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?"'"

Comments

Re:I'm not surprised

[Doubting Thomas]

We had one of those. His name was Thomas Edison, and he, too, claimed ownership (and in fact, implied creatorship) of all of the inventions of the people who worked for him. Who invented the incandescent bulb? Some poor nameless slob who worked for Edison.