Careers of Alumni
Graduates from the Department of Physics and Ph.D. programs pursue a wide variety of careers. For example, some of the non-academic employers that mostly employ our graduates are US National Laboratories, tech companies such as Intel Corporation and Google, Insurance companies, and governmental organizations. MSU maintains a database of alumni and graduate students and keeps track of where our graduates go. Some of the basic information about alumni from our Ph.D. programs are provided in the graphs below.
Areas of employment of MSU Ph.D. graduates in physics and astronomy since 2009. Although
about 1/3 of our graduates stay in academia, more students go in the for-profit sector,
with a significant group working in government
Source: Academic Analytics
Industry classifications of Ph.D. graduates in the MSU Department of Physics and Astronomy,
following the Association of American Universities Data Exchange (AAUDE) classification
scheme. Although education is the largest group, our graduates find employment in
a wide range of classes of industry
Source: Source: Academic Analytics
Industry classifications of Ph.D. graduates in the MSU Department of Physics and
Astronomy, following the AAUDE classification scheme. Although occupations in education
and training constitute the largest employment group, over 50% are in other occupation
groups.
Source: Source: Academic Analytics