Author: Jyotirmoy Paul, Indian Institute of Science ...it may not be true that many geologists leave industry, several are happily staying back there for a long time. Still the question remains valid for a good number of people who left their jobs and returned to academia. What are the reasons behind it? Last week I had an interactive session with the present undergrad and post-grad students from Jadavpur University Geological Sciences department. One of the questions I received there was why many geologists leave their job and come back to academia again. This question lead me to think the topic in more details. However, it may not be true that many geologists leave industry, several are happily staying back there for a long time. Still the question remains valid for a good number of people who left their jobs and returned to academia. While thinking about the reasons, I looked at my small survey data that I conducted during the same interaction session. I floated some basic survey questions in the online meeting. There were around 100 people in the meeting and 68-75 people responded immediately to my questions. When I looked at the survey answers more carefully after the meeting, I found some interesting psychological patterns among the students which could give some trace why many students came back to academia even after being paid highly in their jobs. Although, this article is not the final answer to this complicated question, rather this is just a preliminary scratch that can help to dig deeper into the reality of socio-economic psychology of students. More detailed survey should be done in order to find and add other complicacies. At the beginning of the interaction, I was curious to know the class demography of the students, i.e., what is the distribution of students from different academic years. Among 74 responses, 22 were from UG1, 12 from UG2, 15 from UG3, 16 from PG1, 7 from PG2 and 2 were pass outs (Fig 1). This means there was a well-distributed number of students from different range of age groups and maturity. Then I asked why they choose geoscience as a career. ~54% of them told that the curiosity for understanding the Earth was their prime reason for studying geoscience (Fig 2). I did another word meter survey where participants were asked to write their favourite three branches of geoscience. Results show that Geochemistry, Structural Geology and Petrology (Igneous and Metamorphic) were the most popular subjects. Sedimentology, Geomorphology, Geophysics, Ore Geology and Palaeontology were the next favourites. Petroleum Geology, Micropaleontology and Engineering Geology were the least favoured subject by these students according to the survey (Fig 3). There were other choices too but in negligible percentage. Finally, I did a rank-preference survey where participants were asked to select their future goals according to preferences. Not very surprisingly, most of the students choose an industrial job as their first preference (Fig 4). According to this survey, the majority of students have come to the field of geoscience because of their curiosity. If this is true, it may indicate that students could be more curious and research oriented. Although, in this survey it was not asked if the jobs offered to geologists is a reason for them to study geoscience. Their favourite subjects also reveal that their familiarisation is more towards the research-oriented subjects like petrology, structural geology and geochemistry. It will be wrong to say that these subjects are only meant to be studied for research, however, more industry-oriented subjects are indeed petroleum geology, micropaleontology, and sedimentology. I found this result interesting as there is a compromise between the subject of interest and future choice of career. I think, such discrepancy ultimately forces students to change their career paths in future. If a majority of students would choose the industry-oriented subjects as their favourites and opt for industry jobs as a primary career option, I could overrule the previous statement. However, this small scale survey does have a general indication that at a young age students do misunderstand their actual interest and land up into a place where they are not fitted for. In fact, in the neoliberal economic market, student psychology usually gets influenced by the thought of money-making careerist goals. Often this remains as a short term illusion and with age, compromised work and lack of interest in the industrial sectors push them to quit the job. I must say, there could be various other reasons for changing the career path, but compromising in field of interest could be the most important of them. Also, this can happen for a person who is interested in job and started doing PhD due to lack of job. Research works could be utterly monotonic and useless to them. The way knack for a research-oriented subject grows could be very different than the subject is used in the industry. Let’s take an example for structural geology. When a student grows an interest in this subject, they become fascinated with stress-strain relations, rheology, mechanism of deformations, tensor algebra and field works. In the industry, the same subject may remain confined into standardised software protocol-oriented works of reconstructing or unfolding sedimentary basins. The whole enthusiasm of a highly interested student could be subdued at this point of monotonic work (to them, who had dreamt something else). Many get frustrated with office or field site job locations as the money does not drive them crazy with ageing. When I did my internship in a reputed multinational oil company, I was asked to rotate the deformed sandstone and shale beds using a software. That high profile internship opened my eyes and realised how much I detested these industrial works. I will not deny, there is an R&D (Research and Development) section in industries. Many students who are confused to choose between job and research, fantasize R&D section as their dream position. I did also. But, it is better to realise that in those R&D section employees will be asked to do that kind of research where the industry has some benefit. If the research interest of the employee and the employers overlap to a great extent that could be a great opportunity for the employee, but in most of the cases research interest diverges too much. Also, getting into the R&D section of an MNC could be more difficult than getting into other sectors of MNC. The intention of writing this piece is not to encourage students to do research or to discourage for industry job. Rather, it is to convey that one should understand their interest without being influenced much by external factors. I strongly urge that students should not come to the field of research if they do not have any interest in it. Career struggle will be there independent of where you go, be it academia or industry. However, if one chooses a path where they were not interested they may get demotivated and may not have enough energy to struggle in the rat races. Views expressed here are author's personal view.
3 Comments
Avishek Adhikari
8/2/2020 11:05:31 pm
Research and development sectors want researchers to work for the benefit of industry whether employees are interested or not. But PhD scholars can not choose their research topic even in some institutes professors do not read the SOP before PhD interview. Employees in R&D section as well as scholars in academic institute are bound to do their job on someone else's interest in most of the cases. So this can not be a proper reason.
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Jyotirmoy Paul
8/2/2020 11:27:18 pm
I did not compare the freedom of research in academia and industry. It might be true that in academia also you may not get a chance to work on your topic of interest. Particularly, PhD positions offered in EU countries, are pre-defined most of the time and you consciously apply there. In US you need to define your own research project to get funding. In India, in most of the cases, the project is developed on the basis of mutual interest between mentor and student. However, I do not deny that all the time students get complete liberty to do that.
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Avishek Adhikari
8/3/2020 01:57:55 pm
Really I appreciate your idea. That will be a fantastic approach to clinch this issue. In that case someone has to conduct a survey among R&D employees in different industrial sectors and PhD students in different region of the world covering most of the eminent research institutes. Finally we get know where researchers find more liberty to perform their job.
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