Is Pursuing A Ph.D. Worth It? 7,200 UC Ph.D. Alumni Respond

Is Pursuing A Ph.D. Worth It?  7,200 UC Ph.D. Alumni Respond

Over Half Of Science UC Ph.D.s Now Working In For-Profit Firms
October 16, 2014

By Riley McDermid, BioSpace.com Breaking News Sr. Editor

Doctoral recipients from the University of California have reported record high rates of employment and job satisfaction, and those in scientific fields have found unprecedented success in private-sector jobs, a new survey has found.

The survey was conducted by the University of California Office of the President and its campus graduate divisions and alumni offices. It polled 7,200 alumni who had earned their Ph.Ds. from 1969 to 2013 and asked them questions about student loan debt, the added value of having a graduate degree and their employability.

Those that studied science or engineering have found welcome arms in the private sector, with more than half of engineering and computer science graduates now ensconced in for-profit companies. “Significant” numbers of physical sciences and life sciences graduates also have chosen careers in private industry, said the poll’s authors.

Is Pursuing A Ph.D. Worth It?  7,200 UC Ph.D. Alumni Respond The proportion of all STEM or Health Sciences alumni who reported spending their most recent principal career position in the private for-profit sector are as follows:

51% of alumni from Engineering & Computer Sciences
32% from Physical Sciences (includes mathematics, statistics, chemistry, astronomy, geology, materials sciences, etc.)
22% from Life Sciences (includes biology, biochemistry, botany, genetics, physiology, pharmacology, zoology, biotechnology, etc.)
21% from Health Sciences

The study shows that the overall ability of former graduates to find work is very high. It found that unemployment among UC Ph.D. alumni extremely low, at around 1 percent, because the vast majority of UC alumni reported having stable careers in fields related to their chosen degree. A whopping 64 percent of respondents had spent their careers in academia in a field closely related to their UC degree, with 42 percent in tenure track positions.

Perhaps more astonishingly, was how low the debt load was for many former doctoral students, with “more than half of alumni, even among the most recent graduates, had no education-related debt, either from graduate or undergraduate study, when they completed their Ph.D. degrees.”
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The news did not surprise UC administrators, who said they see regular satisfaction from former graduate students. “These survey results support what we hear anecdotally from our alumni: UC Ph.D. recipients find their graduate education to be worthwhile and relevant, and they go on to achieve career success and make contributions in critically important areas of the economy,” said UC Provost Aimée Dorr.

The ability for students to transition right from their fields of study to jobs, either in the for-profit or academic sectors—with little or no debt for 50 percent of them—makes the case for pursuing higher education almost a no-brainer.

“People interested in pursuing a Ph.D. rightly want to know: Is it worth it?” said Pamela Jennings, director of Graduate Studies at the UC Office of the President. “We put that question directly to those who had been through our programs over the last four decades. We’re pleased to learn that the vast majority of our doctoral alumni are not only highly satisfied with their graduate school experience, but they would do it again if they had the chance.”

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