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Too Few American Scientists? Maybe Not
An anonymous reader writes "We've been hearing about bad K-12 science education, too few American science and engineering students, and the real-soon-now employment nirvana in technical fields for, like, the last 20 years. The reality: rising undergrad enrollments and unemployment rates, long years as an underpaid postdoc for those who finish a Ph.D. The Chronicle of Higher Education article quotes Harvard economist Richard Freeman: 'They're not studying science,' he says, 'because they look and say, "Do I want to be a postdoc paid $35,000 or $40,000 at age 35, with extreme uncertainty working in somebody else's lab, and maybe getting credit for my work and maybe not getting full credit? Or would I rather be an M.B.A. and making $150,000 and hiring Ph.D.'s?"'"
Only if they graduate from Harvard, Yale, Wharton, Stanford, or some other top 5 school.
2. If (as seems to be the implicit assumption) the science PhD could do the MBA's jobs as well, any company hiring PhD's can gain competitive advantage (lowers wage costs) by hiring science PhD's instead of MBA's. Don't companies realize this? Or is there more to MBA's than we all assume?
A lot of business is fuzzy thinking. In my MBA program, half my class is engineers. They're great at the math, but unfortunately, they trust the numbers too much. IMHO. Some have a hard time realizing that the numbers are an approximation and not based on physical laws like theey're used to in engineering.
Just my opinion because I do the same thing.
Well, I am a 36 year old post-doc, I am making under $50/yr, but I do not work in someone else's lab. Rather, I work with a group of great people who are very motivated and good at what they do. I wake up in the morning happy to have some real problems to solve. Life is too short to make it just about $.
Most of the hard science majors I know didn't get there because of their K-12 education.
I wholeheartedly agree. I remember as a child *hating* science classes. Up until 14 I wanted to be a musician, after that a writer.
I went to college to be a science teacher, and was appalled. They concentrate more on the teaching than the science (now, i am not saying that being able to effectively communicate an idea is wrong to learn) but these idiots were getting D's in their science classes. Maybe the problem that no one goes into science is because of this phenomena.
Happily to say, I am pursuing a Ph.D in the sciences. It has nothing to do with my experience as a child. It has everything to do with the women who taught me calculus. She was a real encouragement to me going on to grad school.
And for all those people who say that women don't go into sciences: you should check out the men:women ration at schools of public health. All of the ones in the US have more women.
All the MBA programs I'm aware of are 2 years. If you're including an undergraduate degree, well why not throw in the 12 years of primary education as well?
If an undergrad degree is a given (all the jobs we're talking about require one) it's not really germane to the tally.