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U.S. Science Gap Fictional?
James Cho writes "There are more science and engineering students than ever, says one Newsweek journalist. Inflated counts of Chinese and Indian students have created the myth of the U.S. science gap. While no gap exists yet, an exodus of retiring U.S. scientists could create one." From the article: "...a country's capacity for scientific and commercial innovation does not correlate directly with its number of scientists and engineers. Hard work, imagination and business practices also matter."
Why bust your hump getting MS or PhD in one of the hard sciences/engineering, only to land a job making less than 80k?? OR ... you can go to law school, or get an MBA, or sell cell phones, or flip real estate, and have a much greater earning potential for much less work. Until wage scale for engineering and the sciences returns its proper level there will be a deficit of people entering those careers.
I don't think it's an issue of the number of scientists, but rather how many do something so useful as to significantly change our society for the better.
If the federal government wants to increase our scientific advancements, it would be in their best interest to offer prizes for such things as solar panel efficiency, new energy devices, spaceship design (easy way to get to Mars if we had to), cure for certain diseases, etc.
(I don't know if they currently do prizes or not. I haven't read up on it.)
By prizes, I mean maybe a tax-free cash payout, no personal income taxes for the person for life, etc. Prizes that would guarantee security for the person for life.
I find it ironic that the only people likely to care about this apparent decline in US Scientists is us, the Science types.
Artificial intelligence has already been solved here in the United States, while the rest of the world is caching up.
AI algorithms have been released into the public domain and have come to the attention of AI wannabes all over the world by means of U.S. search engines.
An American book about artificial intelligence gives away the bleeding-edge American AI secrets to the rest of the world.
Singularity Scams, alas, are also an American invention recently on the rise and seeking victims to defraud of their money by playing on fears of unfriendly AI taking over the world.
Hard work, imagination and business practices also matters if you don't have trained people to do the science in the first place. Science has all but become a dirty word in the west and is associated with odd balls and hard work.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
All my TA's are from IIT, graduate school (especially PhD) just isn't worth the time/money. You can make 50k starting off with a bachelor's, or 80k with a Master's (and this tends to get you raises as well). If you go PhD, you go 80k and stay there. It's just not worth the money. Then again, maybe it is in my area.
There is a comment in the article pointing out that Indian and Chinese engineering graduates do "only a 2- 3 year course similar to our associate degreess" in the UK for certain, when you go to school to study, say, electronic engineering, that's ALL you will study for your three years (well, it was 20 years ago) there was none of this majoring/minoring crap it was 9-5 EE (and maths, and labs) for three years. If the Chinese and Indians do the same, THATS why you really DO have a skills shortage. In our old style system, you had to have had a modicum of liberal arts before you went to school, not expecty to be taught it at the expense of your degree.
Far more interesting is the comment that prices are FINALLY going up in the market, as shortage of supply has its wonderful effect.
I suggest we FIGHT to restrict the supply of Engineers and scientists, and not whinge about there not being enough.
Steve
From the article:
Despite an eroding manufacturing base and the threat of "offshoring" of some technical services, there's a rising demand for science and engineering skills.
What I get from this is that if you're a member of the IEEE and/or AITP etc., (basically any industry-recognized accreditation body,) you have nothing to worry about. On the other hand, you had better start praying if you are just a tech.
AI is far from "solved," given that nobody's built a robot that can beat the average five-year-old at walking across a room or a program that can equal one in conversation. (See the Loebner Prize Contest, which basically focuses on spawn of ELIZA.)
But some projects and resources seem promising. I'll refrain from plugging my own little project, but check out Hofstader's book "Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies," Stephen Pinker's book "How the Mind Works," and Sony's QRIO robot (unfortunately no longer in development). We're getting there. Looks like us Americans and the Japanese are leading the way. I'm on Kurzweil's side in his bet on AI's success.
By the way, why do all diagrams of AI systems look crazy? Maybe we should be focusing on narrower problems than a general-purpose AI -- and there have been successes in specialized tasks like face recognition.
" if an american engineer can do the work of 11 Indian engineers."
BLEEEEEPPP. Troll alert.
This article is a dupe
That's strange; to me it does not look like the comments are dupes.
By now you must realize that comments are the most informative section of Slashdot, or you must be new here.
The universities love to talk about the "science gap" because they hope to tap into Washington's money faucet. Congress fell for the missile gap during the Cold War and the PhD-granting institutions figured out that they could use the same logic to get more cash. But the cash isn't spread out evenly. Tons of it goes to create new PhDs but little goes to employ them. That's why less than 5% of the PhDs get jobs in academia practicing their specialty. There just aren't that many jobs.
To get rid of the PhD gap, they should stop flushing newly minted PhDs out of the system. Create a sustainable system where 50-80% of the PhDs can use the knowledge they have. Too many have to go out and get a new career. It's just a rip off of the US taxpayer.
So whenever big science comes along talking about a shortage of funding, I laugh. They're terrible liars.
AI Has Been Solved -- with a Theory of Mind (TOM) that is 1) extremely difficult for anyone but multidisciplinary experts to understand; and 2) all but impossible to implement in AI Mind software before we have massively parallel (maspar) computing hardware.
The Mentifex Theory of Mind is the long-awaited "solution to (the problem of) AI." Stand by for software solutions, and fall not prey to Singularity Scams.
I am an engineer with a Master's Degree and even one of those silly Professional Engineer licenses. I work for a Mortgage company as an analyst / project manager. I gave-up on engineering years ago due to low salaries, poor opportunities and companies going down the tubes. People who fix cars make way more than engineers. Not a slam on them as I am thinking about going to tech school to do such a career change. There is simply a glut of people out there with technical degrees. Try hiring a programmer; you get flooded with thousands of resumes.
Hard work is meaningless in a bureaucracy. Imagination and innovation are simply incompatible with bureaucracy and office politics. Only business practices matter. That is why the modern workplace is an adversarial, backwards, anti-innovation toilet.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
"It seems fundamentally unjust that a number of scientists could spend several years working on something but the one that finishes a few weeks earlier takes the entire reward."
Interesting point, yet isn't that the case with patents? Whoever gets in first kills everyone elses work. Not only that, the way a vague description is accepted for patents these days, the person getting the patent may just be a bullshitter with a vague description of something they haven't researched.
"Furthermore, the one that takes the reward in your system has guaranted security for life, so may as well immediately retire."
Just like Gates retired? Page?...
"When considering how many scientists actually change the world for the better, you can start by discounting the ones that work for military or security organisations..."
I don't see why you would do this, if you need a gun to defend yourself a gunmaker is a good guy.
Also having a reward like that doesn't preclude commercial success as an alternative. If tail-fins sell then thats a commercial success and the inventor of tail fins can still make money that way.
Overall, I side with GP on this.
Besides which, prizes are generally about chanelling development not the research which gets you to the point of development.
Israel. Less than 7 million "units of population", yet vast amounts of science and technology when compared to the population.
Business men claim that there is a lack of engineering talent grown here in the U.S. What they really mean is that there is a lack of U.S. engineers who are willing to work 60 hours a week for coolie wages - which is why they hire foreign engineers, programmers etc.
Technical people get very little respect in the U.S. Last week's Battlestar Galactica - where an engineering officer was promoted to command showed the way that the "people people" view technical people: "they only know how to deal with machines", "its all about the people - don't forget that" Of course "people people" are not technical people for the very simple reason that they can't be. The technical people who go into management tend to be technical incompetents who couldn't cut it where they were.
"People people" tend simply to be emotional bullies - stand up to them and they wilt. "People people" tend to make bad decisions that screw things up - hurting a lot of people in the process. Mostly their emotional strength is used for such ridiculous things as breaking off relationships - instead of making things work, they insure things are broken. While technical people get little respect from managers most managers don't know that the technical people are laughing at them behind their backs.
And yes, there is such a thing as a good manager - just like there is such a thing as an incompetent engineer.
Am I the only person who misread the headline as, "US Science Fiction Gap"?
I can't decide if this post is interesting, funny, insightful, or flamebait.
In any case, while lowering our standards -- effectively what you're suggesting -- certainly would produce a greater number of engineers and scientists, it probably would not produce a greater number of quality engineers and scientists.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
Am I the only one who read this as " U.S. Science Fiction Gap?"
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there. - Will Rogers
To the extent that there is no US science gap, I believe that the myth is propogated for the specific purpose of creating one. If people fear that there is no change for a good job in technology, they will not train for a job in technology. The whole purpose of this exercise is to de-industrialize America and militarize America so that the only non-menial labor jobs are in homeland security or the military. Once this is done, the transition to a facist dictatorship will be complete, and the elite will use this country as an engine to invade and subjugate the entire planet.
A mere lack of scientists could be recovered from. But look at it through these three traits, and now the US is doomed.
...or maybe you can do a lasting solution by removing exhorbitant tuition(3000 max for citizens for unrestricted access to Ivy level) and overrestrictive admissions (the cat's out of the bag, you might as well let the Midwest in with no conditions at all, and all the same benefits upon exiting) out of the equation.
Market based solutions do not work in relation to things such as jobs. They ignore external factors and do not provide favorable transition for displaced. They only destroy upward mobility.
Why, yes Carly, an American has a right to his job, even if it means you suffer.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
That's really interesting, I didn't know about the 9-5 thing for their students.
Being an American college student, I noticed pretty quickly that college isn't quite as much as high school. The classes are about the same difficulty as high school(meaning you go to lecture, turn in your assignments, and pass your exams, the hardest part is remembering to ataully do it all), but far less intense. I know plenty of students taking three or four classes per semester, taking maybe 3 or 4 hours a day; nowhere near the 9-5 attitude that students in other countries may be taking. And what's more, is that students at different institutions can graduate with equal degrees with fewer classes than here (University of Minnesota).
I think if the US were to reshape the image of what college is, from four years of sitting through class and partying, to focusing on learning, that would help any "gap" of the quality, and at the same time reduce the number of qualified people looking for jobs(as other people in the thread were suggesting, supply and demand, fewer scientists, the demand for them goes up, they get paid more) in the US.
Just something interesting to think about.
Mr. President, we must not allow a science gap!
Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, all deeply involved in technology but no degree for them. While not even close to their level i left college and joined the Navy. In 1972 I started working in tech. Did some systems programming. Did some hardware design and was deeply involved in a few very significant products. Put 2 kids through college, eventually got a BS an MS and an MBA at night cause I wanted to. Have anice house. Had a nice airplane. Lived in 3 countries. Retired froma major vendor after 33 years. Started a second career with a small "free software" company and love it. And I am no genius.
And I know some bright people do have degrees. rms for example
Point: While I would have been disappointed if my kids did not get degrees, I wouldn't confuse education with diplomas.
. . .I sure as hell don't want moneybags here trying to design my next car while all he can think about is how he's going to be able to afford his in-ground pool.
Hard work, imagination and business practices also matter.
In my experience, many organisations are organized in such way that it is barely possible for scientists to run a project successfully to completion. The more complacent they are, the more dysfunctional they tend to be.
The reason is simple. To get a scientifict project (in fact any project) near its goalpost, you typically need to coordinate a number of elements in an intelligent manner: People, for you do need a certain critical mass of scientific knowledge to get a good team; space, in terms of laboratories and offices; equipment; engineering support; money; computer hardware and software; and so on. One missing element can be enough to ruin your day.
Now look at the typical "professionally" managed organisation and you will see that rather than coordinated, these elements tend to be fragmented, sometimes very highly fragemented, each with its own manager. Who often enough will fiercely defend his turf against any interference and takes care great to ensure that any inter-departemental coordination is only done at the highest possible level.
The theory of it usually is that the scientists need to be "supported" by taking the responsibility for budgets and computer and other circumstantial elements out of their hands, to leave them doing what they are best at, science. Scientists are supposed to be no good at administration. But in practice it only takes two breaths for these "supporting" departments to effectively take over control of the organisation, forcing the scientists to spend more of their time on fighting the system than on research.
It would actually be far more efficient to hire more scientists and to let them improvise things in their own sloppy way, than to hire managers and administrators who are supposed to be more efficient.
I couldn't find any discussion of this statement in the cited article, so the submitter appears to have pulled it out of an unspecified nether region. Is there any actual evidence to support it?
When I started college 17 years ago the conventional wisdom was that the job market for academic scientists was tight, but that it was bound to improve as the big cohort of professors who got tenure in the 1950s and 1960s -- when colleges and universities were expanding like mad -- retired and opened up positions for new folks.
Now, 17 years later, the job market for academic scientists seems to be as tight as ever. So I'm pretty skeptical of the old "imminent retirement" argument. As the article does point out, the rate at which science and engineering degrees are awarded has grown by 38% over the last two decades. Doesn't this growth more than assure that we can replace our existing scientists as they retire? Has the rate at which scientists retire really grown by more than 38% since 1990?
As several other posters mentioned, American students are becoming very worried about spending a lot of time in school and a lot of money pursuing a degree for which there will be a high supply and low demand. Doctors go into huge amounts of debt, but they know that the debt they incur now will more than pay for itself later. Same with lawyers...these two professions are immune to economic downturns, and we sure don't complain about a shortage of either!
Now consider a student who wants to do pure engineering or scientific research. PhD's just aren't drawing the same salaries or lifetime employment that they used to. Tenured professors are an exception, but corporate research labs (AT&T, IBM, Lockheed, etc.) would invest im employees for the long term and make sure they were able to continue producing research. Today, every employee, scientific or not, is interchangeable. If you don't want to work for $60K, someone else will. Add to this fact that there are some areas of the country whose housing prices and cost of living are way out of control (New York, California, Boston area, etc.) and they just happen to have the scientific jobs right in that area (pharmaceuticals, Silicon Valley, MIT, etc.) Another point to consider is that you're out of the workforce for an additional 4+ years. Traditional pensions which kept workers comfortable for life are gone, and you have to do it yourself with a 401K and such. If you don't start right when you're 21 and get your first job, you can miss out on huge amounts of money later on in life. This is part of the reason why PhD's demand higher salaries...some of them are starting their retirement savings at 30!
Ask yourself this: Would you be willing to watch your less-educated peers flip real estate or crawl their way up the MBA ladder, while you made comparatively less doing much more important work? For some, the answer is yes, and those are the people who should be in their chosen fields. I'm not a scientist, but I graduated with a scientific degree. I work in IT, and there's a definite difference between someone who took an MCSE course, and someone who takes the time to learn the systems they're working on inside and out. The second type of person would probably answer "yes" to this question, simply because they enjoy challenging work. Managers make more money, sure, but it is a totally different skill set. (If you think your boss isn't doing anything, look again. Good ones are constantly keeping their techies shielded from political battles so they can do their jobs.)
I also think the gap is made up by foriegn students, just an empirical observations by educators I know. Universities can't find enough good talent at home, but they still need to fill positions. Science in this country just isn't as important anymore, I guess.
One change that I'd like to see happen in general is a return to a stable workplace. Back in the day, it was unrealistic to switch jobs every few years and have to constantly worry about layoffs. A lot of technical people I know aren't buying houses or other things simply because they don't know whether their job will be yanked out from under them. If employers were forced to really think about their hiring as an investment, things would change for the better. The prosperity of the 50s and 60s was a result of a strong middle class with stable paychecks who could afford to buy things. Companies who hire someone with the intention of keeping them, giving them training, and putting them in places where they'll be productive will eventually see ROI. The other thing I'd like to change is the promotion structure in companies. Pure people management should not be the way to reward great technical people; it leads to ineffective management. Instead, identify your best leadership talent and technical talent, and compensate them on two parallel tracks. The more you produce, the better your compensation, in either track. That would be a fair way to go.
The real money is in politics.. Little work, grand rewards in both power and funding.. And you dont even need to goto school..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"There are more science and engineering students than ever, says one Newsweek journalist."
True Journalists don't make claims, they report facts. In this case, the journalist is real; he reports facts (he is one of the real journalists, at least in this case.) The NSF provides facts that prove that more scientists and engineers graduated in 2004 than ever before.
The real gap in the US is a different educational one. There are plenty of bright people, graduating and contributing, as the facts show. Empiral evidence, however, points us in the direction of concluding that there is a large contingent of US citizens who have no idea what to believe, cannot tell the difference between a fact and a claim, and ultimately get confused and just choose to believe what they want to, or have to to, to deal with the insecure feeling one gets when the people in control of their lives cannot be trusted.
I recently revised my theory on Bush. I do not believe he was behind the tainted election results. Those who fixed the election chose him because he falls into the latter category. He is willing to say "I have the authority to do it, or - it is true - or -it is a good idea - for the Bible/my advisors tell me so." Bush is not a puppeteer; he is the favorite puppet of the military industrial complex, American corporations, and those who would twist and manipulate the words of Christ and the Bible to facilitate their own (not very well) hidden agendas.
Sadly ironic
Chum the waters with enough bogus journalists and you can say whatever you want. The proverbial fourth part of the checks and balances system doesn't exist anymore, because people will think "that guy is just offering up his opinion
There is a lack of qualified journalists in the US, not scientists, and that is where the real problem lies.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I just recently complete an M.S. in Electrical Engineering at Rutgers University.
Despite being a state school where New Jersey residents get *DIRT CHEAP* tuition (thus nullifying the cost/reward argument some people have made against graduate school), the graduate engineering programs at Rutgers (at least EE) are utterly dominated by foreign students. In many of my classes, I was the *ONLY* U.S. citizen out of 10-20 students in the class. Figures of enrollment in U.S. graduate schools are most definately not inflated by any means. The author clearly has no clue - he's been looking at papers and studies (probably finding ones biased in his desired direction), he hasn't actually experienced first hand the sad state of non-foriegn enrollment in U.S. graduate programs.
Even though I feel that Rutgers' program was substandard (I got what I paid for), the increase in starting pay from having my M.S. at my new job will pay for the costs of my M.S. within 4-5 years.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
You can't do anything of any significance in a vacccum
Faith: n. -- That human impulse that drives them to steal appliances when the power goes out
scientists they want!!!! For free! No, there is no wage for the slaves. Muhahahaha...
I know many people who do basic open science research and the number of students isn't the issue--funding is. US public funding in biological research has, according to their estimates, been cut in half over recent (Bush) years. Where the top 15-25% of grant proposals were funded not too long ago, only the top 10% are funded today (and don't even ask how they're scored...). That means most of these new students may ultimaely wind up having no choice but to take limited industry jobs or find other lines of work. Forget about high-paying salaries (which are already lower for non-commercial scientists), this is about basic survival in their field of choice, and the benefit we get from their hard work.
What's so bad about commercial research vs. public? Obviously, the profit motive cuts both ways. Drugs and therapies are developed which will make the most profit, not necessarily do the most good. It's viagra vs. a cure for AIDS. They find lots of treatments, but not a lot of cures. Why is that?
And we, as consumers and tax payers, pay for it on both ends -- welfare (tax breaks) for big pharma, plus higher health care costs and "prescription drug benefits" that benefit the drug companies bottom lines. Prices keep rising as we keep paying.
Also consider that science works through openness and peer review. But if scientists can only function inside for-profit companies and those companies are better served by keeping everything a trade secret? We're back to the days of alchemy. The un-scientific revolution.
As I've said in the past, the gap in US engineers and scientists is not actual, and studies suggesting otherwise are often biasesd and based on shady statistics.
-Tom
One thing I would like to see is some serious expert systems at the patent office allowing cheaper patents. Anyone see that coming or think they got the brains to do it?
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
"You can be virtually guaranteed a decent (50-80k) paying job"
Woah up there, buddy. When you say stuff like a decent (decent) income is 50k to 80k, you are doing a great disservice and illustrating the terrible gap in the US.
A decent paying income is one that gets you 30k a year. On 30k a year, you can live like any other person easily. If you're a one-person household, you can probably like on 22k and still be pretty fine -- you'll always have food; shelter; clothes; and, with the way credit is available, you can buy a car or a house.
About 50% of the US population makes less than 30k a year. If you want a lot of money, form an economic alliance (family). Most 4-person US families make about 70k a year (see these US Government statistics).
50-80k is great. You're upper-middle class the moment you make that. If you hit above 90, you're into upper-class. Of course, 1 high-end family makes 20 times what a low-end family makes, so there's still plenty more for you to strive for.
OTOH, I'd look at what exactly causes crime in the US and other social problems, and see if there was a relationship to income level.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Yes, it's called the American obsession with statistics. If it can't be quantified, then it doesn't matter. Numbers are god; qualitative reasoning is what cavemen do.
I would rather say "1 brilliant engineer can do the work of 11 bad engineer". I've seen plenty of examples of this in practice. Hiring good people really pays for itself (but there are good and bad engineers of every nationality, so you should look at the individual).
According to the article, the number of Bachelor's of Science degrees has increased greatly, which means we have a lot more techs, not scientists as the article is claiming. Although there has been an increase in graduate degrees, the author does say the majority of them came from foreign countries, with a modest increase in U.S. enrollment since the 1990s.
As everyone has already pointed out, we don't need more techs; we outsource those. So realistically, we are facing a surplus of "scientists" with tech-level skills and a deficit of scientists able to carry out intensive research.
I have spent a little while comparing UK and US universities, and the main difference seems to be one of attitude. In the UK, the university is expected to teach you to know a subject well, and you are expected to acquire an education in your own time. In the US, your university is expected to provide you with an education. While I was an undergraduate (in Computer Science), I attended the occasional politics lecture, read a number of works of classic literature (including the Bible, cover to cover) and philosophy. I kept up to date with the latest developments in a few scientific fields. None of this, however, counted any more to my degree than did attending parties and getting outrageously drunk; they were just things you were expected to do at university, without needing some kind of external validation. At the end of my three-year program, I found I had a deeper and broader education than many of my colleagues completing four-year courses in the USA.
[1] A few were seminar-driven, and a few were less formally structured, but 90% were two lectures per week.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Supply and demand sets the proper level. I know of no pre-defined way to know which job is the most valuable other than what people are willing to pay.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
What do you mean? I'm a student majoring in engineering at NC State and there's all kinds of programs, career fairs, etc. and people here to help you get employed while you're here and set up some contacts for when you leave. It's all your responsibility though to take some initiative, they aren't going to spoon feed you a job. There's hundreds of employers interested in hiring students from this school for internships. This area gives kids in the tech field a great opportunity to get internships because we're so close to Research Triangle Park. I'm sure many other schools that are big into science and tech offer the same programs.
I'm currently an undergraduate at a small science/tech school majoring in physics. Since there are only a handful of people in my field of major the professors know each of us on a first name basis. What I'm getting at is I often speak with the professors about their research and interests.
If there is a deficit of science and engineering majors I doubt that is the true issue. I don't exactly believe the argument the quality and motivation of the graduates has decreased either - but rather ambitious research isn't what it used to be.
Just recently we had a story on the discovery of CCDs. The scientists had an idea, deviated from whatever project they were working on, an tested their idea which led to a new technology and market. This is where the problem lies - in the present industry there is little incentive for ambitious or abnormal projects. Funds are allocated for very specific projects, and if some side discovery is made with that funding it may very well be frowned upon (did I ask for a CCD chip!?). In the academia there is a similar attitude of "publish or perish". Why research cutting edge technologies involving complex quantum mechanics, nanotechnologies, and so on if there's a chance of failure? You don't, because if you failed you'd be done. So, many scientists are studying basic things that can be guaranteed results. The professor I know well here has toyed with the idea of testing the EPR hypothesis with entangled atoms or particles. Unfortunately that's difficult, and after much funding he could very well fail. So most likely he'll never try, which is a shame because if he succeeded it would be one for the textbooks. Instead he's studying something practical, such as wetting of surfaces, that can assure a solid review and published papers.
It's really unfortunate people aren't taking chances due to this attitude.
I just don't see how sci/tech/math can be our nation's comparative advantage. The laws of math and physics are the same in low-labor-rate countries. Apples fall down there too. Thus, it makes economic sense to do R&D there.
Some cite "innovation", but it is a myth that only western countries/peoples have innovation. Most of the "innovations" that come out of the US of late are marketing or legal innovations, not really technical ones.
For good or bad, consumer marketing is our comparative advantage because we consume more than any other country. Face the new music and prepare for the new dance. Sci/tech/math is dying or stagnant here because our cost of living is too high.
Table-ized A.I.
I suggest we FIGHT to restrict the supply of Engineers and scientists, and not whinge about there not being enough.
Oh yeah, good idea, why not form a guild while you're at it? With grisly punishments for anyone that lets guild secrets out, restrictive admissions to keep out the riff raff, and your very own club secret handshake! That worked well in the middle ages, keeping them, well, medieval.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
There is a lack of qualified journalists in the US, not scientists, and that is where the real problem lies.
Amen!!!!
The entire news industry has major problems, but since they report the news, most people won't know!
I recently read a Ziff-Davis publication that gloated over a quiet "fanless" computer. The article's photo prominently showed a large fan on it (and yes, it was the correct photo). The article writer who appeared to have "reviewed" this product wrote the article entirely without ever seeing it. It was just a thinly disguised advertisement.
While this is not of a political nature (and is really minor), it illustrates what kind of deception may be (in)advertently caused by apathetic "journalists".
Another problem is that most news companies are afraid to tackle truly controversial issues. (Funny how the topics in PBS's "extreme oil" video are never mentioned on local or national news). Instead, most news companies take mundane issues and harp on them enough to stir the public into a frenzy. (Janet Jackson, etc). They know they can do this safely and greatly increase their circulation/profits/etc....
I live in a major US capital city. What is the main topic of the local news? They seem to spend about 1/3 of the time talking about weather records, forcasts, etc. This might make sense if this area's (or state's) main industry was agriculture, but it is NOT. And besides, the weather here is fairly moderate, its not like it is going to snow one day and be scorchingly hot the next...
Coverage of international issues is virtually absent from all US news sources -- unless a single American is somehow involved. Some might say, well what would be the point?
Well, US-based companies are doing some pretty questionable things in other parts of the world. (soft-drink companies, pharmacuticals,etc) I think the US public would be interested to know what that the companies they support by buy products/services are doing to others... Whether or not the US public actually cares is highly irrevelant. It is the responsibility of journalists to make things *known*.
In another example, the US news seemed to entirely miss upon the point of the poor design used for the electronic voting machines. They easily could have interviewed a few "experts" that could relate in laymen's terms of how easily preventable/avoidable such design flaws are. Something to the effect ("they built the equivalent of a bank with no walls, etc")
A few years ago, I went on a cruise ship... I noticed that the side of the ship stated it was built in "Monrovia". Me, being a dumb American, figured that was somewhere in Europe. (Most of the crew were from poor areas in eastern europe). Last night, I watched "The Lord of War", whose plot included Monrovia (or the area). Needless to say, I was shocked...
Well, one thing is now clear to me: There were multiple levels of exploitation involved in the construction and operation of that ship. Had I known that in advance, I wouldn't have done the cruise.
Truly, how ignorant are we?
In the words of D. Rumsfield, these types of issues fall into the "unknown unknowns" of the public, with a small minority knowing them as "known unknowns", and a very tiny few as "known"
At quality state schools, out-of-staters are going to be paying as much as many private schools for tuition.
I'm an out-of-stater paying about 16k each year. I also could have gone to a school in my home state for about the same price.
And this is a state school that's known for being a "bargain".
Is it listed as a bargain for out-of-staters or in-staters? Most lists I've seen assume in-state tuition.
"The use-mention distinction" is not "enforced here."
The median real estate broker makes about the equivalent of minimum wage. The ones that make the big bucks are a small minority in the profession, and they generally bring personal assets that aren't common, and aren't the product of "a few months' night classes." The pay distribution is pretty similar to that of writers -- sure there are a few writers who make millions of dollars for what's for them pretty easy work, but the median income for writers from their writing similary is not even a living wage. The ones who make the big money in writing, like the big money real estate brokers, may have gotten a minimal education in their craft which helped, but the main thing is a natural talent for it.
The difference with engineering is that those without a real aptitude for it, if they work hard enough and pursue enough years of education, can still get decent-paying work in the field. Still, even in engineering it's the people with natural talent who take most of the big financial rewards -- often rewards in the same ballpark as top realtors and writers.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
They always say that there are two things you don't talk about at work, religion and politics, because it always degenerates into an argument where both sides are utterly convinced that they're correct and usually end up doing little more than slinging mud. Productive conversation comes to nil very quickly.
I'd like to say that, outside of work, there is one thing you shouldn't bother talking about and that's work. Why? Let's profile it the same way we would profile religion or politics. There are two sides. There is one side that has it good (whether because they were born into it or they got lucky) and one side that does not have it good (whether because they were born into it or because they didn't get lucky). Let's get one thing straight. How hard you work has nothing to do with it. Zero, zilch. Let's get another thing straight. How smart you work has nothing to do with it. Zero, zilch. Plenty of people will claim that they made it to success through hard work and perserverence but that is simply not true. It is a correlation and causation disconnect. Those very same people could claim, with the same statistical accuracy, that they made it to success because the weather had been just right on the day they hit their promotion, or their hair was exactly 2.5 inches long, or because they had eaten turkey the night before. Let me reiterate: the only two factors that affect the separation of the two groups are birth and luck.
So now that the two groups are defined, let's look at how the conversation will inevitably go. This is the same way that employment conversations have gone on this board, and many others, and in many pubs, and around many lunch tables, for years.
Person A is the person who has it good. Person B is the person who does not.
Conversation 1:
Person B: "My job sucks."
Person A: "You're an incompetent fucktard who can't do anything right and doesn't concentrate on your job."
Person B: "Fuck you."
Person A: "You're a loser."
Conversation 2:
Person A: "My job is great."
Person B: "Mine isn't."
Person A: "You're an incompetent fucktard who can't do anything right and doesn't concentrate on your job."
Person B: "Fuck you."
Person A: "You're a loser."
Conversation 3:
Person B: "I'm not getting paid enough."
Person A: "You should be happy just to have a job! There are people starving in China!"
Person B: "Fuck you."
Person A: "You're a loser."
Conversation 4:
Person A: "I just bought a new car!"
Person B: "I wish I could afford one."
Person A: "You should be happy just to have a job! There are people starving in China!"
Person B: "Fuck you."
Person A: "You're a loser."
And that's how it always goes. Why do we even bother anymore? Nothing ever gets resolved. Person A is always self-satisfied and, usually, doing nothing but trolling B. B is always frustrated and looking for that lucky break and wishes A would quit needling them, for just once, and offer some real advice.
Who wrote this script? It's getting old.
The government itself is not stealing your liberties. Their new programs are enabling criminals who will.
Why bust your hump getting MS or PhD in one of the hard sciences/engineering, only to land a job making less than 80k??...
THE BABES!!
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
There are no Chinese or Indonesian science students. No American, Japanese, Russian, or French ones either.
Studing science in serious way puts the student into a category that transcends nationalism. Especially today as the amount of global scientific knowledge has become so vast. Mastering a speciality to the point where one can add to the knowledge base puts one into a mind-space that goes beyond the limits of nationalism.
The purpose of creating nation-states is primarily to wage war on other nation-states. Nation-states also need to create a political and economic elite in each country that will facilitate the collection of taxes and the other functions needed to define the state. This was an effective means of organizing societies out of tribes and into effective economic wealth generating entities in the industrial age (1750-2010).
But it is passing now. And scientists and science students are in the forefront of the new era - the information age. Nationalism and its collolary, citizenship, will become less and less important to the new transnational elite with each passing year.
So it is becoming more absurd to classify serious science students by nationality. In turn, serious science students have an obligation to their new elites status to NOT engage in destructive behavior like designing omnicide technology (omni-cide being the destruction of all human life through technological means). That means refusing to design things like hydrogen bombs, super-long half-life radioactive poisons, genetically-engineered diseases with no accessable cure for most people (like smallpox varients), and newer technologies like earthquake generation that remain secret and speculative. When scientists do research on omnicide technologies for reasons primarily focused on nationalism or religion, they must be denied access to the most advanced scientific research by the other scientists themselves who have joined and formed the new information-age scientific elite.
So, yes, realistically there are no Chinese or Indonesian science students any more. There are only science students.
Not to mention a patent system that allows people to innovate without getting their @$$ sued off for the innovations they come up with. These patent holding companies are killing our innovativeness. All they do is come up with an idea, patent it, then wait for someone else to come up with the idea, do all the hard work of design and implementation, then they sue because "it was my idea first!".
It has been said that "Americans invent as the French paint, or the Italians sculpt." If we are to stay ahead in our technical prowess, we need to remove the chains of thought that hold our top engineers back.
There's a quote that I particularly like from Jane Jacobs in Death and Life of Great American Cities which reads: "Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must come from old buildings."
This holds true for nearly all innovations. We take steps advancing ourselves from the progressions made from our forefathers. We had to invent the airplane before we could invent the jet engine. The automobile begat airbags. If some SciFi writer of the 1930's had invented a fanciful (yet at that time impossible) design for some type of internally jet propelled engine, then sued the first person(s) to come actually come up with a working plan of that idea; we may be living in a different era today.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
Sometimes you can't make up for talent with numbers. That's why Google hires who they do. They don't just hire more people... they make the people they hire count.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
This article gives figures of present graduates, but fails to address present enrollments. From what I understand, this is a four year pipeline, and that pipeline is drying up. Over the last two years enrollments have dropped dramatically in the field of computer science and it will be two more years before we see the full effects of this drop.
"Hard work, imagination and business practices also matter."
When was the last time the US excelled in any of that?
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I spent the time and money to get a MSCS. After going through 2 other majors I found I simply love computer science. I love learning. I love solving problems. And, I really get a charge out of seeing products I worked on selling in stores or being used in offices.
:-)
Troule is, the older I got, the more grey there was in my beard, the harder it got to find jobs. No matter what kind of training you have, in the US there is a serious bias against old people. Many people, (most people?) assume that if you are over 40 you can't possibly know anything about technology.
So, after getting the graduate degree, spending thousands of dollars every years for books and training, and shipping I don't know how many commercial products, not to mention writing and publishing many articles; I can't *buy* a job in technology. I was laid off on my 49 birthday in 2001 and I have not been able to find anything since then.
Once in a while I get an interview... It ends as soon as they see that I am "old"...
So, I am training to be a high school teacher. I teach part time at the local CC, but I can't get on there full time. There are so many people like me out there that I am actually under qualified to teach at a community college. In my neighborhood there are a half a dozen of us. We live on savings, part time jobs, and our wives incomes. It seems you can't get away with treating old women the way you can get away with treating old men.
So, if you want to go into science and technology, please do. The world needs you. But, plan on "retiring" by age 50 because no company needs you after that age.
Stonewolf
P.S.
Forced retirement isn't all bad. At age 50 I took up a martial art and meditation. The result is that I can now kick ass on most (not all!) of my young students, but I don't want to.
They're related, but very different animals. I notice a LOT of people on this thread are making this mistake.
The key to success in any field, managerial or technical is being able to network and work with people. The manager types know this. A lot of the technical people don't. The difference between someone who's a wildly successful engineer, and someone who is (an) engineer is likely to be how they interact with people.
PhD's are a different problem; it's quite possible you need to spend 45 years working to understand one problem enough to solve it. That is why we have universities, government grants, and corporate research labs. The problem is all three of those are subject to wild political influence.
..don't panic
Internship = Company gets professional labor for free. Employee gets no credit.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
This is where the problem lies - in the present industry there is little incentive for ambitious or
abnormal projects.
It's called a startup.. you find investors, build a prototype, sell some, go after venture capital. I've been involved in a half dozen projects like that. Some work, some don't. Just like science experiments.
The more important distinction to make is between those project who have immediate practical benefit and those who do not. You can get funding if you want to work on a quantum computer from private industry, men in black vans, etc. You can't if you want to research the pioneer gravity effect.
Usually, when the science is ready, discoveries will happen. What might be different is they might happen in China, not here.
..don't panic
Your point about it being in the US' national interest to have a lower number of scientists and let countries where wages are lower do more science is false.
Having science pursued abroad is in the US' national interest only if it can fully absorb and take advantage of the discoveries made abroad. That can kind of work if US companies are doing scientific operations abroad, but what will happen is that those foreign scientists will eventually stop working for American companies and found their own companies and such. The discoveries those scientists then make will benefit foreign interests over American interests. Further, scientific and technological advances in one company/industry typically cause spillover effects that benefit other companies/industries. These positive effects have the most impact in the economy where the advances are made.
It's definitely in a country's interest to pursue strong science and technology programs at home for the military and economic, and thus political, advantages they provide.
Show me ten Ph.D's in Physics and I'll show you ten Ph.D's in Mechanical/Material Science Engineering or Electrical Engineering and let's compare notes on what makes a Scientist and what makes an Engineer.
Simple: One knows both theory and how to apply it to create products and services the World uses; and the other continues to expound upon theory and teach it under the guise of adding some breakthrough the World will eventually utilize. Of course this research is a requirement for both types of titles.
Care to choose whether that is the Scientist or Engineer?
We had a saying in Engineering disciplines:
If you can't do Chemical/Mech-Mat/Electrical you do Civil/Environ and if you can't do Civil/Environ you do Mathematics and if you can't do Mathematics you do Physics.
The reason for such a broadly sweeping generalization that clearly isn't an immutable truism was due to the countless observations in undergraduate programs that all the top math and physics students applied to engineering schools and their various disciplines. I recalled fondly my Heat Transfer examinations where the curve actually hurt you and then compared a friend of mine who had dropped Chem. Eng. for Physics proudly displaying his 60% A+ exam and stated the rest of the class was in the low 40%. He had no problem freely admitting in Vector Analysis that his grades skyrocketed after he left Chem. Engineering. We both agreed that it was a combination of effects. The quality of competition and his renewed vigor and focus kept him focused. The competition was always steep in engineering and continues to be, not because most professional engineers can even remember a PDE or ODE but because the profession doesn't allow for such padded curves. Factors of Safety and real world regulations that deal with design against lawsuits, etc., shows that outside of the bubble of theory, practical application demands many more concerns, the foremost being human safety trumping any theoretically cool, new breakthrough.
My apologies for the generalizations but if the Newsweek journalist believes this country doesn't have a gap in available engineers to fill in the gap then perhaps he should write about how hundreds of thousands of engineers having to switch careers because these noble professions don't keep one afloat is where companies should look. I became an engineer for the chance to work in a profession that is always challenging and peaks one's interests. When reality trumped fantasy I switched professions.
Now that we have Battlestar Galactica how can there possibly be a science fictional gap?
We rule.
I live on roughly 8-11k a year. I'm attending University. My tuition is taken care of by student loans. All the rest (books, rent, food, car plates, any cars, fuel, etc) are paid out of that 8-11k a year. If I get extra money (last year I had 3k extra), I do things like upgrade my desktop computer.
I live a comfortable life. I have enough books and video games, eat a balanced diet, pay my credit cards, etc. I don't have a fancy new car, or own my house, but I'm not doing poorly.
In my experience in visiting the states, I could live comfortably there on the same amount of money, excepting any possible medical care.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Obviously you have a little bit of a skewed sense of reality. A minimum wage worker in Oregon (my home state) makes $7.50 an hour starting wage.
$7.50 per hour x 40 hours a week x 52 weeks in a year
That comes out to be $15,600. Pitiful. Oregon has the second highest minimum wage in the country (thirteen cents per hour less than Washington), so other states pay even less. These workers usually get pay raises every once in a while, but not much. I agree that lawyers, business executives, etc. are generally grossly overpaid, but that doesn't mean that S&E workers are underpaid. The next time you sit down to eat with another engineer at a local restaurant to talk about how much more business majors make than S&E majors, remember this: There's someone washing dishes in the back who wouldn't mind having even just half of your salary.
"it's not about aptitude, it's the way you're viewed" - Galinda
If you are born in the US, you see a lot of avenues of earning money. You can be a doctor, an engineer, a lawyer, an artist, a sports person, into real estate etc or none of the above and still make a good living. Scientific education probably plays a role in your money making ability -- but it does not play a critical one.
If you are born in India ( I am an Indian in a US grad school; don't have enough insight into Chinese system ), and if you do good in your standard X examination, you take up science -- no questions asked. Now you have two choices -- you study engineering or you study medicine. If you cannot get through either of them, you do pure sciences.
On rare occasions a good student goes for economics and arts. If you had bad grades and still want to show a degree in your matrinomial ads (damn! most marriages are still arranged), you become a lawyer.
Some of this must have changed after the emergence of call centers but these new jobs are a recent phenomenon.
There are much better job prospects if you are in the sciences than if you are in any other field. Without exaggeration, I can say that an average Bachelor of Technology would earn twice as much as an average Bachelor of Arts. Consequently, whether or not you are interested in Science, you end up studying science. No wonder, India produces so many engineers.
But there is no free food -- People in science cannot run and jump. The Indian contingent, representing a billion people -- a sixth of humanity -- earned ONE silver medal in the last Olympics. Sports does not earn you enough money in India; unless you are one of the 11 men who make up the Indian cricket team.
In summary, one cannot expect the masses to be suddenly interested in science ( in the US ) or sports ( in India ) if there is no monetary incentive.
Of my friends who got jobs at a major computer/software company, 3 of the 8 didn't have college degrees. But that was a long time ago. The last one to get hired with no degree was hired in 1995. They're all grandfathered now, once you have significant industry experience, no one looks at your degree.
I am a manager now, I've hired 5 people in the last 3 years. Not a single one doesn't have a degree. I rarely even get resumes from people who don't have degrees.
I do agree that you don't necessarily have to have a degree to be good in the computer field. But I would not recommend trying to enter the field of software or hardware development (as opposted to testing) without a college degree nowadays. Few hiring managers will take a chance on you.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
But that doesn't mean they're qualified. I've had positions open for programmers for well over a month now. I get lots of resumes, and I phone interview a lot of people, but that doesn't mean they're qualified.
.com explosion) it was viewed as a lucrative job. I wish those people had just gone to business school instead and left my field alone.
I'm looking for people who are good at a slightly specialized software task. The industry is flooded with people who entered programming not because they liked it, but because in the late 90s (esp. the
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I'd take that argument too. After all, the chineese and indians are knocking out engineers by the dozens, but they're hardly what americans consider "engineers". I doubt it's 11-1 but seriously closer to 5-1 because the wage disparity is so bad. One thing I always found about forigen students is that they were brilliant at their specialty, but not very good "out of the box". American engineering has become more about the "other stuff" paperwork, purchasing, managing, than about the engineering work.. The science almost an afterthought in most companies these days.
From TFA:
:-)
(Note: These figures exclude psychology and social sciences, such as economics, that are often counted in S&E totals.)
And we accuse Asians of inflating their S&E figures?
Not all internships are non-paid.
I am on internship now in cali, and it's definitely paid. Heck, some of my class even got internships in NYC for 80k a year. Not bad for undergrads...
Not all internships are non-paid.
Good. No internship should be unpaid. Unpaid internship is called volunteering, and there are places far more in need of volunteers than Cubicles Inc.
Unpaid internships and temp jobs (with no benefits, of course) are reasons why young adults can't find a salary any more.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
When I lived in the former USSR my parents knew that I was going to get an engineering degree because that was the only way to good life; well, at least according to them. Starting from the first grade I was told that the only way to become a well-educated human being was to get a Master's degree in a discipline related to science or engineering. It was almost expected that I would go to school for five or six years in order to get a degree and then become some dude who wears white robes at some lab... Well, that did not happen.
After moving to the United States and talking to other immigrants from China, ex-USSR and India, I realized that most of us had the same bullshit pressure from our parents. That is how most of us ended up meeing each other in computer science classes. Well, to be honest with you, I liked computer science because of the possible career choices and due to my natural interest in technology. However, some of my foreign class mates could not see themselves doing anything but getting a Master's degree and going through all the schooling at once because they were told to do that. It was expected from them!
Naturally, people who are born and raised in the United States see choices. It is not uncommon to graduate from high school, take a year off, travel, go to school, figure out what you want to do with life and then go back to graduate school when you are thirty. In other countries this may not be an option and that is why many people aim to get as much education in a specific discipline as soon as possible. The question is: Does it do one any good? As for me, I am not planning on going to a graduate school until later on. I have not figured out what I want to do with my life yet...
Cheers!
It's definitely in a country's interest to pursue strong science and technology programs at home for the military and economic, and thus political, advantages they provide.
What economic law says that subsidized sci/tech is a good thing? I don't necessarily agree or disagree, but am at a loss to provide evidence beyond "it seems so" (outside of military advantage).
If comparative advantages seem to lead away from sci/tech because our labor rates are too high, then economic theory seems to say "let it go".
Table-ized A.I.
We are talking about a reporter that several months ago thought the American Association for Retired Persons is (and I quote) "America's most dangerous lobby." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/11/15/AR2005111501308.html I suggest you read his current article in terms of his credentials and roles within Newsweek. Then read some of his previous positions and decide whether you feel he is credible.
I would like to pose this question to Slashdot readers. Whatever facts you dispute, there definitely will be a lot more Chinese and Indian engineers than American in the future. It is reasonable to assume they will use their native languages more and more as time progresses and non english speakers form the majority of their audience.
What is your reaction if Chinese or Hindi replace English as the primary documentation language, or that the latest open source technologies may only be available to those capable of understanding Asian languages?
Hi "Raven",
I did specify my experience was from 21 years ago ! Things have changed. This was Leeds 1982-1985 and we didn't even have semesters, just three terms.
We really did do 9-5s. Morning lectures, afternoon labs (except Wednesday afternoon) + coursework. That workload was all the way to third year, when it was lectures, then project work.
Where are you now BTW ? In the US or the UK ?
Steve
Our third year was 25% project and the rest standard modules (mostly lecture + coursework/exam, with a few seminar-based).
I'm actually in the US at the moment, doing a collaboration with someone at Utah's SCI group, although I'm still based at Swansea. I also work with some people from Leeds as part of the project my grant is under. Did they have the crazy system where they numbered the floors in all of the buildings from sea level when you were there?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Me? I'm in the same boat; loads of parental pressure to get back to grad school, but personally, I'd like to spend some time off and discover what I really want to do. The odds are definitely against doing a technical masters.
More than mere navel gazing.
Silly floor system Yes, as far as I know its still in place.
Steve
It's less an economic law and more of a political economy theory. Scientific and technological advances are the chief mechanism of long-term economic growth improvement. These fields also tend exhibit large returns-to-scale and thus be dominated by a few large firms (e.g. operating systems, pharma) and are relatively high-risk and can be capital-intensive. Further, sci/tech advances have spillover effects that improve the productivity of other firms within the economy as well. Advances diffuses across national lines, but they tend to benefit the domestic economy most, making domestic firms more competitive worldwide. Sci/tech advances have a big impact on maintaining a strong, advanced military.
So, you could argue that is in a nation's political interest to promote a strong science and technology sector. Promotion could take the form of education incentives, direct subsidies, or other means, with varying degrees of efficacy.
Perhaps it is really those who can exploit the inventions, or extract profits from the inventions who make the profit. It may be a myth that direct tech is more "important" economically than other revenue sources.
For example, India and China may excell at basic R&D, but US investement and IP law companies are the ones who end up reaping the economic benefits because India and China snub investement firms and IP law firms to persue technology.
Table-ized A.I.
So it is becoming more absurd to classify serious science students by nationality.
Horse wash. 60k USD goes a lot further in India than in the US. The cost of living between countries is huuuuge, and the borders are not going down any time soon (at least in Asia).
Table-ized A.I.
It depends on where you live and whether or not you have a family. In the midwest, $80k is a fortune. In Southern California, $80 won't get you a median priced new home (over $600k).
Please don't humanize the morons around me. It makes me very uncomfortable.
www.omb.gov
How can you confuse "stopped rising" with "cut in half"? Holy partisanship, batman!
funded are falling. This is not because the pie is shrinking, but rather the number of starving people is skyrocketing.
The federal government has really "#$"#ed up scientific research, particularly in biomed, by over-subsidizing the creation of scientists without creating jobs for them. Now countless young people are stuck in "temporary" post-doc land for years, while anyone with the sense to have avoided science is by that age making a comfortable or high salary as an engineer, doctor, lawyer, etc. Needless to say, fewer and fewer Americans are entering science. Go figure.
The last thing we need to do is more business at usual at NIH. We need to quit funding grad students and start funding full-time researchers with real salaries and benefits. The government has it backwards - if they would create good jobs for American scientists, they will get American scientists. Creating scientists for whom there are no jobs is a recipe for disaster.
My uncle is a chemist millionaire.
He was born in north Mississippi in the 30s and lived in a shack with dirt floors.
To my knowledge, he was the only one in his family who graduated from high school and was given a scholarship to Ole Miss Univ. He earned a BS and then went to work for Buckeye/Procter and Gamble. He also has his own firm.
He currently holds 20 something patents and was the principle chemist that designed the absorbancy factor of Pampers and MaxiPads.
He is a millionare, and has earned it.
There is nothing wrong with using science to make money - in fact it is how society progresses forward (that and warfare technology development). Money is the driving force of innovation and invention. Don't beleive me? Look at Hughes, Bell, Edison, Ford etc...
Libertas in infinitum
In 1943 - 1945, the Germans tried to cheer themselves up by saying the Russians lost 6 soldiers for every German soldier wasted. Well...
Trust me, I work for the government.
I'm assuming you make CA$100k each, that doesn't seem like very good pay. Taxes and the cost of living are much higher (at least my relatives complain about it) and there is no mortgage deduction. I don't really know though, it isn't comfortable to ask about their finances. How are my assumptions incorrect?
Man, you really need that seminar!