text:
Net salary calculation for TVLE-13 65% PhD offer in Münster
I have received a PhD offer in Münster with a pay grade of TVLE-13 65% in 2024. How much net salary I should be expecting after all deductions?
Actually I have another PhD offer from USA with tuition waiver and 25000 USD stipend in Johnson city, Tennessee. I wanted to know how it compares in salary perspective as the research area is almost similar (I only applied for my specific research areas) and both professors are quite friendly (as far I have interacted).
I am 27, single with no kids if it matters for the tax calculation.

I kinda think the personal finance stack is a better target for this.

You'll also owe tax on your US stipend, so don't forget to calculate that as well.

There is a website to calculate TVöD and TVL Salaries: https://oeffentlicher-dienst.info/c/t/rechner/tv-l/allg?id=tv-l&g=E_13&s=1&zv=VBL&z=65&zulage=&stkl=1&r=&zkf=&kk=15.5%25, looks like you would end up with aroun 1800 € net per month in the first year.

I already entered 65% and TVL 13, there is a table at the bottom that shows the salaries, with the tiers. If you just start you will be in tier 1, after 1 year in tier 2 and after 2 more in tier 3 and so on.

More info can be found in the answers to the linked duplicate question.

@BryanKrause - seems unlikely their stipend will exceed $120,000. They will need to file a 1040 but are unlikely to owe anything to the US.

@JonCuster Why $120k?

@BryanKrause - IRS Publication 54 (https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p54.pdf) suggests at first glance that up to $120,000 in foreign earned income could be excluded.

@JonCuster I meant the $25000 stipend in the US they are comparing to.

@Sursula the link was not helpful as the commentor has written it TVLE-13 2/3 approx 1300euro, while the calculator is showing 1800 euros. I am not understanding what I am getting wrong.

@BryanKrause In USA 25000USD stipend is tax free. and cost of living in that particular city is well within 1000 dollars per month as I enquired from a labmate.

@RichaSarma You're sure about that? Typically stipends would be taxed in the US. It's possible yours is not due to an agreement with your home country.

"I am not understanding what I am getting wrong." You're ignoring more than 10 years of inflation. The numbers from the linked answer are from 2013. Still, the answer contains all the relevant information - in particular, the link to the "Öffentlicher Dienst"-calculator.

Regarding the comparison to the offer in the United States: Please keep in mind that net salaries are hardly comparable between Germany and the US. In particular, the net salary in Germany is the number you get after health insurance and contributions to a pension plan have already been paid (although this pension plan comes with some caveats regarding how long you live in Germany).

@RichaSarma the calculator shows the correct numbers for today, the link to the old answer also has general information that might be helpful. Also, as an added note, do keep in mind cost of living when making a decision, in many places in the US it is more expensive to live compared to Germany.

I got it now. Thank you, you guys have been really helpful, especially @Sursula. Another thing not related to academia exactly my USA visa J1 was rejected around 5 years back, so I was particularly skeptical about USA. You guys made the decision easier. Now another matter will be declining the USA offer politely as the professor really went to different lengths to get me accepted.

From my experience with living in Germany and the US, the 1.800€/mon(after taxes and insurances)  will allow for a more comfortable life that 25.000$/year  (even if there won't e any deductions).

I cannot speak to the actual amount you will be paid, but do keep the following in mind:

Munster/Germany may not be the center of the world, but it is not a bad place either and it will not be difficult to explore Europe from there by train. Johnson City, TN -- I assume you've been there and looked also what's outside city limits? Let's just say it's not the center of the world either, and nothing around it is either.
It's hard to compare German and US salaries. You won't have to pay for health insurance there, and if you get sick you won't go broke because your deductible is negligible. You will have good public transportation. All the stuff governments that are reasonably funded can offer to you.
As many others have already pointed out on this site, pretty much everyone who has lived abroad says that that was the best decision they made in their lives. It's hard to measure the value of that by comparing salaries. (Of course, living abroad is also hard: You're far from family and friends, and in an unfamiliar environment where you might not speak the language.)

In USA also, I will have an insurance being a foreign citizen. The amount is 1750 USD for a year that I have to pay from my stipend and it's okay with me.

You might have insurance, but if you actually get sick, you might have to pay a deductible of $1000 anyway. In Germany, deductibles are minor issues.


text:
Is it SOP for a university course to claim to teach a coding language, and then have the coding portion of the course be completely self taught?
Is it standard practice for universities to have completely self taught portions of a course? For example, a statistics course that is said to teach R (among other things) and then simply quizzes over R documentation without devoting class time to R or coding concepts.
I'd love to hear others' thoughts.

Lots of reflexive downvotes on this post, but this is a new contributor and it's not at all clear to me which guideline their question violates. (It touches on some matters of opinion, but so does any "Is this appropriate?"-type question, and there are plenty of high-scoring examples of those here.) Please explain how this question can be improved or suggest an edit rather than discouraging newcomers from participating.

@Max It's clear the asker has made up their mind already.  So it is not a question.

Introducing new concepts during a quiz or another assessment is fine.  However, it should not be a surprise.

I think it's likely the intention behind the question is "What would be the appropriate response to this situation?" rather than a simple yes/no validation of the OP's point of view. I agree that as written the question doesn't reflect this answerability, but we could suggest edits instead of starting with the assumption that the question can't be salvaged.

I am sincerely unsure if having completely self taught sections of a course is standard practice at universities. It seems off to me, but I came here to see what others thought. Perhaps I should withhold some of my disappointment in future posts.

I hope it is standard practice to require some initiative of students. The "topics" of a course are about learning, not teaching. There are a lot of techniques by which students learn that don't, for example, require explicit instruction - especially lecture.
On the other hand, the expectations need to be clear. If the instructor "teaches" R by pointing to the documentation and then requiring its use, that may well be appropriate. I would hope that they answer questions from students about it, however.
My mantra in teaching was always that what the students did to learn was more important than whatever it was that I did. I had to "set the conditions" in which learning would most likely occur, but not everything that the student learned need to come from my pen or mouth.
Learning how to learn is probably the most important lesson taught at university. Learning how to listen should be a skill already learned that needn't, necessarily, have further reinforcement.

My numeric methods class (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forman_S._Acton) the class was on algorithms and issues, and we were assumed to pick up the 6 or 8 different languages used in the assignments. A good way to get a reasonable exposure to a bunch of different languages.

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

sort: votes


text:
The influence of my supervisor has been harmful to my research. Should I still present my thesis?
Some background. After my bachelor's, I took an interdisciplinary masters that allowed me to switch to a field that interested me. I'm currently in a PhD student with a supervisor that took a similar drastic career turn. After some years, I realized that overall he dictates most of my work and is actively harmful to my research.
The problem is that he is not at all acquainted with the methodologies and the practical skills necessary in our field. Where me and others of his students have taken seriously learning coding and statistics, he has never bothered to do so. He seems satisfied playing a 'managerial' role from the security of his position, setting abstract goals and deadlines, but can't really suggest solutions to the more practical problems or detect problems in an experimental design. In essence, he feels like a very controlling orchestra director that doesn't know how many strings a violin has.
This means he has concerning habits that I think are not normal and have casted a negative influence in my work over my time in academia:

He is very controlling. He sets tasks daily for everyone, and asks for progress a couple times a day, leaving little to no space to initiative. He relies a lot on weekly 'internal deadlines'. This wouldn't be a problem if he were competent, but he isn't.
He is very active at the writing stage, often including bits in the article that are grounded only on his own expectations, such as eyeballing of plots (often cherry-picking data). On this line, he has often asked for different statistical tests until they confirm his conceptions (p hacking). Me and the rest of students try to challenge these practices when we can, but it's mentally exhausting and demoralizing to have our projects hijacked.
When he wants to explore a piece of data we are asked to retrieve it for him (with consequent time spent coding), even if we are not interested in that ourselves or the code is available already to run it himself. This happens often, and the 'results' end up in our project paper where there was no motivation for us originally to report on that. Sometimes the chaining of these tasks develop into projects we get sucked into for months.
He can be very confrontational, and there is a history of people leaving the lab due to methodological disagreements. Other researchers sometimes also avoid him as they notice he is smoke and snakes. I didn't recognize that as the red flag it was until it was too late and I was already enrolled.
His publication rate depends on our work, so most projects are rushed (as enforced by his internal deadlines). We are pressured to produce results, or things that look like results to him at least, and sometimes he dismisses and downplay concerns about quality because he wants to 'wrap up' a project  for publication.
Unsurprisingly, I have preprints only as my work as it is is not accepted anywhere. Part of it is the quality of my own work independently of him and part the academic game, sure, but I think a considerable factor in it was caused by the points above and how they affect the work I produce, in essence, for him instead of for myself.

I feel very bad about this situation. I feel like I produce rubbish research that reflects poorly on what I would like to do, and that I am very limited in my efforts to improve it. As someone who has switched fields I want to do things right, and I knew that meant a lot of learning on my own, but I expected at least that my supervisor would be helpful, not actively harmful. A competent advisor should be able to point out flaws in my work much easily, and actually make me improve as a researcher. At this point of my PhD changing advisors is a remote possibility, as someone without the 'right' background to keep working on this field in a country with very few PhD grants, a grant that is tied to my current advisor's funding and a very limited academic network due to my advisor's isolation (department colleagues work on very different things, plus point above). Being at the start of the post-COVID economic crisis doesn't help make this decision easy, as my family is in a delicate economic situation and cutting my income stream for some time is going to make things hard.
I managed to tolerate this situation for some years now, trying to get the better out of it, and now my PhD dissertation is not so distant in the future anymore. I don't have anyone to ask for advice right now, so any advice would be great. What would do in my situation? Do you think I should present and try to salvage the few bits of work that might be worth defending, get the title and keep afloat economically for a while more, or should I try to quit while I can, since I'm clearly not comfortable with the work and I don't feel it represents can I could have been capable of? Or am I missing a third option I haven't considered?
(Sorry if this feels like a rant, but I'm genuinely in need of advice and I felt every bit was necessary to give enough context)
TL;DR: I'm a PhD student. My supervisor is very controlling and a terrible researcher, and he sometimes is more a burden than a mentor. Switching advisors is complicated in my case. Should I go on and at least get a PhD (and keep a much needed income for a bit more) with whatever I feel is salvageable or desist since I'm clearly not comfortable with my research work involving him?

You haven't mentioned any alternatives! You say your family is financially vulnerable, so...Quit, and then what?

You say "my PhD dissertation is not so distant in the future anymore". Do you mean starting it, or finishing it?

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Completing requirements for PhD programs years after undergraduate degree
A few years ago I received a Bachelor's in Computer Science and I'm planning to return to school as a non-degree student. I'd like to complete prerequisite courses for a PhD program in Mathematics including supplemental graduate level math courses. As a non-degree student I would complete core courses such as abstract algebra, analysis, linear algebra, and topology. Additionally I would take the general GRE with the math subject test, and work towards letters of recommendation. How effective is the completion of prerequisites outside of an undergraduate to satisfy admission requirements for a PhD program?

@Libor, Do you mean course requirements within the PhD itself? or prerequisites for applying? As a non-degree student my intention is to complete prerequisites for the program not satisfy internal requirements.

@Libor, why won't they transfer? If there is a transcript from a university, they should be fine.

I'd like to complete prerequisite courses for a PhD program in Mathematics including supplemental graduate level math courses. ... How effective is completing PhD program prerequisites separate of an undergraduate degree? Your only stated goal is to complete courses, to which I imagine completing courses to be a very effective way of achieving that goal. Did you leave something out of your post?

@Libor, recently asked the graduate math department if I'm eligible for research initiatives typically for undergraduates. The response wasn't promising, and I'll try to look for outside research programs.

@AzorAhai-him-, How effective is the completion of prerequisites outside of an undergraduate to satisfy admission requirements for a PhD program?

@jA5q Why wouldn't they be anything other than just as effective?

There isn't any issue about time (or age, in most places). If you attend an accredited university for your coursework and get grades like any other student then you should be fine, provided that they will provide a transcript of what you have done when you apply later to a degree program.
But doing online courses or unaccredited work is much chancier and you would then need some other way to assure the new institution that you have the required background.
But ask the registrar of the place where you will take courses about such things (grades, transcripts) to be sure.
It is also very advantageous if you make a positive impression on the faculty giving those courses, since your original professors may not remember much about you and you will want letters of recommendation.


text:
How feasible is a remote postdoc in Mathematics?
I will be graduating this year with a PhD in mathematics.  My research background is in analysis in a top 20 program in the US.  However, my family situation is such that I can't uproot my family any more than I already have, and I am thus geographically limited in our "in-person" options.  There are several universities and liberal arts schools in my native region, but these days it is increasingly rare to get a tenure track position straight out of the PhD, even for non R1-institutions.
So here is my question.  How open are math departments/potential mentors  to the idea of a remote research postdoc, assuming I can make trips to the host institution, say, two or three times a year? I'm looking both at postdocs in the US and abroad.
On one hand, COVID has made online work more a possibility. And if I stick to research postdocs, I don't have to be in-person for additional tasks (I might also teach online courses in other cases, but I don't want to bank on the continuation of this pandemic, which would just be, well, awful).  Additionally, as a mother I already do most of my research from home, and I have figured out to a large extent how to balance my personal life with my professional life under the flexible time schedules allowed by academia.  My CV and research activity, as far as I know, is decently strong (two published papers, one in a good journal, two submitted papers, one to a top journal, and several more research projects along the way, several talks, including some invited ones), and both I and my advisor had correspondences with some of the researchers in potential institutions, some of who also know I have a child, so they might be more understanding (or not).
On the other hand, I fear a remote option request might be read at best as a lack of commitment to my research, and at worst an insult to the department.  I know personally this isn't the case for me in terms of my productivity (it's been my default for a few years now), but there might be prior assumptions in play.  I also know that generally, math research is increasingly social and collaborative.  There are some advantages to being able to stop by an office next door and ask a math-related/ research question. I also recognize that universities are going to want additional teaching experience if I am applying to tenure track positions afterwards. My limitation to research postdocs also makes it that the total number of postdocs I'm looking at is less than most PhD's numbers of applications.
Should this not work out, I am also applying to non-academic positions as a back-up plan (gotta put food in the table), but I really do enjoy research in pure math and do not want stop doing it.

Does this answer your question? 'Virtual' postdoc (in math)

You might be lucky if you start now in a country where people are against the idea of coming together because of covid.

@GoosDeeds: The other question is pre covid. Things with teleworking might have changed since then.

Do you have any fhance of applying for your own grant and then "go" to a host institution? Maybe it is easier to convince host profs in this way..

@GoodDeeds, to some extent, but as user111388 said, I'm wondering to what extent COVID has changed some things here.
Some of my possible choices for postdocs are in Europe where people had been hit hard, but I am not sure if a year from now things will be the same and people will want to get together again.

@user111388   I have also been looking at grants as an option, precisely for this reason.

I think a remote postdoc is pretty hard to sell, because a department doesn't really gain anything from the papers you write; what they gain is the possibility of stopping by your office and asking you a math-related/research question.

My impression is that in the US there's some pretty severe legal hurdles for this.  We were told that we could not pay graduate students or postdocs a salary for remote teaching unless they were located in the US.

I agree that this looks really unlikely to workable, but even if you can make it work, what is the plan afterwards? It sounds as if you are hoping to find a tenure-track position without ever moving after the PhD, and without any obvious way to gain teaching experience. It is hard for me to imagine this working. It's hard enough to get a position for people who spend a decade moving to the best place possible for each point in their career!

I (perhaps unwillingly) see the points being made here.  I know that it seems like a stretch.  My guess is that if I am to stay in academia, I will have to be somewhat unconventional at this point. I personally know someone who worked remotely under much less dire circumstances, but this gives me a bit of perspective at least in figuring out what I am up against, even if it's not what I want to hear...

I’ll only address the US in this answer. Some of this may not be applicable to other countries.
The large majority of US pure math postdocs are mixed teaching and research positions, typically with a three year term. Even though teaching is happening remotely at many schools nowadays, you are asking how departments view the idea of a remote postdoc; well, from a practical point of view, if one is making decisions three years into the future, one cannot assume that teaching is going to continue to be done remotely that far ahead. So, my guess is that you getting such a position as a remote-only postdoc is a non-starter.
That leaves the fairly small number of postdocs that don’t have a teaching component. These come in two flavors. The first is grant-funded and controlled by a specific researcher or research group. These seem to me to be vanishingly rare in pure math these days, but if you are lucky enough to be doing research precisely in an area someone with funding for a postdoc is interested in, you may have a chance. At the very least, it seems more plausible for an individual researcher to be receptive to your suggestion than for a department, committee, fellowship, or other institutional sort of entity.
The other type of positions without teaching are prestigious research postdocs funded by well-known fellowships such as the Miller and Clay. There are only a handful of such fellowships and they are ultra-competitive and extremely difficult to get for anyone, let alone someone who insists on doing a remote postdoc; so getting one of them cannot be thought of as a reliable career plan. But if you’re good enough to be considered seriously for one of those, I can imagine at least a theoretical chance that they might allow you to do the postdoc remotely. You’ll have to check.
The bottom line is that the job market for math postdocs in the US is unfortunately not very friendly towards people in a situation like yours who have geographical location constraints. In any case, good luck!

This is a tough one.  It's really terrible that academia is set up to essentially require several moves from people, but that kind of is the setup at the moment.  You're right that with COVID, a lot of old assumptions are being questioned, and the idea that you have to physically be in the office is obviously out the window, so you never know.  There's not much downside to you reaching out to people to see if they are willing to consider it given the circumstances, but I wouldn't go into it with high hopes.  Think about it from the perspective of someone on the hiring end.   I would say your best hope is something like an NSF postdoc (I'm assuming you're a US citizen) or some comparable fellowship, so I would seek out everything you can find along those lines, and of course, pursue all avenues to find a postdoc in commuting distance of where you live now.  I think that's the usual approach of people who for whatever reason really cannot move.


text:
Another bachelor or PhD?
I have already completed two bachelor's degrees in law and social sciences.  And a master's degree in political science. My field of study is interdisciplinary and focuses on social inequalities.
I want to continue my career as a teacher and researcher at the academy.  But I realized that I need to improve my knowledge and techniques in methods.
What is not clear is the way in which to do this.  What would be better?  Another bachelor's degree in economics / statistics (to deepen model studies and econometrics) or pursue graduate studies with a doctorate?
It is important to say that here in Brazil we do not (usually) have sufficient training in political science methods, so I want to try another bachelor's degree that fills this gap.
Thanks for the help!!! Anyone could help with ideas and opinions, please I would be glad to read.
Edited
An relevant aspect that I didn't mentioned: another bachelor's degree or the doctorate will are both funded.

If you're thinking about US grad schools, you should almost definitely go for a PhD. In the US system it's completely acceptable for PhD students to enter with just enough background to start learning what they need to know, rather than being already prepared for advanced research. Particularly for methods in PoliSci (which I'm familiar with), you should just take a look at the 1st year methods courses in PhD programs and you'll realize you won't need a bachelor's degree in stats for that.

That being said, it'll help a lot if you take some university level intro math courses if you haven't already (Calculus, Linear Algebra, Real Analysis, Probability, and ODEs, probably in that order of priority). Having a programming portfolio, or research experience (e.g. internship) in quantitative topics with substantial programming component would also help. But I don't think any of these is an absolute must and many 1st year PoliSci PhDs enter with no background in math and stats (it'd be a totally different story if you target Econ PhDs).

Needless to say, I assumed you won't be applying only to Stanford and Harvard. Apply to as many programs as you can, and spread your choices across different levels (not necessarily uniformly). Keep in mind that some quant-heavy departments, e.g. Caltech, might even require courses in at least some of the subjects I mentioned, but I doubt that there are more than a handful of those. You can always contact the department and ask. And anyways, I think it won't hurt applying if you don't mind paying the application fee (which is not cheap, but you can try asking for a waiver if you need one).

Thanks! Very useful! Just one thing, what did you mean with "different levels"

Sorry for the ambiguity. I mean different levels of competitiveness. A very useful proxy for that is the USNews grad school ranking for the topic(department) you want to apply for. You should weigh in the overall prestige of the school as well though to get a more accurate idea about which school is harder to get in (e.g. Harvard is still one of the most competitive ones even in fields where it’s not ranked among the top 20).

A third bachelors won't get you very far. Get yourself into a doctoral program, especially if you are interested in research and not just knowing lots of stuff at a relatively lower level.
I don't think a dozen BS/BA degrees will get you an academic job (post secondary) in very many places.
You can learn what you need as you go along, but don't procrastinate.

Thanks, I got it! But I mean if I do another bachelor before PhD --- Although I realized that seems useless


text:
Is it still possible to get a decent job in academia (specifically physics) nowadays?
I am an American high schooler considering what to do in university. I am immensely interested in theoretical physics, and I would quite like to become a professor in the subject (I've self-studied quite a bit of it; while I'm no master, I can still do enough to have a decent bit of reputation on the Physics S.E.). However, I've been hearing some rather concerning things from others already in academia about becoming a professor in physics in particular. First of all, I've heard here that every new crisis is permanently harming the job market in academia overall. Secondly, I've heard in several places (including here, if I recall correctly) that the job market for new mathematics professorships is starting to dry up, which most likely means the writing is on the wall for physics professorships. I've heard plenty of personal anecdotes from friends who have parents in academia about how brilliant folks who went to top class schools are now either not able to find work at all or only able to find work in small, relatively unknown universities. Finally, I've heard from a couple physics professors and chairs that it's somewhat difficult to find a first position in physics in general (though it is apparently relatively straightforward to achieve tenure once you get your foot in the door, so to speak).
I've really enjoyed my self study, and research seems quite lovely with the little experience I have with it. Thus, I'd really, really love to grab a PhD in physics and teach and research for the rest of my time here on this planet,  but I'm concerned I'd be left out without a job if I tried to do so! Is my outlook on the situation too bleak, or would I be right to travel a different path and perhaps research on the side?

Well, yes, ... and academic jobs have always been a gamble. On the other hand, "if you don't play, you can't win". As I told myself at a low point, and I do still tell my students, "if you don't manage a permanent academic spot, you can always go get a real job like everyone else has to do". Seriously. Yes, complications with partners and family and geographic location and ... admittedly!

... for the rest of my time here on this planet ... You’re thinking too small, kid. Within your lifetime there will even be jobs for physicists on other planets.

related: Why are positions in math so hard to come by nowadays?

You sound like you have a very good attitude, and it's great that you're thinking about this! You should avoid asking "is it possible?", however, which is a meaningless question -- of course it's possible -- there's no law of the universe against it, and the number of physics departments hiring faculty couldn't possibly be zero! (If it were, they'd soon vanish, as people retire.) Are you asking about the odds, what to do to succeed, personal stories (not really acceptable here, or ...) ? By the way: I'm a physics professor; it's a very hard path; it's a very tough job, but one that I love.

Short comment: the majority of academic positions and universities in Europe have stable public funding and most departments are growing. If you'd be willing to learn a foreign language, this may as well be an option. In general, the political atmosphere is not so anti-academic over there.

If you're going to learn physics, don't neglect programming.  If you're a physicist and you can program, forget about academia - the real world will give you a myriad of very good jobs.

@DanRomik Thousands of retired physicists probably heard the same thing in the 60s.

@RaghuParthasarathy thank you for the advice! I am mainly asking about the odds, but any advice on succeeding is always welcome.

@J... I can code in the Wolfram Language and a small amount in Java and Python, so that's something, ha.

I think you need to expand on what you mean by "decent job".  Do you specifically want to be a "professor" - that is, to TEACH physics?  Or do you want a job doing research in physics, which may or may not involve some teaching?  There are a lot (relatively speaking) of potential physics jobs that don't involve teaching at all.  And it bears repeating that a strong programming background broadens potential opportunities.

My impression is that academia has always been tricky to get into and that it really helps to make connections and get on with the right people.  For example, Einstein was unable to get an academic job for a long time as he didn't get on with the right people.  However, I think the good news is that talent always finds a way in the long run.  If you have talent, then it will eventually be seen if it is not picked up on at first.

Suggestion: have a plan B, and a plan C.  Target that professorship, sure... but make sure that you're developing the right sorts of skills to keep other options open while you do, in case you falter somewhere along the way.

@J... but this will not be academia. I am more or less in that situation (PhD in physics, now working in a super job in high tech) but I miss teaching (which I do on a pro bono basis when time allows)

@WoJ Sure, I just mean to say that if OP does go that route but ends up not finding, or not necessarily wanting, a position in academia, a physics degree and solid programming skills make for a highly employable individual (ie: it's not a dead-end diceroll if it doesn't work out as originally planned - OP would have options).

@J... ah yes, sorry for misunderstanding you. This is an extremely strong setup for high tech and in some countries (Germany for instance) having a PhD is an excellent asset.when in industry. Generally when combining not too abstract scientific background (physics, biology) with modern applied coding (not theoretical stuff like how to design a compiler) you are on the top of the heap when it comes to employement.

From your wording in this question, I'd say you have an excellent chance in terms of reporting your findings. If you're passionate about the topic in which you plan to work on, go for it.

Keep up the good work. We made it this far because of theoritical physics & a good deal of maths. Otherwise we'd still be burning coal, timber do what people did before lasers, semiconductors, missiles, fighter jets & DNA sequencing.

Of course it's possible to get a decent job in academia (specifically physics) nowadays.
Whether it's more or less difficult than last year or a decade ago makes no difference.
If you truly believe no-one has recently got a decent job in academia (specifically physics), why not Post some useful statistics?

I've heard from a couple physics professors and chairs that it's somewhat difficult to find a first position in physics in general

This is a dramatic understatement. I always recommend reading the first chapter of Karen Kelsky's book. She demonstrates that our universities are not in crisis -- that was 20 years ago. Rather, they are in decay. Most departments are not growing; they are shrinking and cutting back. Yet, graduate programs keep pumping out PhDs.
For physics in particular: APS reports that in 2012, 1800 physics PhDs were awarded. In contrast, there are 9400 physics faculty positions total -- about half of which are at institutions with no physics graduate program (i.e., schools that -- with a few exceptions -- focus on teaching rather than research). From this, you can estimate what fraction of physics PhDs end up with faculty research + teaching positions (see also here).
In short: saying you want a faculty position is like you saying you want to join the NBA -- of course you do! But even for the best students, it is a long shot.

I'm concerned I'd be left out without a job if I tried to do so

Now for some good news. 1-year post-PhD, only 4% of physicists are unemployed. The overall unemployment rate for those with a physics PhD may be around 1-2%. There are research positions outside of universities, and there are also non-research positions that are both intellectually engaging and financially remunerative. Further, you should not have to incur debt to attend graduate school. Thus, attending graduate school in physics might be a good choice (financially and otherwise) even without the allure of a faculty position. But it is certainly good to be realistic about the situation; indeed, you might consider subfields, projects, and skills that could lead to interesting work both inside and outside of the university.
Note: this answer, and the statistics therein, refer entirely to the situation in the US.

Karen Kelsky's book is definitely worth reading, but do keep in mind that it focuses on humanities and social sciences which are much worse off than physics.

Completely agree that the book sometimes overgeneralizes from the author's field (anthropology). Further, the second half of the book is pretty much just filler. But the first few chapters are pretty great.

There are 450 million basket ball players and 450 NBA players, so the NBA comparison is a slight exaggeration.

@AnonymousPhysicist - well, you are counting everyone in the world who has ever picked up a basketball. If you restricted your denominator to only those who played college ball in the US, and accounted for the fact that the average NBA career is only a few years, I suspect it would be closer.

Why the assumption that physics PhD == faculty position?  (Or indeed, PhD-level studies in any science?)  What's the ratio of physics faculty positions to jobs where an advanced physics degree (plus programming &c) is a good qualification?

Not sure I understand your question; I never said physics PhD == faculty position. In fact, I said pretty much the opposite. I also did point out that there are plenty of jobs for which an advanced physics degree is a good qualification. I did not specify a ratio, though some of the links do discuss this.

I'm having a hard time understanding the "decay" part. My alma mater is building like crazy, the places I was post doc at are also building, but, somehow, they don't have money for research and supporting new faculty. Not to mention that tuition has exploded almost everywhere. What exactly is going on?

@cag51: You say departments are shrinking, yet "graduate programs keep pumping out PhDs", which together with the low unemployment rate for physics PhD suggests there must be a significant demand for them outside academia, no?

Jamesqf: Yes, I agree. Indeed, I wrote: "There are research positions outside of universities, and there are also non-research positions that are both intellectually engaging and financially remunerative...attending graduate school in physics might be a good choice even without the allure of a faculty position"

Magicsowon: That might be an interesting topic for a separate post. My impression is that the number of schools has grown while government spending on basic research has shrunk....but I'm sure there are many other factors, I cannot speak authoritatively.

@cag51 NCAA says that about 1.2% of draft-eligible college basketball players move onto the NBA, so sounds like you're fairly close, ha. Thanks for the answer; I'll be accepting it.

I'd like to offer a different perspective on this.
I was in your position in 1979, and convinced I was going to solve the unified field theory problem¹ I went to Cambridge to do first a degree then a PhD. But talking to postdocs in the department convinced me that I really didn't want to get on the postdoc treadmill, and even in 1985 there were already mutterings about the terrible job situation in academia. So after my PhD I got a job with a corporate multinational (Unilever) and:

it paid much better than all but the most senior academic posts

I really enjoyed it

So if you love physics you should not let a fear of job prospects in academia put you off. There are companies out there desperate for clever people and there always will be. I ended up moving into an area (colloid science) that was unrelated to my PhD, but the time spent doing my PhD was certainly not wasted. The skills I picked up doing the PhD were valuable in my job, and more importantly the three years I spent doing the PhD were the best time of my life.
As it happens a student who started in my group at the same time I did stayed in academia and is now a Fellow of the Royal Society.
A footnote: I too am active on the Physics SE. The physics chat room is quite active and there are a number of us there who were or are in academia. You might be interested to ask there about people's experiences.

¹ it turned out to be harder than I expected

Come rain or shine, faculty always complain there’s no $$ for postdoc positions, and postdocs always complain there’s no $$ for faculty positions.  Graduate students just worry about food.

This is very good advice, but I wonder if all companies are equally willing to let employees spend lots of time on SE getting their "physics fix".

This answer provides me with a bit of (much needed) hope, ha. Was it very hard for you to find work after a PhD? (Also, as a bit of a side note, thanks for putting so much time into Physics S.E.; I've learned quite a bit from your questions and answers there. I was pleasantly surprised when you answered my question here!)

@JohnDumancic no, I had lots of offers of jobs. Obviously the world is very different now from 1986, but anyone who gets a physics PhD has proven they are (a) smart and (b) determined. Employers are well aware of this, and it's what makes physics PhDs attractive to them.

I think what Zero the Hero said is important to bear in mind too. Like you, I was really interested in theoretical physics at high school. I participated in the physics olympiad, went on theoretical physics summer schools, wrote an expository book on realtivity etc. I was really into it.
After 3 years of undergraduate physics, I switched to pure mathematics and am now beginning a PhD at the intersection of pure maths and theoretical computer science.
Why the change? I realised that the physics I was interested in was at a bit of a dead end. I had aspirations to be a string theorist/particle physicist, but presently the reach of our experiments is so far removed from the theoretical predictions we are making that the latter is starting to border on philosophy. I don't see that changing within the next 20-30 years or so, and even if governments did invest a lot of resources into building higher energy colliders soon, I wouldn't want to support this as there are much more pressing global issues in desperate need of funding.
However there are a number of areas of physics which are becoming increasingly active and have many important applications, including hard condensed matter, soft condensed matter, quantum information theory, nuclear physics. You could be building the next generation of quantum computers or superconductors, coming up with ways to make fusion reactions a more viable source of energy etc. Note that condensed matter is certainly not easy on the maths. It can be as math-heavy as string theory, and some of the mathemtical techniques developed in high energy physics found use in condensed matter (see Ads-CFT correspondence).
Also, I do not think that studying theoretical physics, even to PhD level, will ever be a bad preparation for the job market. You gain lots of analytical and computational skills that are in high demand for jobs in finance, computing, operations research and more. It might not be as clear cut what career you would end up in, say compared with doing a computer science degree or engineering, but there will be plenty of open doors.
EDIT: Also, I should note that if you plan on staying in the states for college, you don't have a pressure of committing yourself to anything at the moment. You probably have at least 2/3 years before choosing a major, during which the current situation will probably iron out and its long-term consequences on academic positions become more apparent. It may also help to audit different classes and speak to advisors once you are in college. They will be able to give you much better advice about your chances in academia, given your abilities, enthusiasm etc.
For the momement, what matters for college applications is to show you are enthusiastic about some subject and really go beyond your school curriculum in it. That's not to say you shouldn't be keeping an eye on other options you might be interested in now, but for students interested in STEM it is much better to have a few stellar points on your application than spread yourself thin looking at different options.

If the problem with studying string theory is that it can't be tested, how does becoming a pure mathematician help with that?

@AnonymousPhysicist It doesn't. But at least pure mathematicians rarely claim that the goal of their work is something which it is not. We do mathematics for the sake of mathematics. If it has real-world applications, wonderful. But we never made any promises.

High school students think of strings and particles when they think of theoretical physics, the vast majority of it is condensed matter though.

I chose to study physics because I liked doing it, without any expectation that a particular job would be guaranteed for me. And, several degrees later, I'm still in essentially the same position- employed as a researcher, not necessarily knowing what my 'final' career will be (if that's even a relevant concept in this day and age), but liking where I am now. If you go in with this attitude, I think you'll be alright.
Even if the progression to your current dream job were completely guaranteed, I would still suggest that you keep an open mind about your career and periodically re-evaluate whether you're doing what you want. You are too young to be locked into one path, and the world is full of changing opportunities that you might not have considered yet. Fortunately, the first step of studying physics- getting a bachelor's degree- will let you explore this while still leaving many options open to you. And this is even more true for the first step of this first step- taking a few college physics courses. Go forth and try everything that you can.

Finding a permanent research position in theoretical physics is very difficult.  Theoretical physics implies, by definition, blue sky rather than applied science (but of course theoretical physicists can do applied science).  Blue sky science is limited to academia, and permanent research positions in academia are very rare and very competitive.  You have to be both very good and work very hard and be lucky to get one.
However:

Finding a temporary job in theoretical physics is doable.  You need to be good, but not outstanding.  Many PhD students become post-docs.  They might get funded for 2, 3, maybe 4 years at a time.  Some people chain many such temporary positions, possibly for decades.  The upside is that you get to do what you love.  The downside is that you're never sure about whether you'll still be employed several years later¹ and that you may have to change city, country, or continent every 2-4 years.  Most find this a big price to pay and eventually leave, but you might do a PhD and a couple of postdocs and then change career 10 years later.  No harm done.
Finding a permanent job as a theoretical physicist is doable — you just won't be doing theoretical physics.  You might be doing applied physics, in particular outside academia, or you might be primarily teaching.  Plenty of commercial companies and government institutes are interested in applied physics, whether to develop the next next gadget of which they hope to sell a billion copies, or to research environmental issues including climate change, or many other applications.  Or you might be doing something else altogether — when I studied applied physics, the tax office actively tried to recruit physics students as soon as they finished their degree.  I was quite surprised at the time, but maybe they figured that people who studied physics are smarter have skills complementary to economists or others they might usually expect to hire.  Theoretical physicists have good maths skills.  Good maths skills are wanted.

Personally, I chose to study applied physics from the start, because although I found theoretical physics and astronomy interesting, I considered that applied physics would equip me with a broader range of career opportunities.  I work in satellite meteorology, which I consider part of applied physics.  In this field, I have encountered many people who used to work with either particle physics, astronomy, or space science, which are rather blue sky science.  Evidently, it's possible to move into applied physics when coming from a background of blue sky science including theoretical physics (astronomy may not be about telescopes, understanding instrumentation certainly helps to tell the difference between measurement and artifact, and understanding instrumentation is quite an employable skill, even when for the physicist it's just a necessary side issue).
Therefore, if you are really excited about theoretical physics, I would decide to go for it.  Probably you'll love your undergraduate, bachelor, you might afterward do a PhD and a couple of postdocs.  But have realistic expectations: you are unlikely to find a permanent research position doing primarily theoretical physics.  Be prepared to either accept to move around a lot hopping between temporary positions, or to transition from theoretical physics into applied physics, or even use your skills outside of physics altogether.  Theoretical physicists are unlikely to be unemployed, but they are also unlikely to spent their life doing just theoretical physics.
Good luck!

¹One could argue this applies to most jobs; but even though working for the same employer for 40 years is less common than it used to be and job security in private companies may be less than in government jobs, it still makes a different whether the default is "you'll stay employed if you do a good job and the employer is doing well", or "your contract ends unless you or your boss finds money to renew you, even if you do a brilliant job"; and in many "normal" jobs, it may be possible to change jobs without changing city, let alone country or continent.

" Theoretical implies blue sky science." No it doesn't.  Theoretical physicists are employed in corporations where they research practical things using theoretical methods.

"never sure about whether you'll still be employed several years later" This is true of 99.9% of jobs, it's not something that can practically be avoided.

@AnonymousPhysicist Theoretical physicists employed in corporations researching practical things are not doing theoretical physics but applied research.  And in most of the world, tenured professors are pretty hard to get rid of, the job security is much, much better than that of a post-doc with a time-limited contract.  In much of the world, most jobs have some forms of job security, in some parts of the US employers can fire employees at will, this is not normal in much of the world.

I don't think it's reasonable to compare career postdocs whose next contract renewal may be days before (or after) their previous contract runs out (possibly requiring them to fly halfway around the world for a visa renewal), who may need to change city, country, or continent every couple of years, to regular corporate or government employees whose permanent contract may be terminated by the employer with or without reason depending on country, but who in case of good performance are likely to remain employed, possibly for decades.

@AnonymousPhysicist  theoretical math-ish degrees get hired by corporations because they tend to coincidentally acquire skills that are relevant to corporate R and D departments, not because they give a toss about your theory of top quarks.  In the 50s, sure that sort of thing existed, particularly in places like RCA. Incidentally the experience of RCA is exactly why almost no-one does this anymore -- tossing a bunch of cash and letting theoretical PhD's run amok is a great way to burn a lot of money without having anything marketable to show for it.

I’m with @AnonymousPhysicist on this.  I actually don’t agree with the suggestion that theoretical physics is “blue sky” research: it’s an overly restrictive definition.   Studying strongly correlated electrons can be theoretical but hardly blue sky if the goal is to understand high-Tc supraconductors - and if this isn’t somehow theory or somehow not mainstream physics then what is?  I doubt anyone in the field would think of themselves as “applied physicists”, who in my experience are much closer to market.   The boundary is not sharp but theory is much more than blue sky research.

"in case of good performance are likely to remain employed, possibly for decades."  That's unrealistic.  Bankruptcies and layoffs happen all the time.

@AnonymousPhysicist I don't have statistics on to what degree bankruptcies and layoffs happen "all the time".  Bankruptcies happen, as do businesses who lay off researchers who bring great value to their business, but I don't agree that staying with the same employer for 30 years is unrealistic for a good applied physicist.

@ZeroTheHero I suppose our disagreement may be down to semantics; the definition of theoretical physics, applied physics, and blue-sky science.  I know little about superconductivity; your example would seem quite blue-sky science to me but it's not my field at all.

If I may say so: your answer in some ways illustrates a common and regrettable confusion.  Sure it’s a matter of definition but the perception is that theory = blue sky, and this perception is valid only in some limited instances.  You’re right there are (blurry) boundaries between blue-sky and not-so-blue-sky and between theory and applied but - to quote Legolas - “to a sheep all other sheep look different” so when you’re a professional physicist you clearly see appreciate how blurry the lines are.

It is absolutely possible.  You can consult the American Institute of Physics for job statistics, which they publish from time to time.
It is very far from being the easiest way to get a job.  If you have the ability to become a physics professor, you can earn a great deal more money as an engineer, banker, or programmer.
It is getting harder to get a job in physics.  The money available is not increasing, but the number of people seeking those jobs is increasing.

"If you have the ability to become a physics professor,...": However, you really need the skills for being engineer, banker, programmer. It is not like professor is the best job and someone who can do all the other jobs. Each job needs different skills.

@user111388 The employment data for physics PhDs suggests they often have got those skills because they often have those jobs.  But they quite probably had those skills before they got their PhDs.

More importantly than you can earn a great deal more money as x is that there are far more positions as x, so it's easier to get those positions in the first place.

@gerrit I don't agree.  There are ample jobs teaching physics available if you are willing to accept very low pay for part-time work.

@AnonymousPhysicist Right.  With "physics professor" was thinking of a Full Professor leading a research group, not an adjunct professor being paid per course taught.

@gerrit The difference is that an entry-level job as a programmer is much better paying than an adjunct position.  There are also scarce jobs for senior programmers, but they pay much more than full professorships.

@AnonymousPhysicist There are far more careers in x, so it's easier to find a career (meaning a job that will give you enough money to be comfortable, long term promotion opportunities, savings for retirement, health care/paid time off/other benefits, etc.). Senior programmer is not a rare title in my area, pretty much every company around here always hiring, and even paying recruiters to go looking for more people to interview.

Well it kinda depends what you mean by “physics”. If you mean in the restricted sense of “string theory” the odd are very slim.  If you mean more broadly condensed matter/soft matter, quantum optics, experimental physics or any number of physics area “not-string-theory” then it is completely possible and indeed it is an exciting time to study physics.
The people studying climate change are physicists.  Lots of people working in quantum information are physicists.  People trying to understand high-Tc superconductivity are physicists.
There are huge possibilities in industry and good possibilities of doing research in material science (“invisibility”, photonics crystals, organic semi-conductors, graphene materials).  A good deal of technology is now moving to integrated optics (including self-configuring devices).  Indeed with quantum computers now slowly coming online, there are bound to be exciting developments in unexpected problems.
Yes there issues in academia - but that’s unrelated to physics.  Academia is difficult now for a number of reasons.  However my experience is that good physicists find jobs in physics or related areas as often as biologists or economists or chemists do.  Physics is less visible than professional degrees like engineering or nursing, but that doesn’t mean there are no jobs in the field.
So yes, jobs as a theoretical physicist specializing in supersymmetry are rare, but once you recognize that this subsubfield is not representative of physics or of the jobs prospects in physics, it’s on par with other sciences.

"If you mean in the restricted sense of “string theory” the odd are very slim."  I've never met anyone who thinks string theory is synonymous with physics.

@AnonymousPhysicist unfortunately I’ve met plenty who think that anything not string isn’t really physics (or not worth doing).

A majority of physics departments contain zero string theorists.

@AnonymousPhysicist indeed the overwhelming majority contain 0 string theorists.  However ask Joe Public what physicists do and you’re gonna get surface science or material science with probability near 0.  THEP nevertheless is the physics brand, with Einstein and Hawking at the forefront.

(not sayin’ this perception is right... just observing that if you go in your local bookstore the physics books are extremely unrepresentative of the current trends in physics research.)

@AnonymousPhysicist Maybe I’m reading too much into this but the OP makes a comparison with math, suggesting that if math dries up so does physics.  IMO this is telling.

Note that OP specifically mentions theoretical physics.

@gerrit String theorists are still a tiny portion of theorists.

For clarification, I am talking about any branch of theoretical physics, not necessarily string theory. I would be quite happy working in anything from plasma physics to condensed matter theory to Yang-Mills theory (a representative sample, but by no means all I would do); it's all interesting to me, ha.

@JohnDumancic then can you afford not to go for it?  I was reading just today https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-discover-first-room-temperature-superconductor-20201014/ .

@AnonymousPhysicist On the contrary, I feel there are more people who think anything string is not really physics (not that I'm in either camp)

I think the prospects for physics PhDs are pretty good (even if most ended up outside of academia) considering the fates of the people I went to grad school with and American Physical Society statistics.
I started grad school about 15 years ago, so things have probably changed a bit. But here's my experience. From my class of about 55 physics PhD students, I think maybe ~5 of us (including me) got permanent positions in academia. Those of us in academia are not necessarily in physics departments, since our research interests changed over the years and you tend to get funneled towards fields where the funding is (biomedical research or to a lesser extent, materials science). I think most of us in academia are doing stuff that we like, even if our research is a mix of physics, chemistry, biology, and materials science. Some people I know ended up at undergraduate institutions and are mostly teaching physics to engineers and doing very little research. I think they like that too.
Get some experience programming! Most of my friends and acquaintances from grad school, especially the ones that did theory research, are now software engineers (at places including MathWorks and Google). I also have a couple friends with theory backgrounds who do mathematical modeling for insurance companies (also involves a lot of coding). Finally, some of the people who did experimental research ended up at places like IBM, Norfolk Grumman, and Intel. From an informal survey, the people outside academia are making 1.5 to 2 times what I make in academia. Statistics from the American Physical Society show that most physics PhDs are making pretty good money:
https://www.aps.org/careers/statistics/phdsalary.cfm
Often you can get tuition remission and a teaching or research assistantship that pays your bills while a PhD student, so most students I know don't accumulate any debt (beyond what they already had from undergrad). So all you have to lose is about 9–12 years of your life (4 years of undergrad + 5–8 years PhD), during which you will work hard and be mentally exhausted a lot. If you like physics, you'll probably enjoy it too!
My conclusion is that most people with physics PhDs get good-paying jobs (or did 5–9 years ago) and have fulfilling happy lives.

Just to add to what others have said: Getting a faculty position is a long shot. But that doesn't make doing a Physics PhD a bad option.
Do a PhD because you enjoy the subject. Not because you can't think of anything you'd rather spend the rest of your life doing, but because you can't think of a more satisfying way to spend the next ~5 years. See the PhD as the goal it self, i.e. spending 5 years of your life being paid to do something you love, rather than as a means of achieving some other goal.
This might be bad advice it it left you in a bad place afterwards - sacrificing 5 years of enjoyment for starting the rest of your life at a disadvantage. But doing a physics PhD will leave you at an advantage for whatever else you might do with your life other than Physics research.

By "the PhD itself", it didn't mean the credential - I meant the day to day of doing research. As in the goal is to spend 5 years of your life being paid to do something you love. I don't think someone with a Physics PhD will have to worry about their financial future.

As in doing the PhD is the goal, not getting the PhD.

I'm not convinced it's prudent to pursue a PhD without considering the value of the degree beyond personal enrichment. Even with free tuition and a stipend, the opportunity cost of a PhD can run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. I agree that a physics PhD would be likely worthwhile in the long run for most people even without entering academia, but I don't really agree with the notion that a PhD itself should be a goal.  A PhD is merely training, and one should consider what they're training for.

@NuclearWang Would it be so terrible to do as Dr. Sudbery suggests? I am on track to graduate with a bachelor's degree at nineteen (I've taken a lot of college courses here in high school) , so perhaps the opportunity cost would not be so high?

@JohnDumancic There's certainly something to be said for doing what you love, but I don't view a PhD as an end in itself. The opportunity cost isn't related to your age at all, it's simply the difference between what you could have made with your bachelor's degree and what you'll actually make on a PhD stipend. After my undergraduate degree, for example, I left a $65k/year job for a $25k/year PhD stipend over 5 years, so the opportunity cost of my PhD was about $200k. I'll make that back over time with the increased earning power of the PhD, but that may not be true in all cases.

This answer reminds me of the sorts of statements that got a lot of people into mountains of debt with nothing to show for it. "do what you love and you will never work a day!!" it's certainly an option for people from privileged backgrounds but everyone else should think long and hard about the tradeoffs and how realistic their plan is.

@eps true but the alternative is the guarantee of doing something you don’t love for the rest of your life.  Granted one must walk into this with eyes wide open.

@eps People doing physics PhD don't get into piles of debt. You get paid. The OP is a soon to be physics graduate with grades good enough to be admitted to a PhD. They will not struggle for employment. I'm specifically not saying they should do a PhD so they always love what they do - i'm saying do it because you want to NOT because it will lead to a better future.  Instead accept for most your life you'll have to be responsible, but now while you're responsibility free and willing to share an apartment with 4 others and eat only ramen, have some fun.

I think you've gotten plenty of good answers, and so now I'll add another personal anecdote/piece of advice. I was likewise at a young age interested in theoretical physics, and ended up getting undergraduate degrees in physics and math and then a PhD in physics with a focus on quantum information science.
I think everyone who wants to get a PhD should hear the spiel that you've seen above -- the numbers aren't good for permanent faculty positions. (I will say that I think this is highly subfield-dependent -- as I was in QIS, which is a "hot" field, many universities were expanding their work in this area and thus hiring in that field. But nobody can tell you what will be hot in ten years.) But the numbers are pretty great for everything else, in terms of finding work with a Physics PhD. It's a highly quantitative field with lots of experience analyzing complicated problems from first principles, and depending on what you do in your PhD you're likely to pick up skills in coding, data analytics, data visualization, and presentation.
The other side to my story is that a couple years into my PhD I realized I actually had no desire at all to continue into a faculty position. I was happy enough to finish out grad school, but as for "the rest of my time on this planet," I wanted to do something else. I stayed in school, did plenty of research on possible career paths, managed to convince my professor to let me do a summer internship somewhere relevant to what I wanted to do, and got a job shortly after graduation. It's not very physics-y at all, usually, but it lets me use a lot of the skills and background I gained in graduate school and presents me with interesting challenges on a day-to-day basis.
My point here is, I would encourage you to embrace the fact that humans change and that you yourself may feel your priorities, values, and circumstances shift significantly in the decade it would take you to be done with graduate school. Make reasonable choices based on the path you feel like you want to pursue right now, and re-evaluate them regularly.

Some of the other answers give you the stats and a global view on the problem, so I'd like to add an anecdotal answer.
Not that long ago, I was pretty much where you are right now: I'd fallen in love with physics at the end of high school and I'd started learning on my own. During my physics undergrad I was a good student (I understood a lot of the material better than most tenured professors) and during grad school my supervisors and other collaborators kept telling me I was doing very well. However, after getting my phd I wasn't able to find a good position in physics (or even in other academic disciplines that interested me). Though (as others have mentioned) I'm still happy I took the time to learn physics, the job situation is pretty frustrating.
Now, while my own shortcomings (I'm a lazy bum and I never bought into the publish or perish culture) might explain away the problems I've encountered, all my friends who studied physics were also unable to find jobs in physics (and they are all smart and hard-working). Some of them ended up working as data scientists with good salaries, but it's really not the same. I do know someone who studied physics engineering and was able to find work in a governmental research institute, but that's the exception rather than the rule.

Yes but it keeps getting tougher as depts shrink and PhDs keep getting pumped out faster to clog the pipeline to those fewer jobs.
So you would have to be among THE best or else settle for a real job in industry or govt.


text:
Renaming Master of Divinity
I no longer feel comfortable with my master's degree (Master of Divinity). Especially for theologists, the title of education should not be racially problematic (calling myself a master might make others feel like slaves). I don't need the MDiv for my job, so I am reaching out for having my degree invalidated.
Now, if I want to have the term "Master of Divinity" changed to a more welcoming title, where would I start? Is there a committee responsible for these titles? Let's assume this applies to the US first, before going global.

Close voters: The question is clearly answerable, even if you think it's wrongheaded.

Please note, the question is about how to get an academic degree renamed. For discussion on whether this particular renaming is necessary (or other topics), please use the chat.

You cannot change the name of your degree.  Even if you can get the University to change the designation, it would apply to future graduates of the degree.  Imagine the confusion with the recognition of the degree if some arranged to retroactively have a different designation.. .

You can be a Bachelor, even if you're married.

No, generally speaking, degrees cannot and won't be renamed after you've received them. While it would be fine to not use the title in day-to-day life (e.g. an email signature), most people would consider it inappropriate to leave it off a resume or CV. Degrees are only revoked when you did something fraudulent to obtain it.
You also cannot rename it (in formal contexts) as the comments suggest, e.g. to "MSc in Theology." You shouldn't insert things like "of Science" or "of Arts" where they don't belong in any context, though.
As far as your specific objection, I don't think it's anything you have to worry about, and I say that as someone pretty far to the left.
If you truly did want to remove "master" from all degrees, you would have to talk to 1) your university and 2) the accrediting body for theological degrees. I cannot imagine you would be very successful.

‘’You also cannot rename it as the comments suggest (e.g. to "MSc in Theology") although that wouldn't seem to fix your problem anyway.‘’ Surely not on a CV, but I do not see any problem in doing that in everyday's life, if the concern is not making people feeling ‘‘inferior’’.

@neutroshock Fair enough, that's what I meant to imply. I would say though that claiming to have a "Masters of Science in Theology" when you have a "Master of Divinity" is stretching too far, and doesn't fix the OP's objections

@Azor Ahai, sure, changing the title into Master in ‘something else’ would not address the problem, as the issue is with the master word.

@neutroshock Yeah, that's what I said.

It’s clear. In my first comments I thought the problem was with ‘divinity’.

@DanielHatton Interesting, I have never heard of such a procedure at a secular university in the states.

@DanielHatton: Clearly, avoiding those terms is just starting. You'll not find many references yet. Most active IMHO is the IT sector, like https://summit.sfu.ca/item/20478 I also see (some will say "unnecessary") clarifications for those terms in https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9138718 I agree, it is mostly applied to master/slave pairs until now. Then I found https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53050955 and I was affirmed this does not affect a master/slave pair. The slave is implicit.

@Don'twannaMDiv The usage of "master" in GitHub is much closer to the master/slave sense than "master of science" or "master of nursing" or "master of ceremonies." If the divinity degree was "master of the flock" then I think your objection would make more sense. "Master" certainly doesn't imply there is a slave.

Hardware frequently have a master/slave terminology because it literally is a master and a slave relationship. It isn't offensive because it describes what it actually is; one piece of hardware/software directly controlling another. The ethical concern is applicable to human interaction. You being a "Master" of an academic subject probably won't invoke thoughts of slavery.

It's safe to say the word in general is started to be looked at unfavorably and is being avoided when possible.  Even words like "blacklist" are being relooked at, even though it has utterly nothing to do with race. Here's an article that came out recently: https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/06/us/racism-words-phrases-slavery-trnd/index.html .  Master in the sense of academics really isn't that far off from master in "The Masters Tournament".

@eps I don't want to get too far into the weeds here, but "blacklist" is looked down on because it uses "black" to mean bad, not because of the etymology - that's not the claim. I think it's pretty distinct from "the Masters," and the article even goes into the racist history of golf and that tournament.

You should keep in mind that the “master/slave” dynamic is not inherently racist, particularly as it is applied to a graduate degree. You can definitely view the word “master” as racist if you try to and spin it to fit that type of narrative if you feel like, but most seeing that you have a “masters” degree, will not presume that you’re a racist or that you are racially insensitive for achieving a masters degree.
Nevertheless, you’d need to speak with the institution that awarded you the degree and they would, I imagine, have to put out a statement of some kind to apply it to all degrees awarded in the past and future. While I understand you feel a certain way, you should bare in mind that it’s really just not a big deal for an overwhelming majority of people. If you do want to appease a small margin of people though, I wish you luck on your journey.

FYI you "bear in mind"

"really just not a big deal for an overwhelming majority of people" - if you have a scientific study on that, I'd greatly appreciate reading it

Shouldn't the person asking that everyone's degree be renamed be providing the "scientific study"?

@RaghuParthasarathy: as I commented elsewhere: I'll provide reasoning, i.e. potentially including a study.

No need for a scientific demonstration. I have never seen such a complaint before, so I can infer beyond any reasonable doubt that it is not ‘a big deal for an overwhelming majority of people’. If anything, you should prove that this is a concern for the other people, especially for those who are going to have their title changed. And the original Latin word for Master (Magister) has no racial implications.

@neutroshock: Inference, well ... How many black, poor, uneducated people do you have contact to? Latin? You know about slavery in Roman Republic? Why do you say the Latin word is without racial implications?

Magister, Magistri (masc.) / Magistra, magistrae (fem.): noun, 2nd declension. Teacher, tutor, master, expert, chief. Note ‘expert’ among them. In fact, your title states that you’re expert in your field. Without any slavery implications.

The fact that Romans practiced slavery does not mean that a Latin word is racist or slavery-related. In Spain, France, Italy and countries with Latin languages in general, the equivalent of magister is simply used as teacher.

It’s not a great answer, but it’s also not a great question, so I accept the downvote.

@neutroshock that's true but it's also irrelevant as many words are coming out of fire even though their roots have nothing to do with race or slavery. Blacklist, for example.  Or 'The Masters Tournament" : https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/06/us/racism-words-phrases-slavery-trnd/index.html

@Don'twannaMDiv slavery in roman times had nothing to do with race.  The concept of race really didn't even exist in the modern context.

@CL40 as my link shows, people (including scholars of race and racism) clearly disagree with you. etymology is not the only concern.

*a correction about my Latin comment, since I can no longer edit: 2nd declension only refer to the masculine noun (magister, magistri), the feminine one (magistra, magistrae) obviously obeys to another declension (1st). That was quite gross from my side.


text:
In the U.S educational system, would a GPA below 3.25 really disadvantage a student?
I am taking a TOEFL lesson and encountered a lesson in which a student is (almost) complaining he had got B- because he would like to maintain 3.25 GPA average.
To me (outside of US) it sounds very "average and O.K" to me.
But would that grade point be so disappointing for the student to come to a professor's room to consult about this? Or is this just an example for my TOEFL that is not meant to be realistic? Just curious.

This totally depends on the student.  That said, it is not unrealistic.  I have had students complain about an A- because they wanted a perfect gpa.  However, this is not a US issue either, and students in every country do this.

Ugh I see. Your comment only compromises my question. Many thanks!

In the US, the specific number of 3.25 is used as a cutoff for certain scholarships, so for some students it could be quite costly to drop below that line.

@Anyon I would really appreciate your kind assistance too!.

You might like to read about grade inflation.

Given that the US system for undergraduates implies a broad education with a bit of specialization (the major), it is possible to achieve such a GPA in a large number of ways. Students "majoring" in, say, mathematics in the US have less than half of their coursework in maths. The rest will invariably include literature, history, the social and physical sciences, etc.
If you want to do graduate study in mathematics, coming from such a curriculum, it might matter a lot where you got B's and lower. If you do well in "major" courses it is easier to make the case for math than if your lower grades are concentrated in your major.
But, in general, 3.25 isn't horrible, but it isn't great. But graduate schools look at more than a number (any number) when choosing students. They look for indications of success as expressed in the coursework, but also in letters of recommendation and statements by the candidate. Some students, however, are "grade driven" and will do nearly anything to achieve a high GPA, even if they have to sacrifice learning to get there.

Thank you so much for your informative answer! I like this site!

The US is a bit different than other countries in this regard. For example, in France, I believe scores in the range of 16-18 out of 20 are considered excellent, and higher scores are very rare. In the US, this is not the case. Obviously the numbers will vary a LOT from school to school, but just to give an idea as to how it works at many large state schools:

In difficult science classes like physics, chemistry, etc., about 25% of students will receive an A grade
In easier science classes and non-STEM classes, as many as 50% of students might get As
Some classes (e.g., seminar) are graded for completion, and the fraction of students with As could be over 90%

Given this, it is not so difficult for strong students to get an average over 3.00. Most students who get into top graduate schools have a 3.8 or 3.9. Students with below a 3.25 may have difficulty finding a graduate school that will take them, and may also lose their scholarships, etc.
On the other hand, as you say, a B- (2.75) is a passing grade. One can graduate from college in good standing, get a degree, and get a job with this grade. So, students who just want to graduate shouldn't be too upset with a B-.

Thanks. The "imaginary" student is taking Philosophy class btw.


text:
Translate academic titles (lecturer, assistant and associate professor, tenure track, instructor) in French
I am puzzled how can one translate the following in French?

Lecturer, Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, Tenure Track, Instructors

Does Maître de Conférences translate the first three altogether? So, how can we distinguish between the various ranks? Maîtresse de Conférences for a woman is considered a "barbarisme" or not?
Can we use Conférencier(ère), professeur(e) assistant(e), professeur(e) associé(e) for the first three, respectively? If not, why?
Google Translate gives Professeur agrégé for associate professor but this is partly faulty, for
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professeur_agr%C3%A9g%C3%A9

En France: Professeur agrégé de l'enseignement du second degré Titulaire d'une agrégation de l'enseignement supérieur : agrégation de droit, de science politique, d'économie, de médecine, de pharmacie.

Nevertheless,

Au Canada: Titre universitaire atteint généralement après avoir été professeur adjoint, avant de devenir professeur titulaire

Further, can we use professeur(e) adjoint(e) for assistant professor?
Ibid. for the couple Instructor and instructeur/instructrice.
Lastly, can we use Tenure Track in French?
For example professeur(e) assistant(e) «tenure track» is comprehensible in general?
Should we use instead something like professeur(e) assistant(e) avec titularisation conditionnelle?

Well, first you should consider if the posts in France are equivalent then consider if the titles should translate... Perhaps the French titles have a longer history than the American ones (gasp, shock horror...:) )

Related -- you may want to edit your question so it doesn't overlap with this one. In general, they are two different systems that don't correspond exactly -- you wouldn't call an Army O-10 an admiral, even if it's essentially the same rank as a general.

What's your usecase? If this is for a CV the answer maybe be somewhat different than for an official translation of  a legal text, say.

Generally, if someone asks me how to translate "Maitre des conferences" into English, I tell them to write "Maitre des conferences", and, if necessary, add a reference or long footnote about how titles work in French universities.

To be honest, the first three title (Lecturer, Assistant/Associate Professor) were always quite nebulous to me. What you must understand is that the two systems are completely different.
Basically, if your job is permanent and your activities are split between teaching and research, you have the rank of a maître de conférences (MdC) or professeur des universités (PU). Note that the answer on the "related" question mentions the habilitation à diriger des recherches (HDR), which is more of a degree than a rank. You need to have a HDR to apply to full professorship positions, but you are still a maître de conférences in the meantime. Finally, there are several tiers within both positions (MdC and PU) based on seniority.
If your job is not permanent but still have to teach and do research, you are most probably an Attaché Temporaire d'Enseignement et Recherche (or ATER).
If your job is permanent and only have teaching duties, you are most probably a professeur agrégé (or PRAG).
And finally, if your job is not permanent and only have teaching duties, well, you are not really in the academic system and I don't think there is a rank or title for that.
So to answer your questions:

No, I believe maître de conférences is the equivalent of a tenured professor (in terms of service/duties but not necessarily experience).
I have seen some people using maîtresse de conférences, so I guess it is accepted.
All your translations are not valid since they aren't associated with anything in the French system.
Since there is no tenure track in France, it doesn't really make sense to try and translate it.
Extra item: If you are searching for translations because you are writing your CV, I also recommend what has already been said in the comments: just use the official title and don't mind too much about translating it one way or the other.

This is the right answer for the French system.

you could add the case of non permanent research position: postdoc, which is not a real rank afaik but it's quite common.

@Erwan Yes you're right. I didn't because OP did not really mention anything regarding postdoc positions.

"if your job is not permanent and only have teaching duties, well, you are not really in the academic system and I don't think there is a rank or title for that": some places have "chargé d'enseignement"

In French North America:
Full professor translates to Professeur titulaire.
A tenured associate professor would be Professeur agrégé.
An untenured assistant professor would be professeur adjoint.
I suppose it’s possible to get promoted to “associate prof” without getting tenure (the processes of promotion and tenure are generally distinct), but “tenure” is agrégation.
The notion of “adjunct professor” does not translate to “professor adjoint” but rather to professeur associé.
I’m not sure there’s an English equivalent to Maître de Conference.  Maybe this is before the “professeur adjoint” level.
“tenure track” translates to “en voie d’agregation” or “avec possibilité d’agregration”; the latter formulation is used for recruitment but a professeur adjoint already hired would use the former.


text:
Enquiring about postdoc opportunities: should I contact professor directly or via recommendation/networking?
I have recently finished my PhD and I'd like to contact a professor to introduce myself and express my interest in doing a postdoc in their group. My doctoral supervisor is familiar with this professor's work, and he may know him/her personally.
How should I approach the professor? Should I contact the professor directly via email, presenting myself and mentioning my supervisor? Or should I start by asking my supervisor to connect me with the professor, and take it from there?
In case it is relevant: this is in Europe.
Thanks for the advice.

I think that the professor contacting their colleague about how wonderful you are is far superior to you cold emailing. The recipient doesn't know you and you have no reputation with them, so it is easy to just ignore any email unless they are actively seeking people.
It is especially effective if the two professors know one another already. This is one reason that I recommend every young scholar to spend some effort on expanding their circle of contacts and collaborators.
A colleague won't be ignored, but you might be.

Fully agree. So far every job I've taken (over 35+ years) has involved my network in one way or another. My postdoc came when the institute director walked up to me at a conference and said 'I heard from so-and-so you are looking for a postdoc - when can you start?'


text:
Msc exam resit and PhD admissions
I study Msc in Belgium and I just got my exam results back. This was my first semester and I was 5 weeks late into the semester due to visa and immigration issues. Out of 4 exams I got 16-15-15-9 out of 20 scale which is like A, B+, B+, F on the US scale. This is the first time in my life that I get F for an exam and I’m freaking out as I wanna apply for PhD starting this summer. The F is not directly related to my field of research but I have no idea how it will affect my chances for PhD admissions. The exam resit is apparently normal in Europe but I haven’t had any experience like this as I did my undergraduate in the UK. Please tell me if I’m screwed already? I did apply for the exam evaluation but I’m not counting on it. I only need one mark to pass the subject but I have to deal with three professors for this subject.

It seems unlikely that any single thing like this will end your career.

Exam resits are quite common at Belgian universities; in the more difficult MSc courses 15 - 25 % of students will fail their first try.
For a PhD in Belgium, a typical formal requirement is an average of 14 or better; if you have 16 or more that should give your application a bonus point.
At this point there's no reason to bury your PhD plans, but you should aim for results on the level of your other 3 courses in general. Definitely go to the exam feedback - not as a way to try to change the result, but to learn what was missing and what you should focus on for the resit. In the end, a result of 14 or better in the resit will be more helpful for a PhD application than arguing your way to a 10 from the first exam.
Regarding the timing for PhD program applications, if you have a 2 year MSc program and you want to start a PhD in Belgium then it's better to wait at least until December / January of your 2nd year with the applications.


text:
Publication costs in an obscure journal how to fund?
I am long retired (2008) In the field of cardiology I am a pariah, there is an embargo on my publishing in major journals. I have therefore been forced to go to obscure journals where the referees are not from the cartel that ban me.  J Cardiol Cardiovasc Med. and J. Integr. Cardiol. I have so far with these journals persuaded them to accept only cost covering fees, i.e. reduced from over £2000 to around £500.  It is embarrassing to do this and with 5 papers already done this way in last 2-3 years hurts my measly pension. I now have a sixth to submit and it is again ground breaking and against the establishment's dogma, the reason for the embargo. I have tried various funding agencies but there are none I can find to get funding of anysort, e.g. I need an updated Mac.

Why would people want to fund "a pariah"? Why are your ideas rejected?

The "Journal of Cardiology and Cardiovascular Medicine" is published by Heighten Science Publications Corporation. The "Journal of Integrative Cardiology" is published by Open Access Text.  Both publishers are in Beall's List of potential predatory publishers.

Based on their researchgate profile their ideas are related to their project: "To convince the world that the glyceride industry is basis of thhe main food allergies."
(maybe @Buffy)
You also say you were an STO at cambridge, what does STO stand for?

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/83764/how-do-i-identify-predatory-and-low-quality-journals-with-bealls-list-gone-ho

It sounds like you have already made significant personal sacrifices for this cause over many years. Without comment on the validity of your cause (I am entirely unqualified to assess such claims). it might be worth thinking about just how much more you feel duty-bound to sacrifice.

Buffy and Libor you eally do need to read my cardiac output, you will find it revolutionary that is why I publish although retired. You will find CaATP as substrate . STO is senior technical officer, I supplied orgaanic chem to anyone who wanted it, it is lecturer equivalent.

Geoffry Brent, I am a scientish, pursuit of truth is central. One could also say giving something back, I have stent, double bypass, metal aortic valve and very recently a pacemaker. My latest yet to appear explains the lack of understanding that led to the pacemaker.

The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) currently lists 1,845 open access journals in the field of Medicine that do not charge any publication fees.
You could use the advanced query functions to the left to narrow down your discipline (e.g. to Internal Medicine), and browse through the list of journals to find some that may be suitable to you. That way you would not need any funding at all.

I bookmarked the question because of this answer.

@scaaahu: you could also bookmark the link!


text:
Withdrawing conference submission before notification
Is it unethical thing?
It's been a week since submission and a month left until the final decision.
I'm so worried about it.

Yes, you can withdraw it. There is no issue. The paper is yours. With a month to go you will cause little disruption.
Sooner is better, though.

Thanks. I was so nervous about it.


text:
How to ask for another university prof for course materials?
Just surfing the net to find useful resources, came across to the university course page, and course materials were well explained. However, when trying to download them, Unfortunately, there was a canvas page to do the university authorization.

Is it a mistake to ask the instructor for the course contents, despite not being a professor's student?
Well, if that is not a problem, Is there any suggestion or recommendation with how speaking and using words or expressions in email text might make it better?
Should there be an EDU email or other Email service providers are safe?
What if they did not answer? Is it right to keep doing it again?

Any help would be appreciated.

Does this answer your question? Is it okay to ask a professor from another university for class lecture notes of a course that he offered on that university?

Not entirely just some parts.

It is definitely not a mistake to ask the instructor for his course notes. From what I know it is common practice to do this and many professors and grad students do this on a regular basis even if you are not a student taking that course.
I would recommend you take a straightforward approach, there's no need to beat around the bush. Introduce yourself to the instructor being clear about your intentions with his course notes. If there are some certain parts of the course you are more interested in, remember to mention them as they might be more comfortable sharing some parts of the content rather than the whole thing.
An EDU email could be better but it depends on the circumstances. If you are a professor teaching  a similar course at some other university, the instructor might have his concerns regarding sharing content but if you work in industry and there's no chance of stealing their work they might be okay with sharing it.
If they don't answer you can drop another email after some time (I usually give people a week before sending a polite reminder email). However if you don't get a reply for your second email, I personally wouldn't keep sending them emails.

I hope this was helpful. Let me know if you have any more questions.

I see no harm in asking, but personally I would find it weird if someone outside the university asked me for all my course materials.
Building a course is a lot of work.  There are multitudes of open-access education resources that I could post to if I felt so inclined.  But teaching the course is part of what I do for a living, at my place of work no less.
So, it can't hurt to try an email, but I wouldn't go into it with high expectations, nor would I keep after the professor.  I think you'll be more likely to be successful if you simply explain your interest in them specifically, and why you can't get the material elsewhere.