<p>Both fields are tough to make a living in. If you want to advance in the field, you will have to get a graduate degree in both. Unless you are clever enough to own a company. Graduate degree for chem and bio are both going about 6-7 years:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/education/edlife/18phd-t.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/education/edlife/18phd-t.html</a></p>
<p>If you choose not to get a graduate degree, you will have increased job security and less geographic restriction. However, your career will practically stall within a few years of joining the work force. As far as the outlook for either one, it’s pretty bleak:</p>
<p>This is a graph of layoffs for pharmaceuticals: [Who’s</a> Next? | Business | Chemical & Engineering News](<a href=“http://pubs.acs.org/cen/business/87/8711bus1.html]Who’s”>http://pubs.acs.org/cen/business/87/8711bus1.html)</p>
<p>And return on investmen (ROI) is practically zero over a scientist’s lifetime:
[Ph.Dollars:</a> Does Grad School Make Financial Sense? - Science Careers - Biotech, Pharmaceutical, Faculty, Postdoc jobs on Science Careers](<a href=“http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_development/previous_issues/articles/2008_04_11/caredit_a0800055]Ph.Dollars:”>http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_development/previous_issues/articles/2008_04_11/caredit_a0800055)</p>
<p>This year has been just as bad and likely to continue for 2-3 years.</p>
<p>Many students that come to grad school fit into a few major categories: 1) Think a higher degree is automatically better 2) Indebt, need to avoid Sallie Mae 3) Don’t know what else to do. That describes about 80% of people. Don’t be in that class of people. Med Chem has taken a serious beating job wise and is unlikely to recovery in the next decade. Bio has many opportunities, however the extremely long training period (Grad school + Post-Docs) put people in the predicament that their field may not be so hot ten years after entering graduate school. Genomics and MedChem are two such examples.</p>
<p>If you must go into science, pick something you will enjoy and will be proficient at. The competition is too intense to pick something you cannot be really engaged in for the remainder of your career. Also, seriously consider professional school and going into business, they will provide you with much security and are not as isolating. After many years of grad school, I’ve seen people break down in tears over the realities of trying to forge a living out of this stuff, please choose something where your enthusiasm will carry you through the hardest times.</p>
<p>For those that need the harshest criticism of the science field: [Women</a> in Science](<a href=“http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science]Women”>Women in Science)
For those interested in Physics read Michio Kaku: [So</a> You Want to Become a Physicist? : Welcome to Explorations in Science with Dr. Michio Kaku](<a href=“So You Want to Become a Physicist? : Official Website of Dr. Michio Kaku”>So You Want to Become a Physicist? : Official Website of Dr. Michio Kaku)
Kaku is not as prone to hyperbole as Greenspun, though Greenspun’s arguments are actually lining up very well with the current job outlook since 2006.</p>