Lives in Science: How Institutions Affect Academic Careers

Lives in Science: How Institutions Affect Academic Careers , Joseph C. Hermanowicz U. Chicago Press, Chicago, 2009. $55.00 (323 pp.). ISBN 978-0-226-32761-7

We all know someone like Sammie, who got a PhD in physics from Summa University and landed a faculty position at Elite University. But despite a productive career that featured several grants and early tenure, Sammie failed to meet the department’s expectations for major awards and international recognition. Sammie’s graduate-school classmate Bobbie settled on a position at North East State University, which emphasized teaching physics-to-non-majors courses to keep the department afloat. Funding agencies rejected all but one of Bobbie’s grant proposals. Apart from a few senior projects, Bobbie’s research program faded away.

In reality, how common are those life histories? How satisfied are those physicists with their academic careers? How do career expectations change over time? And what role do universities play in shaping careers and physicists’ perceptions of their careers? Those are questions addressed by sociologist Joseph Hermanowicz in Lives in Science: How Institutions Affect Academic Careers .

In 1994 Hermanowicz interviewed 60 physics faculty members (56 men and 4 women) at six PhD-granting universities in the US. The physicists were divided into early-career, midcareer, and late-career cohorts. In the National Research Council’s (NRC’s) assessment of graduate physics departments, two of the universities (“elites”) were ranked near the top; one (“pluralist”), near the middle; and three (“communitarians”), near the bottom. The interviews and questionnaires collected from the six department chairs formed the basis of Hermanowicz’s earlier book The Stars Are Not Enough: Scientists—Their Passions and Professions (University of Chicago Press, 1998). Ten years later the author reinterviewed 55 of the original cohort (one had died, and four—notably few—had changed institutions) to find out how their careers had changed over time and how those changes were shaped by the culture and expectations of their universities.

Lives in Science begins by laying out the sociological framework for the analysis. The rest of the book reports on the changes that have occurred in the careers of the 55 physics professors: Hermanowicz quotes freely from his interviews with the physicists, who speak frankly and often passionately about their careers. The reader will find several surprises. For example, the strongest dissatisfaction comes from some of the late-career elites. Although they like their institutions, they lament that they had not made a major—let alone revolutionary—impact in research and had not received the external recognition valued by their institutions and the physics community. As one elite physicist put it: “The dream is to discover some fantastic new effect that knocks the socks off my friends and colleagues. … I want my effect” (pages 86–87). Nonetheless, the elites state that they would make the same career choices again if given the chance to start over.

The pluralists express the most satisfaction. Many, after some initial discontent, have found a comfortable mix of teaching and research and realize that internal as well as external sources of recognition are important for their sense of personal satisfaction. The communitarians, at universities where teaching dominates over research, feel they have become disconnected from professional science as their careers have evolved. By midcareer their expectations have adjusted to meet the low research expectations and meager resources of their universities. Many of the communitarians state that they dislike their universities and would not choose an academic career if they could begin again. They look forward to a retirement in which they can pursue interests outside of science.

Why should the physics community be interested in what Hermanowicz has to say? There are several reasons. The life stories he presents are fascinating and often touching. Hermanowicz documents how the local university culture shapes a faculty member’s expectations and sense of career satisfaction. But the most important lesson is that the science community’s obsession with research as the sole reason for recognition and reward leads to frustration and dissatisfaction when reality fails to match expectations. And that, as sociologists would put it, “leads to anomie.”

Can the physics community afford to lose the energy and passion of a large fraction of its highly trained talent? And how does a university that wants to advance in the NRC rankings elevate the career expectations of its faculty members who have been socialized to live with low expectations for research and do those characterizations hold for the 50% of physics faculty members who work at non-PhD-granting institutions that conduct some research? Hermanowicz does not provide all the answers, but in Lives in Science he forces us to think about these important questions.