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

I'm not surprised

[Omnifarious]

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.

Re:I'm not surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite true, I think. Scientists and engineers need to realise that I"P" law is NOT about them controlling their work, it's about the MBAs and lawyers doing so. Mass disregard for copyright and patent law is not just a good idea, it's your duty as a scientist.

Re:I'm not surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

We are the upper management of the rest of the world.

And it's statements like that that get the country bombed. Way to go.

Re:I'm not surprised

[kevlar]

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.

You can really say its about money. Money is what funds the development, money is what funds the lawyers who file the patents.

A PhD who could fund his own R&D and lawyers could have everything. The problem is that in order for them to fund it, they need their own fat savings account.

The fundamental issue with PhD salaries is that there are so many PhD's out there who are perfectly willing to work in academia withthe basics of their financial life supported that universities and companies don't NEED to pay them more. Their love for work is their motivation, not the money. Thats why they'll always generally be paid just enough to survive.

Of course... if they WERE paid more, and the costs were reflected in drug development, etc, everyone on Slashdot would scream bloody murder.

Re:I'm not surprised

[Bishop]

I think if you look back through the past 200 years you will find that academics have always been under paid, and poorly apreciated. Despite the lack of funds science has advanced because of self sacrifice and dedication. I don't believe this is good. Rather I wish to show that it is not a new problem.

Re:I'm not surprised

[AKAImBatman]

It'll be like that until everyone realize that it takes a scientist to properly control output of other scientists.

I'm an engineer you insensitive clod!

Joking aside, I think it's important to point out that what we need a lot of are engineers, not scientists. Scientists are wonderful people who advance our knowledge from a 50,000 foot level, and do so for little pay. These guys dream math calculations that make my mind gloss over just thinking about it.

Engineers OTOH, use a combination of scientific research and intuition to develop real and practical devices that advance civilization. Most of these guys are also very smart, but from a far more practical standpoint. Their job is to use all that research done by really smart scientists to exploit the laws of nature for the purpose of creating advanced machines that can do "work". (In CompSci, that would be a matter of applying the proper data structures and formulas to derive a computational machine that does work.)

The primary difference here is that Scientists tend to do the research because they love it. They have a keen insight into the universe and its working, and generally won't stop research even if they can't find funding. In addition, country borders rarely mean anything to their research. They could be American, Russian, Indian, British, French, or whatever. When their research gets published, everyone benefits.

Engineers (being more practical by nature) tend to aim for either the fortune of working for hire, or the fame of engineering some really amazing project. Their focus is to find a way to achieve whatever goals are put in front of them. I could tell some Aerospace engineers that I wanted to colonize Alpha Centauri, and they should be able to tell me how it can be done, how long it will take, what technologies must be developed, and at what cost. The idea that it *can't* be done is not the way they think. It's only about whether someone is willing to fund the project to its needs.

While I'm painting something of a rosy picture here, I do have a point to this rant. The US is losing *engineers* for various reasons. One reason is lower pay. Another reason is today's poor education system that often denies potential engineers from becoming such. The most damaging thing, however, is the continuously laxing standards for "engineers". A construction worker is not an engineer. Neither is a programmer a "software engineer". Yet kids fresh out of school have scented money, and said "I'll be an engineer! I'll cram my way through the schoolwork, then I can stop learning because no one will ever make me prove myself again!" As a result, the signal to noise ratio of engineers is ever dropping.

I'm not sure what the solution is yet, but I do know one thing: we need a different system for separating the wheat from the chaff. Traditional thinking says that School Degree == Knows His Stuff. Yet the reality is that you have a lot of people who go to school, but aren't really qualified for the job. At the other end of the spectrum, you have a lot of people who've made use of today's information mediums to become qualified without a degree. It's all a very confused situation.

Re:I'm not surprised

[the gnat]

Agreed, but over the last 200 years scientific research has expanded immensely as a career option, and the US has become a scientific superpower in addition to an economic/cultural/military superpower. This exponential growth in research fields, coupled with exponential growth in commercial engineering, is part of what's given us the incredible scientific and technical progress of the last two centuries.

The problem is that while engineering traditionally pays pretty well, basic research never has (except for the elite professors, a very small fraction of the people doing the actual work). But you can't have progress in engineering without basic research. On the flip side, a lot of basic research doesn't directly result in marketable products for decades (if ever), so it's not economical for companies to spend a lot of money on it. (Besides, why should they? Your tax dollars already fund basic research, because the government cares about getting science done, not bringing products to market - that's just an occasional side benefit.)

I'm entering the second year of my PhD in biology, and I spend more time than I'd prefer to worrying about this conflict. I love basic research, and I love seeing my name in print. I love the thrill of discovery, and while I'm happy to see my research used towards improving human lives, that's not my primary goal - I simply want to expand human knowledge. Unfortunately, I'd also like to own a car, and lots of books, and various musical instruments. I've been wanting a video projector for a while too.

I don't think I'd find industry as rewarding in a purely scientific sense. But the odds of me getting a faculty job are slim, and even if I did, I'd be 40 by the time I was settled in with tenure (assuming I get it), and I'd probably still be single and working nonstop. Alternately, I could spend the rest of my career as a glorified postdoc, doing terrific science with some of the best people in the world, but making very little money and relatively little fame. The easier course would be to simply skip all this, go into biotech, and work in anonymity doing drug development, but without ever having to deal about funding problems or paying the rent.

I know this sounds shallow and materialistic, but I live in the Bay Area, and since all the women here are shallow and materialistic, I figure I don't have much of a choice unless I want to remain single for the rest of my life. The only thing less sexy than being a geeky, underpaid, overworked 25-year-old scientist is being a geeky, underpaid, overworked, 40-year-old scientist.

True for Me

[billstr78]

I know that the bleak employment opportunities for a Computer Science Ph.D. in a 50th ranked school were the main reason I left my program and finished with a Masters instead. Now I'm employed doing the same work I did while interning as an undergraduate 4 years ago. If I'm not able to move my way up through the ranks and get to some real development, going back for an MBA is a real possibility.

A little history...

[cleverhandle]

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.

Re:MBA is not the end all be all

[mOoZik]

I don't think a passionless person would spend 6+ years studying something in which they have no faith or no love for. It is a fact tha the average MBA makes more than the average post-doc. Money seems to be the attracting force, but also a certain sense of freedom. At least that's the reason I'm a year away from my MBA.

What does K-12 science education matter here anywa

[ShatteredDream]

Most of the hard science majors I know didn't get there because of their K-12 education. It couldn't come really even close to covering what they needed to know to do anything with it. I can look at schools' "computer science" classes and see basically identical results. Most of the real coders in my computer science classes are the ones who didn't waste their time with "computer science" classes in K-12. I tried taking one for fun and found it to be quite possibly the most asinine class there, even more so than PE. K-12 is designed to build up the lowest common denominator to a point slightly above dark ages superstitions about the world. Overall it is an abysmal system and I see no reason anymore to fix it or fund it more. Think of education like hemp rope. Some will use it for good and useful purposes, some will hang themselves with it, but the majority will do nothing with it except maybe try to smoke it and get high off of it.

My decision:

[mhore]

I am a Physics student...with only one class left until Grad School. When I first considered Physics... I had a hard time justifying to myself making $40,000 as a postdoc (if I'm lucky) vs. making maybe $60-70k as a programmer...or more with an MBA or Engineering degree.

What it came down to is this... I did what made me happy. I may never make much money at all, but I love what I'm doing. I made the choice to switch over to Physics, and I have never looked back.

Mike.

Re:My decision:

[John Seminal]

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.

PH.d's can't.

[PeterPumpkin]

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 ;)

Re:PH.d's can't.

[billstr78]

This is other people's problem with Ph.D's but does not generally impact their employment opportunities or job performance. They are paid to be good with the formulas, et cetera. They never fully adapt to the working life becuase their knowledge is deep not broad.
The employment opportunities for U.S. Ph.D's are bleak becuase the field is competitive. There aren't that many positions outside of academia that require that specialized knoledge and there are plenty of talented people from other countries itching to plant themselves in the U.S. to get away from less than perfect conditions in their own country.

Re:PH.d's can't.

[foidulus]

I don't personally see how you could ever have too many researchers. As a country, the more of them we have, the more technology we will have in the future (though since the payoff won't be soon, it might not look like that to retards). Or is it simply more profitable to raise generation after generation of sheep-like consumers?
I think you hit the problem on the head. Look at some of today's most successful companies, do they do research? Dell doesn't do much, neither does Wal-Mart, and yet Wall Street follows them like a hawk. Wall Street only cares about ROI and getting rid of labor, no matter what the long term cost to the company is. At a place I used to intern, they hired very expensive consultants to come in and fire people, thus concentrating a lot of critical knowledge into a few hands, which they then proceed to treat like crap and pile loads of work onto them. How is this good for the company?
Nobody wants to engage in risky R&D anymore because they won't be able to use the buzzword ROI on the project(Intel thinks that it is the governments job to do research for them)
The long term consequences of this short selling mentality will be dire IMO.

$150K MBAs?

[mst76]

What I want to know is:
1. Does a typical MBA really make $150K?
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?

Re:MBA is not the end all be all

[the_2nd_coming]

you just described a leader not a manager.

managers are made to maintain the Status Quo, Leaders are made to give direction and vision and to get everyone on board.

though a good leader needs good management skills to maintain the day to day garbage.

After 25 years in engineering I went elsewhere...

[freeio]

After 25 years working as an electronics engineer, the last company I worked for went into technical bankruptcy, stopped meeting payroll, and I was forced to reconsider whether I wanted to continue in this line of work. Result? I decided to take the savings, 401K, and such and put it into a more sane business.

So my wife and I expanded her business (one of those "horribly overpayed wedding photographers") and now I work full time selling portraits, photographing weddings, doing bookeeping, and such. I couldn't be happier!

The life as an engineer was (excuse me) pathetic. Why should I spend all my life chained to a desk, living in a cube farm, and putting up with the Boss from Hell who figured he owned me as so much chattel property? Life is much better now.

So tell me again why I would even talk any teenager into becoming an engineer? They would be fools to do so.

This is just wrong...

[John Seminal]

Last fall the president of the University of Maryland found himself doing something that none of his predecessors would have dreamed of trying. While on a trip to Taiwan, C. Dan Mote Jr. spent part of his time recruiting Taiwanese students to go to the United States for graduate school.

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").

It's about time...

[MisanthropicProgram]

that someone published an article about this. I'm so sick of CEOs complaining that there are not enough engineers being educated in this country and therefore, they have to go to other countries. What horshit!

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.

I have to agree with this assessment

[betelgeuse68]

The people who visit here tends to have "tech" under their skin (me included). But the average person who is considering college does not necessarily enjoy our enthusiasm for open source code, LINUX, cool science news, etc. That's just life. If someone were considering computer science I would tell them, "Unless it's something you think about an awful lot during your day, forget it." That is, unless computing is in your "blood" in some shape way or form, the prospects simply are not worth it. I went to a large Midwestern state university and left the area to be on the West Coast. I kept in touch with different people from my college days (I finished in '91). Nowadays there are quite a number of "engineers" in Chicagoland that are essentially at dead ends the changing dynamics of the tech industry. Unfortunately for them, Chicago had a rather telecom presence and the downturn in that space means there are probably lots of people who won't be in tech jobs anymore. Just yesterday (and also featured on Slashdot) there was a Businessweek article about consolidation in the software space. I see it as a given and it is something I have told people for a couple of years. You see, the railways saw huge growth in the second half of the 1800's then ther was consolidation. Then the auto industry went nuts during its inception, then it too went through consolidation in the first half of the 1900's. Frankly I don't see why the software industry would be any different or immune to these business dynamics. And despite the fact that software doesn't have a material cost, commodization directly (open source) and indirectly has dramatically altered the landscape from 10+ years ago.

Here's a good article on Newsforge that makes my case, "There may never be another software billionaire":

http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=03/03/28 /2 125237&mode=thread&tid=3

Sure I'm only talking about computer science jobs but the prospects of studying some scientific field and making a living at it are rather grim. I've met my share of electrical engineers and physicists making a living by being code grunts vs. being in employed in their field of study. Nowadays there's a "nuclear engineer" on my team but the company I am currently at in no shape, way or form deals with that space.

So yeah, if I had to start all over and had the business savvy, mindset, drive and acumen I would go do something else.

After all, how many CEOs in corporate America have engineering and/or scientific degress?

Point made.

-M

Re:I'll take the Ph.D., thank you

[cTbone]

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.

Postdoc problem

[overbyj]

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.

Supply and demand

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a fairly simple equation. The reason you can get someone for under $40,000 with a bachelor's degree, and 2-10 years of postgraduate education in some esoteric field, is that there's too damned many of us. Worse, once we're done, there's no requirement for real-world experience. Few PhD's or postdocs have any knowledge of how industry works, so they can get hired into the workforce for about as much as you can make as a prison guard with a GED in most states. (We have lab techs with MS degrees that make less than prison guards start at in this state.)

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!

Re:career decisions...

[Duncan3]

*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.

Ph.D Not So Bad

[UMhydrogen]

Coming from one of the higher ranked engineering schools in the country, I find that Ph.D and masters enrollment seems to be quite up. I know most of the people I am around are not settling for just their bachelors - everyone wants to go to graduate school. I also am spending my summer in DC working for Boeing. Almost everyone here either has a Ph.D or plans on going back to get their masters or Ph.D. Engineering docotorates do not fall in to the $35,000 range and they actually get paid quite a lot. Now I am not so sure about "science" but it seems to me that getting a Ph.D doesn't leave you anywhere near shy on money. On top of that, if you're any good at what you do, you can always get a job as a Professor at a university. At Uof Michigan the Professors get paid very well and do a lot of research. I find it hard to believe that in an age so motivated and focused on technology, that a scientist or an engineer would have trouble finding work.

Re:Ph.D Not So Bad

[Life2Short]

"...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.

Re:Read what a real scientist has to say.

[foidulus]

Meanwhile, the ABA does the opposite. For as long as I remember, they've issued publications trying to dissuade people from taking up the practice of the law. The AMA does the same by lobbying to restrict the number of accredited medical schools. I guess the difference is that these are "real" professional associations that act on behalf of their members.
No, they are all acting in their members best interest. The fewer lawyers/doctors out there, less competetion, more money. The big difference is the ABA and AMA are run by the professionals, instead of those who hire the professionals. So the control they want over the supply/demand balance is different.

You cannot justify working as a Ph.D. in the US

[Cerlyn]

I left a comfortable job position to try for a Ph.D. at a major US institution. I was offered a full stipend, and it paid for pretty much everything except car insurance and clothing costs.

Unfortunately, when I got there, I found myself outclassed, and without help. Once my advisor came to realize I was not a specialist in the areas he thought I was, he rarely saw me, while discouraging me to look elsewhere.

Finally, my advisor dumped me two months before my contract with him was due to expire, well after the point all the other Ph.D. advisors had already chosen their underlings for the next year. I later found one of my friends in that research group was originally under my advisor as well, and had been dumped just prior to this advisor taking me in.

But it was too late for me. I lost a large amount of personal funding taking out loans to pay for the next two quarters. The politics in the Engineering department there were much worse than those I ever encountered working for the US government. Eventually I received a very good job offer from a private firm, and dropped out with the Masters degree I already had received at another school. But by that point in time, I estimated I wasted well over $10,000 in my own funds waiting for a new advisor I liked to take me in (it is worth noting he did come up with some funds for me, but I left just after this point).

The paranoid should look at two professors' testimony before the US Congress for some insight. The first is the testimony of Dr. David Goodstein about how the US Ph.D. program attempts to only breed elite members like themselves. The second is the testimony of Dr. Norman Matloff (revised since 1998) on how there really is not a Software labor shortage in the US (one section of this paper discusses why American CS students tend not to go for Ph.D. degrees).

That is a general problem with our current economy

[LordZardoz]

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

not just the money, superstition

[fermion]

Formal education can only do so much. The great scientists are able to look for the areas of the world which we have not fully explored, and then, without prejudice, collect data or create models in such a way as to support refute existing theories. All this must be done in a logical, auditable, and repeatable manner.

I think in America we are losing this sense of adventure. I hear more people espousing their beliefs and superstitions as if it were The Truth. They are afraid of exploration and the unknown. Modern science does not exist to confirm personal beliefs any more that the CIA exists to promote political agendas. Both are there to discover what is, in a significantly tangible way, real about the world. Reality is often hard for us to understand and accept, but we are much better off when we have some assurance that we are close to the truth. The past few hundred years have shown one of the most reliable processes to get close to the truth is the scientific method.

But we have a few religious nuts afraid of anything that will contradict their carefully crafted fiction. These people subvert the educational process and teach our kids that the scientific method is wrong. Make no mistake. If one claims evolution is wrong on the basis of scripture, if one claims that the earth is a few thousand years old on the basis of scripture, if on claims that one can go from an a priori truth, construct a data set that fit those facts, and then claim that is science, then one is so wrong as to be the greatest enemy of science, progress, and even the free market.

When one makes these fantastic claims, that everything that does not fit your reality is wrong, even if a process that has proved successful for hundreds of years says it is correct, a thing called cognitive dissidence is set up in the mind of a child. I believe this often leads to the child falling on the side of superstition, and a scientist is lost. I believe that a whole generation of American scientists have been lost to this attack on science. An attack based on the assumption that it is preferable to get an MBA and oppress a workforce for personal profit, but not ok to challenge ancient superstitions for the sole betterment of the human race.

Let me state I am not anti-religion. I am quite for it and have seen organized religion to a great many wonderful things. I am, however, against the use of religion, or anything else for that matter, solely for the purpose of personal gain, and without respect of what it does to other people. Certainly Christianity tells us not to harm others, that the truth will set us free, and in the example of Jesus, that personal sacrifice is not only expected but necessary.

God may not play dice, but I am thankful every day for the quantum wells that make my life so much more convenient than my parent's.

More to the point....

[eril]

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?

Re:What does K-12 science education matter here an

[cmorriss]

You're right in that an education is what you make of it, but I disagree that what we have is an abysmal system. If someone doesn't care about school, usually because of the environment in which they were raised, there is little the educational system can do about it. It's a cultural problem and we need to start treating it that way.

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.

It was a lie in the '80s. It still is.

[Sans_A_Cause]

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.

Re:After 25 years in engineering I went elsewhere.

[slashdotjunker]

The life as an engineer was (excuse me) pathetic. Why should I spend all my life chained to a desk, living in a cube farm, and putting up with the Boss from Hell who figured he owned me as so much chattel property? Life is much better 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.

Re:MBA is not the end all be all

[Antique Geekmeister]

Yes, plenty of people would spend 6+ years studying something they have no passion for or stink at. Being a student itself is often a short career, rather than what you do when you get *out* of school.

Plenty of people who got into computer science in the dotcom boom realized how much they wanted to do something else, and are frankly much happier now making less money. They made an educated guess during college about their talents and careers, and it turned out wrong.

Bless the people who were such programmers, web designers, etc. and who are now doing great jobs as artists, plumbers, teachers, etc., etc.

Re:Too many para-engineers in software

[multiplexo]

someone who holds both a bachelors and masters in computer science from the school of engineering from U.C. Berkeley, one huge problem is too many "para-engineers."

Well, bully for you, what do you want, a fucking pony or something? As someone who holds a B.A. in political science from the University of Washington I can say that categorically you're full of shit. Licensing doesn't exist to protect consumers, it exists to protect the class of people being licensed, as an example look at the Bar, you can be admitted to the Bar in one state but not in another, does this protect people seeking legal counsel? Well, not really, but it does protect lawyers from too much competition, which leads to such things as judges in the state of Texas attempting to ban software from Nolo press because it allows people to write wills without consulting a lawyer (See http://www.nolo.com/texas/index.cfm for more on this) If you had taken a couple of basic political economy classes insetead of wanking your way through some of formal education that you got in CompSci (hint: no one uses Scheme or Eiffel in the real world) you would have learned about how these state sanctioned monopolies work.

Oh, by the way, another reason that your whine really pisses me off, aside from the obvious chip on your shoulder and the snivelling sense of entitlement you carry around because of your degrees (notice that I didn't say "education") is because I consider myself a systems engineer, despite my lack of formal training (well I took courses at the U of Wa, but they were mostly a waste of time, my best training was OJT working in a lab there). Why do I consider myself an engineer? Well, because I designed, procured and managed large scale systems that came in on time on budget and worked in high intensity production environments for years. I worked with a lot of other people who did similar things without any benefit of this formal education that you speak of (What does that consist of anyways? showing up for class, sitting up front, kissing your professor's ass whenever possible?)

Of course if I had a dollar for every piece of shit code that had been written by a CSci graduate who called himself a software engineer, and which burned CPU cycles, leaked memory and hammered my systems into the ground I wouldn't ever have to work again. Formal education is no guarantee of quality in computer code, I'll testify to that from experience, and it's not much of a guarantee of quality in medicine or law either, if it were malpractice wouldn't be the problem it is in those fields.

You write The problem in computer science is too many hacks are being paid and labeled as engineers when they are not. well if you had ever worked in the real world you'd realize that a lot of those hacks have CSci degrees and have studied software engineering, and despite this their codes still sucks ass. Let's face it, if the only way you can get and hold a job is to have the government artificially lock out competition then you're a worthless piece of shit.

Of course there's also the interesting question of what the Professsional Engineer's exam would look like for software engineering. Given the way government works you'd probably have lots of questions about the best way to manage loading data from tapes when programming in Cobol and Fortran. If we had the kind of government regulation that you want to protect your worthless ass then we wouldn't have a computer industry, Hell, it would still be the early 1970s with a bunch of geeks wearing clip-on ties and birth control glassesloading tapes into IBM 360s and entering instructions in assembler via a TTY.

Of course if you don't like it here in the US of A you could always move to Germany and work there, the Germans are really credential happy (I speak from experience having worked there for a year) and might give you the adulation that you think you deserve for getting those shiny Berkeley degrees, and if they don't you can always go on welfare there, which given the obvious welfare mentality that you manifest in your post wouldn't be too hard for you.

To repeat: It's fear of uncertainty.

[mosel-saar-ruwer]

...it's that small, entrepreneurial businesses simply can't survive the competition with corporations. Walmart alone has devastated the American heartland, crushing many, many formerly prosperous small-town main streets.

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.

Finance

[Mad Martigan]

This is one of the reasons I'm going into the field of finance instead of teaching.

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 .... won't."

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.