research without a PhD

[spectastic]

what are your guys' perspectives on going the traditional academic route, vs the nontraditional route of moving up a ladder as a BS level researcher?

 

I stumbled upon this article. Not sure if it's still relevant 10 years later.

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/employment/8101/8101employment.html

[Vene]

I tried to make it with a bachelors, actually. It is possible and I know people who have done it, but I wish you good luck if you try. It is hard and there are a ton of pitfalls and dead ends along the way. The way the job market is right now it's really easy for people hiring researchers (industry, government, and academia) to just hire a PhD level scientist.

[peachypie]

All depends on what you want your endpoint goal to be.  Having a bachelors you can only get so far in the sciences, there are just some things you cannot do without a graduate degree.  You can work up to a certain point which is fine if that is where you are hoping to be one way or the other.  I went to get a PhD because there were things I needed to have the advanced degree to be able to do that I want in my future.  

[spectastic]

yea, it would probably depend on the company, industry, aspirations, etc.

 

I'm not looking forward to spending 5 years in the poop. But if that's my one way ticket to getting job with intellectuals doing stuff I like, then so be it.

[Eigen]

Honestly, what's the aversion to getting a PhD?

 

The pay's not great, but it's not horrible. You'll learn a ton, you have freedom for research that you may or may not have that 5 years moving up the ladder the slow way, and the flexibility of grad school can be a huge benefit. 

 

Choose your school well, choose your advisor well, and take it as a great 5-6 years instead of a bad 5-6 years.

[spectastic]

he aversion for getting a phd comes from the 5 years of low income, high workload, and a variety of other uncertainties that pertains to mainly the job market. I was originally interested in working with OPV's, OSC's, OLED's and the like, due to my background in polymers. But these are very small markets that appear to be struggling. There was a whole bunch of research money poured into these areas, and by now, their development seem to have pretty much flat lined. That's a bad sign to me. biotech is another option, but I've not had that great of an experience working with them in my college career. so I need to do more research on what's out there, and get a better career plan than just do what I find interesting.

[ktk]

I'd agree with a dearth of a jobs in the OSC/OPV industry, everything I hear about those are in academia.

 

OLEDs, maybe, I guess you're also kind of limited in companies that do OLED R&D. I know a prof who does lucrative OLED research with Samsung/LG, for obvious reasons; OLEDs power a good fraction of smartphones, they'll power larger screens as costs are driven down + virtual reality setups. But i can't think of any other companies off the top of my head who'd be interested. Other display companies, really. phillips, sony...

 

I suppose $3B by 2015 isn't "that" big of a market cap for OLEDs compared to the $400B of S&P 500 in biotech now, past the fact that biotech is really a huge encompassing field x_x (src: marketwatch)

Edited September 24, 2014 by ktk

[spectastic]

yay big pharma!....

 

 

self assembly merged with 3D printing seems like a niche area that seems pretty cool.

Edited September 30, 2014 by spectastic