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NSF Reports No Geek Shortage
Baldrson writes "The NSF's report titled 'Graduate Enrollment in Science and Engineering Programs Up in 2003, But Declines for First-Time Foreign Students' (a pdf of the report released for the first time last month) is now available online. In an analysis of the report, Edwin S. Rubenstein of ESR Research states of these latest figures: '4.2 percent of science and engineering PhDs work outside their field of training, chiefly for financial reasons. This further weakens corporate America's claim of a shortage of high-tech workers.'" Interesting to see how things have changed since then.
Yep, H1-B visas will bring that cheap labor in.
On a side note, affirmative action is a bunch of BS and the way the powers that be train future H1-B labor. The truth is that in many schools, The over representation is actually from foreign students, particularly from Asia, strong H1-B candidates.
I was looking at some data for U of Washington, the place where they had the infamous "affirmative action bake sale." To make class populations representative of the population of the state, they would need to increase black students from 2.7% to 3.5%, hispanics by something similar, increase white students from 50% to 70%, and drop Asians (huge numbers from outside the US) from 30% to something like 6%.
Advice for my fellow geeks: before seeking out that threesome you dream of, you might see what a TWOsome is like first.
Do the Slashdot editors even check the nature of the sites that are linked to? Apparently, VDare.com is an extremely biased site that shouldn't be linked to. What happened to objectivity? What if we started linking to KKK sites?
For one thing, this tells alot about the poster of article.
There is a glut of Ph.D's in the US creating an over-competitive environment that's drastically deflating the pay level. What really should be done, is restricting the Ph.D's that schools push out to help overcompensate for the over inflation. But this won't happen. Why? Grad students are cheap labor for PI's. Schools accept grad students not because they are interesting in training and bringing more qualified people into the field, but rather because they need them to work for PI's. A PI is only as good as his/her grad students. If you add in a post-doc period, you are looking at, in some cases, 10+ years (a figure nowadays that has been increasing as many people are having to do multiple post-docs) of getting paid 1/2 of what you would have gotten if you had just gone straight into industry. Mind you, this isn't a bread and butter time either. This is a period where (in most cases), people are spending ridiculous hours working weekends/nights trying desperately to get data. And for what? An even more competitive academic environment where the positions to applicants ratio is (in some fields) 1:10. We haven't even gotten to the whole tenure track part. Add in all these factors and it is not surprising that 1 in 3 of these students never even complete their graduate "training"--most fighting for a masters.
I hate to seem pessimistic, but this article is long overdue, and at the same time, disturbing. We are flooding the market with ambitious bright individuals with promises of great prestige and fortune.
I really think they need to make a "Sims:The rise to professor" game depicting the rather long and gruesome journey to professorship. It would have to be realistic, so on average, you should only be winning, say, 5% of the time. Most people don't realize how different the actual and perceived opinion of prospective graduate students is from the actual reality of academia. I'm actually quite surprised that only 4-5% of Ph.D's are working outside their field (mind you, this figure doesn't include people that wanted to be in academia but couldn't get a position and ended up in industry). Sadly, I know a few that are working in simple jobs as security guards.
(And before someone jumps down my throat saying that I am bitter because I had a bad experience--I actually haven't. However, I know many more that have, and while I can't empathize (as much) with them, I certainly sympathize).
Teaching is usally more cushy and stable in comparison.
And isn't that the truth. I was a programmer and did DBA work for three years, until I switched to teaching. Because when IBM cuts 500 mainly tech jobs in your state, and you get laid off, and all your friends with more certs and coursework in programming than you get laid off, teaching starts to look damn good.
Once I get my lvl 2 teaching certification, it's pretty much as good as tenure. I have to majorly screw up to get fired. Like abuse a kid, or repeatedly come in under the influence. Compare that with my last tech job, when I got laid off RANDOMLY as part of a 5% reduction in salary/benefits costs. That's right - no performance based review, no cost/benefit analysis, a random (less managers and friends of the president) layoff. I had been there almost 3 years, but they laid off another worker who had been there LESS THAN TWO WEEKS.
As we say at school, this would be the best job in the world if it wasn't for the kids and the administration. Regardless of my bitching about school, I sure as hell don't miss my time in IT. And I have summers off to program and screw around back in IT land, while getting paid the whole time.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor