How to Make Your PhD Work (eBook)

A Guide for Creating a Career in Science and Engineering

Thomas R. Coughlin (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2023 | 1. Auflage
224 Seiten
Wiley (Verlag)
978-1-394-19316-5 (ISBN)

Infos

How to Make Your PhD Work

A modern guide for a challenging modern PhD market

The job market for PhDs in science and engineering has become immensely more challenging in the last decade. As of 2022, less than 5% of PhDs attain permanent academic positions, yet books about navigating PhD programs continue to treat permanent academic employment as the assumed norm. Today's PhDs need tools not only for completing their programs successfully, but for positioning themselves in a varied and competitive job market.

How to Make Your PhD Work meets this need, with concrete, empowering advice that takes account of modern job market challenges and opportunities. It cuts through widespread misconceptions about STEM careers and funding, offers tips for navigating difficult degree programs, and supplies current or prospective PhDs with the tools to radically transform their post-degree career prospects.

How to Make Your PhD Work readers will also find:

• Detailed discussion of topics including postdoctoral fellowships, nonacademic careers, success in industry, and more
• Twelve stories from PhD students who talk about their relationship with their advisor, their success with their project, and their transition into their careers
• Worksheets and case studies designed to help PhDs map out potential career paths
• An author with extensive experience of the nonacademic job market and a real understanding of the challenges STEM PhDs face

How to Make Your PhD Work is ideal for any STEM PhD student, prospective student, or early career researcher looking to improve their positions in the job market.

Thomas R. Coughlin, PhD, is founder of the company PhD Source, which advises PhDs on their career prospects. He is also Founder and CEO of Core Merchants LLC, providing consulting and technology to startups and small businesses, and holds numerous positions in the biopharmaceutical industry. He has extensive experience in research, biotech start-ups, and medical communications, and has taught entrepreneurship academically and held industrial positions of many kinds.

Textauszug

1
The Twenty‐First Century PhD

1.1 A Realistic Perspective

The story of my PhD is similar to the story of many of the tens of thousands of PhDs who graduate each year. During my graduate school experience, I did not receive nonacademic career training. Instead, I was taught how to become a principal investigator (PI). I learned how to run a research laboratory at a research‐focused institution. Unfortunately, I was not taught how to convert my PhD into a job. And I was not alone.

The sad truth is that academic institutions do not budget enough money to support career training for PhDs (Malloy et al. 2021). And on top of that, your PIs do not have the in‐depth knowledge of the job market to support your PhD career search (Dalgleish 2021).

Many PhD advisors want to help PhDs navigate their job search but just do not have the experiences to help them (Figure 1.1).

1.2 The Current PhD Landscape Has Changed

From the 1960s to the 1990s, the PhD was the primary gateway to a career in academics. These were the kind of erudite, wool‐sweater‐wearing academic professors you might have envisioned. You might have imagined yourself among them, strolling across the university quad, deep in contemplation, entering classrooms full of students captivated by your lectures. This epitome of a professor still exists, but the competition to get this job and to keep it has changed drastically.

Figure 1.1 Advisors might want to help you with your job search, but they often do not keep up with the jobs available for PhDs, and therefore, other resources, like this book, are needed.

After the early 2000s, the odds of turning a PhD into an academic career changed dramatically, shifting the career landscape for PhDs. Many factors have contributed to the apparent decline in professorial positions, but the most significant factors influencing this have been:

1. the increased number of PhDs,
2. the decreased access to funding, and
3. the unchanged number of professor jobs.

1.2.1 Factor #1 : A Steady Rise in PhDs

One of the primary factors that has changed the job market for doctorates in the United States has been the steady rise in the supply of PhDs (National Science Foundation 2022). The number of PhDs granted in the United States has risen by approximately 3% on average since the late 1950s until today (Figure 1.2). In 2021, there were 52,250 doctorates awarded in total, and of those, 40,859 doctorates were awarded to PhDs focusing in the fields of science and engineering (S and E). This trending increase in the number of PhDs holds true globally, with doctorates increasing in countries throughout the world. PhDs being awarded doctorates increased by approximately 8% between 2013 and 2017 (Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development 2019).

Figure 1.2 The number of doctorates granted in the United States since 1958 has risen steadily (National Science Foundation 2022).

1.2.2 Variable #2: The Funding Rates

One of the reasons that the professor job market changed is because funding has not kept pace with the growing number of PhDs. In the early 2000s, the success rate for grants was higher than it is now (Figure 1.3). For example, in the 2000s, the success rate was approximately 32%, but by 2022, it had dropped to 21% (National Institutes of Health 2023). This drastic change is due to more competition for funding. In 1995, there were 25,225 applications, and by 2022, there were 54,571 applications.

You might be wondering, what has the government done to increase this rate of funding? Well, they have increased budgets, but not as much as it appears.

For example, the NIH budget increased from $10.8 billion to $40.9 billion from 1995 to 2021 (National Institutes of Health 2023). (Figure 1.4) During this time, annual compound growth was approximately 5.4%. However, the average inflation rate was approximately 2.5% during this same time period (Statista 2023). As such, the increase in the NIH budget is not as substantial as it appears. If the US government just received a budget increase to account for annual inflation from 1995 to 2021, the budget in 2021 would be approximately $19.7 billion. Fortunately, the NIH budget has increased, but not as much as it appears. Therefore, the real increase in the budget from 1995 to 2022 is closer to two times than it was in 1995, not four times.

Figure 1.3 The NIH average success rate in the late 1990s and early 2000s was approximately 32% and has since settled at approximately 20% from 2006 to 2022. In 2022, the NIH success rate was 21%. Research project grants in this graph include DP1 through DP5, P01, PN1, PM1, R00, R01, R03, R15, R16, R21, R22, R23, R29, R33 through R37, R50, R55, R56, R61, RC1 through RC4, RF1, RL1, RL2, RL9, RM1, SI2, UA5, UC1 through UC4, UC7, UF1, UG3, UH2, UH3, UH5, UM1, UM2, U01, U19, U34, and U3R (graph type: stacked bar chart) (National Institutes of Health 2023).

Figure 1.4 Since 1995, the NIH budget has grown from $10.8 billion to $40.9 billion in 2021, but the rate of inflation has been approximately 2.5% over this span of time. As such, accounting for inflation, the NIH budget increased from an adjusted $19.7 billion to $40.9 billion (National Institutes of Health Budget 2022).

And comparing the number of people applying for grants between 1995 and 2022, there were 2.2 times more grant applications but an increase in the number of awards of only 1.4 times (National Institutes of Health 2023). So despite the fact that the number awards increased since 1995, as depicted in Figure 1.3, the number of applications has increased at a faster rate. This is one of the main factors accounting for the scarcity of grants and higher competition.

Let's consider the number of NIH R01 grants awarded in 2022. In 2022, there were 36,198 applications and 7,816 awards given at a success rate of 22% for the coveted R01 grant. By contrast, the success rate was 32% in 2000. So despite more money being available in 2022, the success rate is lower for R01 grants than it was 20 years ago.

The reason that the success rate has not increased with increasing funding available is because there are more professors applying and, therefore, more competition.

This conundrum stems from the rising number of doctorates being awarded each year. The graduate system in the United States simply does not set up PhD graduates to match with an academic career with a clear job path. In fact, the figures do not get better for academic jobs.

1.2.3 Variable #3: An Unchanged Academic Job Market

A report in 2013 in Nature Biotechnology on PhD careers and recruitment specified that there are 3000 new faculty positions in S and E fields created annually (Schillebeeckx et al. 2013). The number of available faculty jobs does not align with the number of new PhD graduates (Figure 1.5). PhD graduates are in abundance compared to the number of faculty positions, with there being a 10 : 1 ratio of PhDs to faculty jobs. This ratio however, is even lower due to the number of PhDs who stay in postdoctoral positions applying to faculty jobs each year. An earlier study reported that from 1982 to 2011, almost 800,000 PhDs were awarded in S and E fields, but only about 100,000 academic faculty positions were created in those fields over the same span of time (Schillebeeckx et al. 2013). Taken together, these numbers are not very promising for PhDs aspiring for academic professor positions.

Does this professor application success rate still hold true today? Let us test this with a job search. Running a job search during the hiring period for the fall semester of 2023 for full‐time tenure‐track professors of engineering and professors of science that required a doctorate returned 1,934 and 5,618 job results, respectively (Indeed Job Search 2023). Of course, the search algorithm also included some positions that were not tenure track and slightly outside of S and E. Of the 40,857 newly graduated doctorates in S and E, 18% of these graduates could find jobs in the academic job market (National Science Foundation 2022). That leaves 82% of newly graduated PhDs to find other jobs. And this statistic is an underestimation because there would be more PhDs applying who graduated in previous years.

Figure 1.5 The percentage of PhDs who graduated in 2000 and 2021 were hired as professors in S and E, assuming there were 3000 professors hired each year (Schillebeeckx et al. 2013). There were 11 available positions per 100 PhDs who graduated in 2000 and 7.3 available positions for every 100 PhDs who graduated in 2021 in S and E. This estimation only accounts for PhDs who graduated in 2000 and 2021. It does not take into account the abundance of PhDs in postdocs who also might be applying for these job openings (National Science Foundation 2022).

1.3 The PhD Job Market is Vast

So where do the majority of PhDs go if they do not go into academic careers? Despite the difficulties of trying to make it in academics, the current job market for PhDs is vast and genuinely exciting. In fact, I would argue it is more exciting than ever before.

More and more S and E PhDs are finding their...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 11.10.2023
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Chemie ► Allgemeines / Lexika
• Schlagworte: Biowissenschaften • Business & Management • Chemie • Chemistry • Karriere • Life Sciences • Personal Career Development • Personalwesen • Wirtschaft u. Management
• ISBN-10: 1-394-19316-5 / 1394193165
• ISBN-13: 978-1-394-19316-5 / 9781394193165