<p>So I’ve heard that only 50% even make it to the graduation. Among this half, about how many settle down as professors? Maybe it differs between HU/SS/NS?</p>
<p>for humanities students, only 40% get the PhD and only 20% find tenure-track positions. this year, many schools suspended their searches for new hires, and who knows what the job market will look like next year, so the real number of tenure-track jobs for humanities PhDs might actually be lower.</p>
<p>20% of all beginning PhD students, or 20% of the 40% who actually get the degree?</p>
<p>20% of all beginning PhD students.</p>
<p>out of 5 humanities students, 3 don’t finish, 1 gets a tenure-track job, and 1 doesn’t. but again, that was when the economy was still fine. now in this recession, things are even worse.</p>
<p>note that this is highly dependent upon the area of the humanities. additionally, in some areas of the humanities (esp. those closer to the sciences/social sciences), there are many non-professorship jobs available. additionally, in my field attrition rates for the Ph.D. are generally quite low (if a school’s attrition rate is above about 10-12% or the time to completion is above 6.5 years, I considered it a major red flag when I was applying).</p>
<p>non-professorship jobs are great. in particular for historians, there are a lot of job opportunities that allow you to continue researching and publishing. [Beyond</a> Academe: About Beyond Academe:](<a href=“http://www.beyondacademe.com%5DBeyond”>http://www.beyondacademe.com) is a good site that gives advice on finding a job as a historian outside of academia.</p>
<p>but yes, some schools have better attrition rates than others. some schools are also better at placing students in certain subfields (i.e. cultural anthropologists, asian historians, etc.) than others. the numbers i quoted don’t apply to every situation, but it’s a good average of most humanities programs.</p>
<p>The situation isn’t rosy for you humanities people. Of 10 people in the humanities starting a Phd, 4 will finish, 2 will get tenure track and 1 will do so at a major research university.</p>
<p>The situation is substantially better for those of us in the biomedical sciences. 30 percent will end up with a tenure track position, 25 percent with non tenure track academic, 15 gov’t, the rest are distributed between industry, alternative careers and further education. This is after 1-2 postdocs.</p>
<p>What about the social sciences people?</p>
<p>So (given that the economy is stable) be in the top 20%? That doesn’t sound too bad, does it?</p>
<p>Top 20 percent of people getting Phds. This is a bit different than top 20 percent of your high school class, top 20 percent of college class or top 20 percent of the people in line at the DMV.</p>
<p>Top 20% seems like an optimistic estimate.
I would guess that in biology, even in some of the top PhD programs, at least half don’t even go on to do postdoc in academia.</p>
<p>Shnjb, you may not be right on that point. These are the placement statistics for Duke
<a href=“http://www.gradschool.duke.edu/about_us/statistics/placebio.htm[/url]”>http://www.gradschool.duke.edu/about_us/statistics/placebio.htm</a></p>
<p>86 of 106 graduates with a Phd go on to post doc and then academic tenure or non tenure track. Presumably anyone getting a tenure or non tenure track faculty position has at least one post doc.</p>
<p>Don’t forget that getting on the tenure track doesn’t mean that you will actually receive tenure. I’d also wonder about the statistics for non-tenure track faculty positions. How many of those are full-time jobs? How many more are part-time adjunct positions?</p>
<p>That’s a very encouraging stat Belevitt.
It’s interesting that Duke provides this kind of useful information.
The only other school who provided this type of information was for me Rockefeller; other than that, my only other information was the Science magazine article entitled, And then there was only one, or something like that.</p>
<p>However, among biological sciences (I do not know what the differences are between biology and biological sciences), % postdoc seems to be near 50% though, with 285 out of 504 completing a post-doc.
In fact, excluding the biology people, 199 out of 398 PhD’s in biological sciences went on to do a postdoc, which is exactly 50%.</p>
<p>This is certainly higher than Yale biophysics in the 90s, which had a class size of 38 and only 1 tenured with 2 more possibly being tenured.
In comparison, Duke biological science PhD’s are getting academic tenure track positions at around 13% (8% for Yale biophysics).</p>
<p>Where else have you found this type of information for?
I know Rockefeller had about 80% academic postdoc rate.</p>
<p>I have been told this information at interview sessions for Vanderbilt and UNC. Vanderbilt has a 90% rate of people going to postdocs. I don’t remember the specific number for UNC but it was similarly high. </p>
<p>Admittedly those statistics from Duke seem woefully incomplete…what are the other 168 (unknown + other) of the 504 doing? I would bet a fair number of them are in postdoc positions. I think the difference between biology and biological science in that page is that biology refers to students classified as in the bio dept whereas biological science includes cell, molecular, micro, physiology etc. </p>
<p>If you take a look at lac and teaching colleges, nearly all faculty who got their Phd in the last fifteen years have a postdoc (admittedly it is at their graduate institution suggesting that maybe they couldn’t find a better place, but that is neither here nor there). The situation is even more slated towards individuals with postdocs when you look at university faculty. Also, take a look at the cv’s or bios for people in government research and you will see nearly everyone in a leadership position did a postdoc. While my experience in industry was only a couple of years long, my observations were that Phd’s without a postdoc came in at “scientist” level while those with a postdoc came in at “senior scientist” which carries management responsibilities. You might notice people without postdocs in academia being classified as “instructors” which might as well be a postdoc itself.</p>
<p>I don’t think doing a couple of years of postdoccing is a bad thing. It seems necessary and very common. In fact, I have heard that you don’t really specialize until you are in your first postdoc. Anyway, I try not to get too far ahead of myself, I haven’t even started grad school yet, I probably shouldn’t obsess over doing the right postdoc just yet.</p>
<p>So how much % of tenure-track but not tenured(i.e. assistant) professors eventually achieve tenure? I’m just curious.</p>
<p>This varies greatly from school to school and from department to department. Some top schools are notorious for using the tenure process to weed out the ‘weaker’ researchers.</p>
<p>Of course doing a postdoc is a terrific thing.
I would be seriously concerned about any school whose students do not do postdocs.</p>
<p>What are you talking about? Where did you get these numbers?</p>