I disagree. The unemployment rate among physics PhDs is between half and a third of the college graduate population as a whole. It is true that there are more PhDs than academic jobs, because each professor might graduate ten students over her career, only one of whom is needed to replace her. But this is only a problem if one insists on an academc job.
However, the non-academic job demand for PhD graduates in most fields is more limited than for those in physics and a few other fields.
A good number of these are international students.
Also, only 55,000 of these degrees are Research Doctorates, according to NSF’s Survey of Earned Doctorates (Doctorate Recipients from U.S. Universities: 2020 | NSF - National Science Foundation)
The rest include MDs, VD’s, DDs, EdD’s, PsychDs, and a dozen more. Even those 55,000 include other Doctorates than PhDs.
Yes, the footnote clearly says what’s included. There are also international students in the AA, BA/BS, and Master’s data that I linked to.
I was merely giving data that show the number of graduates at US institutions at each level (AA, BS/BA, Master’s, Doctor’s)…a total of about 4M across all categories, NOT 4M just for Bachelor’s, which someone had erroneously claimed.
I looked at where new PhD graduates went from Economics at UChicago for the last 5 years.
Academic - Tenure Track
US 34
International 33
Academic - Non-Tenure Track 7
Public Sector
US 15
International 9
Private Sector 39
Graduate school is kind of a funny thing…it’s really a need based training based on what she studies in undergraduate. I didn’t find out I needed it until I was in my 30s and I needed to change careers. Plus, graduate school can be a very expensive mistake if it’s the wrong career. My advice, just focus on undergraduate for now. Once she has an idea of where her passions are and settles on a major, then she can make a decision during her 4th year of college. In fact, it’s common to start a job somewhere, and get a masters at the local university while the company pays for it. There’s lots of options available.
It also depends on which graduate school. In many fields, an MA/MS is helpful in getting higher pay and a wider range of jobs, like in environmental sciences or engineering. In some fields, like biology, jobs with only a BS/BA are pretty low paying and limited in scope, so going to grad school is generally the rule for people who stay to work in the field. Of course, one should always check whether employers prefer hiring people with masters who also have a number of years experience, so that they get a more experienced employee for the higher pay that comes with a masters degree. In that case, a few years of work between undergrad and graduate school is useful. This is also useful for checking whether this is the right career. Although in all of these fields, a masters degree is generally the most cost-effective degree, going straight to a masters and only then discovering that you don’t really like the field is a distinct possibility.
Degrees like an MBA can also be a particularly expensive mistake. It is almost always out of pocket (some universities do have financial support for masters students in other fields), it is one of the most expensive degrees out there, and most MBAs do not make enough to justify the cost of the MBA.
That is actually a relative large number who are in an academic career track. In general, only around half of all Economics PhDs go to academia. It may be because Chicago has enough of a reputation in the field that academic jobs are as attractive and as available as non-academic jobs.
I did the same for U of Colorado. They are in the 50ish range for Econ PHDs. What really disappeared are the public sector jobs. These are mainly at the central banks. For the academic jobs, the level of school changed. The private sector jobs changed from Amazon and GS to non profit organizations.
Academic TT
US 11
International 7
Public Sector 1
Private 4
Academic non TT 5
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Huh, interesting.
Never would have remotely guessed that. So half of Bachelors eventually complete some sort of graduate degree (even if years later).