A physics bachelor’s degree is good preparation for lots of different careers. That claim is oft repeated within the physics community, but now the American Institute of Physics has data to prove it. The first in a series of reports based on AIP’s pioneering survey of people several years after graduation came out in August and focuses on the roughly one-third of graduates who hold no additional degrees and are not primarily students.
Conducted in late 1998 and early 1999, the survey involved people who received a bachelor’s degree in physics from one of 149 US colleges and universities five to eight years earlier—in the period 1991–93, during what was, the report notes, both a nationwide recession and a boom time for the IT industry.
Of the 400 or so survey respondents whose highest degree is a bachelor’s, 96% are employed, with 75% working in science-related jobs. The largest blocks...
