Career Development for Life Scientists: An Ongoing and Disturbing Trend
For the past 10 years or so, I have been providing career counseling and development seminars and workshops for life scientists. In the early years, students, postdocs and a smattering of faculty members would attend to learn about the industry trends, the job market and more recently alternate careers for PhDs and postdoctoral fellows. However, over the last few years, a disturbing trend has emerged—the lack of faculty participation at these events.
Yesterday, I was invited to participate as a panel member to moderate a career development event sponsored by the graduate student and postdoctoral associations at the University Of Rochester School Of Medicine. The event was well attended (over 85 participants) and the discussion lasted for more than 2 hours. Joining me on the panel was a PhD-trained scientist/manager from Bristol Myers Squibb and a healthcare company executive who received his PhD degree from the university about 16 years ago. Many of the questions asked by the participants were spot on and revealed that graduate students and postdoctoral fellows are extremely anxious about their futures. The panel did its best to describe what it takes to get a job in the life sciences, the process and steps required to successfully win jobs and some ideas for alternate career options for PhD-trained scientists. Unfortunately, not a single University of Rochester medical school faculty member attended the event. In fact, I met the PI of one of the postdocs who sponsored my visit and he said with all sincerity (I think) “Thanks for coming...the students are really looking forward to your talk.” Obviously, I don’t it ever crossed his mind that he, like his students and postdocs might learn and benefit from a discussion about career options and hear (probably for the first time) how anxious and fearful his and other students are about future job prospects.
The fact that faculty members are routinely eschewing career development seminars and forums is troubling and extremely disturbing for a variety of reasons. First, as I have said many times before, I believe that PIs have moral and ethical obligations to help their students determine what careers they are best suited for. I don’t think it is too much to ask or labor-intensive for PIs to learn about what is going on with the job market outside of academia. Despite an ongoing lack of tenured track faculty positions and the extremely fierce competition to win them, academicians continue to exclusively train and prepare students for academic careers. This makes absolutely no sense from a “supply and demand” perspective. Second, the lack of faculty support and participation sends a clear message to graduate students and postdocs that their anxieties, fears and concerns about job prospects simply isn’t that important to their PIs. The mantra of most academicians —“just continue to do good science and everything will be okay”— is outdated, anachronistic and self serving (for PIs) at best. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the failure of tenured faculty members to actively engage and participate in discussions about career options reveals the unbridled contempt that most academicians have for scientists who work outside of academia. Most academics choose to not concern themselves with non-academic and mundane issues like jobs and careers. And why should they? Once they win tenure, their lives are set because they are guaranteed jobs and benefits for life!
We are living in very challenging and troubling times. In the past three years, over 180,000 pharmaceutical workers lost their jobs and national unemployment will likely hit 15%. Academic and government jobs are hard to come by and the competition for these jobs is ferocious and extremely competitive. And, sadly, current academic training programs are woefully inadequate to prepare graduate students and postdocs for alternate career opportunities in the life sciences.
As I have stated numerous times before, life science graduate training programs are in dire need of systemic change and be overhauled to remain relevant. Unfortunately, systemic changes are unlikely because tenured faculty members can’t be forced or induced to change their practices, attitudes or beliefs. While a minority of life sciences faculty members realizes that the system is broken, the majority doesn’t. To that end, if graduate students and postdoctoral fellows want change to occur than they must band together and collectively send a message to their PIs and mentors that “We are mad as hell and we aren’t going to take it anymore!” Anything short of a widespread massive protest will be ineffectual!
Until next time...
Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!!
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After 
Employees of Pfizer/Wyeth were notified earlier today of impending changes and consolidation that will be taking place at the newly combined company. According to internal sources, Cambridge, MA, Groton, CT and Pearl River, NY will be the main centers of the combined company’s East Coast operations and San Francisco and La Jolla/San Diego CA will represent West Coast operations. In Europe, the research facility in Sandwich, England will be the main R&D center with a network of smaller sites, in locations such as Montreal, Ottawa, Cambridge UK, Aberdeen UK, and Dusseldorf, Germany providing expertise in vaccine production and biomanufacturing. The company’s China R&D Center in Shanghai will remain the focal point of operations in Asia,.gif)
As somebody who has been unemployed more than once, unemployment can be depressing, very frustrating and extremely worrisome..jpg)
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The bad news is that the US unemployment rate is close to 10 percent. The good news is that the government is looking for scientists at FDA, NIH, USDA, CDC, EPA and other agencies. For those of you who haven’t applied for a government job, the process can be daunting and overwhelming. To alleviate some of the pain, Cyndi Fischer, MSA at the .jpg)
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Forbes Magazine released its 
Late Thursday, after 8 months of difficult and often acrimonious negotiations, Genentech’s board finally caved and agreed to allow Roche to purchase the remaining 44% of the outstanding Genentech shares that it doesn’t already own. The price: $95 per share—less than the $112 per share that Genentech’s board and management team wanted —but better than the $86.50 per share that was tendered last fall.
Late last week, Roche raised the price of its hostile offer to buy out .jpg)
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