What chemistry grads do in Academia

College Majors Science Majors
1

<p>I was wondering what the 50% of MS and BS grads do in academia. I just found my answer.
Apparently science is now a minimum wage job.</p>

<pre><code>Northwestern University
Evanston, IL
Admin - Laboratory and Research
04/19/2011
05/09/2011
Full Time
** $10 to $11 USD Per Hour**
</code></pre>

<p>Job Summary:</p>

<p>Under direct supervision, prepares and assists with standard research procedures following detailed research protocols. Responsibilities may include performing a variety of laboratory and research tasks for the PCOS Team.</p>

<p>Specific Responsibilities:</p>

<p>Retrieve samples from the freezer/laboratories, item track and organize them.</p>

<p>Performs research related duties as required or assigned.</p>

<p>Minimum Qualifications:</p>

<p>Bachelor degree in chemistry and/or biology, or equivalent combination of education, training and experience from which comparable skills can be acquired;</p>

<p>Adaptability;
Attention to detail;
Strong communication skills, oral and written;
Efficiency/dependability;
Energy/drive;
Initiative;
Highly organized.</p>

<p>PC Skills:</p>

<p>Proficient in Microsoft Office suite</p>

<p>How to Apply:</p>

<p>For consideration, please send your resume and cover letter to tempcenternorthwestern.edu For all resumes received, if there is interest in your candidacy, the temporary center will contact you.</p>

<p>“As per Northwestern University policy, this position requires a criminal background check. Successful applicants will need to submit to a criminal background check prior to employment.”</p>

<p>Northwestern University is an Equal Opportunity Employer</p>

2

<p>That’s certainly not a great wage, but that’s definitely significantly higher than minimum wage, which is $7.25 an hour.</p>

3

<p>In logic and statistics we call that a hasty generalization fallacy. You can’t take one non-randomly obtained sample and use it to draw a valid conclusion about an entire population, or even a subset of a population.</p>

<p>You need a randomly obtained sample with a large enough number of samples (n>30) to approximate a normal distribution from the sample statistic before drawing any inferences about a population. You need to take an intro to stats class before posting this garbage.</p>

4

<p>I think that’s about what I was paid as a extern at my school after graduating early but before going to grad school. I imagine this is a similar position.</p>

5

<p>While it seems like a meager salary, it is certainly a lot more than what people get paid in the majority of the world. People die of starvation, disease and civil war. Corporation’s exploiting children and hard working people to 5 cent an hour wages, but they still manage to raise families. Here in America, we cry about being unable to afford the latest trends in technology. I don’t know about anybody else, but in this economic downfall, I’ll gladly take that crappy $11 dollar an hour job over being a parasite on the welfare and unemployment system. And besides there is something called a ladder, which you climb in order to get access to the better opportunities. This is even visible in the business world, where jobs are more mundane and working hours are longer as in 12+ hour work days and extremely fast paced. The work day does not end after that bell rings on Wall Street. Everything has its ups and its downs. You cannot achieve anything great without having to sacrifice anything great.</p>

6

<p>There is no ladder in science except the one hanging half off a cliff that when you reach the end of you fall into nothingness. We just had 3 permatemps quit this week to leave the field 1 teaching 1 took an admin job at an insurance company 1 is headed to nursing school. They had been here for 3 years without raises or benefits.</p>

7

<p>Also, don’t forget it’s Chemistry, which is hard. Not to mention Chemistry major is time-consuming due to the lab courses.</p>

8

<p>

Uhh… how exactly are you going to “climb the ladder” working as a lab tech in a university? What are they going to do… promote you to a professor?</p>

<p>

Really? You think there’s a job more mundane than one with the description “Retrieve samples from the freezer/laboratories, item track and organize them”?</p>

<p>

Not that Wall Street has anything to do with this thread, but guys on Wall Street make more per hour than this chemistry lab tech in a day… or in a week.</p>

9

<p>

</p>

<p>Difficulty of major has nothing to do the wage you earn. It is sad but that is reality.</p>

10

<p>My point is that Chemistry major is not worth the effort to end up earning such low wages.</p>

11

<p>I think that is everyone’s point. One has to make a living and that isn’t going to likely happen with a chem/bio major.</p>

12

<p>I think you have higher standards of what constitutes a living, unless my area just has an outrageously lower cost of living than the rest of the country. $10/11 an hour should be able to pay for rent, food, and bills, with plenty of money left over to spend on entertainment and build some savings, assuming you don’t have a family to support or a ton of loans to pay off. I don’t make nearly that much now even with scholarship money and I live comfortably even with paying for college.</p>

13

<p>That’s why you take engineering/physics/computer courses and go to grad school for engineering/quant finance. Although we could’ve started off as engineering (not biomedical) or finance majors, sometimes we get tricked by dumb teachers/dumber friends that tell us math is hard.</p>

14

<p>I have many friends who live off of minimum wage, and live semi-comfortably. You just have to be frugal and pinch every penny you have. Learn how to use every resource you have without it going to waste. Sure they may never own 2 BMW’s and a 3 bedroom house, but they will survive pretty well. It really isn’t about how much you make, it’s how you use the money you make. Someone making 120k can easily find themselves in the poorhouse if they spend it recklessly, just because they have that kind of money. People just need to learn how to be less snobbish and greedy, which is a big reason our country is in the condition that its in.</p>

15

<p>^
That is not the point they are trying to make. The point is we don’t go through 4 years of college and loads of debt for that.</p>

16

<p>The typical salary for a chemistry major is somewhere around 30,000-50,000 a year. </p>

<p>You take one outlier and act like it’s close to the population mean. Very, very irresponsible way of getting your frustration with your personal failures out.</p>

17

<p>It’s really not difficult to go out onto a job board and find a job posting with a ridiculously low wage. For example, should we conclude from this example that any business major should expect a wage of 10-14/hr to start out? No, because that would be ridiculous, the median entry-level salary for business majors is 40-50K a year:</p>

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18

<p>The NACE salary survey has the entry-level chemistry salary at about 40k, which equates to about 19/hr assuming a 40-hour work week.</p>

19

<p>12-15 dollars an hour for a bachelors degree required job in Chicago, IL. According to the OP’s logic, we must conclude from this job posting that wages for all bachelors degree holders are just as dismal.</p>

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20

<p>The range I see for BS grads are $15 to $20 (no benefits) in the private sector. When I read the last salary stat from the ACS that says of the only 40% BS/MS grads that are employed full time 50%+ are in academia. Academia is well known to pay less than private industry. Therefore the $11 job makes sense.</p>

<p>The point I am making is that when you take in to account tuition and opportunity costs with post college wages a science degree is not only worthless it is less than worthless. It has a negative ROI there in a huge monetary penalty for being foolish enough to get one.</p>