Your parents told you to go to college if you wanted to get ahead. Today’s emerging work force, however, will likely need another strategy to make good in the research segments of the flourishing biotechnology sector.
“There are tons of people with bachelor’s degrees who are excellent employees, but as we move toward the future, people coming out of school will find fewer and fewer jobs available at that level,” says Doug Hutchens, director of clinical and pre-clinical development and research and development for Bayer Animal Health’s Shawnee facility. Future biotech research careers, he said, are “going to require a master’s degree or a PhD, even at an entry-level position.”
That will pose some major challenges not just for businesses seeking the best-qualified research staff, but for the educational institutions sending new workers into the market, or upgrading the skills of those with more experience.
Yali Friedman, a Washington-based author who specializes in biotechnology work-force development, says an emerging issue for the life-sciences sector is reconciling the disparate skills sets of those who run businesses, the MBA holders, with those whose expertise is the organizational lifeblood—the PhDs.
America’s biotech sector needs more managers with science and business management skills alike, he said. The problem, he said, is one of timing: “There’s a lag phase in traditional education. Getting a PhD is one way to start that track, but it takes a long time. If you spend a decade getting it, that seems very inefficient.” So is getting an MBA before studying the science, he said, “because the later you’re trained in science, the harder it is to absorb it.” But over the past decade, the emergence of Professional Science Masters programs nationally has been able to help students achieve both goals simultaneously. “The training,” Friedman said, “is phenomenal.”
That’s the kind of innovative educational response needed to keep up with rapid changes in the biotech marketplace, those from both business and education say, from community colleges, private colleges, public universities and advance-degree program planners alike.
Examples of such responses regionally, from different levels:
Kansas City Kansas Community College has worked with or is working with companies such as Bayer and Cerner Corp. to keep the curriculum current. It recently adopted new programming for biomanufacturing, said Hasan Naima, dean of technical education, and the 150 hours of training will yield certification for careers as human- and animal-health technicians. “To work in the labs, they need a basic understanding of chemistry and biology, and how to calibrate and operate sensitive equipment,” Naima said.
Johnson County Community College, which is partnering in the developing Research Triangle in Kansas, has partnered with the KU School of Medicine and the university to implement a certification course called Introduction to Biomanufacturing. That course was specifically requested by private companies, said Darcy McGrath, JCCC’s dean of work-force education. Its focus on biotechnology allows working technicians and scientists to earn additional certification in laboratory techniques and technologies.
At UMKC, said Lawrence Dreyfus, dean of the biological sciences department, simply tweaking the program schedule has moved students into the work force or PdD track sooner. “The beauty of it,” Dreyfus said, “is that it cost us nothing in added faculty or changing the curriculum. To offer new degree programs, it could take as long as two years to get the paperwork in order.” This fall, UMKC will have a five-year bachelors-masters program, so graduating students can complete a master’s in cellular biology, for example, in one year instead of two.
Despite Hutchens’ cautions about under-degreed researchers, the field requires many support positions. That means a need for regulatory affairs managers, medical educators, non-profit program managers, lab technicians and more, with new employment opportunities emerging.
In animal health, for example, dozens of career tracks are available for those with associate’s degrees in animal care at research facilities and zoos, livestock breeding, food processing and meatpacking, dairy herd management, horse training, and research farm management, among others Higher degrees can lead to agribusiness law, specialties in banking and production, and more.
“Those higher levels of education are not necessarily going to apply to sales and marketing, or manufacturing and production,” Hutchens said. “I think we’re moving to an era, for example, where from a sales and marketing standpoint, an MBA will be a great thing to have.” 