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Did you even read K-Luv's post or were you so happy to find someone who could support your view that you just glossed it over? He freely admits that the majority of people who go into the discipline find low pay and disappointment. The reason he does better is because he is a gifted grant writer.
There are also people out there who are either well connected or good at selling themselves. I know outgoing people who are experts at job searching, have such good sales skills they could sell ice makers to eskimos, and they can likely get any job in reason. Such people can often have a comparative religion degree and be able to phenagle their way into a job but that is not typical especially of scientists who are attracted to facts rather than spin, marketing, emotional exploitation (networking/cronyism) etc.
Noone claimed that the odds of doing well in science are equivilent to a lotto ticket. What MSC and I have claimed is that odds are less than 50% I believe 32% is the only stat ever quoted 100-68% of science grads not working in science related areas. Those are not good odds to be gambling your future on. If I was having elective surgery and told I had a 32% chance of the surgery going smothly I know I would reconsider.
You just quoted statistics without providing a source. Isn't that a no-no for someone who claims to have a science degree?
Second, I would love to see those stats particularly the one that the odds of getting a job in your field across all of science is less than 50%. Or even better the one that states 68-100% are not working in their field especially as the way you written it is is not physically possible. So please, in the name of the scientist you claim to be, cite your sources.
Because anecdotal as it is, I graduated from Rutgers University not a terribly long time ago, with 12 other students with oceanography degrees and we are ALL working in our field except for one who died in a car accident. Additionally, my four best friends who majored in science (from different schools) all have jobs in their field, now granted one is at a NPO for only about 40K a year but the rest of use make decent money.
Is it possible we are the elite few? I suppose so, but the odds are strongly against it. Especially since we all majored in the supposedly cursed marine sciences.
Additionally YOU were the one who named this thread "SCIENCE one of the most overrated careers" when even your own sources makes that claim for one single field. They mention 4 or 5 other sciences as some of the best careers. So even using your own reasoning, it maybe best to avoid at most a handful of particular science fields and instead focus on other ones since OVERALL its still a good career choice.
I understand why someone like the OP can be upset. He probably studied chemistry or physics or biology hoping it would get him a great paying job. The truth is that tens of thousands of people study that. So there is no need to be selective when you have so many to choose from. Whereas if you studied something like aeronautical engineering or biomedical engineering or chemical engineering. Employers would rather hire those instead of the others because it shows that they have higher thinking skills than the others. But the problem with those engineers is that not enough people study them.
Honestly though. Study something engineering that very few people do. You'll find great amount of opportunity and then some.
I just watched a documentary about this topic on television. I'll try to find it and post a link here. It basically stated that because there was a shortage (in the past) of graduates in the science fields, employers began outsourcing. Major companies even fed millions of dollars into foreign universties to influence the curriculm and enhance their chances of wooing graduates trained specifically for their needs. Its seems to be a matter of long term cause and effect.
Its pretty sad, though. Society is willing to pay unheard of amounts of money to a man or woman who can act (nothing against the arts) but throws chump change at the gifted men and women who are scientifially inclined and willing to make a difference in the world. Little thought is given to the medications that sustain our bodies, the new technologies that we have grown to depend on, and things such as the safe operation of cars, airplanes and the other things we take for granted.
So, if you never hear it from anyone else... from one science geek to all others... thanks for all you do!
That is not entirely true. Those who come up with the initial medicine make a lot of money. The pay for scientists who come up with everyday inventions is high.
more than half of those with bachelor of science degrees still enter careers having nothing to do with science.
Sure seems like something is repelling Americans when they bust their butts for years for a science degree (amongst the hardest next to engineering) only to flee the field upon graduation.
But the reason is not, as some people say, that young Americans lack the smarts or the skills to succeed in those fields. Instead, it appears that longstanding U.S. policies have destroyed the incentives that used to attract many of the nation’s best young minds into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (the so-called STEM fields).
“It’s a labor market story,” not an education story,
Although the numbers of young Americans studying STEM in high school and college are as strong as ever, the very best of those students, as indicated by their SAT scores and college grade point averages, are less likely than in decades past to stay in STEM when they leave college.
Translation: the smarter you are, the quicker you get the heck out of science.
Like this article, did you actually read it? Especially the paragraph underneath the graph you are referencing?
Another 12.5% of the SESTAT set are teachers, another 11.3% are doctors and nurses and another large portion are technicians. That accounts for almost 60% of graduates.
"There were approximately 7 million people with at least one S&E degree who are working in what SESTAT defines as non-S&E occupations. What are these occupations, and how are these individuals distributed across those jobs? As you can see, there is an interesting distribution of S&E-degreed people in non-S&E occupations. About 1 in 8 are some kind of teacher, either non-S&E postsecondary or other types of teachers. Another 11.3% are in health-related occupations, which includes doctors, nurses, and technicians.There is also a large group of technologists and technicians, including computer programmers. Each of these occupations certainly are S&E-related, but they are occupations in which do not necessarily require having an S&E degree."
Then there are the managers (many of whom used to be classified as S&E by SESTAT) and marketers of things like pharma companies, which account for another 20%.
"The other two large groups with the non-S&E occupations are managers and administrators, and sales and marketing occupations"
So again using your source, there are plenty of doctors, nurses, high school science teachers, pharma sales reps, etc who are finding jobs from their degrees that may not be working in academia (which is how the SESTAT set defines S&E). Using your source its more like 70% of all people with S&E degrees are working in fields that are related to their degrees even if they are not working in academia.
Are you really going to argue that doctors and nurses who have biology degrees do not count as gainfully employed scientists?
From the updated SESTAT there are about 4.7M people in their data base working in non S+E jobs and less than 40% are considered to be working in fields not related to their degrees.
So if you thought I was claiming everyone who gets a degree will end up a professor I apologize for being unclear. The majority of people with science degrees will end up in science related careers. About half in traditional academic or research settings and the rest in related careers such as doctors, nurses, pharmaceutical managers etc.
I saw this article a while ago and I see where you cherry picked your quote but did you read the article itself?
It clearly makes the point that there are not enough scientists particularly in technology related fields.
Again, I agree many people with science degrees do not end up as "scientists" if you ignore doctors, nurses and all the health personnel. Additionally from the SESTAT data set, many of those grads go on to become lawyers and doctors, but that does not remotely mean they couldn't go on to work in science field. You own source above bemoans the LACK of scientists.
Translation: the smarter you are, the quicker you get the heck out of science.
So I went and got the actual study used in the third source and read it.
Interesting part
"Overall, STEM retention at the three transition points (high school to college, college to first job, college to mid-career jobs) was:
1. relatively unchanged from high school to college from the 1972/77 to the 2000/05 cohort
2. higher from college to first job from the 1977/80 to the 1997/00 cohort (although it dipped markedly in 1997/00 from the peak for 1993/96); and
3. higher from college to mid-career job from the 1977/87 to the 1993/03 cohort"
So while this study has found that the top kids leave for greener (monetary) pastures its is not remotely saying there are not STEM jobs aplenty to be had. Quite the opposite.
Next.
And while you did again cherry pick the part that it maybe due to salaries and instability of traditional STEM jobs; the authors actually go on to suggest that it is due to the top performers going on to become STEM MANAGERS. Did you miss that part or ignore it?
"It also may be that STEM-prepared students are increasingly being recruited into jobs that are not categorized as STEM according to the occupational categories captured in the surveys examined here but jobs that do require or at least utilize their STEM education. The latter type of explanation suggests that market forces are generating more STEM management jobs not formally classified as “STEM,” or even generating more strictly “non-STEM” jobs that require a very strong understanding of STEM."
Are you suggesting that is what happened to you? You are such the top performer that you are being recruited away from the top paying science job your currently hold for even better salaries in other types of work? Because didn't you state before you do not make even close to the median salary those less than genius scientists are earning?
So basically Lou's source is only valid if it is making the point you want it to and if it makes the point that science can be a rewarding career it is wrong. LOL!
You also have to consider the sources here. Between these threads and my personal experiences, I'm at a loss. I'm currently training a temp who has been a QC chemist for 15 years...15 years. And he's a complete moron. These people follow their SOPs, run their machines in the same way a GM plant factory worker does, and I think it drains the brain over time. They're left waxed. They then, stupidly, as techs, confuse themselves with actual scientists who use their brains on the job. The biggest mistake the US has made thus far when it comes to STEM is dishing out degrees, with that grand old grade inflated curve, to people who have no business considering the sciences. The days of pushing go, on this or that instrument, for a good salary are long gone. Thank goodness! Maybe in ten years I won't have to be training some dolt with a decade of experience who is expected to use his noodle and not be led around by the nose.
exactly. who in the hell wants to be a scientist, when all the money is in the finance/insurance/real estate sector?
That's a good point. I suppose it would be people who *like* doing science and who value job satisfaction over the all mighty dollar.
I'm sure there are plenty of people in finance/insurance/real estate that are satisfied with their jobs, but the type of person who likes doing science probably isn't one of them. I guess what I'm trying to say is people who don't like doing science need to change their major to something they like doing or to something that pays better (depending on their world view on work-to-live versus live-to-work.
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