What really matters? Factors other than pay Part 3 -- How happy will you be?

Howdy

Last time we talked about work hour for lawyers. I was PLANNING to talk about the same thing for MBAs and MPH's, but I couldn't find any data on either. Instead, I'll skip ahead to what I was going to talk about next week--employment satisfaction.

Being happy and satisfied in your job is one of the main points of the American dream. Unfortunately, reality often intercedes and money takes precedence. As such, the employment satisfaction rate in the U.S. of A is an abysmal 19%.

Scientists in America tend to be substantially happier than their counterparts on other areas of the workforce. A study by Nature says that ~49% of scientists in America report being "very satisfied" with their work, even if only 17% report being satisfied with their pay.

What about patent lawyers? This article in The Scientist, a magazine focused on--you guessed it--scientists says that "Generally, scientists who move from the bench to the bar are satisfied with their decisions" but also reports that it's often difficult to return to research if one so desires because of the stigma associated with "selling out" to become a patent attorney and also because of the fast-paced advancement of science nowadays. But what about exact statistics? Well, according to this survey, 82% of IP attorneys (not just patent attorneys but also copyright and trademark lawyers, who do not require a science degree), report being satisfied and many (32%) make more $300,000 per year but that work is intensive and vacations scarce. Obviously, it varies based on location and what subfield you're in.

And business degrees? Since people who get MBAs are so diverse, it's hard, once again, to find good statistics. This survey says that MBAs are often much happier after the degree than before, mostly for reasons of self-development and hard, fulfilling work. But, those reasons were cited as reasons for scientists' happiness in the Nature article, so it's hard to understand whether this applies to scientist who later choose to go into business. 

Next time, I'll talk more about the conundrums associated with business degree statistics and finally some stuff about the MPH

What really matters? Factors other than pay Part 2 -- Career Breakdown

Howdy

So last time, I talked about the issue of hours and pay. Certainly, jobs with longer hours tend to pay more. Some people are comfortable with working over a hundred hours a week and raking in
$200,000--$400,000 per year. Others prefer to stick to 40 hours a week and make enough to live comfortably. Understanding what you want is crucial for choosing a career. With that, let's talk about lawyers.

As I said before, when you already have a science degree, the main reason you'd go to law school is to become a patent lawyer. These folks check out patent submissions in order to see whether or not they're truly original or innovative in some way. They also help arbitrate patent and intellectual property disputes. Patent lawyers are required to get a degree (at least a bachelor's) in a science or engineering field. They will then deal with patents that have something to do with their field of prior knowledge.

According to this, patent lawyers are sought after primarily because not many scientists or engineers have an interest in law. As a result, they can make more money, while working far less than most lawyers. The poster cites a figure of $150K for 1600 billable hours, or roughly 6.15 hours a day, which seems like an incredibly good deal, but billable hours are not on site or on call. Often, lawyers sit around waiting for work for weeks at a time, and get billed for none of it, and other times, they'll work 70-80 hours a week. So, it's hard to pin down actual hours worked for attorneys. The BLS puts the figure a little at $121,000 per year with no mention of hours worked.

Suffice it to say that, if you're going to be a lawyer, you have to be comfortable with long days for weeks on end punctuated by periods of nothing.

What really matters? Factors other than pay Part 1 -- How long do you want to work?

In choosing a career, pay is definitely important. But, it's often a factor that misleads or is given an undue influence in job selection. There are many other factors to consider. I don't know about you, but for me personally, I'd rather make a lower wage doing something i enjoy than a higher one doing something I hate or is incredibly tedious. It's important, then, that one weighs pay appropriately relative to the other components of a career.

Consider, for instance, the matter of overtime. In hourly positions, workers are paid “time and a half” (1.5x the normal rate) for any work done past the standard 40 hours a week. This is a fair means to ensure that employees are not overworked, and that, if they are, they’re compensated appropriately.

But, in more advanced positions (anything middle management or up, but also including things like teaching) this ceases to be the case. No longer can you simply leave your work in the office. Doing some work after one goes home, and working longer than 40 hours isn’t just acceptable—it’s normal and expected. You’re no longer being paid for the time you work but for the job getting done. But, in most cases, employees are paid a fixed annual salary with no consideration for overtime. This can be a turn-off for those potential promotees, who may refuse such a promotion in order to maintain a more robust social and family life. It also has the adverse effect of often simultaneously increasing absolute salary but decreasing hourly salary, at least at first. In essence, when one is first promoted, their time becomes less lucrative until they work their way up to a still-higher salary. This often comes with increased responsibilities, and thus, more work. It’s not hard to see how one gets from this to the stereotypical hardworking Wall Street salaryman working long hours and having no time for family while bringing home a 6-figure salary.

In the next part, I'll talk more about the complexities of this problem and look at possible changes being implemented on the federal level.

Why get a second degree? Part 3 -- MPH and MHCA

So over the last 2 days, I've gone over the two most common degrees that people take to supplement their already-graduate education. Law degrees provide prestige, Business degrees allow advancement, and both raise salaries. But what about other degrees? Are there other options?

Well, yes, there are. Another degree that can be taken alone or with another (usually life) science is a Masters of Public Health. Why take this degree? Well it allows one inroads into policy-making. Consider how important public health is--how often it comes up as a topic of debate in politics or in the media. Whether it's autism or vaccines, cholera in the water, child obesity, or the newest strain of SARS or H1N1, an MPH allows you to work with any threat to public health imaginable. They work at places like the CDC in Atlanta, or the NHS in Bethesda. They often go abroad to places like Africa to fight AIDS and provide clean drinking water. If you want to make a difference in the world's health, an MPH degree is very attractive.

So how does an MPH pay? The median salary for an epidemiologist is around $65,000 per year, according to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics. That's actually lower than the average for scientists and on par with that of a PhD microbiologist. Pay would probably be higher if one already possessed a graduate science degree, but money is often secondary to people who seek an MPH. Instead, an MPH allows one to make a real difference in the world and influence policy in a positive way.

What else is there? Well, there's a Masters of Health Care Administration, which allows you to do just what it sounds like. With an MHCA, you can run hospitals and things like that. There's a lot of overlap with an MPH, but this degree is more oriented toward management than policy. Many of the people who choose this degree become Medical and Health Service Managers, who make a median salary of around $89,000 per year and there is room for improvement. The field is growing fast, too--about twice as fast as average. So, for those looking for something in public health in the managerial side of things, this could be a good option.

There are other career choices, too, but few of them involve another degree.

Next week I'll begin looking at cost of and average indebtedness after school, as well as time costs for these degrees.

Until next time,

Thomas

Why get a second degree? Part 2 -- MBA

Last time I talked about some reasons why a law degree might seem enticing to someone less devoted to research and more devoted to money. Today, I'll talk about why a business degree seems even more enticing.

So what is a business degree?

Well, a business degree, officially known as a Master of Business Administration degree (or MBA for short), is a degree that proves that you know things about, well, business administration. This includes things from marketing to finance to accounting to hiring and firing. Obviously, you can go and get a specialist degree in any one of those fields, but despite the word "Master" in its title, an MBA certifies you as a sort of Jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none kind of person. It shows a certain knowledge of entrepreneurial and financial tasks that is often appealing to employers. 

"But Thomas", you say, I have no interest in business! I want to be a scientist!

Well the great thing about a business degree is it allows you to be promoted upward in almost ANY field. Almost no one (in the corporate world, at least) is going to put some laboratory scientist with little to no administrative experience in charge of anything more than a supply closet, some lab rats, and a few of his fellow scientists. A business degree shows a corporation that you have administrative know-how, without them having to take a risky chance on you, which could cost them a lot of money.

A business degree pays well, too. The median earnings for an American with a Masters' degree in any field is ~$59,000 per year. Not bad but not great. Compare that to a median salary of ~$110,000 for an MBA-holder, no matter the prior occupation. That's close to double. And despite the fact that salaries have been stagnant for a while, it's still a heck of a lot better than research science, where 38% of Ph.D's are unemployed. That's in stark contrast with a nearly 95% American MBA employment rate.

If you're working in industry, an added bonus of an MBA is that you can often get your company to pay for it. They WANT capable management. So, you go to school, get paid to do so, and walk away with better employment prospects and a better salary. Seems good to me.

But that's only one half of the equation for a lot of people. The really cool part about an MBA is that it can be taken in addition to any other degree, so you can keep working in a field you love, but in an administrative capacity.

Now this isn't to disparage research scientists. I'm just saying that, for some people, financials come over the ideal of scientific research.

Tomorrow I'll wrap up this preliminary research series with a discussion of other second degrees, such as the Master of Public Health.

Until next time,

Thomas

Why get a second degree? Part 1 -- Law Degree

Hey y'all. Since I'm technically living in the south right now, and since I'll be going to college in Texas, I figure I ought to use y'all more often.

Probably the most common response to when someone says they're going to get another degree on top of a graduate or even post-graduate degree is "Why?" Why would you want to spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours getting another degree when you've a perfectly serviceable, well-paying job?

There are a couple reasons, in general, and specific to the sciences.

With a law degree, you get to, you know, be a lawyer. You get all of the prestige and respect (and bad jokes) that come with that. Even in our technological world, research scientist doesn't carry with it the same oomph, the same gravitas that lawyer does.

But, more importantly, lawyering pays better than science does. For all lawyers, across all types of law, the median salary is $113,000 per year, according to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics. This is even higher for patent attorneys (the main field of law that scientists go into, as it requires a science degree), at $175,000 per year, according to CNN Money. Compare this to an average median salary of $74,000 for all graduate-level life and physical science professions and you begin to see the appeal. Combine that with the fact that after four years of undergrad, and at least 6 years of graduate education, you've spent several hundreds of thousands of dollars only to make $30,000 per year more than the median salary (around $40,000 as of 2010)  and it's understandable that a research scientist would want to take a gamble and move on up.

Finally, law degrees open doors. 38% of the members of the House of Representatives and 55% of the Senate hold law degrees. Barack Obama and 21 other presidents were lawyers. 9.2% of Fortune-500 company CEOs have law degrees, mostly from prestigious universities. Now let's look at scientists. Of the 43 presidents of the United States, only ONE has had any sort of STEM degree (this was Herbert Hoover, a mining engineer) and NONE were scientists. Of all of the 535 members of the United States Congress, only 6 have science degrees. It is easy to see why a scientists who has more on their mind than being in a lab or in academia for the rest of their natural life would see a law degree as a wonderful option.

Tomorrow I'll look at business degrees, and on Thursday, I'll look at other assorted post-graduate degrees, such as a Masters of Public Health.

Until next time, see y'all.

Thomas

Topic Acquired!

I had a meeting with Dr. Matyas yesterday, and I've decided my topic. My research question will be "Is a second degree worth it?" I'll look at whether or not getting a second degree (e.g. a law, business, or public health degree) on top of a graduate-level science degree, can pay off in the long run. I'll look at statistics of salary, career satisfaction, level of attainment, employment, and other such indicators of success, and weigh them against costs such as price of education, time, and familial stresses. I'll try to answer that question with regards to as many different degree and career choices as possible, in order to provide a comprehensive picture of the situation.

Why this topic? Well, the other topic, about the professional skills data, would only really have real-world implications within the American Physiological Society. This topic, on the other hand, has wide-reaching implications for a number of people in post-graduate education.

I'm still going to work on the data I have been, though, as my day job, and do research on the side. The APS has a lot of data with regard to biologists which I will be happy to use, and the professional skills data might come in handy somewhere down the line. But its use will be primarily in the workplace. I might get to be named an author on a paper detailing what I've found though, so that'd be cool.

Next blog will talk about the opening stages of my research and will include the first few items of my bibliography.

Until next time,

Thomas

Discussion

So, I met with Dr. Matyas on Thursday. She and I discussed a number of options for research questions. The Graduate Skills Workshop data is certainly looking to be the most promising one, but I have a few other options. When I went through the committee reports that Dr. Matyas gave me, I found a symposium titled "Should I Get Another Degree?" which discussed, as the name would suggest, whether obtaining a business degree or a law degree in addition to your science degree was a good idea. This was a very interesting subject and I think it might make another good research question. This, unlike the GSW data, allows me to look into something that has implications beyond the APS, which I think is highly valuable. There also might be some prior research on the subject, which will give me a bibliography, something which the GSW data lacks. But, the GSW data would allow me to do more original research, and maybe publish a paper. They both have their merits, and I'm going to have to think about which one I'll pick. 

So in the meeting, we narrowed down my options to these two questions. But, Dr. Matyas wants me to meet with the Science Policy department next week in order to see if anything strikes my fancy there. If not, I will make the final determination by the end of next week and start researching straightaway. That will give me some real content to fill up this blog with.

Until next time,

Thomas

Options

So yesterday I mentioned that I had several options in front of me for research questions. My work at the American Physiological society is, by and large, intern stuff. I file, scan, and shred documents. I sort a lot of files. Tedious as this may be, this gives me access to a lot of data that I can use. As such, my research project will be a bit more internally-oriented than most, probably focusing on some area of APS policy, rather than a general question in science. Still, given what I've got, and the small amount of time I've had to do it, it should serve.

To help me along this road, Dr. Matyas gave me five documents to peruse this week. They were reports from five of the APS's education committees, outlining their current programs and proposing changes. One program that interested me was a graduate Scientific Writing Workshop that the APS held in 2006. This workshop was, as the name says, designed to help new physiologists learn to write scientific papers effectively. The APS wants to know how the people who took the workshop have done since 2006. They want to compare publication numbers with a control group. I spent about 7 hours this week going through the list of the 312 attendees to the workshop and searching through PubMed to see what they'd published. On average, these people have published between 6 and 9 papers each. 33 people had not published anything (at least nothing available on PubMed). The next step would be to chase these people down and see if there have been name changes (in the case of marriage or otherwise) or publications not accessible in PubMed, so that the list can be more complete.

Another area I've looked at, though more cursorily than the last, is the Intel Science and Engineering Fair. The APS is the organization that awards prizes for the physiology and medicine category of this competition, and it'd be interesting to know what the winners have gone on to do.

Other possible areas include science policy, membership statistics, and women and minority inclusion in the sciences, but I have not yet had the chance to look into these very deeply.

On Tuesday, I meet with Dr. Matyas to discuss options. I'll blog then about what we've got. I think, though I'm not sure, that I can make a decision by next Thursday.

Until then, i'll be following the developing crisis in Ukraine. It's not looking pretty over there.