academic career advice

[uk elephant]

I'm sat here trying to do some work, but my brain is going in circles so I thought I'd ask you all for advice. I have to decide whether to accept a job offer, which means deciding whether I want to go down the academic career route and also deciding whether I want to move to the end of the world (or very nearly...on the west coast of Wales..any opinion on the location would be appreciated too...).

So here's my question.....for those of you in academia (or not, but with some opinion of it)....why would you recommend a career as a lecturer/professor? or why would you not recommend such a career?

I suppose for the sake of balance, I should ask the same of those of you in a scientific career outside academia so any input from you would be greatly appreciated too.

And in case you are curious, my scientific field is biology, more specifically ecology and behaviour.

Thank you for any and all input!!! I'll be doing a lot of thinking this week-end...my head hurts already!

[Pax]

I don't much opinion one way or the other UKE, I just wanted to say congrats of the offer and share an outsiders view of a friends recent choice.

My friend just made the same decision you're facing and he went to work for Big Pharma instead of academia, his decision was based on freedom primarily. In academia he would be forced to spend and inordinate amount of time chasing ever dwindling grant funding to operate the lab he would oversee, as opposed to doing the research he loved. Going corporate offered him the freedom to remain in the lab and out of administration/funding. I don't know if the situation is the same in the UK?

[uk elephant]

Big pharma is not an option for me really. I don't know much about chem/biochem. The type of research I do, I would either be chasing grants in academia or chasing clients in industry. Don't know which is easier or better. At the moment I'm in academia chasing industry clients and finding it difficult, but much the same as when I was doing my phd chasing grants...

[Flur]

I would love an academic career. I've definitely considered going back to school to get my Ph.D. so that I could teach at a university. And with the consistent infusion of new thoughts, I can't imagine a better place to do research either.

[mayanorange]

DH and I are both scientists- DH is a professor, I am a research coordinator at a Med School- I'm not really in normal academia, it's closer to private sector. I think both can be good, depends on what you want.

Pros of Academia:
-More flexible schedule for doing things during business hours that are not work- popping home to walk dogs, etc
-Lots of variety in tasks
-Support for people in obscure and/or less applied fields (like ecology and animal muscle function)
-Researching your own ideas
-Tends to be a more community feeling
-In-class time is great
-Once you get tenure- job security

Cons of Academia:
-Longer hours in general
-Stresses of funding (the level of which depends on if it's a teaching college or a research university)
-Grading, students who expect you to reiterate lectures via email, etc.
-Having to be on committees
-Student evaluations (there's always one every semester that makes you feel like a toad)
-Having student evaluations and grant money brought in determine if you get tenured (I know you guys don't have 'tenure' per se, but whether you ever make professor vs staying at lecturer forever.)

Pros of Private Sector:
-Can pay lots better (depends on field- probably not in ecology, but could in behavior if it's medically related)
-9 to 5
-You don't directly worry about funding (depends on setup)
-Higher job security from the start- no tenure to attain, etc.
-Because of the funding, there's a bit less sink or swim- less requirements for publication usually and there's not as much background stress (of course depends on the company)

Cons of Private Sector:
-Often you are investigating what someone pays you to look at. Which can be fine, but there's less "Hey, I've got an idea, I'm going to check it out"
-Often the above makes you question whether it's still 'science'
-More 'job' feeling than academia. The academics are dreamers, constantly theorizing and fun to be around. Not that you don't get some in private, but the percentage is less.

Hope that might help a little. It is a job, which is usually a good thing. And there's nothing that says you have to stay in a job forever- you could always try it.

[ilima]

I have to say that being a professor has not been particularly rewarding for me. I'm an evolutionary biologist, so in your field. I think your department has a lot to do with how much you like your job. If you're in a shitty department at a shitty university it really stinks. And I speak from experience!

Remember that you'll be in a rigidly hierarchical system and not one strictly based on merit. Associate profs that barely made tenure and have had their brain turn to mush in the years since will be your 'superior' for many years, even if you are a much more productive researcher. Most of the senior faculty in my department seem to make an art of working as little as possible. Some, I won't see for weeks at a time and I'm in every day, door open. The undergraduate and graduate programs are decades out of date, so it's not like they were making contributions early on in their career.

It's a generally lonely profession. You're normally not part of a research team. Yes, you can have a lab with graduate students and other underlings, but it's not the same as government jobs I've had where you had colleagues on the same project that were your equal.

Professors have always been paid less than MDs and lawyers, but the gap increases every year. The shitty pay doesn't make up for the debt and most of all the time I spent getting my PhD. The health care and retirement benefits that used to assuage the low salaries are no longer guaranteed.

And grant funding is getting tighter and tighter. Things might not be as bad in the UK has here in the US, though. Politicians will routinely decry studies they know nothing about. Bad (ignorant) press can cascade into reduced funding for research. Bill Clinton blasted research on 'plant stress' back in the 90s thinking it was some new-agey research where people were sitting around giving psychological treatment to plants. Uh, no, it's about plants growing in stressful environments and the research is fundamental to things such as growing crops, you know--food!

One of our presidential candidates, John McCain, has been decrying earmarks for projects like studying the genetics of grizzly bears in the Northern Rockies. He's to ignorant to realize that the work is necessary to indirectly assess the population sizes pursuant to laws like the Endangered Species Act and National Forest Management Act. Trying to determine the population sizes directly would be much more disruptive to the bears and much, much more costly.

Uh, off my soapbox. If I had to do it over, I'd have become a scientist for the government, where I'd probably be making about $40K more than I am now. Or become an architect or landscape architect.

[chicago]

do whatever your heart is telling... because you will ultimately end up there anyway...

[salsabike]

This is what the west coast of Wales looks like:

[uk elephant]

Like you said, Salsa, Wales is stunningly beautiful. But would I like to live there? It is pretty remote. No big towns for shopping or symphony concerts. But then again, I now live only an hour from London and I've been there three half days in the three years I've lived here but always complained about the lack of hiking around here. Hmmm....perhaps Wales would be good.

As for the job, I waver between panic and excitement about it. I didn't get a good look around the departement when I was there because I was only there for a half hour interview and a half hour talk, but what little I saw was good. The few people I did meet seemed nice and the facilities good. And they are getting huge influx of funding for a new building and a restructuring of the entire curriculum which would give me as the teacher of animal behaviour a lot of freedom to design those courses. It is only a one year post to start with with focus on teaching that first year, but they want this to then merge into a more traditional lectureship post with a mix of teaching and research and from the dept heads description of the situation, what mix of research and teaching I would get after that first year was largely dependent on what I wanted. I think if I decide I want a job in academia, this would be a very good opportunity. But is that what I want? and is Wales what I want? Who knows?!

[mayanorange]

If it's a one year post, I say go try it. If you don't like it, you can move on at the end of the year. If you like it, it sounds like a very flexible option to continue has been offered, which is rare. Is this more career advancing than where you are now? Do you have any other irons in the fire that you're waiting to hear from? I imagine there's not a ton of Unis in western Wales, so if being in the same place as BF is dire, then that's an important consideration. DH and I ended up in Boston partly by accident, but it's really the only area we could depend on finding 2 posts. Of course we did transcontinental long distance for 3-4 yrs before it all came together. If it's going to open doors later, then it's worth the sacrifice. It seems like starting out in academia they want people who have been lecturers (asst. prof over here) already, but how do you get that first job then? Maybe 2 years there to establish your foot in the door, then you can be more competitive elsewhere. Or by then you'll be desperate to find a non-academic post.

[salsabike]

Like you said, Salsa, Wales is stunningly beautiful. But would I like to live there? It is pretty remote. No big towns for shopping or symphony concerts. But then again, I now live only an hour from London and I've been there three half days in the three years I've lived here but always complained about the lack of hiking around here. Hmmm....perhaps Wales would be good.

I know--I would be thinking all those thoughts too. Shopping I don't know about. Arts, the university might provide, or other towns that aren't too far away from this town. And the job sounds pretty exciting actually. So, given that you may not KNOW FOR SURE right now whether it's what you'd want for the long haul, if it sounds interesting/promising/like an adventure you'd like to try, then that may be as good as your conclusions can get right now. Then you'd just be making a leap and seeing what happens...

[bnylo]

Wow what a great thread for advice, could have used this 25 years ago when I was floundering around for career choice. I guess it wouldn't have helped me because I didn't know myself at 21. Had I understood myself better, I would have realized that I could not thrive in the business world because I had no interest in its primary function: the making of money. And key point is - the kind of personalities business attracts are not the kind of personalities inhabiting academia.

Do you want to be around business people? Are you a more practical personality interested in the here and now rather than what was, what might be what could have been?

If you like ideas, new ideas and the exchange of ideas, academia is where it resides. Given the financial turmoil of recent times, financial gain in business is offset by layoffs and uncertainty as great as grant seeking.

Finally, in academia, there's teaching. It can be really rewarding if you have a good pool of people.