They'll even pay for law school,....

Wrong.

I've met people who have PhD/MBA/JD from highly-regarded, top-tier, numero-uno schools, but they are unemployable. If you gamble on the wrong niche, you will pay for it the rest of your life. I'd suggest you ask a high school career counselor.

I have a Master's degree in Biotechnology without any job.

Is getting an MPS in biotechnology management at a high rated school a good idea? especially when that school has a built in internship program?

""I'm not trying to run my own business, I'm pursuing the career I love."

Well, if you want to survive in this business beyond the first 5-10 years on the job, then you better look for ways to get out of the lab and become an overly important Manager who loves to hear themselves talk and is very good at power point presentations. If you stay in the lab until you're middle aged then you're doomed. There's a reason you see more gray hairs driving desks than wearing a lab coats."

The career you love isn't going to love you back. At Pfizer (Ann Arbor) there was an unwritten rule: No silver backs allowed (referring to silver back gorillas). Men would die their hair to conceal their age and keep a low profile as much as possible. Listen to the person suggesting getting out of the lab. I did, a position (at my new employer) in the legal department opened up where no prior legal experience was required. Requirements were you had to be a non-Ph.D. scientist with intimate knowledge of the company's research and interface between company scientists and the patent attorneys, to explain to attorneys in non-scientific terms the details of experiments, assist in literature and patent searches, and co-writing patents. This position allows one to do virtual science away from the bench in a relatively stable environment. They'll even pay for law school, not a bad way to sail into retirement with grey hair.

"I'm not trying to run my own business, I'm pursuing the career I love."

Well, if you want to survive in this business beyond the first 5-10 years on the job, then you better look for ways to get out of the lab and become an overly important Manager who loves to hear themselves talk and is very good at power point presentations. If you stay in the lab until you're middle aged then you're doomed. There's a reason you see more gray hairs driving desks than wearing a lab coats.

I'm not trying to run my own business, I'm pursuing the career I love. Maybe its because I live in Boston and the biotech jobs are on the rise my situation is different. Otherwise I have no idea what any of these people are talking about because the industry is not that bad.

And I might also add that as a Plumber, Electrician, etc you can anywhere you damn well please and still find work.

Trying doing that with a MS in Biotechnology.

"Yes you could "learn a trade", but if you don't enjoy being a plumber/electrician, why bother?"

I'll tell you why. Because with a Masters the most you'll likely ever be is a Technician, which is basically the same thing as being a Plumber or Electrician. Just different technical skills. The only reason Companies are offering to pay part of your tuition in return for part time help is because you're cheap labor at this point. Wait until you turn 50, then you'll be unemployed, if not sooner. If you were a Plumber or Electrician you could easily be running your own business by 50. No matter how smart you are, you'll never run your own Biotech.

Do people stop dying, shitload of work in hospitals, shitload of nothing in biotech. Biotech NEVER delivered and genomics is about to crash hard. Mostly because of inflation promises etc...

I have a bachelors and masters degree in Microbiology. I wanted to go for MS in Biotechnology, but the cost of the course and with no jobs, very confused. Is a associate degree in Nursing better??

Lol, I love the bitterness in this thread. I'm currently getting my masters in biotech, and some companies are offering to compensate for some of my tuition if I work part time with them until I graduate. Sounds like there are a lot of lazy people in here who don't understand that looking for a job/career is tough work. If you enjoy biotech and the prospect of working in a lab or having a position in a big pharma company, just go for it. Yes you could "learn a trade", but if you don't enjoy being a plumber/electrician, why bother?

Good luck!

I learned house wirng in high school, but never pursued Electrical Wiring as a career. If I had, I could have retired 10 years ago. I am 53 years old.
In biotech, the future is in the hands of moron CEOs who lie about every single thing.

There are more SOCIOPATHIC CEOs in biotechnology than in ANY OTHER FIELD OF SOCIOPATHY.

I got a job in fast-food and it was actually more rewarding and more lucrative than most lab jobs as a Medical Technologist. They are just different sorts of chemistry.

What you learn after a while is that the people you work with are what matters most.

It's the people. People matter.

"huge unemployment in biotech field, i did masters but cant get a job, dont no wt to do"

Learn a trade and become a Plumber, Electrician, etc. That's what you should have done in the first place. You'd be in the money by now.

huge unemployment in biotech field, i did masters but cant get a job, dont no wt to do

Dear BS thinking of MS,

You've made some bad choices that happened to be amplified by the downturn in the economy.
There are no jobs in Biotech, especially since you're fighting PhD/3post-doc candidates for the same crappy $45,000/year jobs. You will not be hired if you're only experience is this silly program.
The vast majority of programs and certificates have one priority in mind, and that is getting your money whether from the government, a bank, or you. The US education system, after giving away free higher education to the Third Worlders as NIH Training grants, is now a for-profit system which matches the short attention span of the average American, doling out useless credentials with $60,000 student loans, which you can not default on when you file for Chapter 7.

That's keeping it real.
Yo, Out.

Well everyone cannot convert to sales, or there would be no one to sell anything to.

I think we should start being entrepreneurial and develop ideas ourselves. Many PhDs are overrated.

The best strategy for success is always to find someone who is successful and copy exactly what that person does.
Try it.

Move into sales

Are there a lot of unemployed PhDs and Masters degree holders out there?

I would refer you to the posts about LIFE, Pfizer, Randox, and Affymetrix for some orientation to the potential of this field.

The best strategy is to enroll in some crappy college, like you mention, get the maximum allowable student loan and all the financial aid you can, then just use the money to party and take an entry level job as an electrician's helper. Learn a trade. Some 68% of kids default on their student loans.

College is currently the worst way to prepare for any job.
If you just want to go to school to party and wet your wick, that's a different issue.

This last comment is 100% accurate.

Practice your burger flipping technique. Not long ago, most MS's with any ambition bailed on the technical altogether and went into Project Managment; those with particular aptitude for getting their nose brown would go into Marketing. However the ranks of most biotechs and pharmas got so swelled with this nouveau "executive" class that all the companies have died or gone terminal with the constipation it caused as responsibility for making virtually all the critical decisions was claimed by this enormous cadre of boobs not remotely qualified to make them, yet who were the only ones the senior executives could relate to because they were cut from the same bolt of cloth. So now, even the companies not yet dead are absolutely moribund - with no jobs, no growth, no opportunity. Not for scientists, not even for people anxious to join the bloated corps of Product/Project Managers because those guys aren't going away. They'll make sure they are the last ones to go down, no matter how many dead bodies of people beneath them they have to lash together to make a raft to keep them above water long enough to spy a place on a lifeboat.

I would hazard a guess that you would be a better leader, manager, or director than 90% of the sociopathic clowns clinging insanely to their jobs. In most cases, biotech "leadership" have no empathy for anyone reporting to them, and zero insight for driving progress. They steal ideas and parrot what they hear from people like you....

-----------------------------------

"I've been in the lab for over 35 years so I guess I'm a rarity. I have an MS in micro and have been doing immunoassay development all that time. The best that can be said for my career is that I've been unemployed a total of about 2 weeks.I don't have a knack for management or leadership so here I stay."

I see about 20 CVs a week from post-docs and PhDs looking for work. The market is "over-saturated" with candidates who have excellent PhDs and post-doctoral experience.

If you could get financial aid to pursue an MBA, you'd be much better off. A Biotechnology degree without specialization is pretty worthless.

The industry is definitely not crumbling. The glass is either half empty of half full, everyone makes their own call. Be adaptable and will to anticipate change. There will always bottlenecks in every workflow, regardless of efficiencies. Don't listen to the pessimists and plan to capitalize on promising opportunities.

ssss

Until google makes the self driving trucks that don't need to sleep.

Flipping burgers is a better prospect. The industry is crumbling.

I am 5 years out of college and have been in immunoasssay development the whole time and agree with everything you've said. However, I do feel I am in a rut, a rut that an MS would not solve nor do I feel I have the passion for a PhD. Glad it is working out for you however. Job security feels pretty safe especially with all the focus on biologics these days however with the consolation in Big pharma that may not last as well...

Quit your job and join the circus. Your career prospects will be better.

"As somebody who has been a "lab rat" for over 25 years, I can tell you that it is very rare to see anybody begin and end their career in the lab."

I've been in the lab for over 35 years so I guess I'm a rarity. I have an MS in micro and have been doing immunoassay development all that time. The best that can be said for my career is that I've been unemployed a total of about 2 weeks.I don't have a knack for management or leadership so here I stay. My main advice is to avoid getting in a rut because after you've been doing a technology for a number of years, it's almost impossible to get a job doing anything else. With a BS, you'll be expected to just do what your told and keep your mouth shut.

Any MS program will help you hone in your skills and if you can do a thesis project then that will help you market your skills even more. I did an MS after a BS and the thesis project I did definitely helped me land my current job at a top 5 biotech. But, the flipside is that the degree is not well respected in industry. The mindset is either you have a PhD or you dont. If you dont, plan on doing labwork for 20+ years and then, if you're lucky, maybe getting to manage a project or person. Also, the people who only have BS degrees who are in management usually feel threatened by the people with MS degrees and will hold back and thwart the career development of anyone who has better education than them. That has generally been my experience.

The reality is that most people seeking out an educational program wind up doing something quite different than what they imagined five years after graduation for both good reasons and bad ones. That is not a reason to avoid your education program, but realize that an educational program will only take you so far in an ever-changing world.

Learn all you can, whether it is technology related or not, and seek to USE that knowledge. Much advancement comes from those who combine existing facts in a creative way to discover new knowledge. Avoid the cookie-cutter mentality of always doing things the same way and you will be valued.

As somebody who has been a "lab rat" for over 25 years, I can tell you that it is very rare to see anybody begin and end their career in the lab. The successful ones move on to some form of management.

I was never smart enough to do that, so I had to take a 66% pay cut just to stay an employed "lab rat". Fortunately, I am in a position where I can afford to do that.

Thank you very much for all of your replies! The anxiety these past few days as I try to assure myself that this is for the best has been overwhelming. I might end up giving myself an ulcer before the program starts. It's either this or wait a year and try to save up the money to get MLT training at the local college, because I know my boss is going to be retiring soon and I'm not sure doing medical billing is for me.

I'll definitely take some of this advice to heart and try to always look out for new opportunities and to broaden my skills. The program that I want to go to isn't in a top school, but they can fund me (so I won't be falling into debt) and they say that there is a "90% placement of grads into career positions"--then again I know a lot of colleges inflate those numbers. I'm just nervous in general, reading some of the posts on here. I loved working in the molecular bio lab during college, and I did well in my lab classes, but I know working in industry is going to be very different. Any advice or words of warning/wisdom are highly appreciated. Thank you.

Also, good luck at the bench, sorry to say that the void between the average joe and the better than average job in the US is becoming very wide. Cheap labor is a matter of fact, frankly, I'd rather open a pizza joint than work in some of the labs out there. Get yourself in a good public institution of you can.

About getting an MBA, I will disagree with that, how can you make a masters in business if you barely have any experience in work let alone in selling something. I have yet to see a proper MBA curriculum out there. Way too many kids who create business models and have no friggin clue about business, sorry to be so blunt but MBAs are destroying American creativity. God bless Steve Jobs for not getting an MBA or hiring any...

use your experience and technical ability and try to get a sales job.

Pharma Rep $75k-80k
Instrument Rep 100k-120k
Surgical rep 125-200k
Clinical Lab rep $100-200k
Anatomic speciality Pathology Lab $200-300k

Biotech $35k-100k

You make the choice.

I am not a scientist, but I have had large research departments reporting to me. Some of our best lab staff had a BS and outperformed those with an MS. If you fit with the company culture and do good work I don't know that it matters which degree you have short of getting a PhD.

Regardless, you should be looking for your next position at all times. Biotech is a tough world and even good performers take a hit with the science does not work out and the company has to cut back. That is a fact of life in this industry so the advice below on developing a multitude of skills and moving around to different types of jobs is spot on. I much prefer to high somebody with a range of complimentary skills than somebody with very deep experience in just one field.

I would consider combining it with another degree you find useful. I personally have my BS in Behavioral Neuroscience and plan on getting a dual Biotechnology/MBA degree in the future.

As a new guy to the work force you probably won't have too much trouble getting a job. They love to hire people straight of College with little to no work experience because they can pay you less. However, I would start to look for something more stable than lab work once you've got your foot in the door because once you get past the "5 years of experience" mark you become less employable more likely to get laid off if you've gotten significant raises over the years. Look at related jobs within the company you work for and pursue those that interest you and seem indispensable (as in not easily outsourced) to the company. That would be what I would do if I could do it all over again.

I'd also get my CDL on the side because the world always needs truck drivers and you need a backup these days, just in case. You can't outsource a truck and some of them can make really good money.

I worked for 13 years on the bench after a BS in Biotechnology. After completing the MS in Biotechnology at the University of WI - Madison my opportunities exploded on the business side of the life sciences. The advanced degree pays off if you apply yourself and take advantage of the networking. Here's the website for the world class program. http://www.ms-biotech.wisc.edu/

I have a BS in Biotechnology which I obtained in 06 and know a few individuals who have MS (they went to a different school and had a 5 year program)and also individuals who have completed a 1 or 2 year masters. Based on my experience there is not a significant advantage with the MS. Yes some of my friends started with a slightly higher starting salary but we all pretty much have the same opportunity and skill set. Thus, I do not believe it offers any significant advantage. Does it hurt you, by all means no. Again, just my relatively short experience, in a mid size pharma. Maybe in a smaller pharma/biotech it may give you more opportunities that a BS cannot but I believe a BS with relative experience has just as many opportunities that a MS has if not more. I welcome anyone with more experience's view.