A Seller's Market in Earth and Space Sciences Article

The Chronicle of Higher Education http://chronicle.com
Thursday, November 29, 2001

A Seller's Market in Earth and Space Sciences

By Jennifer Jacobson

Thanks to retirements in both industry and academe, the job market for earth and space scientists is thriving.

Starting salaries for Ph.D.'s in the field are up in almost every employment sector, including postdoctoral appointments. And the estimated length of the average job search in the field is down for the third year in a row, according to a report last month from the American Geophysical Union, the American Geological Institute, and the American Institute of Physics.

For five years now, the professional societies have surveyed Ph.D.'s in the field on their job-market experiences. The latest report focuses on people who earned their doctorates in 2000. It shows that new Ph.D.'s in geophysical science spent an average of 3.4 months searching for a job in 2000, compared with 5.5 months in 1998 and 4.7 months in 1999. And the report says that 82 percent of the 2000 graduates found work in earth and space sciences, and 97 percent found employment in science or engineering.

Average starting salaries for these Ph.D.'s in academe have continued to increase, from $36,500 in 1996 to $44,300 in 2000. The same holds true for jobs at companies, where average starting salaries rose from $50,400 in 1996 to $68,000 in 2000. For those Ph.D.'s with government jobs, the average starting salaries actually dropped to $44,300 in 2000, from $47,900 in 1996, but the report says the category has so few respondents that the figures may be statistically suspect.

"Not only has the job market improved, but more importantly, the perception of the job market has improved," says Nicholas H. Claudy, manager of human resources for the geological institute. That means students have "greater confidence that there will be jobs available if they continue their studies at the Ph.D. level," he says -- a confidence many didn't have back in 1996, when perceptions about the market were nearly the reverse. Back then, only 4 percent of Ph.D.'s surveyed described the market as "good or excellent," while 65 percent said it was "hopeless or bad." In 2000, 28 percent said the job market was "good or excellent" and only 22 percent called it "hopeless or bad."

Academe remains the most popular line of work for recent earth- and space-science Ph.D.'s. Almost half of the new doctoral recipients surveyed work at universities, a fifth work in industry, 29 percent work in government, and 5 percent work for nonprofit organizations.

Oil companies in particular have been hiring more Ph.D.'s lately, says Christopher G. Maples, chairman of the department of geological sciences at Indiana University at Bloomington. The industry, he says, has a bad age demographic: Its workers retire on average at 55, and the average age of those now in the industry is about 47. Petroleum companies hired too many Ph.D.'s in the late '70s and early '80s, then hired very few through the late '80s and '90s, Mr. Maples says. So now, he says, "there's the recognition that we need people, we need people in a hurry, but not just anybody -- the best people we can get."

A wave of faculty retirements also is improving the academic market. "It had been talked about happening sometime earlier than now, but a lot of retirements are in the immediate offing," Mr.Maples says. His own department has one assistant professor, three associate professors and 12 full professors, three of whom he expects to retire within the next two years.

His department, like many others across the country, is not just replacing retiring professors but also expanding its faculty ranks. In the 1990s, his department shrank from 20 faculty members to about 14, and is now building back toward 20. This year Mr. Maples hopes to hire two full professors -- an applied geophysicist and an applied clay mineralogist -- and two assistant professors -- a geochemist and a vertebrate paleontologist. Although Mr. Maples worries about the lack of junior scholars in the department, he says that it is hiring more full professors because it has endowment money to do so.

Simon M. Peacock, chairman of the department of geological sciences at Arizona State University, says his 23-member department has been hiring a new faculty member every year for the last six or seven. This year, despite the economic downturn, he hopes to hire a volcanologist at any rank and a terrestrial biogeochemist at the assistant- or associate-professor level. "Up until six months ago, the economy had been doing really well," he says. "Public universities had the ability to make hires. We're still riding that boom."

The ride may not last long. "Hiring in academia rises and falls with the economy," he says, and some of the hires being proposed for this year may be subject to budget cutbacks. If the economy picks up, those hires won't be in jeopardy, "but if it continues to deteriorate, the hires we're making this year may not all reach fruition. That being said, it still looks like a pretty good year based on the number of advertisements I'm seeing in geoscience journals."

William S. Elliott Jr. hopes the hiring boom will hold out long enough for him to land a job after he earns his Ph.D. in geological sciences from Indiana University in May. Last year, he recalls, of "the 19 students that graduated, I think almost all got jobs either in industry or in academic positions. This year, only three or four or five of us are graduating. I think we'll all have opportunities." Since August, Mr. Elliott has had four interviews for assistant professorships and three interviews with oil companies. He has yet to decide which career path he will follow.

Ultimately, Mr. Maples predicts that a strong job market will lead to a shorter time to degree. In the past, when the market was weak, students were in no hurry to finish. The average time elapsed from bachelor's to doctoral degree for earth and space science Ph.D.'s was 10.7 years in 2000, but he expects that number to decrease.

"There's a real reason to want to finish," Mr. Maples says, "There's a place to go at the end of it all."

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