Why is it tough to become a scientific researcher? What are some of the barriers in the field? Are there any other options? I have a PhD - now what? I discuss these questions and more in today’s Ask a Spaceman!
Support the show: http://www.patreon.com/pmsutter
All episodes: http://www.AskASpaceman.com
Follow on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/PaulMattSutter
Like on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/PaulMattSutter
Watch on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/PaulMSutter
Go on an adventure: http://www.AstroTouring.com/
Keep those questions about space, science, astronomy, astrophysics, physics, and cosmology coming to #AskASpaceman for COMPLETE KNOWLEDGE OF TIME AND SPACE!
Big thanks to my top Patreon supporters this month: Justin G., Matthew K., Kevin O., Justin R., Chris C., Helge B., Tim R., Nick T., Branea I., Lars H., Timothy G., Ray S., John F., James L., Anilavadhanula, Mark R., David B., and Silvan W.!
Music by Jason Grady and Nick Bain. Thanks to WCBE Radio for hosting the recording session, Greg Mobius for producing, and Cathy Rinella for editing.
Hosted by Paul M. Sutter, astrophysicist at The Ohio State University, Chief Scientist at COSI Science Center, and the one and only Agent to the Stars (http://www.pmsutter.com).
EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION (AUTO-GENERATED)
You know what time it is. It's time for Ask a Spaceman. I'm your host, Paul Sutter. You've got questions and I've got answers. You know how the show works, but let's keep trying until we give up. You go online to Twitter or Facebook. Use the hashtag Ask a Spaceman. Send questions my way and I will send answers your way. How easy is that? You can also follow me directly on Twitter and Facebook. My name is at Paul Matt Sutter. You can also check out the website, AskASpaceman.com. We have show notes. We have archive of episodes. every single episode ever produced. You can also follow me on YouTube. That's youtube.com slash Paul M. Sutter. Send questions there. And there's all sorts of zany, wacky science videos available for your enjoyment on that show. We have one simple goal with this show, complete knowledge of time and space. And on the road to complete knowledge of time and space, I'm going to return to a set of questions that I talked about a month ago. This is at 92 Rufino on Twitter asking, what does it take to be an astrophysicist? Vicky K via email asking, what kinds of non-academic jobs are available in astronomy and physics? And how do I become a space woman and or space man? And the reason I'm returning to this topic is I think in the last episode that I did on this, I was able to flesh out what a career in physics or astronomy looks like.
But I didn't quite get to answering the question. So now I really want to dig in to those questions of what kind of jobs are non-academic jobs are available. And was it take to be an astrophysicist? And then what I want to extend those questions because I want to explore really some challenges that exist in the current state of the field. So. Previously on Ask a Spaceman. I talked about how you needed certain skills in order to become an astrophysicist, but not necessarily the skills you might think. It's more about grit and determination and curiosity and passion and appetite for learning and openness to critique and willingness to communicate than the skills you might traditionally or perhaps naively associate with a career in physics or astronomy. And that the knowledge of science, the raw stuff you need to learn, and the ability to use math are a part of your scientific training. That's the first part of your career is to learn the body of knowledge to make you an expert and to give you the ability to use mathematics, to wield mathematics like a sword against the villain of science.
Ignorance? I'm not sure where I was going to take that metaphor, but we'll go with it. You learn those skills in school and especially on the job. For example, you may barely know how to use a hammer, but I bet after 10 years of carpentry, you'll know how to use a hammer. You may not know how to play the oboe, but 10 years of determination and grit and willingness to learn and openness to critique... you'll learn how to play an oboe. You may not be the best oboe player in the world, but you'll know how to play an oboe. The career process for a physicist is pretty straightforward. Also for an astronomer, undergrad, grad school, postdoc, and then a faculty or research position. But I ended the last episode on this topic on a cliffhanger. There are no jobs. Dun, dun, dun! Before I get there, what are the jobs? I don't want to say there's zero jobs. There are some jobs available to someone who has a PhD in physics or astronomy. There just aren't a lot. So what are those jobs? Well, of course, there's the professor at a major research university.
What you typically associate with the word scientist, someone in an office with piles of books and handwritten notes and a chalkboard full of equations and diagrams. And maybe they're a bad teacher or maybe they're really inspiring teacher, but that like, that's like the vision you have the stereotypical vision. What does a professor do? Well, not a ton of research. at least personally. A professor spends a lot of time teaching. They have a required teaching load. They do a lot of administration and departmental service, like they'll serve on committees for picking undergraduate students or mentoring grad students or organizing postdoctoral affairs, et cetera, et cetera. They do a lot of service. A lot of the work done in a department organizationally is done by the faculty themselves. They'll spend a big chunk of time writing grants, writing grant proposals, trying to get that juicy, juicy grant money. They will mentor undergrad and graduate students. They will manage the team of postdocs.
A high-level researcher at a major research university. isn't necessarily a personal research, they will still engage in personal research, you know, they'll they'll write up some codes, they'll be drafting some papers, but they're more like a research boss. They're more like a research manager, they have a team. of people, of undergrads, grad students, postdocs, associated faculty that are working with them. And that role, that level of your career when you're a full tenured professor, it's more like managing that team to make a productive research life for everyone involved rather than you down in the trenches doing the dirty work yourself. I'm not saying professors don't do it. And there is, of course, a continuum. Some professors are more lone wolves. and do a lot of solo research, and some are managing teams of over 100 people in their labs. So there's, of course, there's a spectrum, but I'm trying to give you a picture. Typically, a research professor will have a guaranteed income at least nine months out of the year, and that's tied to the teaching and service.
They use the grants to pay for student assistance, to pay for postdocs, to pay for gear, for pencils, for summer salaries. Sometimes they can buy themselves out of a teaching obligation with grant money. So that's a professor at a research University. There's also many teaching universities and smaller say liberal arts colleges and they will hire PhDs in astronomy and physics. It's basically the same thing that I just said, but the balance between research and teaching is of course shifted to teaching. So you'll have a bigger workload. You'll have typically smaller grants to work with, less flexibility to hire big teams. You can still have a productive research career, of course, but a large chunk of your time is going to be devoted to teaching. Outside of the universities for physics and astronomy, there's also a bunch of national labs. These are primarily run by the Department of Energy. These will be Los Alamos Lab or Oak Ridge Lab or Argonne or Livermore. Dotted across the country, these lab positions are a mix of your own research, whatever your own personally interested in, and assigned projects.
So research projects that support the particular mission of the lab. Your income in these positions is not typically guaranteed. They're what's called soft money positions. It means that the funding has to keep flowing, either from the lab budget itself, like the lab budget will have a chunk of money devoted to it, assigned by Congress, given to the labs to portion out how they see fit to serve their missions, and you might get a slice of that. You can also go off and pursue external grants from the National Science Foundation, from NASA, or from whatever, and that will pay your salary. If you can't get any external grants, then you might be assigned 100% of your time to internal projects that are not of your choosing. And if your specialty isn't required anymore by those internal grants, then you won't remain competitive. And goodbye. That's it. No money for you. Sorry. Figure out something else to do with your life. So while they're nice jobs because you don't have to do a lot of teaching and you don't have to do a lot of administration, it's tricky.
Year to year, you never quite know where your paycheck is going to come from. There are other positions at universities and labs, typically with a title like research scientist. This is like a super postdoc. You're working for one particular research group. Again, you're dependent on funding for that research group. So maybe it's a huge collaboration, like one of these satellite-based missions, like Hubble or WFIRST or JWST. And your research is specifically tied to that mission. You play some important role with that mission. Again, in those large research groups, those large collaborations, there's various infrastructure jobs like running observatories, doing data science, doing computer engineering and computer science in support of those large projects. Sometimes they'll hire people with outside expertise, like they'll hire a real computer scientist. And sometimes they'll hire a PhD in physics or astronomy who happens to be very strong or happens to be an expert in one of those engineering focused fields and they hire them.
So like the Planck satellite or the large synoptic survey telescope or the dark energy survey or the square kilometer array. These are giant multi hundred dollar instruments, sometimes billion dollar instruments. And there's a lot of jobs to support one of those missions. There are jobs literally all over the world. You can get jobs in the United States, in Europe, China, the rest of Asia. You can get jobs in South Africa. You can get jobs in India, in Australia, in New Zealand. There are openings all over the world. The universal language of physics is broken English. So it sounds like a lot. And to be true, kind of gave a little bit of a clickbait headline. Sorry about that. There are a lot of jobs. But there are a lot more PhDs produced every year. Way more than the number of available jobs. And to be totally honest, I have a really hard time recommending kids going into the field, which breaks my heart because I love giving talks. I love speaking to kids. I love speaking to the next generation, finding out what they're curious about.
And every once in a while, well, not every once in a while, basically every talk, at least one kid will come up to me and say, I want to be an astronomer. I want to be a physicist. I want to be an astrophysicist. I want to do what you do. And of course I tell the kid, you know, chase your dreams, junior. But deep in my heart, I'm thinking, oh, There's a really good chance that you're not going to make it. There's a really good chance that just based on the numbers, the statistics involved, there is no long-term position for you. I don't have firm numbers in front of me, but there's about 10 PhDs produced in physics and astronomy for every one open position. Every year, a certain number of positions open up from people retiring, funding streams coming online, grants being available. But for every one open position that is created, there's about 10 people who are qualified to take that position. But that sink in assuming all PhDs want a career doing research. That's about a 90% dream crushing rate, which is pretty abysmal.
We are producing way too many young scientists that can not just based on the funding, based on the raw numbers, cannot have a long-term future in science. And that's a tough pill to swallow. The hiring for these jobs typically happens all at once. Jobs are announced late summer, early fall, all across the world. Everybody submits. The deadlines are usually December, January, and then the selections start and they're filled by April for a start in the next academic year. So basically all of astronomy and physics grinds to a halt every fall. Every fall from October to December, not a lot of science gets done because on the student side, on the young career side, the students, grad students, and postdocs, they're busy filling out applications. And they're not just filling out one, they're filling out a few dozen applications. And on the senior researcher side, they're writing letters of recommendation and they're reviewing applications. They're sorting through, you know, they put out a job call.
Here's 400 qualified candidates. and they have to review them very carefully. So not a lot of science gets done, and that happens every single year. There's a website that you can visit called the Astro Rumor Mill. This is a wiki, so community curated website. It is a list of all open postdoc and faculty positions. And since it's community curated, people will say, oh, I've been shortlisted. I'm in the list of top six. You know, they called me back. Oh, I got the job. I picked the job. So, you know, if you were hoping for that job, don't wait for a rejection letter. You can just read the rumor mill. Let that sink in. A single web page, one page on the Internet. That's not that long. can list every single job available in astronomy in the entire world. Imagine doing that. Imagine attempting that with, I don't know, accounting. What if there was an accounting rumor mill that listed every single open job in accounting? That would be a gigantic, unnavigable website. That's why other career websites like monster.com, I guess, I'm not sponsored by monster.com, but it was the first example I could think of, where you need jobs to sort by location and you can pick and choose and you can target selectively.
No, when it comes to astronomy and physics, here's a dump of every single open position. You're going to apply to basically every single one and maybe you'll get through. That page is total poison, by the way, for aspiring young scientists because you get to see very, very clearly who your competition is. And if they happen to get jobs and you don't, and you're trying to understand why, that can drive you insane. So I actually recommend to graduate students and younger postdocs that I work with or mentor not to bother with the rumor mill because it's just, it will drive you insane to read that page. And I mentioned the term postdoc before a few times. Let me explain that a bit and explain how there's been a cultural shift in the past few decades in the physics and astronomy community that led to this unfortunate situation where there's 10 PhDs produced for every open job. And it's very difficult to get a long-term position. When you get a PhD in physics or astronomy, you're not considered quite ready yet for a real job.
You need to prove yourself as an independent researcher. Maybe you've been nestling under the protective wings of your advisor all through grad school. And, you know, if we sunk a lot of money into you, gave you a faculty position, maybe it turns out you don't really have your stuff together and you're just not going to make it. You're not going to fly on your own. So we need a period of time where you can be separated from your advisor, separated from your graduate institution. Whole new group of people, maybe even a whole new line of research, and see if you can really prove yourself to be the independent scientist that you like to think you are. These positions are temporary. They're called postdoctoral research positions, or postdocs for short. They'll last two to five years. And... In the good old days, not that they're ever really a good old days, but back in the day, you would do a PhD, you get your PhD, you would compete for an open postdoc position, someone else's research group, and you do maybe one, and then you'd apply for faculty positions, and that'd be it.
And then you'd have a job. And it's not like back then there were tons and tons of research positions. We haven't lost a lot of faculty positions in the past few decades. There's always been not a lot of jobs in astronomy. But in the past, there were fewer PhDs being produced and there were fewer postdoc positions. So as soon as you get out of grad school, you get your PhD, you're in your mid-20s, you apply for a postdoc, postdoc is incredibly competitive, very low success rate, If you don't make it, all right, that's life. You're in your mid-20s, you're fresh out of grad school, you have your PhD, you've got time to pivot, to move on with a different career. But if you do make it, if you do make it into that postdoc, there's pretty much a one-to-one match in the pipeline. If you make it to the postdoc phase, if you make it to that temporary research position, then most likely somewhere out there, somewhere in the world, There is an open, long-term research position for you, like faculty researcher at a university.
It may not be your top choice. There may be a higher teaching load or research load, depending on your interests. It may not be in the location you would prefer, but there most likely is a job available somewhere. Starting in the 1990s, there started to be a lot more graduate students. As universities themselves started to grow, there started to be a lot larger undergraduate populations than we've had in the past, which means a lot more people are gonna go into every field, including physics and astronomy, So you're going to get a lot more people with bachelor's degrees in physics and astronomy starting in the 90s. A fixed percentage of these are going to want to attempt a career in the sciences, a long-term research career. So they'll go on to grad school. And there's more money for grad school to support the undergraduate mission. Like if you have a bigger department with more undergrads, that's more tuition money assigned to your department. So you can hire more grad students and you need more grad students to do the teaching and the grading and all that kind of stuff.
So undergrad population started to grow. Graduate students population started to grow. But there were roughly the same number of open faculty positions. What we need, what we would love to see is just more money, more long-term funding. Like, oh, wow, there's lots more people attempting a career in physics or astronomy. Let's find the long-term funding so we can open up some more faculty lines so we can keep up with demand. But over the same time frame, over the 90s and over the 2000s, funding for science has generally been going down or at best flatlining. There's not enough money. floating around to open up new long-term research positions. It is, however, easier to get short-term funding. I want to do this research project, and this research project is going to take three to five years to complete, and I want to hire an assistant. I want to hire one postdoc for this one project based on this one grant so that they can do a lot of the work. That's much easier because it's a lot less money.
it's much easier to convince a funding agency to let me hire a postdoc than for a university to open up a new faculty position. So there's more undergraduate students, there's more graduate students, and now there's more postdoctoral positions. But there's still this cutoff. There's still relatively the same number of faculty positions. So we've come about, now we have a career path where instead of doing graduate school, one postdoc to really test your mettle, and then onto a faculty position, you might do two postdocs. You might do three. You might do four before you're considered even potentially for an open faculty position. Unless you're a ridiculous rock star, they won't even look at your application unless you've done two postdocs. So there's still a major cutoff. There's still, you know, just 50 years ago, 60 years ago, there were more PhDs produced than open positions. That's okay. But back then, the cutoff was when you were in your mid-20s. Now, since there's a lot more postdoc positions, you can generally get a postdoc position if you want one, and you can get another.
And then you try to compete for a faculty position, and sorry about your luck. So there's still the cutoff, but now you're in your mid-30s. There's still a cutoff, but it happens a decade later. So what does this do to people? If you want to pursue a career in science, in physics or astronomy especially, what if you want a family? What if you want kids? What if you want, I don't know, to own a house? That's going to be tough because you're going to live in one place for your undergrad. You're going to live somewhere else for five to seven years for grad school. You're going to live somewhere else for two to five years for a postdoc. You're going to live somewhere else for two to five years for a postdoc. And then you might have a slim chance of landing a faculty position. Maybe. What does that do to human lives? And you know what? If that sucks, well, it does suck. But if that's the way the system is, fine. But it's not exactly advertised that that's how the system is. It's not exactly communicated well to undergrads and grad students that, you know what? You may try to pursue this career for a couple decades and then not make the cut.
And a lot of it's based on random chance. You could be an absolute 100% rock star, the best person, the best scientist to come along in decades. But if your particular field of interest isn't fashionable, if not a lot of people are hiring, or if they just had a round of hiring, Let's say you know Supernova. Man, you have cracked the code of Supernova. You know how their interior structures work. It's going to be awesome. Your work is groundbreaking. But we just hired a Supernova person last year when you were in the middle of your postdoc and you missed the application window. Well, we filled that position. We don't need a second Supernova person. We're looking for someone else with another specialty. Sorry. That's it. These postdoc positions, I'm trying not to just gripe here, but the postdoc positions pay okay, but not the greatest, especially compared to peers who go out into industry. Some postdocs are so poor they can't even afford Patreon. Patreon.com slash PM Sutter is how you, yes, you are able to support this show.
All it takes is a few bucks every month and a bunch of you are doing it at the same time and that lets me pay for this show. That's what keeps the show on the air. I can't thank you enough for all of your generous support. You are the kindest, the most generous, the most supportive audience. An astrophysicist could ever ask for. I'm incredibly lucky and privileged to share my science with you. And I can't thank you enough for giving me the tools, the questions, and the financial support to make that happen. I don't take ads on this podcast. This is the only ad you're going to get. And that's patreon.com slash pmsutter. So there aren't a lot of jobs. Long-term science. What other jobs are available? Well, if you have an undergrad degree in astronomy or physics, you can do pretty much anything. If you have a PhD, you can do pretty much anything. A lot of PhDs end up going into finance, into consulting, into data analysis. They'll go to Silicon Valley. Think of not the research that you do in grad school or even undergrad, but think of the skills that you develop.
You come in with a lot of passion, a lot of grit and determination. So that's already valuable. And then you add to that over the course of your education, the skills you need to be a successful scientist. You get critical thinking. You get analysis. Rigorous analysis. You get mathematical skills. Those are highly prized skills in any industry. Every employer would love to have all their employees strong in critical thinking and analysis and communication and mathematics. It's such a well-rounded package. And you can demonstrate by the fact that you completed a gigantic dissertation in your PhD work that you can commit to long-term projects, that you really do have demonstrated grit, demonstrated determination. The unemployment rate for astronomers and physicists is essentially zero. I'm not making that up. It's not necessarily a job in research, but if you have a degree in astronomy or physics, you have a job somewhere if you want one. So that is the good news. That is the silver lining, that the skills you develop to become a long-term researcher, even if you don't actually become a long-term researcher, is at least incredibly valuable.
So what do you do? What do I have to say to that kid? Or if you're listening or you know someone who has a passion for astronomy or physics, I'm never going to tell you to not go for it. But I want you to know the state of the profession, which isn't talked about a lot internally. It's not in the brochure when you enter grad school. In fact, graduate school assumes, the entire structure of graduate school assumes you will eventually be a full-time researcher. They don't really talk about other options or prepare for other options, although that is slowly changing at the glacial academic pace. But I want you to know that those are the stakes, that there is a very low chance, even if you're incredibly talented, even if you're incredibly successful early career scientist, there is a very slim chance that you'll end up in a long-term faculty position. People who leave the field are spoken about like the recently deceased. Like, yeah, you remember Susan? Man, what a great researcher. She had such talent.
Man, she was going places. It's a shame. It's a real shame, man. That's how people talk about people who leave the field. Kind of ridiculous. So, one option for you, if you have a passion for physics and astronomy, is to go for it. Just roll the die, know that you're going to have to make some sacrifices and some very, very tough choices, but that's the state of the career. Or you can get a real human job with reasonable hours and solid pay. You can have a family and a house and all that good stuff. I don't know, just a suggestion. There are jobs available in the sphere of astronomy and physics. I mentioned those giant collaborations. They really do. They hire engineers. They hire data scientists and computer scientists. They hire graphic designers. They hire administrators. If you have a passion for physics and astronomy, but a talent somewhere else, you can still be within the orbit of the physics and astronomy worlds. You can help support the mission, and you will probably have a normal job And you can live a normal, happy, successful life with a good work-life balance.
That's another option. You can also volunteer in astronomy. And this is something that's really interesting that's been coming up over the past 10, 20 years. Historical astronomy especially has a great tradition of amateurs making huge advances in science. It's a bit harder now because, well, the problems we're facing are a bit harder. But this is where citizen science comes in. Things like Galaxy Zoo or CosmoQuest, where there are huge problems. that we don't have the computing horsepower or the computing techniques to solve that require a lot of human input, human intervention, human guidance, you can contribute to that. You won't necessarily get your name on a research paper, but I'm sure you'll get some credit somewhere and you'll at least have self-satisfaction that, hey, in my off time, I volunteered to some really cool research. That's a pretty cool thing to just be able to drop at a dinner party like, oh, yeah, you know, I helped discover a new kind of galaxy, you know, whatever.
Oh, no, no, no. I'm not a professional scientist. I do it as a hobby and I still made this major contribution. You can join a local astronomy clubs. You can get involved with astronomers without borders, dark sky initiatives, the international astronomical union. There's all sorts of great volunteer ways where you can take your passion for astronomy, but you can still have a job that pays you a ton of money. and gives you some stability, and where you can still explore the universe, share that passion with a community, and educate, discuss, communicate, spread the word, and spread the love of science while making your job somewhere else. So there's plenty of options out there if you have a passion. And I'm not gonna say don't go after the obvious thing, which is a research career, but it might be hard. Thankfully, There's a lot of room out there for all sorts of different talents and passions and energies and all sorts of ways to contribute to the scientific mission. Before I go, I do want to mention astrotouring.com.
The next trip is a cruise of the Caribbean where we're going to get nice and close and personal with the night sky and explore some mind ruins. It's going to be super fun. I'm doing it with Fraser Cain. Go to astrotouring.com. Rooms are booking fast. I'm not joking. So get your name in now. It doesn't take a lot of money to get your name on the list. And also, Spaceradioshow.com. Spaceradioshow is how I talk about the latest news. It's such a fun show. You can call and talk to me live on the air. It's Spaceradioshow.com. Big thanks to my top Patreon contributors this month, Justin G., Matthew K., Kevin O., Justin R., Chrissy, and Helga B., and all the other Patreon contributors that help keep this show on the air. That's patreon.com slash pmsutter. And thanks again to At92Rufino and Vicky K. for the questions that led to this episode. Such brilliant, brilliant, insightful questions. I can't thank you enough. And if you have time, if you can't donate to patron, that's totally cool. Can you do me a favor and go to iTunes and drop a review in, tell the world how much you love this show that helps bring other people in, which means more questions, which means I don't have to stop doing episodes.
Thank you. Everyone go to ask a spaceman.com for the website. You can also visit me, follow me directly on Twitter and Facebook. My name is at Paul, Matt Sutter. I'll see you next time for more complete knowledge of time and space.