Vetrinary degree or science degree?

April 5, 2020 11:02 AM

My daughter wants to work in wildlife conservation: research, management, and policy. Which degree would be better for a career in wildlife: veterinary (with a big debt) or master's in environmental biology?

She planned for years to go to veterinary school, but then was waitlisted at the one offering in-state tuition (still a lot). So she talked herself out of vet school and applied for two masters in ecological biology (or biological ecology, idk) programs in Germany, where tuition is free. She got really excited about those. Then the vet school called and accepted her!

There are big pros and cons to either plan, but she is only 21 and is thinking about the next few years of school. I want her to look beyond that to what she wants to do with her life.

posted by Miss Cellania to Education (7 answers total)

My organization has a vet and willdife vets are a much needed specialty, but the problem is the big debt. I know several wildlife vets and they all did a lot of volunteering, travelling and interning to get the experience with wildlife or to take jobs in parks or with non-profits and they are all European or graduate decades ago with smaller debt. If she wants to be a wildlife vet she should pursue that degree and just know that she needs to save and might have to work part or nearly full time time on american pet cats in a clinic (the big money maker in vet medicine) and part time on wildlife or be a travel or volunteer wildlife veterinarian while she pays her student loans. She may get lucky and get internships at school that lead her straight into a zoo or state or federal wildlife job but really she should already be volunteering there right now if that's what she wants to do so she should know all this from her mentors??

If she wants to work in the other parts of the field get an ecology degree but I wouldn't do a general masters. I myself have a masters in Ecology and spent 20 years in the ecology (not conservation/ environmental/ natural resource management which are different specialities) field and know that very well. It is a tough field and you should only go in to a masters if you know exactly how you will use it and you should get a focused masters too, not a general one. Field based wildlife ecology jobs are few and far between and most people who get the will not have a masters in ecology but in wildlife studies in one species or focus in particular and then will work with that focus the rest of their career. If she wants to go into the research field she should take 2-3 years and do field work and technician jobs then pick a specialty and do her masters in that. Be aware the pay is crap for many years in that field too and then only OK if you land a good government or university job when you are older. Many, many people go into adjacent fields like permitting, resource management, environmental science, education etc because they can't find work that pays as much as they want.

Overall she will make more money and have a much more saleable skill as a vet than an ecologist and also be able to move around more easily, which is important becoming established in the field. and neither degree is ideal for working in specifically wildlife management or policy, those are really separate specialties.
posted by fshgrl at 12:36 PM on April 5, 2020 [2 favorites]

Seconding primalux, much of my work is in this general area and I often come across environmental biologists, animal ecologists, vertebrate zoologists etc but never vets.

It IS useful to have a marketable second fiddle, especially if it is adaptable to different places and veterinary is something that you can move around with and make reliable money. Also a vet degree will definitely give your daughter a lot of useful secondary practical skills, environmental biology will depend much more on how practical the course is.
posted by unearthed at 1:05 PM on April 5, 2020 [1 favorite]

LOOOOOOOLZ "American pet cats in a clinic (the big money maker in vet medicine)"...

(Note: I'm a veterinarian in the military. If the military hadn't paid off most of my vet school loans, I would (like most of my vet school classmates) be living in near-poverty while paying off my student loans on a 20-30-year payoff plan.)

The only vets who make "big" (or even reasonable) money are those who do an additional 3-4-year residency after vet school (while racking up more debt) to become boarded specialists in things like Veterinary Cardiology, Neurology, Ophthalmology, Radiology, etc.

Here's an eye-opening article for anyone considering vet school (or anyone still perpetuating the myth that vets make lots of money): https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/business/high-debt-and-falling-demand-trap-new-veterinarians.html?_r=0

But, as others have commented, it seems your daughter's career goals have very little to do with veterinary medicine. If your daughter actually wants to be a wildlife veterinarian (which it sounds like she does not), then sure, she might consider vet school, as long as she A) has someone to pay for it, and B) realizes that zoo/wildlife vets typically have to complete an additional (highly competitive) 3-4-year residency after vet school (see https://www.aczm.org/).

I'm not saying no one should be a vet; I'm just saying that people should at least be aware up front of the astronomical price (and dire implications for future quality of life) of "following their heart/dreams."
posted by paigette at 1:28 PM on April 5, 2020 [5 favorites]

I'm not saying the vets themselves make "big money" but the practice does and it pays them enough to pay their student loans and also have a middle class life. Admittedly we all graduated 2 decades ago but even then the only way to get by financially was to do small animal work. It's the reason I didn't go to vet school after interning in a small animal clinic in fact. I have 4 or 5 friends who have to work part time in small animal clinics in upscale communities to support the rest of their practice in large animal or wildlife volunteering.

Bottom line: wildlife vets with US student loan finances won't get by doing wildlife veterinarian work, a lot of which is volunteer or in low wage countries and most of the rest is govt or non-profit. the only people I know doing that are older, have degrees from europe or south america or for whatever other reason have much more reasonable or non-existent loans.
posted by fshgrl at 1:31 PM on April 5, 2020

I’m one of those rare people with a field-based job in wildfire biology doing conservation and management. For reference I have a BSc and MSc in Biology and a PhD in Wildlife Sciences. It took me 12+ years to finish school and I got the job through an area-limited call so I consider myself extremely lucky.

I’d for sure recommend the MSc in Ecology and warn that she will likely be looking at doing a PhD as well. I’d also suggest she think very carefully about her research so that it’s applicable outside academia (this came up at and after my interview). She may also want to consider volunteering while going to school if she’s able or doing field jobs for a year before school to make herself more employable in the long term.

I have worked with wildlife vets but even compared to field biologists, there aren’t many of them.

I’m happy to answer any other questions if that’s helpful to her.
posted by hydrobatidae at 1:51 PM on April 5, 2020 [2 favorites]

Btw, I asked a friend and this site is where a lot of US wildlife vet jobs are posted. The starting salaries are available for the govt jobs.
posted by fshgrl at 1:54 PM on April 5, 2020

Response by poster: Thanks, everyone! She appreciated your input and concern. She let me know that the wildlife can wait, that she'd be happy working with pets, livestock, and zoo animals, with wildlife conservation as a further out goal. She will go to Auburn vet this fall. And she is also considering the military as an option.
posted by Miss Cellania at 2:13 PM on May 8, 2020 [1 favorite]