According to an article in The Boston Globe, some physics Ph.D.‘s are abandoning academe, where jobs and research money are increasingly hard to find, for high-paying careers in fields like medicine:
Brian Winey was headed for a successful research career in physics. The nuclear-physics student had worked at Cornell’s linear accelerator and was halfway through a doctorate in quantum optics four years ago when his adviser’s grant money ran out. With no job and no funding, Winey had to reconsider his career options.
This year, hundreds of researchers in the United States may face a similar crisis. Congress’s 2008 omnibus bill in December wiped out funding for two major projects in high-energy physics and clouds the future for individual researchers who rely on National Science Foundation funding. …
Winey turned to radiation oncology, a field that uses physics principles to provide radiation treatment for cancer patients. …
Clearly, turning to medicine is a lucrative decision for physicists: In 2004, the most recent year for which data are available, physics Ph.D.‘s in academia earned about $56,000, while those in hospitals or medical services earned about $120,000, according to the American Institute of Physics. Also that year, physics graduate students outnumbered tenured faculty positions across the country by a factor of 3 to 1.
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