One of the things about teaching in a more industry-adjacent field like electrical engineering is that the vast majority of PhDs do not go on to academic careers. The way in which we have traditionally structured our programs is somehow predicated on the idea that students will go on to be academic researchers themselves, and there’s a long argument about the degree to which graduate school should involve vocational training that can fill many a post-colloquium dinner discussion.

Since I know there are non-academic PhDs who read this, there’s a survey out from Harvard researcher Melanie Sinche that is trying to gather data on the career trajectories of PhDs. The title of the article linked above, “Help solve the mystery of the disappearing Ph.D.s,” sounds really off to me — I know where the people I know from grad school ended up, and a quick glance through LinkedIn show that the “where” is not so much the issue as “how many.” For example, we talk a lot about how so many people from various flavors of theory end up in finance, but is it 50%? I suspect the number is much lower. Here’s a direct link to the survey. Fill it out and spread widely!