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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?"'"
I think this is the primary effect of copyright and patent law. It becomes more important to be the person who controls the output of scientists than it is to be a scientist yourself.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Possessing a Masters in Business Administration is not the end all be all of the world. There are a lot of people who have this degree - but could not manage their way out of a wet paper bag. What business truely wants, and needs are managers who are creative, intelligent, resourceful, unorthodox - not just people who have the book learning.
Yeah, you can make a lot of money having this degree - but unless your passion is management, it's a waste of time - and talent.
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.
Longer than that, actually. The beginning of all of this was the launching of Sputnik in 1957. It was the prospect of losing the Space Race against the USSR prompted the infamous "New Math" of the early 60's.
I am not a scientist (yet), I do however read the musings of a real scientist at Note Even Wrong. Scroll down to "There They Go Again..." and enjoy what he has to say about the article.
Well, part of the problem is that these PH.d's are 35, and have no actual experience. I've seen this at GE - there were guys, who shall remain nameless, who were brilliant with the formulas, et cetera, but who were comepletly devoid of common sense and unable to deal with real-world problems, due to too much time in a academic environment. I imagine it takes some time and several jobs before one could acclimate to the real world.
;)
Nothing that a few good internships couldn't solve, to keep one grounded
There should be no reason to recruit outside the USA for PhD programs. We should be able to have a good pool of undergrads in the USA to fill almost every PhD seat.
I think the fix to the problem is not undergraduate education or high schools, but what is taught in the elementary schools. I knew two people in elementary/high school who went on to get PhD's. One was a person who was always entering science fairs and was excited and interested in discovery. The father of that guy never pushed the kid to "excel", but allowed the kid to feed his appetite of wonder. The other guy I knew as a kid did not really get excited about learning, but had a dad who pushed and pushed and pushed for his kid to be the best. I can't tell you how many times I remember his father telling him "do you want to push a broomstick the rest of your life?". Both did well in high school, both got into good colleges. The one who was liked studying and did not look at school as work enjoyed his graduate school days. The one who looked at school as another hurdle to jump did not like it, and dropped out early getting a masters (and now works as a programmer because it paid the best, even though he hates it).
I think what needs to be done is schools needs to get fun at an early age. It should not be a pressure filled johnny is better than mike type environment, because johnny did well on some test (only to have mike kick johnnys ass after school). I had only one good teacher in my first 8 years of schooling (before high school), and what made that teacher great was not that he taught better but that he made everyone excited about what they were doing and made everyone feel good about their interests. Those who were interested in fiction books were no less important as people than those who were looking at leaves under a magnifying glass. The teacher always asked with an excited face "how did you like that" and "what did you learn"; and anwsered "wow". It might sound dumb, but he was one hell of a fifth grade teacher. Much better than the guy who taught me algebra in high school who always took off 1/2 a point off a right anwser just to show me who was boss (for shit like "can't read your handwriting").
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Every job I've worked at had at least one engineer (many times a Ph.D.) who couldn't get a job in his chosen field - especially aerospace. So, he becomes a programmer. There's a reason that nobody is getting these dgrees - no jobs!
Also, why should someone with that kind of talent "waste" it in engineering when they can go to medical school and make ten times as much?
And another thing, I once was talking to some Indians about why there's so many engineers that come out of their country. Their response: "Every parent wants their child to grow up and become an engineer. If not that, then a doctor." Granted my sample size is four, but it was interesting to hear their mindset. I'm not saying that they're right or wrong, just that Engineers are held in much higher esteem there then over here.
Absolutely.
I'd rather work in a lab doing research that I feel might change something in society or maybe cure just one person's illness than slave with an M.B.A. dealing with the business end of the deal.
I really don't care if I'm getting 40,000 or so. To me it's not a big deal.
I think it's a hidden blessing that salaries aren't grossly overdone with Ph.D.'s because you weed out those who are in it just for the money and you're left with the people that truly care for what they are doing.
The funny thing about the postdoc issue is that it is very much a damned if you do-damned if you don't. In science, if you want a good job, you basically have to have done a postdoc. However, I have known people that have done a postdoc for 5-7 years and then still can't find a job because many will view them with the attitude of "why can't this person get a job after having a postdoc for 5 years".
An unfortunately reality in science, as it is in most of life, is that you have to have connections and you have to have timing on your side. When I was near the end of my postdoc (2 years), the academic job market was good that year. So was the industrial job market. However, two years after that, the academic job market actually shrank as the economy began to wilt and state funding for many schools shrank as well. Timing on my part was critical.
I feel for all those postdocs out there stuck in the rut of that position. I felt it was critical to my development as a scientist but man oh man, there is no way I would ever go back to that.
No trees were harmed in the composition of this; however, numerous electrons were inconvenienced.
Amplifying the problem is the US's addiction to foreign graduate students. While they may work longer and harder hours, they're also cut off from their families or any social life, so they grind away in the lab early in the morning, late at night, and on weekends and holidays while us lazy Americans are off somewhere, complaining about how hard we have to work. The difference is that hard labor /= good results, and the papers these people crank out are often full of nonsense, repeat other people's work, or are completely superfluous. I've had foreign postdocs publish work with my contribution twice now, with no credit given to my input (which lasted for 15 months in one case), either out of ignorance or theft- I'm not sure which.
But, really- if you want to drive a ten-year-old car while it's your boss and administrators that roll in the big bucks (with benefits like retirement and that sort of thing), by all means- postdoc is the way to go!
*laughs*
More like...
Do I want to shuffle papers all day, make and remake long term plans, work 70 hours weeks becasue I'm salaried, never have time for my friends and family, and get no credit ever becasue the CEO and other vicious MBA take it becasue they are trained to...
No, a geek should not try to be a MBA, and a MBA should not try to be a geek. They should however, understand each other.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
It is too bad that money is often what makes a person make a decision which puts them on a path in life where the person is not happy. I remember reading the magazines in college which ranked pay by degree. If only I would have stayed studying what trully excited and interested me- biology. I was facsinated with the possibility of genetic engineering as a method of solving disease and sickness. Now I do programming work when I find it, or other office work, and I hate it. Why? Because I decided to follow the money not realizing money does not give happiness and often what is a hot job/field today will not be in 5 years. Plus, who wants to excel at something they hate doing. You know, the kind of job where by lunch you want to go home.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
I'd do this too, I'd much rather do what I love than be rich doing something I hate, you see this all the time with overworked lawyers and doctors and other high paying jobs, they have no time to enjoy all the money they make, their slaves to their jobs. Not saying that all lawyers and docs secretly hate their jobs, but a lot of them undoubtably do. On the other hand, my uncle, a chemistry phd, makes 35-40k a year but absolutely loves what he does. I currently am working on my masters in Industrial Engineering (Specifically Industrial Statistics and Quality and Reliability Engineering) I honestly have no idea how I'll fair salary-wise when I get out in a year, but I love what I do and that's what matters to me, to me engineers and scientists and the like are my heroes, and IMHO, of all human pursuits, there are none more noble than those of science and engineering.
At the risk of sounding too damn much like a archtypical communist (which I am not)...
At the moment, there are many jobs that are not compensated for very well. Stock brokers, advertising / marketing types, lawyers, and executives make a great deal of money. Scientists, Teachers, Police, Firemen, and the like probably contribute more to civilization then the types listed above, but they certaintly dont reap much of a benefit for it.
About the only profession that makes the kind of money they ought to are Surgeons. And that is only because they have a pretty compelling way to get the compensation they deserve. "Oh, you dont want to pay me that much? Ok. Let someone else perform that arterial bypass then."
Scientists / Inventors in theory can use Patents to generate their income. But research costs money. And they end up having to sign the patents over to the company that employed them.
I think that Patents / Copyright should never pass completely beyond the control of the creator for that reason. But Patents and Copyright are broken.
However, for all my complaints, its not like I have a solution handy either.
END COMMUNICATION
The real crisis may not be one of quantity but of quality.
I believe that this is the larger issue. In my experience many university science professors have a distorted view of the world beyond their walls. As a result the material they teach and their methods do not serve their students. This problem is not one of teching theory over practice. I am a big proponent of universities teaching theory only. Rather it is beliefs such as "If you want to do anything in field X you require a Ph.D." Or like my professor insisting that I would not be able to find a job with such a low mark in his course. (I was already employed.) Too many of my professors taught in such a manner that the highest marked students were the ones who memorized the material prior to an exam, and proptly forgot everything when they put their pencils down. This practice of encourageing memorization is a dumbing down of university curriculum. It is great for pumping out "scientists." But it dosen't encourage science.
Do we really want our scientific community to be comprised of people who are in it for the money and attention? Given the choice between the guy looking for financial success and the geek looking to keep scratchin' that curiosity itch, I'm betting all my chips on the curious geek.....every time.
WTF people?!? How'd this even get on Slashdot? With all of the elitist attitudes espoused around here, I'm surprised you'd even consider encouraging the acceptance of bourgeois pricks into a field that should be filled with guys who are doing it because they're fucking CURIOUS!
[/end rant]
Anyway. Yeah, what's up with that?
Far too many pepople rely on the educational system alone to turn their obnoxious little brats into good upstanding citizens. They don't understand that the educational system is just a tool. It generally takes a good upbringing to get kids to take advantage of it.
Once someone wants to learn and sees the value in a good education, they'll get a good education, even in the "abysmal" system we currently have.
10 minutes working on a sig. What a waste.
I'm an American scientist, and I've been through this battle already. For you younger folks, back in the late '80s, many organizations, particularly societies like the American Chemical Society (whose main interest is keeping Ph.D.'s plentiful so the chemical industry can pay them $40K/yr forever) testified before Congress about the upcoming "shortage" of scientists. Many grad students, including myself, were told that this shortage would translate into good jobs when we graduated with a Ph.D. It was a complete lie.
In the early '90s, testimonies and hand-wringings were still going on. Only thing is, those of us who had graduated with a Ph.D. had learned of a new problem. It was called "The Glut". Most places, especially in academia, were averaging 300-400 applications for teaching and research positions. There were postdocs out the wazoo, and most of us were in a holding pattern. I was a postdoc for 6.5 years, trying to find a place to land (I finally did; many of my colleagues stopped trying and went off to sell computers or work for biotech companies as a marketer or salesman). I remember one position that I applied for in academia didn't even respond with a letter. They had so many applications, they just sent out a postcard that began "Dear Applicant:".
The Glut is still here. Don't believe the lies about getting research positions after you graduate. You may do it, but you'll need some luck. The shortage is in graduate students. Every faculty member would like 2 or 3 (or more) graduate students to work on their projects, mostly 'cause we faculty spend all day, every day writing grant proposals to keep our soft-money-funded postions on faculty. And the NIH and NSF budgets are tapped out, meaning the only way I get my grant funded is if my colleague loses his. This breeds a situation where every April, Sept., and Dec., everyone gets nervous, waiting for those grant scores to roll in. If your score isn't good, update your CV. And there's a pretty good correlation between the number of grad students you have and the score you get: more is better.
Science can be a fun occupation. I love it. But don't be deceived into thinking your going to go from graduation to a faculty position in anything less than 6 years, or that you're going to get some cushy job teaching or in academia. Trust me.
Lee Iococa made sure that his corporation was set up to pay a first year dealer carlot salesman a LOT more than an engineer. And that's the lowball pay structure, it goes way up from there, and it's skewed to the non innovators side. So he wonders why there weren't as many engineers as he wanted? The second point is, professional racing pays better and is more fun for an automotive engineer than working for one of the big car companies. They have more freedom to be creative, and the rewards -in all forms, not just financial-are better.
Here's an automotive engineering example,Smokey Yunick. Worked various pro racing because he truly could be creative, and he got paid well to do it. He even proved he could almost single handedly beat detroit in making a non racing car, but a commuter car that could get fantastic mileage and not be weird, just a normal looking car that worked much better. He did it,built it, proved it worked, that it could be done, when detroit was whining to congress it wasn't possible, and that detroit was being lamer about it,liars basically. Detroit-GM IIRC, offered him literally dick for it in terms of money, a quarter million, it was a joke offer for what he had, so he went back to racing.
These big companies, with a few exceptions, don't want to pay for the class A brains, they want to pay for snakeoil salesmen, because it's a better way for them to make profits, sell the sizzle, which is cheap and easy to do, rather than building a better cow and selling a better steak. They also tend to reward the memebers of their clique, the other managers and sales people, because that's who they grew up with and hung out together with and went to college with. It's a good ole boys network. Why share the pot with people not in your clique? that's what they think anyway. They think anyone not in their cliqie is a loser, or a nerd, sonmeone to make fun of and to soak for everything they can get from them. They put themselves in the position to do that, so they do that. They also go WAY out of their way to make sure the nerds never have an effective union, they keep telling them from day one they are different from the blue collars, they are "white collar" and despite the fact they get treated like the blue collars, the nerds keep thinking they are somehow part of that management/sales clique, even though they never will be, so they get shafted. It's almost impossible for the nerds to use collective bargaining,in most cases,because of that indoctrination, and they also make sure the government-which they control because lawyers and legislators are closer to their clique than the blue collars or nerds-always passes laws that favor them, and no one else, except for the occassional non meaty bone toss.
I am speaking in very general terms now, I know there are exceptions to the rule, but in those general terms that's how I see it being run, and it's been run like that for a long time now.
My life as an engineer is fantastic. I love staying indoors at a desk and exercising my mind. I don't have to suck up to my boss because my industry is a meritocracy. I enjoy the freedom that comes from being able to switch jobs anytime because good people are always in demand. Life couldn't be better.
I am happy that you have finally found your calling in life. But, don't put down my industry. Leave those teenagers alone; let them find their own way. They just might enjoy engineering. I know I do.
"...you can always get a job as a Professor at a university." Ya. Those are real easy jobs to get. Ask one of your U. Mich. Profs. how many applications they get when they advertise a tenure track position. Ask them what percentage of their new hires actually receive tenure. Try reading some more articles in the Chronicle. There's a huge glut of PhDs. Just do the math. Each faculty member at a university has a number of graduate students. Sure, some of them don't get PhDs, but a lot of them do. So figure every 2 or 3 years that faculty member graduates another PhD. The faculty member retains his/her job for 20-30 years, so where are all these new PhDs supposed to go? Private industry? It's kind of like music/entertainment. Sure, there are a lot of big names out there, but for each one there are a lot more people tending bar, waitressing, etc.
Yet another thing that the entrepreneur must fear: Someone who builds a better mousetrap and sells it at an even more aggressive price.
There's always gonna be something to worry about when you're free: There will always be someone who's smarter, stronger, faster, prettier, or better-financed than you.
People who love freedom shrug these things off, and figure out a way to adapt. People who hate freedom get down on their hands and knees and beg Massuh not to take away their hot grits and chitluns.
This is one of the reasons I'm going into the field of finance instead of teaching.
.... won't."
When I started grad school (I'm a second year student in math), they told me, "When you're done you will almost certainly have to teach. Really good students will be able to land a post-doc right when they get out. You
Then, after slaving away at a three-year post-doc (or, more ilkely, multiple one-year post-docs), I could maybe get a teaching job. That's a big maybe, too. People fight tooth and nail for teaching jobs.
Even if I could get a job, the pay is relatively low. Don't get me wrong, even bad teachers at mediocre colleges make enough money to get by, but the pay that you're getting for having a Ph. D in Math is lower than you would think is fair for the amount of effort you put into the degree.
So, I've decided to get a job in finance. There's cooler jobs than you think. For example, my bachelor's degree was in math and computer science. Well, there're these jobs called 'quantitative developers' that combine your (very high level) understanding of math with C++ or JAVA development skills. You get to do math and code, and all for pay that is (on average) much higher than what people got at the height of the tech boom in the late '90s. It's not just the money, either. You wouldn't believe how much great theoretical math there is finance. Most academics will tell you that they're in it for the science, and that's why they can put up with lower pay. I say, why bother if you can do the science in the private sector? It's not quite as nice an environment as academia, but it sure pays well enough to help blur the distinction.
With the scarcity of academic positions, people from lots of different fields, such as math, physics, and engineering are heading to the finance sector. Hopefully, I'll be at the front of the pack.
... turning to the 3-D map, we see an unmistakable con
Is it any better to be enslaved to the market and your customers than to be enslaved to your boss?
Unless they get lucky, and hit it big, most entrepenuers seems to have a lot less freedom than those those that work for "the man".
It's even worse if your passion is not business. Working for a company means letting someone else deal with that crap. Working for "yourself" means you deal with it and have little time for your own passion.
Right, we all lack the balls to go out and do independent scientific research outside of an institutional setting--because it's so damn cowardly and slavish to do underpaid scientific research in a laboratory instead of free-lance "street science," which I've heard is the latest entrepeneurial rage. Uh huh...
Unfortunately, here in the real world (you should visit sometime; email me and I'll give you driving directions), much of science absolutely requires the institutional backbone and funding that established laboratories provide. There are some aspects of science that can be capitalized on, and more power to those that make hay with 'em!, but even those niches would be impossible without a tremendous amount of supporting research coming out of universities and other (largely publicly-funded) institutions. So, gosh darn it, we'd still be back in the 1940's--or even more primitive--if it were all up to entrepeneurs. The over-educated, devoted people who bring you modern medicine, biology, physics, computer science, chemisty, and so forth shouldn't be continually underpaid just because they don't own the damn company.
And so long as you're comparing much of the world to ignorant slaves for their working for or in collaboration with larger institutions, maybe you should take that logic a bit further (to its logical conclusion)--why submit yourself to the rule of law at all? If you're such a freedom-loving rebel, unwilling to let anyone boss you around (because it's soooo slavish), then why buy things when you could steal them? Why not just shoot that jerk who cut you off on the freeway? Screw 'em! Nobody's gonna boss you around, right?
Or maybe some of us are willing to be employed rather than employers because we recognize that the specialized skills that we possess require an appropriate environment in which to be employed, and that we are no more slaves for doing so than you are the arbiter of what constitutes religion, you whackjob.
Knowledge is power. Power corrupts. Study hard, be evil.