of students do the fact that it is chock-full of unsuccessful premeds.

Beats driving a cab like some Lit majors.

scout59

dheldreth - yes, that's me. I am almost done with my certification process to teach high school chemsitry - thanks for your good wishes! I am really looking forward to teaching (despite all the naysayers and their horror stories about teaching.) As much as I loved my old lab job, I think I will enjoy this new career just as much. Here's hoping!!

discoinferno

I'm sorry but "roller coaster designer" and "oyster wrangler" had me laughing out loud.

There is nothing is worse than those "what can you do with our major?" brochures...