@Dunham: I know, there are many good european universities that people in this side of the world have never heard of! I was just pulling the legs!

@Daffodils: Yes, generally speaking, the crime rates are much lower in small towns than big cities so your safety in Boise is not a concern. But bear in mind that there are other things to be considered when you move to the midwest. The state is extremely conservative and somewhat traditional and religious so you may find it a bit difficult to adapt into social life if you strongly believe in liberal ideas. Also the state's population is very homogenous with small traces of other minorities or other religions so if you are from these groups or a very practical religious person of other kinds, you may find yourself a bit isolated. But in general people are extremely friendly and kind and welcoming. I grew up in a small city myself so I find them more attractive than most of the people so I can be a bit bias.

I agree 100% with TheEngineer that it is more important to know your field than where you got your diploma. But also, I understand that when following the path for "academic as a career" and at the beginning of your job search sometimes boutique names can open more doors than lesser known ones. If you go to BSU you may be able to get jobs in industry in the US(as many people in electronics industry recognize the name) but if you go to Middle East or Europe or Australia and want to teach, you may face more challenges than lets say you get your degree from some known european colleges!

An indirect BBC guide to which jobs will be automated and taken by robots in 20 years in the UK so maybe it is not a bad idea to avoid getting a PhD in related fields with high risk of being automated! (i.e. a PhD in IT engineering with 58% chance of being taken by robots!) :)

The obvious answer should be Eindhoven University of Technology! People hardly heard of Boise State University! But thats because most of people writing in here are from Europe and except for few big cities in the US, they never visit anywhere else in the continent and think the rest is just filled up with many many hillbillies!

In fact one of the biggest name in electronics and microelectronics is "Micron Technology" which is one of the top five high-tech microelectronics and solid states companies in the world (physical assets over 22 billion dollars), based in Boise, Idaho with strong ties to BSU. Most likely even the computer you reading this message has few parts from them(i.e. SDRAM, solid state drive or even the flash memory you are using). Many of the electronics in computers are invented in Boise, Idaho! Who would of thought of that!

If you think that your supervisor can define some innovative industrial project for you, Silicon Valley or Intel wont be too far! I would not hesitate to pick BSU over any other hyped european names.

But be warned, Boise is a small midwest town, can be extremely cold in winter and is relatively far from main American cities that europeans like to visit and certainly you cannot find many european cultural things over there (including over crowded coffee shops or men dressed in skinny jeans + crakow shoes and women in Sinbad pantaloons if I remember correctly) but if you are an outdoorsy person, lots of thing to do! ;)

There is a guy who brings small projects to our department and he is an adjacent. Apparently, he is well connected to industries and drives high end cars but also keeps a desk in our visiting scholar office! I can ask him but am sure he will not reveal his secret! :)

Hi all,

My second postdoc is coming to an end soon (just 5 months left) and I have done a total of 4 years of postdocing and produced 12~15 papers. I am not looking into getting another postdoc as the pay really cannot support my family. The economy is not doing well in Canada at the moment and unemployment is raising. My husband is not technically unemployed but have 50% reduced hours and works occasionally from home when his company asks him to do.

Excluding the possibility of a long term unemployment and receiving food stamps due to a disastrous economical depression, I have narrowed my potential future career choices into two categories: (1) looking for an academic position and (2) going to industry or the government. Needless to say, the academic jobs are rare to come by and much harder to get, I put 10% or less chance of getting a tenure track academic job (not including sessional) after at least a year of trying. Using the same logic I put 50% or more chance of getting an industrial job by 6 months trying. Obviously I am leaning towards going to industry. However, my second postdoc has been an industry-related type and I am not totally enjoying it. The emotional part of my brain says that an academic job fits me better but the logical part of my brain says otherwise.

Considering the above reasoning and explanation and the fact that my family needs a reliable source of income, if I make it into industry and lets say survive a couple years (or +) there, what are the chances that I can make it back to academia if I really want it?

Any ideas?

Kim

I am not doing an industrial PhD but doing an industrial postdoc so it may not apply to your case but from my experience, it is very important for you to make sure that the industry partner does allow you to have your research time at the uni. Industry tends to forget the time limitation and work load that goes with a PhD. My recommendation is that you make it clear with them from the beginning that your PhD success is the main objective for you and not allow them to get beyond the scope of your research subject.

From being a child, we'd been told a lot of things that did not happen to be completely true, i.e. tooth fairy and santa, but had their own usage as long as we believed in it.

I am sure you'd been told education leads to lot of good things and they did! Just think about the alternatives if you did not listen to whoever told you about goodness of education. However, I bet you chose to do the PhD and pretty much we all know and (knew) that PhD is not about good jobs and salaries. So you yourself created this alter reality that a PhD leads to higher salaries and decided to go for it.

You cannot undo what you believed and acted in the past but you can do things about present and future. Just think about other things that we'd been told (as adults), such as old age issues and retirement, that will not come true. So what you going to do when you are 65 and there will be practically no retirement money for you?

You could be correct here but the thing is that most of us are (or will be) more or less in the same situation as Kathryn15, I also have finished PhD (sometimes happy I did it sometimes regretting it), have published papers and done two postdocs, lectured at universities, have family obligations and and still not properly employed and live on a postdoc salary which just above the poverty line. My husband has recently got laid off and my contract also will end by end of this year. But this is not only for me. Out of 4-5 people which did PhD together, only one has a permanent government job (which he had it before getting into PhD) and the rest are either unemployed (at least two of them, including my best friend), underemployed (one) or does a postdoc like me. The thing is complaining about the situation ain't gonna work, especially when you expect that universe goes around you so you feel happy.

Time has changed, old models of society, work, jobs, social class, lifestyle, jobs, retirement, income, family etc etc are changing beyond our recognition and no matter how much we whine and complain nothing is going to change. So better wait and see what future brings us with a little bit of dignity not self resentment.

In a real world situation, not everyone would be "supportive" and "pleasant". Sometimes kicking people's buttocks worth more than 5 hours lecturing them :)

And the list GOES ON AND ON ..

Well, Dear Kathryn15, giving all of these negative thoughts about yourself just in few days of posting your first threads in here, I am convinced that you are most likely a self-pitying software program bot for the next year “Turing Test Machine” competition - or The Loebner Prize in Artificial Intelligence (a competition to generate a communicative computer program where people would not be able to distinguish whether they are communicating with a human or an AI machine). So well done in convincing most of the people that you are not a bot but hey, I gotcha ;) so modify and come again next year ;)…

But giving the benefit of the doubt that you still can be a human, why would anyone (either in industry or academia), would even consider to hire anyone with this much machinistic self pitying thoughts and negative attitude and still pay them a professional salary?

More or less, a very accurate description of a typical Canadian graduate studies system! Well Said.

Thanks Dunham and Bewildered. I did some research on few faculties related to my field (chemistry) and it seems that having 8 ~ 12 publications has become a norm for first tenure track position. Also because of funding cuts happening these days, my department does not hire candidates as assistant profs directly. They hire you first as an instructor and based on the student ranking on your teaching and how much funding you can attract, then they might promote you to the next level which is assistant prof.

Does anyone know/guess how many publications for an entry level professorship (assistant professor) is required/recommended? Some people say 10+ conferences and journals, others say its all about journals. Any idea?

.

The thing is that science shall not be treated as a religion with people having a position of authority... He is a scientist like many of us that was lucky enough to discover something new and much luckier than the rest of us because an authoritive body of arsitocrats have decided to give him a medal...

Also, I think an honest stupid comment of what someone actually thinks, it much more respectable that a million dishonest apologies that you can hear them very often these days....

I agree. Unfortunately the political correctness and leave no kids behind culture is distroying freedom of expression in our society. I do not agree with what he said, it is stupid but I can laugh at it and forget about it 5 minutes later and then focus on what he is scientifically going to say. After all he is a scientist not a politician and I respect him fot that. That is why I dislike these role-model games that take places at the universities these days.