<p>ucbalumnus, I agree – I was probably too terse. My sense is that one needs a serious graduate degree in biology to get an interesting job. Probably the same is true in chemistry. But, I’m not really tuned into that segment of the labor market. Is there an over-supply of PhD’s in biology and chemistry as well? </p>
<p>Your observations on physics grads are consistent with mine.</p>
<p>An article in Nature recently discussed PhD degrees, and their supply and demand.</p>
<p>[Education:</a> The PhD factory : Nature News](<a href=“http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110420/full/472276a.html]Education:”>Education: The PhD factory | Nature)</p>
<p>Wow, ucbalumnus. Things look a lot grimmer than I would have guessed for the biological/life science PhDs. Some serious over-supply in the US. ([Education:</a> The PhD factory: Nature News](<a href=“http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110420/full/472276a/box/3.html]Education:”>Latest science news, discoveries and analysis) and <a href=“Redirect Notice”>Redirect Notice). Disappointing.</p>
<p>OP: You need to ask your DS to look into majors that not only satisfy his passion but also provide a base that can be used to launch successful career option. In the field of engineering/computer science, there is one major at the undergraduate level that provide the broadest of the future career choices. i.e. EECS (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science).
It allows students to choose a vast field of careers as:
- Electrical Engineer
- VLSI Design Engineer
- Communication Engineer
- Control Engineer
- Robotics
- Computer Scientist
- Computer Software Engineer
- Computer Hardware Engineer
- Consulting
- Mathematical Modeling
- Quant I-Banking
- With a minor in Biology - Computational Biology
- Biomedical Engineering
- Bioelectrical Engineering</p>
<p>So explore the colleges that offer EECS as an undergraduate major. It is one of the most flexible undergraduate major. The requirements for the basic degree are tougher than most major at any university but it’s well worth it as it provide a plethora of choices and your DS based on his passion will be able to find the right choice within this broad major.</p>
<p>Some chemistry specialties may be doing okay, career-wise (think material sciences.) However, in my field - organic/medicinal chemistry - the recent gyrations of the pharmaceutical industry have been brutal to the careers of chemists at all levels. The consolidations, mergers, outsourcing (China and India) and subsequent downsizing of US research falities have really decimated job prospects, for now and for years to come. </p>
<p>I know there is some hiring in biotech/start-ups, but I don’t know if that’s enough. I know good mid-career chemists who have been job-hunting for 3+ years, and it’s not rosy for young PhD chemists either. I hear a lot of anecdotes about mulitiple multi-year postdocs.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yes, EECS (or ECE as it is called in some schools) is broad, but the student will likely have to make some choices in course work emphasizing some areas, since it is difficult to get course work in reasonable depth in all of the areas listed.</p>
<p>Also, some of the listed subareas are subsets or supersets of others. For example, 1 is a superset of 2-5, 13, and 14 (as well as the areas of energy and power systems engineering and device electronics and semiconductors that are not listed). Others have considerable overlap, such as 4/5, 2/8, 6/7/8/12.</p>
<p>But many other majors (in engineering or otherwise) have many subareas of specialization as well. (And the quantitative finance area is theoretically available to those in any math-heavy major.)</p>
<p>My son started as an Undeclared Engineering major. The curriculum for Engineering is pretty much the same for all branches the first year so he didn’t have to choose until the end of freshman year. He wasn’t positive about engineering starting out but we figured it was easier to start there and if he didn’t like it move to physics or math or anything else. Moving into engineering later was more difficult. He also decided that he wanted a more liberal arts school as opposed to a tech one. He really did not enjoy his visit to Cal Tech.</p>