Ryan Murphey, PhD
Patent Agent, Ropes & Gray

Ryan Murphey has a PhD in Genetics from Harvard University. Directly after graduate school, Ryan entered the Technical Advisor Program at the law firm Ropes & Gray in New York City. This program hires scientists after their graduate training to work as technical advisors in their Intellectual Property Group while attending law school. Ryan is currently a patent agent and has just completed law school at NYU. He is now preparing for the Bar exam in order to practice as a patent attorney.

After posting about why more PhDs aren’t professors, I came across this interesting article called The Real Science Gap by Beryl Lieff Benderly, a journalist who also authors the Taken for Granted column for Science Careers. Intriguingly, this article brings to light that some actually fear we are not training enough scientists, a notion that runs counter to what I and others have written about. While true that a majority of science PhDs leave academia, Beryl counters “It’s not insufficient schooling or a shortage of scientists. It’s a lack of job opportunities.”

Beryl provides a number of arguments to support this and I really appreciated her historical account of how we got into this predicament. Her story starts back with the intense push by the US government to support civilian research following World War II through the creation of the National Science Foundation and the expansion of the National Institutes of Health. Grants issued by these agencies fomented the growth of large research universities and, consequently, made lots of room for new faculty. At the time, this meant that most doctoral students could expect to run their own labs upon graduation. Eventually, though, the “pyramid paradigm” of “self-replicating” professors began to unravel to the point where we are today: more science PhDs produced than there are available faculty positions.

Knowing that there is an overabundance of highly-qualified science PhDs generated every year, it is befuddling that some believe we need to be training more scientists. In fact, this approach merely exacerbates the problem and likely discourages others from going down this path to begin with. Nonetheless, it happens because graduate students and postdocs are required to drive the research of their lab heads. As Beryl asserts, the solution is not to increase enrollment in graduate programs, but to instead provide more opportunities for science PhDs to remain in research long-term.

Implementing these kinds of changes would require a complete overhaul of the current system, which is a long time coming. Until then, it remains imperative to prepare science PhDs for careers beyond the ivory tower, where most end up anyway under the current model.

In a previous post I cited that only a quarter to a fifth of recent PhD graduates will end up in tenure-track faculty positions.¹ This is in spite of the fact that a large percentage of doctoral students and postdocs start their programs and fellowships with the intention of becoming faculty. ² If this is the case, why are there not more PhDs becoming professors?

One of the main contributing factors is that there are not enough faculty positions available in the US to keep up with the growing number of PhDs granted every year. Tenure-track faculty positions have remained fairly stable since 1991 while PhDs earned have increased 55% over the same period.^3,4 To put this in perspective, there were 168,000 full-time faculty in 2006 and 41,000 science and engineering doctorates awarded the following year alone (ibid). This trend has led to fewer PhDs employed in academia (down to 45% from 55% over 1973-2006) and of those in academia, a greater proportion are now found in postdoctoral or non-tenured positions.^5,6

This mismatch is the result of an inherently problematic training system in which new scientists are continually churned out but then left to flounder somewhere in the middle because positions at the top are few-and-far between, owing to a notoriously slow turnover rate in academia. Making matters worse, a spate of hiring freezes instituted during the recent economic recession led to even fewer academic job prospects.⁷ Even the stimulus package of 2009, which pumped 21.5 billion into science and engineering research, was not expected to alleviate this problem.⁸ PhDs are often rightly dismayed when unable to secure a job in the profession for which they have been trained, prompting many to ask "Are We Training Too Many Scientists?"⁹

The difficult job market does not garner all of the blame as aspects of faculty life can be equally discouraging to fresh graduates, as well. According to a 1999 survey, PhD candidates reported being concerned “about the problematic nature of the tenure process, onerous workload expectations, difficulty of obtaining research funding, and low salaries.”¹⁰ In addition, the average age of first obtaining a faculty position in the biomedical sciences has risen to 38, which means more time spent in low-paying postdoctoral fellowships¹¹- not an appealing prospect for many young professionals who have already spent four years in college and an average 7.2 years in graduate school.¹² By the end, a third of doctoral students across all disciplines reported decreased interest in faculty careers during graduate school.¹³

Beyond job market and faculty life concerns, yet others are steered away due to shifting career and life interests. In the journey to a PhD, some find scientific research to be less fulfilling than expected or discover new passions along the way. Former neuroscientist Laura Malisheski had her career epiphany during a postdoc: “I had been spending so much of my energy developing skills that I didn’t enjoy that I was forced to suppress my natural abilities . . .  Finally, I had learned to appreciate the skills that truly motivated and energized me.” ¹⁴ Laura left the bench and found success as a career counselor for other PhDs. Not an isolated case, PhDs are now flourishing in many careers in industry, education, communications, consulting, patent law, policy, and the list goes on.

Although not its original intention, the PhD has evolved into a bridge to many career paths and academia has ironically become the “alternative”. As a solution to this "problem" is not in plain sight, the philosophy that a PhD is narrowly defined as training solely to be an academic scientist is outdated and needs to revisited.

References

     ¹  Science and Engineering Indicators, 2010. Table 3.18. Doctorate recipients holding tenure and tenure-track appointments at academic institutions, by years since receipt of doctorate and selected field: 1993, 2003, and 2006

     ²  Golde and Dore "At Cross Purposes: What the Experiences of Today's Doctoral Students Reveal about Doctoral Education" 2001. Table 1. Proportion of Students Interested in a Faculty Career.

     ³  Science and Engineering Indicators, 2010. Appendix Table 5-15. Full-time faculty with S&E doctorates employed in academia, by tenure status and degree field: 1979–2006

     ⁴  Science and Engineering Indicators, 2010. Appendix Table 2-28. Earned doctoral degrees, by citizenship, field, and sex: 1993–2007.

     ⁵  Science and Engineering Indicators, 2008. Table 5-11 S&E doctorate holders employed in academia, by years since doctorate: Selected years, 1973–2006

     ⁶  Science and Engineering Indicators, 2010. Table 5-6 S&E doctorate holders employed in academia, by position: Selected years, 1973–2006

     ⁷  Siri Carpenter. Discouraging Days for Jobseekers. Science Careers, 2009.

     ⁸ Beryl Lieff Benderly. Shovel Ready Science. Science Careers, 2009.

     ⁹  Bijal Trivedi. Are We Training Too Many Scientists? The Scientist, 2006.

    ¹⁰  Golde and Dore, 2001. pg 9. 

     ¹¹  Bridges to Independence: Fostering the Independence of New Investigators in Biomedical Research. National Research Council (US) Committee on Bridges to Independence: Identifying Opportunities for and Challenges to Fostering the Independence of Young Investigators in the Life Sciences. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2005.

    ¹²  Science and Engineering Indicators, 2010. Table 2-4. Median number of years from S&E doctorate recipients' entry to graduate school to receipt of doctorate, by Carnegie classification of doctorate-granting institution: 1993–2007.

     ¹³  Golde and Dore, 2001. Table 2. Level of Interest in Various Career Options.

     ¹⁴  Laura Malisheski. In Pursuit of Happiness: My Transition from Neuroscientist to Career Counselor. ASBMB Today, 2007.

Beth Schachter, PhD
Science Communicator
Beth Schachter Consulting and Principal, Still Point Coaching & Consulting

Beth Schachter earned her PhD in Cell and Molecular Biology from the University of Southern California and was an Associate Professor at Mt Sinai Medical Center, where she performed NIH-funded research in endocrinology, neuroscience and cancer research.  After sixteen years spent as a principal investigator, Beth left academic research to pursue a career in science communications. She has been both a scientific editor at HMS Beagle, the first online biomedical magazine, and contributing writer at The New York Academy of Sciences.

Beth then started Beth Schachter Consulting, in which she writes about life science, biomedicine, and biotechnology for professional audiences. She has commissioned projects for institutions such as the Whitehead Institute (MIT) and Rockefeller University, and has had bylined articles in the NYTimes, Nature Biotechnology, Trends in Genetics, and The Scientist, among others. Beth is also a Principal at Still Point Coaching & Consulting, providing professional development for scientists and executives in life science research through seminars, workshops and one-on-one editing and coaching.

Business is an intriguing career path for many freshly minted PhDs and it is not uncommon now to find scientists who have made the transition into management, consulting, finance, venture capital, market research, intellectual property law, and entrepreneurship. Nevertheless, some of you might be wondering what about a background in scientific research lends itself to a career in business and how one breaks into the field without doing an MBA. Paul Tumpowsky, chairman of the board of InSITE and CEO of Square Zero, addressed these questions when he came to the Academy on May 13 for the Science Alliance event Leveraging the Scientific Mindset in the Business World.

Paul started his presentation by citing the many reasons why the scientific training is valued in business. For those regarding themselves as only being equipped for bench research or pipetting, you will find it reassuring to hear that the skills acquired in pursuit of a PhD are desirable outside of science, as well. For business, in particular, he highlighted the strengths of scientists in dealing with complex problems and in possessing analytical skills that have been cultivated by the scientific method. I think we scientists take these skills for granted not appreciating the uniqueness of our scholastic pursuits- i.e. years spent engaging in deep intellectual thought and regular problem solving- when, indeed, these talents are coveted in the "real world" for handling tough business questions and devising innovative solutions and can be leveraged when applying for business-type positions.

Paul also discussed the differences in mindsets and approaches that scientists can expect to encounter in the business world. He noted that while attention to detail is good in science, much of business is focused at the macro level and analyses tend to be more qualitative than quantitative in nature; therefore scientists, in order to be successful, often need to adapt to making decisions with incomplete data and on shorter timescales, not having the luxury to exhaustively research every topic. Paul also emphasized the collaborative nature of business, pointing out that projects rely heavily on team efforts and are not solitary endeavors like science can be at times. It is important then, to be a good team player and, for the budding entrepreneur, to be especially thoughtful when assembling a group for a start-up venture.

For scientists eager to make the transition into business, one hurdle is that it can be difficult to gain experience and training before applying for jobs; the second portion of Paul's talk introduced one potential avenue, through the NYC-based InSITE entrepreneurship fellowship program. The two-year program trains graduate students through a series of workshops and real-world consulting cases. Although their fellows have historically all been business and law students, they are opening their doors for the first time to accept applications from doctoral students and postdocs in NYC this fall. Given the sixty-plus scientists who turned out for this event, there is definitely signficant interest in this kind of opportunity and business careers, in general.

More information about their program and the application process can be found on their website: http://insiteny.org. You can also read a blog entry from one of the InSITE fellows who attended this event here.

In addition, I would recommend checking out the Business and Law section of this website for additional resources and references on this topic.