What’s in It for Me?

You want to improve your employment prospects and challenge yourself intellectually. But your graduate adviser may have a different agenda in mind.

Many undergraduate chemistry majors will at some time in their careers be faced with the question of whether to get a Ph.D. Reasons for considering this question range from a desire for a higher salary (starting Ph.D.s are paid twice what corresponding B.S. chemists are paid), hope for an academic position (about 25% of all Ph.D.s are at academic institutions), or even for personal reasons. In my case, I was more or less programmed from kindergarten to get a chemistry Ph.D. My father had one, and family urging combined with the push for more science majors after the 1958 Soviet launch of Sputnik really left little room for disagreement. Of course, I had seen, too, the benefits of working in the chemical enterprise, because my father had a very good research position in a small town. He worked in polymer chemistry applied to the development of synthetic textile-fiber products. Our family lived a nice life.

“Graduate school became for us what it is for many who attend: an overwhelming series of hurdles to be jumped in an effort to avoid failure.”

When I enrolled in graduate school in the late 1960s, my classmates and I believed we should choose a major adviser who was in tune with our desire to learn chemistry as a means of having a good middle-class career. We thought that a major adviser would be perhaps not a friend, but at least a mentor, in providing us entry to companies that based their products on science and technology. The adviser would help in the assessment of our talents, guide us in our decision on what chemical subdiscipline would best suit our capabilities, and ultimately shepherd us into the club of Ph.D. chemists. Safe to say, we were rapidly disabused of that point of view.

Graduate school became for us what it is for many who attend: an overwhelming series of hurdles to be jumped in an effort to avoid failure. There were entrance examinations, 300- and 400-level courses, cumulative exams, and ultimately proposal defenses. Our class of 25 steadily dwindled as individuals left, and slowly those of us who remained began to examine our chosen chemical destiny. We learned yet again about the subtleties of Diels–Alder reactions, the intricacies of sulfur heterocycle chemistry, the geometry of fused-ring steroid reactions, and the physical chemistry of boron. We also learned to oversee a freshman chemistry lab, with particular attention to such things as demonstrating reaction kinetics by way of the iodine clock reaction and how to determine the heat of fusion in a gram of ice. While all of it was edifying and intellectually challenging, I can’t say that any of us saw it as particularly career-building.

One day, after studying an especially obscure organic reaction mechanism, several of us were sitting around after class with our instructor, who was then an associate professor. I asked if the chemistry department had considered offering graduate students the opportunity to take classes not necessarily in the department but that would be applicable to our future life in the scientific world. Perhaps a polymer course from the chemical engineering department, a finance course or two from the business school, or even an introduction to legal theory for those of us who might want to consider a patent-law career. To which the professor answered, “What’s in it for me?” It was a revelatory moment, for suddenly it was clear that graduate school wasn’t about students at all. It was about professors.

Education takes place on many levels, and on that day, I learned that our professor had little interest in graduate-student career planning, but rather was most interested in having us perform publishable research. This is not to say that he was insensitive to the fact that most of us weren’t going on to university careers in organic chemistry, and so perhaps would benefit with training in skills beyond knowing how to most efficiently make carbon–carbon bonds. However, his primary interest appeared to be in leveraging his research into financial support, increasing his regard and value with both department and university faculty, and ultimately being promoted to full professor.

The Ph.D. degree was first awarded in the Middle Ages, when European universities began granting Philosophiæ Doctor degrees to students completing studies in any academic discipline outside of theology. Yale established the first graduate school in the United States in 1861, awarding its first Ph.D. that year. Both European and U.S. programs were designed to train people to be teachers and scholars.

Today, the number of institutions granting Ph.D.s in chemistry has grown to nearly 200, and collectively they award more than 2000 doctoral degrees annually. However, at best only a quarter of these degree holders are employed in a university; the rest work for pharmaceutical companies; traditional chemical firms; federal, state, and local governments; and other organizations. Because many of these employers don’t do traditional laboratory-based research, or any research for that matter, newly hired doctoral recipients, although trained in research, often find themselves in need of management, accounting, legal, and similar skills. These needs were not reflected in my post-baccalaureate education, and somehow I doubt they are much a part of today’s training.

While my graduate-school revelatory experience may have been breathtakingly direct, I suspect it is as true today as it was in the 1970s: what most graduate students study is what is best for their advisers. So my advice to anyone considering a Ph.D. program: first, choose your adviser carefully, and second, recognize that much of the knowledge and skills you will need in your employment will have to be learned on the job or through continuing education programs throughout your career. And wake up to the reality of what Ph.D. degrees really are—a testament to graduate students’ perseverance, not their intellect.

Jim Ryan (ACS ’67) is Assistant Director of the ACS Continuing Education program.