We’ve all heard that Ph.D. graduates who work in industry make more money than those in academia. So one would assume that this is based on studies that track Ph.D. graduates when they select a career, right? Not necessarily. Surprisingly, there is not much data on where graduates go, and therefore even less on the types of places they go and the salaries they earn. This is an especially alarming concern for Congress, who understandably want to determine and evaluate the societal and economic impacts of federally-funded research. A comprehensive study was performed by Nikolas Zolas et al, and published in December 2015 in Science titled, “Wrapping it up in a person: Examining employment and earnings outcomes of Ph.D. recipients.” This article presents results based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the UMETRICS project (Universities: Measuring the ImpacTs of Research on Innovation, Competitiveness, and Science). UMETRICS analyzes research collaborations, results, and the scientific workforce (such as structure and diversity as they relate to productivity). The UMETRICS project specifically provided administrative data on 2010-2012 earnings and placements of 2009-2011 graduates. Data comes from eight universities: Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio State, Purdue, Pennsylvania State, and Wisconsin. The authors focused on two main questions: 1) What are the characteristics of establishments where Ph.D. graduates work, and 2) what are the individual earnings at those jobs? To be clear, the results are not different from expected, but they are encouraging for those of us who want to continue on to non-academic routes after graduation. Here are some of the hard numbers:
- 7% of graduates entered industry with the majority of placement in large and high-wage establishments. This is comprised of both R&D and non-R&D firms:
- 17% go to research and development firms (compared to 10.8% of the U.S. workforce);
- 7% go to non-research and development firms (compared to 75% of the U.S. workforce)
- 51% of graduates work at establishments with payrolls per worker over $100,000 (compared to 8.3% of the U.S. workforce).
- 22% of graduates remained in-state and 13% stayed within 50 miles of their university.
Fields such as biology, chemistry, and health science had lower earnings, but this is unsurprising given that 57% of graduates go into academia. Fields with the highest earnings were engineering, math & computer science, and physics; engineering, and math & computer science were also the most likely to go into industry. The good news? All fields studied were more or less equally likely to have high wage firm placement, and percentage earning growth was similar across fields. The authors mentioned a few stipulations- this data is not causal, and data does not account for graduates who go abroad, or master’s students. Furthermore, most of the universities studied are in the Midwest and are not necessarily representative of the entire graduate population. Despite these caveats, the article is encouraging, providing standardized data that 1) federal research has a positive impact on the economy (you’re welcome, Congress), and 2) that doctoral graduates fare better financially than the average U.S. non-doctoral worker. In short, the years you spend earning your Ph.D. will pay off in the end. The original article can be found here.