The story of a graduate school in the United States. Part 4.1: What next?

So, I will continue my story about the graduate school in the United States. The previous parts live here , here and here , and in this part I will talk about what happens after receiving the doctoral degree. In fact, I wanted to write about everything at once, but the night crept unnoticed and here it will be told about one of two popular ways (the continuation lives here ).

Paraphrasing the well-known phrase, is there life after the PhD, is there no life after the PhD - science is not known. But it will be known to those who look under the cat.

[Remember, everything you read here is my personal opinion, based on personal experience and open information.]
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So, to begin with, I boast of successfully completing the learning process, defending a thesis and obtaining a doctoral degree. The process itself (in other universities is a little different) looked like this: work on a project, presentation was presented (descriptions of research and tasks), passing a qualifying exam (unlike previous years and other specialties, we looked like a mega-review of literature, It was a long time to talk about what people have done before you (IMHO, this is more correct than the usual exam)), writing a dissertation, defending a thesis. I took this whole process for 3 years (it lasted for 3.5 years, in fact, but I did internships for half a year, so you can’t count them). As practice shows, 3 years is quite fast, but everything depends on the region, the success of the project (I did it all and everyone was happy) and the supervisor (there are such professors who keep the graduate students slaves as long as possible). Engineers usually complete their studies in 3-5 years, pure scientists in 4-7, although there are exceptions everywhere. But if you decide to do this, then you need to count on a period of not less than 3 years, it turns out very quickly and very rarely. At the end of the path, you get this thing:

And what happens next? And then the student years end and begins ... life.

Here I will make a small lyrical digression on the theme of that student years is really cool. Everyone knows that students are the best years of life, but they are usually aware of this after the fact. In this case, graduate school allows, though not completely, to go back and pull off everyday work. You do not need to think that if you are 25-30 years old, then everything is lost, in graduate school the average age of students is just about 25 years old (we had people from 22 to 50), so age is usually not a problem.

But back to life after graduation. So you graduated, got a diploma and you need to find a job. If everything happens in this sequence, I have bad news for you: the job search process is a job and takes some (sometimes long) time. Therefore, the right graduate students are looking for work in advance. And then the fun begins. Oddly enough, but the higher the level of education, the harder it is to find a job. Those. The easiest way to find a job is for bachelors and masters to find work harder, and for doctors it’s very hard, since for most of the work this person becomes overqualified or, in Russian, very clever. Those. a person with a degree must pay more, and if a bachelor can do this work, then there is no point in it. But, on the other hand, theoretically, a person with a doctoral degree should want to find an appropriate job. And here this person has 2 standard ways: academy and industry.

The Academy is a teaching at the university and a professorial post in the end. The standard path in this world looks like this:

1) Postdoc: this is like a graduate student, just not so joyful, because there is quite a bit more money than a student (20-40k for South Carolina, i.e. you can live with your family, but only live), And responsibility much more. It is necessary to do experiments, and follow the students.

2) Assistant Professor: this is already a professor, but he is still scared, because, in which case, he can be kicked out. Salaries here are already more adequate (60-80k again for SC (South Carolina)) and you can live and enjoy life in this state. And we must remember that officially professors get it for 9 months of work (in fact, they prepare for the remaining 3 months, but fact is a fact). And we must also remember that these figures are before taxes, i.e. It is necessary to take away 30 percent (taxation in the USA is a separate long muddy history ...).

3) Tenure: here everything becomes more interesting. Tenior means that this person cannot be expelled. Those. he is guaranteed a lifetime position. There is also more money (probably in the region of 100-150k) and this can be considered quite a joyful career.

4,5,6, ...) Further, there are all sorts of advanced versions of professors about which you can read on the wiki .

the end) And at the end of this journey you can become an Endowed Chair: this is such a joyful position that allows you to manage money. Those. the university has a bank account, there lies a certain amount of money (for example, 30M), interest is dripping from them, and you will distribute these same percentages. Those. to allocate for projects, equipment, hiring professors, etc. etc. In this case, your salary will be measured in hundreds of thousands, but we must remember that not all reach this state.

By the way, on the topic of salaries. If you are interested in real numbers, then I will reveal the secret: the state of South Carolina (I suspect that others too, I just studied there and therefore I know) makes all public institutions publish employees' salaries in the public domain. For example, there is a table with salaries of people at the university where I studied, and here throughout the state.

Here it is worth mentioning one nuance: all these are positions, and they are weakly connected with your scientific activity, or rather, they should be strongly connected, but in reality everything is not so simple. You can get the Nobel Prize, and not reaching high positions, but you can reach the posts without having any special scientific achievements and a lot of publications. Moreover, the higher the position, the more there is administrative work, management and politics, but less (if there is any) science. Those. the academic world (what turns into those going along this path) can be divided into 3 categories:

1) Scientists: those who do research themselves and most often do not have major positions, but have many publications, discoveries, patents, etc. and so on.

2) Managers: those who have a bunch of students and postdocs who do research. Most often, managers manage the entire process, look for money and allocate resources (i.e., do the work of managers).

3) Administrators: these are some kind of managers, but they have administrative positions (deans, directors, etc., etc.) at the university and deal more with the affairs of the university and the bureaucracy than directly with science.

It goes without saying that all these categories are very conditional and do not exist in their pure form, and there are also people who have succeeded greatly in many or have not succeeded in any one category. But, going to the academy, you need to understand that, ultimately, for a successful career you will need to succeed in at least one of these categories. So, as you can see, the choice of the academy does not always mean only the pursuit of science.

There should have been a continuation of grants, articles, projects, etc. etc. And also about what will happen if you choose the industry (as well as several alternative options), but the night fell and the inspiration ended, so that all this is transferred to the following parts. Write, if you are interested in any particular aspect of the life of professors or receiving a PhD, I, although not a professor, will try to answer or make a separate article about life “on the other side of the barricade”. I know that many are interested in the search algorithm for graduate schools and professors, I will describe this in a separate article.

PS1: The first photo is taken from here .
PS2: Write about errors in lichku.