[renormalised (Carl)]

I know of at least 4 of my group than have gone onto doing a PhD, starting this year, and I suspect a couple more will do so in the future. Before I do anything of the sort, I want to get a bit of cash under my belt so I'll be looking at lecturing at one or more of the colleges in the U.S. and/or looking at an assistant lecturer's/tutor's position at one of the unis. That way, if I finally decide to go further at least I'll have a foot in the door and some money to back myself up. I like teaching people, anyway, so I might decide to stay in there and do some professional research work every now and then. Less stressful than full time teaching AND research at the same time. Good thing with colleges is that you don't need a PhD to get your foot in the door. To teach astronomy, all you need is a masters in astronomy/astrophysics, physics or maths. Same goes for all academic subjects...masters degrees to start teaching. The colleges usually teach the equivalent of the first two (sometimes three) years of an uni course for the academic subjects, especially in the sciences. Allows the students to get part of their final degrees close to home before committing to go to a larger university further from home. They're like a cross between a TAFE college and a full blown uni. Good idea, if you ask me.

The problem with the "hard slog" approach that Bernard espoused there is that, in reality, all it ever produces is physicists...not astronomers. There is a difference. Although physics is a very big part of astronomer and a reasonable grounding in it is needed, it's not the be all and end all of astronomy. There are other paths that you can take getting into the various fields within astronomy as a whole that don't require a "Neil Turok" or "Ed Witten" level of understanding in physics and/or maths. In other words, a deep level of understanding of either physics or maths. But like I said, it helps to have a reasonable grounding in those subjects. Cosmologists and stellar astrophysicists/helioseismologists need the physics and the maths, but astrobiologists, astrochemists and planetary geologists/exoplanetary astronomers not so much. Theorists (mostly physicists, really) more so than observational astronomers. Archaeoastronomers and planetarium lecturers/curators even less so. You have quite a few options and even teaching itself is very rewarding, without having to do pure research. It's far more open to possibilities than just your bread and butter physics/maths option.


Not much going in Oz for astronomers, of any degree, unless you're lucky to get into one of the obs (like the AAO)