Having interviewed numerous bachelors degree job candidates recently, I’m beginning to question some fundamental assumptions about the value of a BA/BS chemistry degree to industry. Let me say from the outset that I wasn’t interested in hiring an analyst. There are plenty of analysts out there in the market, especially in the temp agencies. I’d been looking for someone to do synthesis. Both organic and inorganic.
Just to be clear, the slot has been filled, so don’t send your resume to me. Sorry.
I had the experience of interviewing a fresh BS chemist from a good- dare I say “elite”- school this week. He had fulfilled the requirements for graduation and was sitting there at the table beaming at me with great confidence. This fellow fared poorly on our application chemistry test, but was undeterred.
When asked as to the length and breadth of his organic synthetic experience in school, he admitted that it was limited to that obtained in sophomore organic chemistry. He did have a trifle of inorganic synthesis experience- he made ferrocene once. That being said, his interpretation of the NMR spectrum on the test was wrong, his understanding of carbocation stability trends was wrong, and he couldn’t calculate his way out of a paper bag.
This is not so unsual.
So here is what I have observed in the past 6 or 7 years interviewing BS chemists. Precious few of them had any demonstrable interest in organic chemistry or synthesis. It is not because they were lacking ability- they had not had the opportunity to practice the art. They might have been involved in some kind of research in their senior year, but very often it is involved in some highly specialized work with a very narrow scope. OK. That is the nature of research. It’s specialized. I believe the college chemistry curriculum and the shifting interests of faculty to ultra specialized research are failing students.
I’m glad to hear that students at the local university have experience in operating a tunneling microscope or picosecond laser equipment. But what about experience in basic synthetic transformations in actual glassware? How about a reduction of an ester or an amide with LAH? What about a catalytic hydrogenation or running a reaction with a Grignard reagent? Are students limited to the microscale experience? Do chem majors get to handle greater than 100 mg of reagents? Do they learn to handle hazardous materials in a smart way, other than just learning tofear them?
This graduate that I interviewed had experience in some kind of nanoscience, but couldn’t say much at all about basic synthesis. When asked about Grignard reagents, he could not recall having heard of it. What the hell good did the professor do for this kid?? The kid burned up his senior year doing deep-niche chemistry with skills of questionable transferability. He should have been doing distillations and crystallizations until he could coax pure subtsances out of a mixture that he/she made. That is what an undergrad should be doing. An undergrad should be refining basic manipulation skills and accumulation experience in running diverse reactions. Experience is proportional to the number of experiments run.
I have no reason to believe other than undergraduate chemistry education is failing to prepare bachelors students for the practice of the synthetic arts. It has been my experience- perhaps yours is different- that students with an interest in synthesis go to grad school. The problem with that is that it immediately doubles the cost of doing synthetic chemistry per unit chemist in society at large.
So, who is best served today in undergraduate education? The students or the institutions? Chemistry departments are faced with rising costs and diminishing funding, especially in public institutions. Faculty do what they know how to do. They promulgate scholarship. That is the comfort zone. And they develop strong opinions about who should join their ranks- people of like mind for the most part.
The pressure to minimize waste streams in undergraduate labs enabled the transition to microscale lab equipment. The development of computer technology has enabled the accumulation and treatment of data by semi-automated data collection tools and spreadsheets. Some of this is good- drudgery for its own sake is dumb. But we are removing students from contact with the very materials they study. This is not how to accumulate expertise. This is expertise in automation and not automatically in chemistry.
These graduates move into important roles in industry. Industry, contrary to a popular academic sentiment, isn’t merely a big sack of tedious details. It is a colossal part of our culture. We’re tool users and chemistry is one of the things that tool-using citizens do to improve our lot in life. The synthetic arts in the USA are somewhat in decline as industry continues to outsource manufacturing and R&D (!!?) to India and China. The USA needs affordable labor to do synthetic chemistry. Continuing to stamp out PhD’s is not the answer. PhD’s are very expensive to have around, and while perhaps they do most of the critical discovery work, the costs are prohibitive. Just look around.
The USA needs a new cultural paradigm. We need a chemistry labor pool that consists of workers of high and medium skill to bring affordable and competitive products to market. Unless we figure this out we are headed for that realm of self-satisfied mediocrity that some of our neighbors across the Atlantic find themselves in. There are many examples of fallen empire around the world and the US is slouching in that direction.
Lamentations on Chemistry 
so either train him yourself or hire someone with a phd in synthesis.
Do you really think it is the job of universities to train undergraduates in skills that were state of the art 50 years ago?
Well, those are the conventional choices, aren’t they?
I don’t accept the premise that a chemistry program is just the embrace of the latest technology. While it includes it, the need to perform basic operations is timeless.
So, yes I do think it is the job of universities to train undergraduates in some
skills that were state of the art 50 years ago. It is the utility and not the newness that is important.
Oh, I already hired this kid and will train him. He was the pick of the litter. He’ll do fine. It is the system that is maladaptive.
It sounds to me like that candidate simply forgot what he learned, or just memorized it briefly for exams. I have taught students like that, I think it represents a failure of early education to instill the proper attitude toward learning. By college this is very hard to correct.
When I took sophomore organic (ca. 2003 at Indiana) we certainly did everything you ask for except the hydrogenation in the first semester of lab, and we did most of it on >1g (You don’t really appreciate how filthy teaching labs get until you have seen them after the azo-orange prep). Speaking of things that were state of the art >50 years ago, the second lab semester was all compound identification by chemical tests, derivitization and physical properties. If I recall correctly the textbook was The Systematic Identification of Organic Compounds by Fuson.
Don’t forget that their degrees are in Chemistry, not Synthetic Chemistry. There may be analytical employers out there complaining that their applicants haven’t titrated enough or set up enough HPLC assays.
Hi Matt,
I have a copy of Fuson somewhere. I’m glad to hear that your students are getting this kind of experience. And in regard to the general nature of the degree, I completely understand this having been a prof for a while.
I’ve thought about the issue since I posted this missive and have come to conclude that the interviewees I’ve seen were missing one particular attribute that I was looking for. Simple enthusiasm for synthesis, whether it be organic or inorganic. That is what was missing.
My undergrad research was in organic synthesis as was my graduate work. As an undergrad I made aziridines from dichlorocarbene and imines. I also attached chiral ligands (i.e., ephedrine and Darvon alcohol) to Merrifield’s resin for solid supported chiral reducing agents back in 1983. But this was bootleg work outside of my advisors interest and as a result, it was never published.
My undergrad experience may have been unusual as I graduated with a great enthusiasm for synthesis. My guess is that students today are under more programmatic supervision that I was.
Uncle Al did some Gabriel amine syntheses with dehydrated sodium saccharine rather than than potassium phthalimide. That will sincerely upgrade any lapses in your lab technique, starting with the drying oven.
Blackboard, chalk. Draw N-vinyl pyrrolidinone. “Tell me about this molecule.” If the candidate says anything these days, you’ve got a winner. Empirical skills imparted to current BS/Chem are imperceptible. Doubly so for vac-line work. All one needed to exit Moo U glassblowing was fabricate a 6-inch four-bulb Liebig condensor. T-seals are trivial, rings seals only require practice. We were all a lot older after successfully forming that fourth in-line bulb to fit in the jacket. Gideon’s chemists.
“Best efforts will not substitute for knowledge,” W. Edwards Deming.
Hey Gauss – do you want to say a few words on the passing of Roger Milliken? About the relationship of a strong manufacturing base to the success of a company perhaps? Or how innovation is related to company success? What do you think?
Hey man! You caught me unaware of this fact. I’ll look into it.
FYI, we ordered a picoSpin nmr.
It is truly amazing how much need there is out there for BOTH classical chemistry (50-150 year old technology) and cutting edge stuff. No university even can keep up with cutting edge; they’ll always be one or two white papers behind.
I would much rather hire someone with excellent critical thinking skills and a personality compatible with that particular workplace whom I can train. So the next big question is, what if anything are universities doing to cultivate excellent critical think skills?
And. How do I determine workplace compatibility? This is tricky stuff because you are no longer looking for technical aplomb, but something much more subtle. It helps to determine core competancies required for the job. Do you need manual dexterity or the ability to google really, really well? Glassblowing is a dying art except for headshops in the post mmjd era. Knowing where to look for information, being able to assimilate it, and having a great work ethic are more important to me.
Finally, something that works really well when you are as close to universities as we are is internships. Take them in their junior year and by the time they graduate you have molded them into your likeness and image. Then they have not only the academic background but also a lot more hands-on real world experience than they would ever get, even if they went on to grad school.
I wrote up a little comment about this post here: http://bit.ly/i9R0zB
I want to echo Matt B’s response. As a chemistry faculty, we are giving chemistry degrees. I think that the biggest issue here is that we really need to prepare the students for a wide variety of things. (I agree that the applicant should have known what a grignard is.) However, most of the students I have don’t have a clue as to what they want to do when they are finished. The motivated ones will end up going to graduate school because that’s what the motivated ones do. Not sure that this is the best option, but it is what happens. My advice to you would to be to look at some of the smaller schools/smaller chemistry programs. I think that you’ll find a lot of passionate/capable people there who don’t necessarily think of grad school as the “obvious” first choice. I think that you’ll also be surprised with the quality of their education and lab-skill set.
Once upon a time US companies trained their workers because they expected them to remain with them for years (if not life). The Gaussling’s ethics are all messed up. He dances around the essence of the putrid concept he’s trying to convey.
And that is he really wants to find someone who’s already been trained by someone else and thus save on his R&D budget. Then he’ll toss the ‘unit worker’ as soon as the bottom line needs a little padding.
Please outsource yourself and your company to China. ‘You’ are the reason this country is going to hell and a hand basket.
We should revoke citizenship from losers like you.
“And that is he really wants to find someone who’s already been trained by someone else and thus save on his R&D budget. Then he’ll toss the ‘unit worker’ as soon as the bottom line needs a little padding. ”
Malice or misunderstanding? I think the latter.
Regrettably, you’ve missed the point.
When I was recruiting Ph.D. Chemists for a company that I was working for, I would tell them that our ideal candidate was someone that could get up to speed on a given project with a minimum of time and over-site. Isn’t that what a Ph.D. in Chem is trained to do? Unless the PI is an all seeing overlord of your project, it is usually up to you to get things done, write the thesis and get the hell out of grad school. Now, there are certainly some things that cannot be taught in grad school to prepare for an industrial career, but what I was looking for in a recruit was someone who could pick these things up quickly, i.e a smart cookie.
We’ve been hiring PhD’s lately. It’s nice to have useful experience, but in fact that can be hard to find. As you say, the ability to learn quiclkly and enthusiastically is the key attribute.
So, my temp hireling is doing well enough. He is opening up a bit and is showing a sharpness that didn’t come out during the interview. The interview process is hardly global in scope and is subject to misinterpretation and errors of omission.
A graduate who can’t recall what a grignard reagent is?
How about these short clips from a part time degree course?
Year 3 Medicinal chemistry….
– “And so, at an ED50 of 1500mg/kg bodyweight, I conclude that this drug is effective…” (someone who works in biomed research)
– “I draw the arrow from H plus to the electrons right?” (Sales)
– “Lipinski’s rule of five is named as it has five rules.” (quoted by a pharmacist, who incidentally is the lecturer)
– And many many working folk (dare i say chemists?) who cannot draw simple reaction mechanisms, read nmr, IR, etc.
They might even ask me what etc is.
This piece is most definitely written from the perspective of an academic, or someone with purely scholastic skills, aka a PhD.
The reality is that an interview is a poor basis to determine worker effectiveness, drive or passion.
I applied for a science position performing organic synthesis in which I was given a test similar to the one described above during the interview process. I found it highly degrading and a reflection into the lack of true wisdom on the part of the interviewer by presupposing that a test would some equate to intelligence.
In the business world, PhD stands for Poor = Hungry = Driven. Whether you have a BS, MS or ‘PhD’ this doesn’t equate to work ethic. Scholastic degrees imply one thing and one thing alone, the ability to retain information on paper. It does not mean you are smart or intelligent.
Institutions of higher learning typically teach one thing, how to work for someone else.
I work for a science instrumentation company now making 100K +.
I look back upon the interviewer who held me in such disdain for my poor test taking abilities and general inability to retain unless information such as what a Grignard reagent is. Understanding how a Grignard reagent functions in a reaction, or having the ability to understand how it functions, is much more important than understanding what a Grignard reagent exactly is.
I now make more $ now than many of the professionals that judged me including many teachers during my undergraduate degree BSc. In addition, I benefit from the financial advantages of being a true PhD, poor, hungry and driven which were not taught in college.
Many of my PhD teachers and PhD holding customers I currently sell to now are some of dumbest people I have ever known.
Take Care
J