Evalyn Gates notes that a student’s career decisions may be influenced by cultural attitudes. From my years of teaching and advising, I have seen that the influence of parents on the choice of a career is also a major factor.
In many instances, I saw students pushed by parents to become engineers or doctors, careers that did not fit their interests or abilities. Some I managed to persuade to change; a few changed majors only after failing a physics course.
Unfortunately science professors have little chance to influence students who have been pushed out of science into arts or social studies. I did encourage a few women to defy their parents and major in a science.
Another possible motivator away from physics could be that in many colleges and universities, students must choose the subject of their major upon entrance. Admittedly the sequential structure of courses starting late in the second year can cause scheduling difficulties if a major is not yet chosen. One woman, for example, came into my office in the second semester of her sophomore year and said, “I have a problem. I like physics.” We worked out a program for a major, and she eventually completed her bachelor’s and PhD degrees in physics.
Too many people today are looking only at the financial gains of a career. After four to six years in graduate school plus at least a year as a poorly paid postdoc, a PhD holder in science can expect an entry-level position to pay about half what a lawyer will make after three years of postgraduate work, and less than half what an MBA will make with two postgraduate years. Furthermore, when a woman is married, a physics degree does not offer much flexibility in finding suitable career positions for both her and her husband in the same vicinity. Fortunately for us some men and women still have become, as I. I. Rabi said, “the Peter Pans of the World. They kept their curiosity.”
