I can understand the confusion, and I regret not clarifying. When I read “a career outside the traditional paths,” I think you mean non-academic atmospheric scientists. Your response indicates I was putting at least some words, if not all of them, into your mouth.

What I think any Ph.D. field should commit more effort to is preparing their students for career paths that may not be scientific, or at least not within their own subject matter expertise. So I don’t think just in terms of being a (insert field here) in government, industry, or with some other organization, but in terms of how what you learn – the skills – as a Ph.D., can be used in different careers.

The sexual reproduction comment includes not only an interest in more multidisciplinarity, but also a criticism of the idea that as long as enough Ph.Ds are produced to replace current faculty in the field, then the field has nothing to worry about. That seems particularly short-sighted to me, and consistent with the perspective that graduate students are little more than depressed wage slaves.

DB: “What’s depressing to me is that the question is phrased this way instead of a discussion of how an education in atmospheric sciences can serve as a preparation for other careers.”

I’m puzzled as to what it is in the way I phrased my question you find depressing. I thought I was exactly asking how education in atmospheric sciences can prepare graduates for other careers.

As to sexual reproduction of Ph.D.s, I interpret that as suggesting a more dramatically multidisciplinary approach to the curriculum. I have been pushing in that direction in my own institution (we’ve instituted a mandatory social science and humanities component to our Ph.D. programs in environmental sciences and environmental engineering) but one doesn’t want to go overboard and reduce a Ph.D. program to facile dilettantry.

I’m replying not to be defensive but because I take these issues seriously and if you see something wrong with my view I’d like to understand the criticism better so I can learn from it.

What’s depressing to me is that the question is phrased this way instead of a discussion of how an education in atmospheric sciences can serve as a preparation for other careers.

Since the field where more than half the Ph.D. graduates are on the tenure track within 5 years of completion is a rarity, faculty that don’t address the question of how their education programs prepare people for other careers are supporting the notion of the Ph.D. as asexual reproduction of academics. Where’s the genetic mixing?

Addressing Ph.D. production from that perspective, every field produces too many, and no field is in danger of lacking replacements for the current scholars.

Curiously, I and a number of my peers moved from physics into atmospheric science in the mid-90s because there was a glut of Ph.D. physicists and atmospheric science was relatively underpopulated (although for me atmospheric science was just a way station and I have migrated many times since).

What’s missing in the hand-wringing is a thoughtful discussion of whether an education in atmospheric science (including meteorology) can serve as a general preparation for flexible and creative problem-solving that can prepare someone for a career outside the traditional paths.

Physics has been successful at this over the past decade, selling itself in the liberal-arts tradition and producing satisfied graduates who don’t think they’ll die if they don’t become professors or full-time curiosity-driven researchers. Is this a reasonable model for atmospheric science?

Indeed Meteorology + Atmos Sciences more generally.

About halfway through the article the term changes from “meteorologist” to “atmospheric scientist”.

Atmospheric science, I’m sure you are aware, is quite a wide ranging field composed of many people besides meteorologists, and consequently it doesn’t logically follow that too many meteorologists means there are too many atmospheric scientists. Unless you’re implying that the trend has now been noticed for meteorologists is generally applicable across all of atmospheric science.