Section 3. Graduate Programs and their Interface to Geoscience Work

Geoscientists in Support of Society

A healthy and vibrant economy and society depends on the steady production of graduate degrees. The production of new master’s and doctoral degree graduates consistently predicts increased growth and innovation (Aghion, et al., 2009). With growing challenges such as climate change adaptation, issues of resource availability, and natural hazard reduction and mitigation, maintaining a productive pipeline of master’s and doctoral graduates in the geosciences is critical to our future. Though public perspectives on higher education center around the bachelor’s degree, this is only the foundational step for driving science innovation and problem solving. Bachelor’s graduates in the geosciences (and other STEM fields) who stay in the profession either continue into graduate programs or pursue careers in specific technical roles that apply innovations and discoveries made primarily by doctoral level geoscience professionals.

Success in the geosciences will be defined by the ability of master’s and doctoral graduates, and the graduate degree programs that produce them, to tackle emerging challenges and advance the geosciences. Graduate programs must monitor and recognize the changing needs and applications of the geosciences, and must be agile with curricula, instruction, and student opportunities. They also represent an incubator for the future of the discipline by developing the next generation of educators, researchers and thought leaders. Although about half of geoscience doctoral graduates pursue careers in academic research and teaching, they only represent a small fraction of the total geoscience workforce (8%) (AGI analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics). With current pressures on academia related to enrollments and funding post-pandemic, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the total number of academic positions are not expected to grow over the next 10 years. But with ongoing retirements and changing societal needs, the next generation of academic geoscientists will need a new portfolio of skills and strategies for success as they will be responsible for educating the future workforce. This core function of graduate degree holders is pivotal for the discipline’s success. Success will require this next generation of educators and leaders to work across the discipline to maximize opportunities in the evolving professional space with a myriad of new opportunities, such as the increasing role of professional services companies across the Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences with their application and advancement of the science.

The Operational Framework

One of the greatest strengths of the U.S. higher education system is the ability of institutions to innovate their own approaches to degree programs. This creativity is especially evident at the graduate level, where degree innovations have flourished beginning with the MBA in 1908, and many new approaches since that time, such as the Professional Science Master’s degree.

Within this diversity of degree programs are dominant structural frameworks in which graduate programs fall. Central are the two fundamental degree levels: master’s and doctorate. A second dimension is the nature, purpose, and expression of research in the degree program. The third structural dimension is the organizing principles of the programs: whether students progress through programs in a cohort or individually, or some hybrid approach.

Based on the AGI survey of geoscience graduate program structures, 73% of U.S. geoscience departments granting graduate degrees offered doctoral programs, while 27% only provided terminal master’s degrees. All doctoral granting programs also award master’s degrees. Almost all master’s programs awarded Master’s of Science degrees, with only 8% reporting awarding Professional Science Master’s degrees.

Master’s and Doctoral Degrees

Geoscience employers and academic participants in the workshops agreed on the distinct purposes and expectations of the master’s versus the doctoral graduate. Importantly for the graduate, the degree received affected the hiring decisions of employers, including academic employers. Employers agreed that the types of skills needed for master’s and doctoral graduates were the same, but the level or depth of competency differed both with degree and with the type of employment. Employers expected that master’s graduates have developed a broad skill set, and that doctoral students have a greater depth of competency, and more expansive technical skills.

Fundamentally, master’s graduates are expected to know how to solve problems but are less likely to have experience defining research questions or fully articulating the broader relevance of their research. Doctoral graduates are expected to have broader backgrounds and to have conducted self-starting research. They should know how to identify and think about problems and how to solve them, and they have more experience and practice.

Role of Research

Research was consistently recognized by academics and employers as central to any graduate program in the geosciences. Importantly, the research process was seen as a primary method for students to develop a wide range of scientific, technical, and core professional skills, such that research was not viewed as just an end in itself. Employers especially viewed evidence of research experience and accomplishment as critical in their hiring processes.

Doctoral research was universally recognized as being independent and as building a student’s ability to conduct novel investigations, and to plan, manage, and execute these activities. They need to define the question, design the project, create a proposal, and justify doing the research. They have a longer timeframe to solve problems and to reach higher levels of accuracy. They are the driver of their research and receive less direction from their advisor than would a master’s student. Those advisor interactions are centered more on reviewing progress and results throughout the project. What distinguishes a strong doctoral researcher is a deep dive into one subject, the ability to discover, own and solve a problem independently, and a high level of creativity and innovation.

Doctoral research may be viewed by some non-academic employers as too specific to be directly impactful on their business, so it is critical for doctoral students to clearly demonstrate their deeper understanding of the technical and core professional skills developed through their research, in addition to content and research-related skills. All employers are seeking leadership, innovation, out-of-the-box thinking, and mentoring skills. They recognize that tinkering is an important and critical luxury of a doctoral degree that is central to fostering these creative capabilities. All U.S. doctoral programs have a strong emphasis on research, and as such need to ensure that key professional skills are well integrated into the effort and clearly demonstrable by the student without losing a strong research emphasis.

Academia is a critical employer for doctoral graduates with about half of these graduates employed in some form of academia. At the 2022 workshops, preparing doctoral students for academic positions was discussed. These students need to be exposed to the fundamentals of academic institutions as a business, to understand the larger picture at the institution, and to know what to expect in their role as an academic beyond the expectation of research. Doctoral students need to know how to mentor students and how to teach effectively. They should be given opportunities to mentor undergraduate or less senior graduate students, to teach classes, to experiment with different teaching styles and to be constructively critiqued and evaluated on their instructional practice. Doctoral students also need to understand the broader professional and stakeholder community and have a global perspective. They need to develop an understanding of the kinds of innovative research they can propose that will be funded, and get practice in writing compelling, concise proposals and constructing realistic research budgets.

Being successful as an academic or in industry or government involves differences in mindset and it is important to learn the cultural and practice differences, and how to shift between these, whether they make a shift in employment sector, or work collaboratively with non-academic partners. Having doctoral students rotate through and work in different labs or with different research groups will expose them to different styles of management and mentorship.

Master’s programs may offer thesis and non-thesis options. Often programs that require a thesis are both doctoral preparatory or, as noted by employers, also workforce preparatory. Non-thesis programs are normally terminal master’s degrees where graduates expect to enter the non-academic workforce. However, across the board, non-thesis does not mean no research, but rather that they engage in different modes of research, with different intents.

Master’s research projects are narrower than doctoral projects. Master’s students are commonly provided with a research problem, and they work under the direction of their advisor, learning the research process as much as conducting research activities. They learn how to solve problems, work on a shorter time scale, and ideally know when their results are sufficient.

Master’s programs with a non-thesis option are not the same as coursework-only master’s programs. Universally, the non-thesis option programs require either a capstone project or a case study, and almost universally require public presentation of their results and an oral defense of their work. These non-thesis options tend to be more limited in scope, however they still provide opportunities for students to develop research-related skills, including, for those pursuing non-academic careers, core professional skills. Employers indicated a preference for students who have completed a master’s thesis because of the expected skills development from the research experience. Thus, it serves non-thesis programs well to focus on ensuring that the research experiences within their programs also develop this suite of skills in a demonstrable manner so students can showcase their accomplishments in an e-portfolio or through interviews.

Master’s students are more likely to seek employment on completion of their degree, but their level of expertise can carry over into a doctoral degree program, especially for thesis-based master’s students, they develop skills and initiate and complete a body of research that could form the basis of a doctoral dissertation. They have developed some awareness of what has been done before, conducted a critical evaluation of the literature, and may have identified where there are gaps and further work needs to be done.

Employers recognized that master’s students may initially need more direction and support once hired as they are still developing their independence.

Employers recommended that master’s students be introduced to problem identification and approaches to finding solutions in courses, and that more instruction and practice in critical thinking skills be embedded into these courses. They also felt that master’s students would benefit from more leadership training, and the insertion of some business skills into their geoscience coursework.

Cohort and Non‑cohort Programs

When looking broadly at U.S. STEM graduate programs, even among the broader models, there are two fundamental structures being used: individualized programs (non-cohort) and cohort-based programs. Within the geosciences, cohort programs are a more recent development as compared to other disciplines, and are mostly relegated to master’s programs, whether in terminal master’s departments or as separate programs within doctoral-granting departments.

Individualized, or non-cohort, programs are what most geoscience academics will recognize as the traditional approach, where a student, working with an advisor and likely a program and/or research committee, will craft a coursework plan that meets departmental requirements but also addresses their research needs. A student’s progress in research is usually managed by the advisor and committee members. This approach allows students flexibility in terms of their coursework and research focus. Students can tailor their educational experience to their specific interests, goals, and schedules. This model is well-suited for students who have a clear research focus, require flexibility due to work or personal commitments, or prefer working independently.

As of 2018, 59% of doctoral departments and 55% of terminal master’s departments exclusively used the non-cohort model across their graduate degree programs.

Advantages of individualized programs:

• Greater flexibility in course selection and research focus
• Ability to work at your own pace
• Potential for interdisciplinary or unique research projects
• Opportunities for self-directed learning and growth
• More individualized guidance from advisor and/or committees

Cohort-based programs group students together based on the time of enrollment or a specific program within a department, so they proceed through the program together, taking the same courses and working on projects or research in parallel and sometimes collaboratively.

Beyond coursework, cohort programs can also include common comprehensive exams, opportunities for group or collaborative research, and opportunities for group advising and dialogue with faculty, providing a broader exposure to the scope of research within the department. Additionally, 70% of cohort programs offer additional specialty certifications (e.g., GIS, energy or IT management, etc.) either within the cohort program or for general access both by students within the program or externally. The presence of these certificate programs aligns with the preponderance of cohort programs producing terminal master’s degrees.

This model can provide efficiencies for departments with large numbers of graduate students, especially if those students are not in traditional thesis programs. For students, cohort programs can foster a sense of community, support, and networking, which can be highly beneficial for both academic and professional development.

In the geosciences, 23% of doctoral departments reported having programs (usually master’s) that used cohort structures, and 25% of terminal master’s departments in geosciences reported programs using cohort approaches exclusively. The remaining departments, 18% for doctoral departments and 20% of terminal master’s departments, had a mix of programs that used cohort and non-cohort structures.

Enrollments in terminal master’s cohort programs were steadier over time than in individualized programs. For doctoral departments, a similar pattern was observed, with cohort programs having substantially steadier enrollments and individualized programs experiencing enrollments varying two to three times as much as cohort programs. It is also worth noting that cohort programs, which almost all co-exist in departments with traditional programs, have very different business models: many of the students in these programs are self-funding, and all departments with cohort programs report receiving support from private foundations, as compared to 62% of doctoral and 42% of terminal master’s departments utilizing non-cohort models. Also, the pedagogical approaches of cohort programs facilitate effective graduate education for a broader population of students.

Core advantages of cohort‑based programs:

• Stronger peer support and collaboration
• Networking opportunities with fellow students
• Structured curriculum and more definitive timeline
• Enhanced group learning experiences

Graduate Program Culture

Beyond the observable structure differences, graduate programs across the country have different academic cultures. Master’s only programs commonly enroll graduate students focused on diverse professional outcomes, including graduates going elsewhere for a doctoral degree. In a subset of programs, most graduates go on to employment in a specific sector, and the coursework and theses are designed to develop the knowledge and skills needed for that profession. This entangles the success of the program with the health of the targeted economic sector.

Employers and academics briefly discussed professional, usually non-thesis, master’s degrees and whether they facilitated students achieving their career goals. Professional Science Master’s degrees focus on real-world problems and are done in conjunction with an employer. These degrees and dual degrees with business (MS-MBA degrees) or other interdisciplinary degrees that blend business and/or law with STEM fields aim to prepare students for the private sector. Their advantages include that they help develop business acumen in students (Moran, 2021; Moran et al., 2009), often take less time to complete, and usually don’t require a research-based thesis. However, employers were forceful in saying that they still valued the importance of conducting research, as it strengthens the students’ ability to think critically, solve problems, present research in writing and orally, and complete a major project.

Programs exclusively or primarily focused on doctoral degrees are research-focused and a common (if often unstated) expectation that graduates will go into academia, or potentially government labs or federal agency research positions. Doctoral programs heavily focused on these outcomes need to increase their awareness of the professional paths outside of academia, as about half of doctoral degree recipients pursue non-academic paths (Figure 3.9b). The recent growth in large start-ups, advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), and the private sector developing their own modeling capabilities provide a much wider set of opportunities for finishing doctorates. Doctoral programs at institutions that also have strong terminal thesis-oriented master’s programs are generally more aware and accepting of different professional outcomes and scaffold skills between degrees.

The trajectory of students in a graduate program directly impacts the eventual outcomes for those students. Given a rapidly changing geoscience profession, it is important to utilize pedagogical approaches that integrate core knowledge with the key skills needed both in academia and in industry (see Section 4: Skills Framework). It is also important not to allow different expectations to develop for academic and non-academic professional directions, as student career choices and the field itself often change over the longer duration of doctoral programs.

Another cultural issue impacting graduate programs is that the ability to do doctoral research is dependent on the extramural funding that faculty can generate and on the available institutional facilities, which are themselves a product of both institutional resources and longer-term faculty research success. Resource-rich graduate programs, whether through endowments, strong institutional investment, or highly successful PI’s, can often support curiosity-driven, blue-sky research. At less internally resourced institutions, or those supported by specific industries, student research commonly has a more targeted and/or applied focus.

Program research and associated career opportunities also vary within the geosciences. Vibrant graduate programs will recognize the opportunities as ways to foster specific skills and scientific advancements that not only enrich the post-graduation opportunities for the students but represent amplifiers for their graduate programs. The increasingly important role of professional services companies in the Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences are creating a myriad of unique opportunities. For the earth sciences we see an increased focus on applied science in the field and the need for increased development of novel data and analytic techniques. In the atmospheric sciences, the role of machine learning and artificial intelligence has exploded, and these companies are often at the forefront of new application spaces for the science and leveraging these new advances. Ocean science is seeing new opportunities in advanced data acquisition and analysis and machine learning opportunities in the search of subsea resources and analysis of ocean dynamics for environmental and climate monitoring.

Geoscience Disciplines

Geosciences includes Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, with earth sciences being the largest in terms of degrees awarded and geoscience employment with 1481 master’s degrees and 890 doctoral degrees awarded (2020 Directory of Geoscience Dept. Survey). According to NSF (2021), the atmospheric sciences had 217 master’s graduates and 156 doctoral graduates in 2019. Ocean Sciences has 144 master’s graduates and 136 doctoral graduates in the same year.

In the results of the survey of recent geoscience graduates, the respondents overwhelmingly come from earth science-oriented programs, but many of those are also multidisciplinary with active atmospheric and ocean science activities. From these results, we see some general trends in specialization between the degree levels (Figure 3.1a,b). Geology is the largest sub-discipline, constituting about half the master’s degrees, and about a fourth of the doctoral degrees. Overall master’s degrees are more application oriented (e.g., GIS & tech, geological engineering) than doctorates. For doctoral degrees, planetary sciences, Earth sciences and hydrology show the largest increases relative to master’s degrees, and degrees in climatology, petrology and physical oceanography are also awarded. Regardless of the geoscience discipline or subdisciplines, employers and academic participants agreed on the skills and competencies needed by graduate students to be successful in the current and future workforce. These geoscience disciplines are employed in a wide variety of occupations (Figure 3.2).

The Successful Graduate Department

Ultimately the driver for change is to make graduate programs more successful, which means understanding what constitutes success. The survey of graduate granting departments asked how a department defines success for themselves as an entity, and separately, how they define a graduate student as having been successful. These definitions of success (Figures 3.3, 3.4) likely extend not only from the internalized values and expectations of educators, but also from external pressures such as deans and alumni.

Departments define their own success largely by the outcomes of their graduates (Figure 3.3). The identified measures of graduate success are primarily employment and degree completion, and to a lesser extent for doctoral programs, publication in peer-reviewed journals, the ability to conduct independent research, and contribution to the geoscience profession through involvement in professional societies. Some departments also noted specific internal metrics, such as departmental funding, the number of papers published in high-profile journals, the number and amount of grants awarded to faculty, a positive departmental culture, and a strongly connected alumni network.

The most prominent measure by which departments define their programs’ success is based on whether their graduates secured meaningful employment. This common and singular success metric creates a clear connection between the graduate programs and their need to understand and respond to the ongoing evolution of the role of geoscience in the workforce.

Departments also reported a suite of metrics they used to evaluate whether, or not, an individual student has been successful in their program (Figure 3.4), including passing comprehensive exams during the course of the degree program, and conducting research and publishing. Research success via publishing in peer-reviewed journals during their studies or shortly after graduating was mentioned more frequently by doctorate-granting departments as a success metric.

Interestingly, although degree completion was important, it was not the most common success factor mentioned by departments. Instead, it was whether the student had gained meaningful employment. In-program assessments were the second most common factor, likely reflecting that such assessments, like comprehensive exams, are one of the few common factors across all students in a graduate programs, as well as pressures from accreditors and institutions to identify some suite of uniform, in-program assessment measures.

With meaningful employment of graduates central to ideas of success of graduate programs and their students, ensuring the programs are well-grounded in the spectrum of ways geoscience expertise is used in society is important. Understanding the current dynamics of geoscience-related workforce needs can provide graduate programs with a roadmap.

Expectations for Graduate Degree Recipients

Both doctorate-granting and terminal master’s departments value critical thinking/problem-solving skills, research skills, communicating research to scientists, and data analysis and statistical analysis as the top skills expected from their graduates (Figure 3.5). It is worth noting that computer programming is not widely emphasized as a required skill for doctorates and non-cohort master’s, despite data analysis and statistical analysis being among the top five where computer programming skills may be inferred.

Skills that are not heavily emphasized include communicating research to non-scientists, ethical conduct/training in terminal master’s programs, formal teaching instruction for non-cohort doctorates and master’s, leadership development, database use and management, and technical writing skills. As the workforce is moving towards data, automation, and greater interaction with non-scientific communities, the lack of emphasis on these skills is a cause for concern. The impact of these shortcomings is also reflected in recent AGI surveys where early career geoscientists name data management and other data-related skills (Figure 3.6), writing, and business issues as key skills they wish they had focused on in during their education along with field and lab skills.

With the increased need for quantitative and computational skills expected by employers (see Section 4: Skills Framework), it is interesting to note which skills geoscience students have obtained, and how much they are used in conducting research (Figures 3.7, 3.8). In general, doctoral graduate students have the most quantitative, computational and programing skills and experience. Although about 70% of graduate students have had statistics, only 40% or fewer have had spatial statistics which is important for the geosciences.

Student Development

All graduate programs report providing a range of specific student development activities, from core courses and seminars to explicit writing and quantitative skills courses. All modes of student development are available in at least half of graduate programs, with doctoral programs more likely to have seminar-related activities and terminal master’s programs more likely to have common core courses and enhanced writing courses. Although almost all doctorate granting departments offer seminars, 65% require attendance at these events. For both doctoral and terminal master’s programs, 80% of programs encourage students to engage with external development activities such as attending conferences and short courses. Diversity programs and events are more prevalent in doctorate granting departments than in terminal master’s programs[^1].

Additionally, for all program levels in doctoral departments, a number of co-curricular experiences were identified as being pursued by current students:

• Presentations at local and national conferences (76%)
• Internships (63%)
• Outreach activities at local K–12 schools (47%)
• Giving public talks and lectures (30%)
• Active with student clubs and organizations (27%)
• Engaging with science fairs (20%)
• Traveling to professional meetings (17%)
• Community service (16%)
• Participation in field trips (14%)
• Pro bono work for local non-profits (11%)

Geoscientists in the Workforce

Since 2015 geoscience employment in different sectors has changed radically for master’s graduates and significantly for about half of the doctoral graduates (Figure 3.9a,b). Prior to around 2017, the majority of new master’s graduates were employed in the oil and gas sector, with a peak of 67% in the mid-2010’s dropping to 4% in 2022. Growth employment areas since 2017 have been in state government, mining, and other unspecified areas; federal government employment increased after 2015 but has gradually declined since 2017. For doctoral graduates, employment in academia has stayed at about 50% since 2017 with a small decline. The largest increases for doctoral graduates since then have been in federal and state government and professional services (Figure 3.9b).

Current structural changes in the domestic labor market and rapid technological advances are driving disruptive change within all science and engineering fields. As the United States emerges from the pandemic, the labor market has changed, with current labor shortages recognized as structural and expected to persist into the future, (Abraham and Rendell, 2023). For technical fields, accelerating retirements are creating a skills mismatch between supply and market needs, with the labor participation rate of workers 65 and older declining 10.6% between the start of the pandemic and January 2023, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. (U.S. Bureau of Labor, 2023)

Part of this mismatch lies in the issue of replacing experienced workers with new entrants, which has been especially complicated in that the pandemic has impeded the usual knowledge transfer and mentoring experiences for new workers. Additionally, the reported skills of new graduates are not aligned with market demands, as technology and the problems being addressed are changing rapidly. Industry is attuned to pivoting quickly, but academic programs traditionally change much more slowly, resulting in part of this observed gap. A response to this critical skills gap by academia is needed, but, even so, there will still be a time lag before current and incoming students with these skills graduate.

The market itself adjusts rapidly to disequilibrium, and as a result of these people- and skills-supply gaps, jobs are being re-envisioned and workers are expected to bring substantially increased productivity to accommodate fewer colleagues sharing the burden.

While technology is helping to fill some of the labor gap, it has also disrupted traditional roles for geoscience graduates at several degree levels. A sharp shortage of people for technician and similar entry-level positions has created a strong employment draw on the bachelor’s degree population, while the desperate need for highly skilled geoscientists in analytic and professional positions is driving a substantial increase in the expected skill level of new hires as they replace experienced workers. The labor market has changed faster than academic programs can adapt, and at all levels there are both a shortage of appropriately skilled individuals for available positions and a shortage of opportunities for graduates with comparatively traditional capabilities.

Traditionally, bachelor’s level geoscience graduates who do not pursue advanced degrees have entered the professional services or state/local government employment sectors. Those with a master’s degree, which is historically considered the default employment degree in Earth and atmospheric science, have tended to enter resource companies, professional services, or government (Figure 3.9a). Doctoral graduates have largely sought opportunities in federal research or academia (Figure 3.9b). This distribution of sectoral destinations is likely to experience sudden and frequent shifts in response to changing market needs. For example, for the graduating class of 2020–21, master’s students saw a doubling in hiring by state governments driven by healthy budgets, and a tripling of hiring in the mining sector driven by demand to support the transition to electrification and sustainable energy (Figure 3.9a). Yet in 2021–22, state government hiring returned to normal levels, having effectively filled their structural demands, and hiring in mining dropped to only double their long-term hiring trend, as they reap the benefits of their prior aggressive hiring. These dynamic changes necessitate that graduate programs focus less on specific employment destinations but rather on fully developing with their students the portfolio of employer-sought skills, and nurturing the necessary creativity and intellectual flexibility to help today’s students navigate a rapidly changing labor market. Students in geoscience sub-disciplines have a diversity of employment options (Figure 3.2).

Interestingly, another shift is occurring at the doctoral level concerning graduates’ career paths (Figure 3.9b). Traditionally, most geoscience doctoral recipients immediately enter academia, postdoctoral research, or government research, with fewer joining the resources industry. However, starting in 2017, there has been an increase in doctoral recipients seeking and securing positions in the professional services. This sector had been reluctant to hire doctoral graduates due to concerns that these individuals might be overqualified, be under-stimulated, and eventually return to academia to pursue research careers. However, the need for higher-skill individuals has pushed more professional services firms to actively recruit at the doctoral level (Keane et al., 2022).

The change may also reflect an evolution of the role and view of the doctoral degree in the geosciences. Employers are seeking doctoral recipients as viable employees because they often graduate with a stronger technical skill base in using data and in data analytics than master’s graduates. As seen in surveys of geoscience graduates by the American Geosciences Institute over the last several years, the skills differential between a bachelor’s and master’s has become narrower while the skills differential between a doctorate and a master’s has grown substantially. Additionally, with increases in automation, more and more work in the geosciences is focused on higher level problem-solving and the shepherding of advanced technical and analytic techniques for which many of the doctoral graduates have exposure and experience.

However, these changes may not be entirely driven by the relative advanced skillfulness of doctoral graduates, but also by external pressures, which include the willingness of private sector employers to hire doctoral recipients given the lack of available and qualified bachelor’s or master’s recipients, as well as a decline in the interest of doctoral recipients in pursuing academic careers because of the disruption and uncertainty within the academic sector, both related to the pandemic and to more recent pressures driven by the decline in college enrollments and the political pressures being applied to faculty and universities (Keane et al., 2022).

Culture of Hiring and Employing Geoscientists

At the 2018 Geoscience workshop and the two 2022 combined academic and employer workshops, and from other survey responses of employers during this initiative, much discussion centered on hiring practices for different employer segments and sizes. A brief synopsis is given below.

In hiring, the relative weighting of specific skills depends on the job opportunity, the sector of geosciences, and the type of employer. The level of required competencies is important, but hiring often comes down to the very specific position being filled at the moment. In some cases, master’s level skills are sufficient, and a doctorate is more than required. In choosing between a master’s or doctoral level applicant, an important consideration is often which applicant’s background is more appropriate for the position. Another is whether a doctoral graduate’s focus area is overly specific and thus not as transferable as that of a master’s student. Hiring at the master’s level tends to be more holistic, and the specific topic of the master’s research is less important. Doctoral hiring, by contrast, is driven more by technical expertise. Current hiring methodologies, and the need for specific extant skills and competencies, do not favor generalists. Hiring is frequently done by non-geoscientists, and especially with larger employers, algorithms may be used in initial screenings. In these cases, the use of well-selected keywords to describe one’s expertise and skills is essential, as is addressing the specifically identified qualifications for the position.

Many employers also consider the long-term career potential of candidates. Is the employer more interested in someone who is solution oriented, technically capable and can carry out specific tasks, or someone who is integrative, thinks critically and has the potential for leadership and strategic vision? The depth and range of experience is generally higher with a doctoral graduate than a master’s graduate, and that deeper experience level allows for earlier transitions to higher-level positions. As such, the doctorate brings potential for more rapid professional advancement. Even if the job advertisement requires a doctorate, other aspects of the position may result in the master’s applicant being hired because they tick more boxes, especially if the position is highly skill focused. Some employers advertise for a set of skills, others for degree level, but documented experience can trump both.

The participating organizations noted that there were differences between large and small employers, even within the same field. Larger organizations can afford to hire graduates with more specific skills and research experience, while smaller ones need employees with broader talents who can make an impact immediately across several responsibilities. Major large industries/corporations and academia can economically afford to hire doctoral graduates to think critically, creatively, and innovatively. For smaller and less capitalized organizations, this is often not an option, as every minute is money. That said, an increasing number of small firms have a single geoscientist, and doctoral graduates with good workforce skill sets are generally preferred in such positions.

State agencies who hire master’s and bachelor’s graduates are generally looking for more generalist research training with better “skills”, and for people who can successfully work in a “political position.” As such, students seeking such positions need networking and team skills, and the ability to communicate with land-owners and other invested parties.

National labs hire both master’s and doctoral graduates. They expect incoming doctorates to have more research depth, but these individuals won’t last if they can’t work in teams, network, or bring in their own projects. At the master’s level they are expected to have the appropriate research skills to do the work they are assigned but are not expected to bring in new projects or funding. National labs need to be able to respond to funding opportunities across a spectrum of domains and thus require more breadth than is required in academia. Specific skills needed include baseline competencies in laboratory skills (especially safety), being able to work collaboratively and in a self-guided way, people skills (e. g. being personable), time management, and possessing a “growth mindset.”

Science divisions in federal agencies (e.g., NASA, NOAA, USGS) generally only hire doctorates, while other divisions hire people with other degree levels. Doctoral graduates are directly recruited for projects, and the skillset and content understanding are more critical than the actual degree. Even in federal agencies, however, doctoral-level science division employees are expected to generate their own funding as PIs within 3 years, which is why they prioritize doctoral applicants with leadership potential. NASA and NOAA attrition rates are very low (2%) compared to industry (10–12%).

In professional services, employers also look for management skills, self-sufficiency, and non-technical skills (e.g., empathy, awareness, emotional intelligence, self-reflection). Proficiency is expected, but some of the necessary technical skills can be learned on the job.

Doctoral students applying for most faculty positions are expected to articulate their short- and long-term plans for research, and their philosophies on teaching, graduate supervision, mentoring and (more recently) diversity. Although for research-oriented faculty positions, their research and potential for publishing and grant success are critical, an increasing focus is now placed on other educational aspects of the position. The skills and competencies that help ensure success in business or industry are also valuable in the academic setting. Search committees are interested in the applicant’s view of the department, and in what motivated them to choose their department over others. Non-tenure track positions for Professor of Practice or Instruction and Lecturers have become more common in academia, and candidates need to know what will be expected of them in such roles for success. In these cases, prior industry experience and well-developed professional skills may still be a positive.

The Workforce Today

The geoscience workforce in 2023, those whose work responsibilities include using geoscience knowledge and skills, in the United States comprises approximately 250,000 working professionals, of which 78% hold a terminal geoscience degree (Figure 3.10). Approximately 60% hold a graduate degree, with about 70% of those holding a terminal master’s degree. Only 40,000 of approximately 70,000 doctoral geoscientists have their terminal degree in the geosciences. Overall geoscience employment over the 7 years has been relatively stable, although U.S. government data shows some seasonality driven by reporting methodologies (Figure 3.11).

The COVID‑19 pandemic led to a temporary plateau in total employment, helped because 88% of geoscience employers received some form of governmental aid such as Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans (Keane, 2022). These static employment levels stayed consistent from March 2020 to January 2021. However, over the subsequent four to five months, an estimated 100,000 geoscience workers were forced out of their jobs, largely due to the expiration of PPP loan protections. Despite this setback, the discipline has shown resilience as the nation began to recover from the pandemic, with employment rapidly bouncing back to around 250,000, indicating much of the churn was not structural but rather pent-up job changes during the hiring/firing restrictions of the PPP loans. One sector which has not seen recovery is the oil and gas industry, where total employment has decreased.

Specific Patterns of Selected Sectors

Though geoscientists work across almost all sectors of the economy, several sectors employ large numbers of geoscientists and help define the general destinations for new graduates. A major consideration is that individuals are not only less likely to work for a single employer for their entire career, they are also not likely to work in the same employment sector throughout their career. The skills and knowledge of well-educated geoscientists are highly transferable and, for agile workers, the ability to move across employment sectors is enhanced. Given the historic economic cycles that have plagued the geosciences, the nimbler our professionals are, the healthier the profession will remain. Building on core competencies and developing creative, innovative individuals who can continue to learn will lead to a future of resilient geoscientists.

The recent shifts in employment patterns underscore a continuing trend, where more than 90% of working geoscientists are employed outside academia (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2023). When analyzing future workforce needs by industry, as projected by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, sectors like professional services and finance are expected to expand significantly, beyond expected economic growth (Figure 3.12). Meanwhile, sectors like government and education are likely to see the total number of jobs remain steady, effectively shrinking relative to the overall economy. Additionally, the projection shows declines in employment by primary employers in the resource industries (e.g., mining, oil and gas) by 2028, but what this reflects is the shift of geoscience work to professional services companies (Figure 3.12).

An AGI 2021 survey of geoscience employers provides further insight into hiring and the wide net with which employers are seeking talent: approximately 72% of employers were hiring geoscientists at the bachelor’s level, around 73% at the Master’s level, and 50% at the doctoral level (Keane et al., 2022).

Professional Services

Traditionally, the geosciences have recognized the environmental and engineering consulting sector as a distinct and highly defined community. Through increasingly complex problems being addressed by these companies, industry consolidation, and changes in other sectors, this field has broadened and grown into one of professional service providers. Many of the consulting companies continue to provide their traditional services related to engineering and environmental issues, but others, including new entrants, are providing geoscience expertise to focus on highly defined but diverse problems brought by clients in all parts of the geosciences, including the Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences.

This sector has particularly benefited from strategic shifts in the energy sector, where much geoscience work has been outsourced to these consulting firms. A portion of the growth in this sector is actual reallocation of positions that historically would have been in the energy sector but are now in these service companies, even though the work is the same. Thus this has driven a diversification of capabilities in the professional services sector, but also brought strong overall growth, with as of 2022, 42% (U.S. Bureau of Labor, 2023) of all geoscientists working in this sector.

Additionally, an increasing number of professional service companies are forming around developing advanced technologies with geoscience applications, from advanced data acquisition to machine learning methods in atmospheric science to lateral transfer of science across domains, such as the frontiers needing both earth and ocean sciences in deep-sea mining. Many of these ventures work closely with the highly capitalized industry players. But increasingly, the definition of domain scope between the science, technology, and entrepreneurial innovation is becoming less defined.

Based on AGI’s Survey of Recent Geoscience Graduates, during 2020–21 there was a notable shift in the hiring patterns within the professional services sector (16% of all doctorates). This sector, which traditionally favored hiring bachelor’s and master’s degree graduates, witnessed a decline in its hiring at that level, possibly due to being outcompeted by aggressive hiring by the federal and state governments looking to replace retiring geotechnical staff. With the combined external competition at earlier educational levels and an increased need for high-skill labor, professional services firms have started to hire more at the doctoral level. Though the shrinking doctoral graduate pool in 2021–22 lessened hiring of doctorates into the sector, hiring at the master’s level rebounded to consume nearly 33% of new graduates.

Raw Materials

We have observed a significant increase in graduate-level hiring within the broader raw materials sector, including the mining industry and state governments, particularly seeking those with master’s degrees. The mining industry’s growth can be attributed to increased economic activity in the raw materials sector as the economy works through its “energy transition” and ventures into new operational areas such as mining in extreme environments and activity in other parts of the material cycle such as recycling and waste recovery. Like the energy sector, the raw materials sector includes many professional services companies that are working on mineral and materials challenges, sometime in collaboration with mining companies and sometimes independently in different parts of the material cycle. Though the outlook for labor demand in the raw materials sector remains bullish, all resource sectors are highly vulnerable to cyclicity. Transferrable skills remain important, and with the addition of several sought-after skills in the raw materials sector, such as drone licensing and core professional skills to support social license efforts, these new mining geoscience professionals should be able to move between sectors more freely than prior generations.

Government

Large scale retirements at the federal and state levels, coupled with healthy budgets from pandemic stimulus funding, has led to an episode of accelerated hiring. Most recent hiring at the federal level has been at the bachelor’s level to fill in geotechnical positions. But we see hiring of master’s recipients at the state level, replacing recent retirements of more senior scientists. However, with the 2021–22 graduate employment data, we have seen both sectors moderate their hiring, potentially because they have satiated their immediate demands and will be returning to long-term replacement hires. The Department of Labor does not expect any absolute growth in government positions and with, as of 2023, looming budget challenges, this sector will likely not be returning to significant hiring in the foreseeable future (Figure 3.12).

Energy

The energy sector has become a more complicated situation relative to the geosciences. With the movement from a fossil fuel-driven economy towards a materials-driven economy, many traditional oil and gas jobs in the geosciences have disappeared. But complicating this dynamic are new energy positions such as work on geothermal, wind and solar energy, carbon capture and even geoscience applications related to batteries and the material cycles for batteries. These new kinds of positions confirm that geoscience expertise is central to the energy sector, but the specifics and necessary skills and competencies are changing rapidly. Between 2013 and 2022 hiring of master’s graduates in the oil and gas industry decreased from 72% to 4% (Figure 3.9a). Although the primary hiring may no longer be in the formal petroleum sector, there continue to be diverse employment opportunities for geoscience-related positions across energy applications.

One interesting outgrowth, especially for those coming from the energy sector, has been consistent hiring in “non-traditional” geoscience sectors. For example, from AGI’s Survey of Recent Geoscience Graduates, the health care industry has consistently been hiring geophysics master’s graduates, mostly in the medical imaging industry. Many of the skills and knowledge developed in geoscience graduate programs are highly transferable.

The Forces of Workforce Change

Projections for future geoscience labor demand are built on two key assumptions: the growth rate of the overall economy, and that per-person productivity remains approximately the same. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, for the geosciences, labor demand is expected to grow slightly faster than the economy. Whether there will be supply to meet that demand both in terms of quantity and capabilities is a key question.

From an economic development perspective, a certain amount of labor is required to produce a given amount of work. Failure to reach that level of work results in unrealized economic activity. Meeting that amount of work in the geosciences, however, can happen both with actual geoscientists and professionals who can substitute in some of those applications, such as engineers or actuaries. But perhaps more importantly, innovation improves professional efficiency and can thus allow a single person to accomplish more work, reducing labor supply gaps (Figure 3.13). Innovation is a major factor in meeting labor needs, changing the traditional productivity curve of geoscientists from a 3% per year rate (Keane and Milling, 2003) to something as yet unquantified, but much higher.

Much of the innovation today is driven through data analytics and machine learning applications being applied to scientific and industrial activities. This shift to a data-centric workflow is profoundly impacting the geosciences and will define the future of work within the discipline. Conversely, these data-centric skills, as well as the increase in AI, are allowing geoscience graduates to obtain non-geoscience positions in other highly technical fields (e.g., information technology). It is interesting to note that of those with a terminal geoscience master’s degree, 49.1% are working as a geoscientist and 76.3% in a science occupation. For geoscience doctoral graduates, 69.7% are working as a geoscientist and 87.9% are working in a science occupation (Keane et al., 2022). Not all of these in science occupations are in data or computationally intensive positions, however, the skills and competencies developed by geoscientists in graduate school are clearly applicable to other scientific endeavors.

Machine learning and artificial intelligence are not directly replacing the intellectual endeavor of geoscientists but are rather being applied to tackle the problem that scientists spend ≈80% of their working time identifying, cleaning, and preparing data and only ≈20% of their time analyzing data and generating useful insights and syntheses (Fell, 2018). Several industry initiatives have pursued using machine learning applications to reduce this 80/20 ratio so that geoscientists can spend substantially more time focused on doing science rather than on data manipulation. These efforts have yielded clear successes, both in building efficiencies as well as in automating large parts of the geologic analytic workflow, such as logging, surveying and interpretation (Fell, 2018) and have supplanted many middle-skill geoscience positions doing routine geologic evaluation in the field and in the lab. Today these processes are advanced enough to handle the classification of most routine geoscience information and are also sensitive enough to flag areas that deviate from expected norms which usually indicate points of geologic interest to be analyzed and evaluated by a geoscientist.

Several companies that have adopted these processes insist that they don’t intend to replace geoscientists in the workforce. Instead, they aim to create an “augmented geoscientist” (Fell, 2018), following onto the ideas of Kobelius (2017) to use machine learning in computer programming as a strategy to better utilize the intellectual strengths of humans through the reduction of rote activity. The goal is to enable professional geoscientists to spend considerably more time addressing geoscience problems, using their creativity and scientific abilities to tackle the increasingly intricate issues that society encounters. This idea of “augmented” professionals is also growing rapidly in other fields. The rapid advances in AI applications are making this mainstream, through computing tools like GitHub Co-Pilot.

Another important change in the geoscience profession is the transition of the roles of geoscientists to becoming part of “solution teams”. In the last fifty years geoscience work has transitioned from domain-specific specialists working independently to interdisciplinary collaborations in academia, and more recently to the formation in various industries of integrated teams of interdisciplinary professionals. The current trajectory is towards cultivating integrated professionals/individuals who possess a broad understanding of the geosciences and related areas, including engineering and business, while maintaining specific strengths in their technical area. They collaborate with other professionals who have complementary skills, enabling all team members to contribute to every facet of the problem. Numerous large geoscience employers have reported trying to move towards this new team model.

These changes are disrupting traditional models for labor in the geosciences, eliminating many mid-skill roles such as seismic and stratigraphic interpreters. The focus has shifted to individuals who are field and technical-oriented, especially in data collection and production, and to those focused on analysis and synthesis. This shift is leading to a new geoscience labor structure where geoscience expertise is applied to two specific aspects of the discipline (Keane and Wilson, 2018).

We are also witnessing systemic changes in the role of geoscientists within the economy. Traditionally, many geoscientists were employed in the resource sector, including oil, gas, minerals, and water, working for large companies that developed and managed these resources (Figure 3.9a). Today, the challenges are less about traditional resource discovery and more about the production, development, alternative sourcing, and stewardship of these resources with their hosting communities and the environment, leading to the application of geoscience expertise downstream.

Another expanding trend is the solitary geoscientist in the private sector. With the growth in environmental regulations and increased compliance expectations, coupled with market pressure for adherence to ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) goals, a growing number of corporations, particularly in manufacturing, finance, and infrastructure, are hiring individual geoscientists. These professionals are tasked with addressing a wide range of questions and fulfilling reporting requirements to meet these goals for their employers.

Dynamics of the Labor Supply Chain

For the first time in nearly four decades, enrollment in geoscience graduate programs in the United States has decreased (Figure 3.14a). This reduction is partially due to the impact of the COVID‑19 pandemic, but signs of a weakening in graduate school enrollments were evident as early as 2011. Since 1982, the geosciences had maintained a steady graduate enrollment around 10,000 students, which largely represented the functional carrying capacity of geoscience graduate education programs in the United States.

The decline in enrollment since 2018 has been significant, with only around 5,000 students currently enrolled in geoscience graduate programs as of 2022. According to department leadership in the AGI survey for the Directory of Geoscience Departments, distinguishing between master’s and doctoral enrollments is challenging, as many students indicate intent to pursue the doctorate, as that improves the access to funding, but then may leave with a master’s degree. The same survey shows that degrees awarded for master’s and doctorates have been relatively steady for decades but decreased during the pandemic (Figure 3.14b). Between 2019–2022, master’s degrees awarded dropped by 32.3% and doctoral degrees by 48.4%. The post-pandemic rebound in undergraduate enrollment and increase in degrees awarded (Figure 3.14a,b) may result in more graduate enrollment and degrees.

From the surveys of AGI’s Impacts of COVID‑19 on the Geoscience Enterprise project (NSF #2029570)(https://covid19.americangeosciences.org), another trend that has emerged since the start of the pandemic is that many geoscience programs have curtailed their intake of new graduate students as they grapple with how to successfully guide their current students, who may have faced delays due to the pandemic, to graduation. An ongoing steady output of degrees in an environment of decreasing enrollments (Figure 3.14a) suggests that the issue of delayed completion has been a major factor. Moreover, increasing numbers of programs are either choosing not to admit new students or are reducing the number of available spots due to financial uncertainties within the school and lower undergraduate enrollments, which has led to fewer available teaching assistantships.

Looking to the future, 10 years from now, if enrollments continue to decline and the need for geoscientists increases as predicted, what can be done to avoid a large employment gap — ​which is to say, how do we attract more students to the geosciences? Previously, geoscience employment largely followed oil and gas trends, but by 2005 it had decoupled. Geoscience employment is now being driven by new fields: our participating employers included those from the reinsurance industry, from tech companies, from remote sensing, construction firms, and a wide range of other earth, atmosphere, and ocean science employers. To effectively compete for graduate students, geoscience departments need to highlight how the geosciences allow students to participate in solutions to global and societal challenges. Jobs requiring geoscience skills won’t go unfilled, but who gets hired into those jobs may not have the competencies that are needed for them, because they don’t have geoscience degrees. We need to make sure the future workforce has geoscience expertise.