From the American Chemistry Council (the trade association for the big chemical companies), this update on their outlook for 2018:
So here's my question for you? How is your economy going? Mine is going all right - we are (my family is) keeping our heads above water, and 2018 looks to be fine.
So, readers, are you getting hired? Decent pay? How about your friends? Are they finding positions? How is your organization (academic institution, company, etc) doing? Any layoffs in the present/future?
How is your economy going, readers?
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| Credit: the American ChemistryCouncil |
The Chemical Activity Barometer (CAB), a leading economic indicator created by the American Chemistry Council (ACC), notched an increase over September’s reading both on a three-month moving average (3MMA) basis and an unadjusted basis. The CAB was up 0.2 percent and 0.7 percent, respectively. The increases reflected a bounce back from the effects of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. Compared to a year earlier, the CAB is up 3.0 percent on a 3MMA basis, a slower pace than the previous nine months, but one that continues to suggest further gains in U.S. business activity into 2018.So looks like things are kinda going vaguely okay. It's not clear to me that US GDP will break out of its 2-3% range any time soon.
The Chemical Activity Barometer has four primary components, each consisting of a variety of indicators: 1) production; 2) equity prices; 3) product prices; and 4) inventories and other indicators.
So here's my question for you? How is your economy going? Mine is going all right - we are (my family is) keeping our heads above water, and 2018 looks to be fine.
So, readers, are you getting hired? Decent pay? How about your friends? Are they finding positions? How is your organization (academic institution, company, etc) doing? Any layoffs in the present/future?
How is your economy going, readers?
I've been fortunate - I am doing OK and my wife (in a different field) is doing OK. I don't know how the tax cuts will work (they will likely cost me money, not even counting the effect on government services) or if they will stimulate business spending, and I'm not sure what the health care perturbations will do to me (it would be harder on us if my employer cuts it because of the compromise of the markets - they've been pondering a donut hole plan for a while and that plan would not be affected), but I don't expect significant short-term effects for me, unless something disastrous happens (though I think that probability has increased).
ReplyDeleteRetirement accounts are up $130K over last year at this time. Got the largest bonus in the history of my career in March. The bonus that occurs as a result of this fiscal year should be slightly less but still substantial. Wife just applied for a position that would give her a substantial bump in pay. Storm clouds are brewing, however, as my company is restructuring and there's a ton of uncertainty.
ReplyDeleteClinched a faculty position at a low-rank R1, so there's some stability at least until the tenure decision. The job market concerns me because I am concerned for my students - they are getting Ph.D.s in materials chemistry from a low-ranked institution; I have very few industry connections and am really worried for their job prospects when they graduate. But it's not easy to get a clear picture of what htat market looks like - thanks Chemjobber for keeping the information coming in.
ReplyDeleteI see where you're coming from, and I'm glad you're at least thinking about helping your students find jobs. The real question is why aren't departments doing the basics. It's medieval: professors running little sole proprietorships and having their students do what they see fit. Some professors really can pick up the phone and get their student a few interviews: this ensures loyalty to them, and they wouldn't want anyone interfering with it. But most professors can't, or in some cases won't. I mean, damn, I've known professors who didn't get tenure, it happens a lot these days. And they don't all even succeed in finding themselves an industry job, a lot of them don't. So how on Earth are they supposed to hook up their students, if they can't hook themselves up? Let alone postdocs: a 'postdoctoral' advisor has gone from someone who helps find someone a permanent position to someone who, um, helps someone avoid a gap on their resume and gets to pay less than they would for a technician. Professors have shown themselves not capable of doing placement on their own, as a whole. This really should be a department thing. If more professors even cared about placement, as you do, departments would do a lot better. Does your department employ anybody whose responsibility is helping graduates find employment? They should. Ideally someone who has actually worked in industry recruiting and placement.
DeleteI'm doing vocational education now and there are lots of simple easy things that college departments could do, but just don't, because they don't want to and nobody can make them. Industry advisory boards, regular meetings! Learn what skills the students should walk out of there knowing, that will get them their first job. Seek assistance purchasing modern equipment for training purposes as well as research : God, there are still professors out there who won't spring for multipipettors because students aren't hourly, and industry is all using automated liquid handling, that sort of mismatch is keeping good students from getting their first job, which means they'll never get any job in the field. Institute a mandatory core of required experiences and work them into every student's thesis project: just because a professor's interests are X doesn't mean that a student should spend 5-7 years doing nothing but X in the lab, if nobody is actually hiring people who do X. Maintain departmental relationships with recruiters who actually place entry-level people in contract or temp-to-perm positions: don't just pass on spam from people who seek to fill positions that always require '3-5 years of industry experience', but go up a level and actually make connections with the agencies in the area that actually do the placements your students will need. Departments should be doing all this. If it works for vocational schools then real academics should be able to do it too. Perhaps you could do committee service in this area, if you feel that such activity will not be detrimental to your tenure case.
Just a thought. When the major outcome of grad school is doing a postdoc or three, then leaving the field, that means grad schools are not doing their job.
Don't be afraid to make some cold calls to people in industry (assuming you can get contact info... this might work best at conferences, YMMV). Some of the people you reach out to will want to help you because you're doing something good. And if you don't get tenure, you'll really want to know who those people are.
DeleteOldLabRat - thank you for your thoughtful response to my post (Anon@October 27, 2017 at 7:43 PM), I really appreciate it. There's a good bit for discussion, and as a new member of the faculty here in Podunk, Flyover Country, I'll respond with the decidedly incomplete picture I have so far. There are a few things to consider, so I'll go point-by-point.
ReplyDelete1. The pressures not just on new faculty, but on established, tenured folks are tremendous, and I'm thinking in particular about funding. Established faculty still need to keep up a research program, and what was useful for industry 10 years ago may be entirely outdated today. Faculty don't have the resources to switch on a dime, nor do they have the resources to "keep tabs on industry." In fact, knowing what "industry" wants, needs, or does is a significant obstacle, and is something that companies spend millions in consulting fees trying to determine. There are good suggestions you made for faculty to at least add a *little* relevance to their research and instrumentation, but resources are again a problem. I am well aware of the liquid-handling robotics that are pretty much standard in industry, but where will I find $300,000 (depending on the instrument) to purchase one of those? Furthermore, how can I justify a $300,000 purchase meant for high-throughput, reproducible processes when I have a single student working on that project? Spending that kind of money means I have nothing for the other students. You might argue that I should in that case downsize my lab, but will that really help my (now) sole student gain teamwork skills or expand their knowledge past their own very narrow area of research? It's a tough question to tackle, and I can speak for myself and a FEW other faculty in saying that it hasn't escaped our notice, but considering that a $500,000 NSF grant nets about $50,000/year in actual money, most of which goes to a single student's salary/tuition/benefits, it's just not possible to set up a lab that mirrors what you'd find in industry. I don't want to make excuses, but that's the harsh reality we, and in consequence our students, face.
2. Speaking only for our department, placing students (both undergrad and grad) in good jobs has a direct impact on the amount of money we get via donations, and also helps us place more students in good jobs via network building. We also look good to the higher-ups (the endless ranks of deans, asst. VPs, and other higher-salaried positions at the university), which means that when the department wants to make a crazy request (like asking for more lab space or a steady stream of funding to maintain expensive equipment), we're more likely to get that request granted. Hence, everyone from the most cynical to the most altruistic faculty want to place students in good post-university positions because we (the faculty) benefit directly from it. With that said, I am in absolute agreement with you that we don't do enough. I would only argue that we don't do enough because faculty (typically) have no clue what to do and are worried that it will take large amounts of time and energy better spent on (for example) writing grants to keep the lab afloat.
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ReplyDelete3. We don't have anyone in our department who is solely responsible for helping graduates find employment. Our department is run by a skeleton crew of 1 secretary, 1 manager, and 2 instrument guys. Our grants/funding people are shared between Chemistry, Physics, Biology, and anyone else who finds out about them and sends them an email. I think it's an EXCELLENT idea to have someone we as faculty could consult to help add vocational relevance to our program. We as a department don't have money for it (we barely have enough to run our seminar series), but I think this is something the upper administration might be receptive toward.
4. It's harder to bring industry people in than you might think. We have a few local companies of relevance to a chemistry Ph.D., but they don't represent the diversity of disciplines needed to provide a chemistry education (nothing in the area for inorganic/materials/physical chemists that I'm aware of). Bringing in people from afar means paying for flights and hotels, which would come out of our seminar series budget and limit the number of speakers we can bring in even further. I would acknowledge that it's a fair argument to say that an industry panel would be more useful than bringing in Famousguy McGee from Snobbyass University, but I've seen some pretty terrible industry speakers in my time who do little more than advertise their company on our dime and don't reciprocate with job offers (either because our students are weak or because they trash all CVs that aren't from select universities in Cambridge, MA, or most likely, a bit of both). It's tricky. But it's something that I do think we should consider more deeply and is something I would like to bring up in our department meeting once I get a little more settled in here.
I hope I haven't come off as defensive here - while there are a lot of frustrating obstacles towards making our program a job factory (as opposed to a paper mill), there are steps you point out that we can take. I'd like to hear your thoughts if you have time to write.
I'm sorry I didn't write back earlier. If a certain political initiative involving taxing grad students out of existence happens, it may not matter. But assuming that there is some adult supervision, which I doubt: I do have some thoughts.
ReplyDeleteI agree that there's no point bringing somebody in from some bigshot company who's just going to talk about how great they are and then hire nobody. If none of your graduates land jobs at, say, Dow, there's no reason to invite somebody from Dow. But where do your students end up, besides postdoctoral spots or Wal-Mart? If they're starting their working life as QC techs for some boring company, that's someone you could use as advisory.
Or if they sometimes start by doing crummy temp work through Kelly or something, you could bring in someone from Kelly. Ideally not the nice-looking 20something who matches keywords, but someone up a level who is willing to divulge what keywords are actually being matched. They will never reveal their actual placements to a mere jobseeker, because they will suspect them of attempting to game the system and also the actual recruiters don't have much of a grasp on the big picture. But someone a level up might actually see reason.
Where do your students actually end up? Those are the folks who could give you advice and they're the ones who will want to: because they actually want your graduates, they'll probably actually be helpful instead of self-promoting divas.