Know the Odds of Becoming a Research University Professor

When I was in high school, some of my friends and I would occasionally play a strategy board game call Axis & Allies. We did not take it very seriously, and never invested much time in learning the game’s optimum strategies. Years later, I met a new friend in graduate school who loved Axis & Allies. The first time we played, he looked at the units I chose to buy for the first round of the game and asked, “Do you really want play this out?” When I asked what he meant, he explained that, when you consider the odds of the game, the ill-considered choices I was making would put me at an essentially insurmountable disadvantage. I had not taken the time to understand the odds and strategy of the game I was playing and my friend was nice enough to point that out in advance, rather than simply crushing me.

Unfortunately, I also approached the “game” of physics graduate school without really understanding the odds. I knew vaguely that it was not easy to become a professor. However, I figured that my hard work and elite education would allow me to get the research university professorship I would train for in graduate school. Only later did I truly understand how steeply the odds are stacked against anyone obtaining such a professorship.

The odds of landing a professorship at a research university are not discussed quantitatively very often. My efforts to mentor young physicist piqued my interest in learning what the numbers actually are, so I hunted down several different reports from the American Institute of Physics and pieced together the story. Here it is in round numbers:

  • Every fall about 2,500 students start physics PhD programs at US universities.
  • Roughly 1500 of those students earn a PhD an average of 6.3 years later.
  • Every year US research universities hire about 200 new tenure-track physics faculty across all sub-disciplines.

That means roughly 8% of those that start a physics PhD and 13% of those that finish one will ever have the academic research professor job they ostensibly trained for (assuming the PhD / job creation rate ratio stays steady).  The APS career webpage will tell you something similar.  Global numbers were not readily available to me, but I doubt the situation is radically different.

So, given odds that steep, why does anyone “play out” the game of physics graduate school?  There are many reasons.  I think these are some of the best:

1. You Love the Subject.  If you do not have a pretty significant love for physics and its way of thinking, getting a PhD in it is probably not a wise move. You will be investing most, if not all, of your twenties completing the degree. You are likely to be unhappy with that investment if the subject does not give you a deep sense of satisfaction.

2. The PhD in Physics is an Apex Credential.  A PhD in physics is arguably the highest, technically-oriented general-education credential a person can achieve. Essentially, it is a certificate that says you can successfully tackle novel problems that require not merely the application of existing knowledge, but the creation of new knowledge. That is a potent skill set in a rapidly changing world of high technical complexity.

3. It’s All Relative. When considering career odds, it is important to think in comparative terms. Elon Musk’s odds of career success did not exactly go up when he dropped out of graduate school at Stanford to follow his entrepreneurial dreams. The point is to always make the informed choice that is right for you.

4. The Odds of Having a Successful (Non-Academic) Career are High.  A PhD in physics can make the sky the limit (sometimes literally) to your career. Of course, that outcome requires that you play the game correctly.

The main key to playing the game well is to understand that, for most people, the physics PhD represents general education and not complete professional training. That means you will need to spend a significant amount of time acquiring career skills and forging a career plan outside the normal graduate curriculum of classes, research projects, papers and conferences. If you are lucky, your institution will have some formal instruction in these things. Even if they do, however, it will only be a start. The process of going further is the main topic of The Prosperous Physicist.