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The Real Science Gap
walterbyrd writes "This article attempts to explain why the US is struggling in its competition with other countries in the realm of scientific advancement. 'It's not insufficient schooling or a shortage of scientists. It's a lack of job opportunities. Americans need the reasonable hope that spending their youth preparing to do science will provide a satisfactory career.' I can hardly believe that somebody actually understands the present situation. It continues, 'The current approach — trying to improve the students or schools — will not produce the desired result, the experts predict, because the forces driving bright young Americans away from technical careers arise elsewhere, in the very structure of the US research establishment. For generations, that establishment served as the world’s nimblest and most productive source of great science and outstanding young scientists. Because of long-ignored internal contradictions, however, the American research enterprise has become so severely dysfunctional that it actively prevents the great majority of the young Americans aspiring to do research from realizing their dreams.'"
I am a scientist and manned exploration is basically a useless waste of money for us (and yes my research is deeply rooted into space exploration). Robots bring more data for a fraction of the cost. I have yet to hear any of my colleague complain about the government new plans for space. On the contrary.
Most people in the sciences don't pay their way through grad school. It's generally covered by grants already.
It's not specifically structured finance, but the whole system of money-making.
In my company, there are a number of world class engineers who do consulting work.
There are also sales drones... err people... who sell said work.
We bill about $300/hr for consulting and our better engineers make $200k. Not bad. Even the average guy makes $125k or so.
But our top sales guy made almost $1m last year and there are a dozen of them making over $500k. That's more than the CEO.
The sales guys can sell so much because we have world class engineers and a world class management team.
Why did he make 8x what some of these world class engineers make? Is it because sales is more important?
I don't think he's a world class person in any regard. He's a lush. He gets kicked out of strip clubs on friday nights for getting sloshed and being a dick.
At the same time, his engineer is at home working to finish up the project he was working on to pay for that strip club outing.
Ahh the justice.
Word.
How did the grand-parent post get modded up? If you leave PhD program in the sciences with any debt, it's either left over from your undergrad years or it's lifestyle debt (car, eating out, clothes, etc.)
Between teaching, research grants, and cleaning test tubes, grad school in the sciences will cost you $0 out of pocket for tuition, fees, rent, and food.
I have a Ph.D. and while I wouldn't consider the pursuit of one to be insane, it is definitely not in your economic best interest. The sweet spot in science has long been to get the master's degree. The average Ph.D. won't catch up to the average M.S. in lifetime earnings, though eventually the average Ph.D. will get paid more. It's just that a M.S. takes 2-3 years, while the Ph.D. takes 6-7 years. Frequently, especially in the life sciences, the Ph.D. is then followed by one or two (or, horrors, more) 2-5 year long postdoctoral positions. A Ph.D. student in the sciences gets paid these days in the high teens to mid 20's (You're paid. Not well, but you're paid--no loans). A postdoc gets paid anything from the upper 20's to the low 50's, depending on experience and much more importantly luck. So it's pretty easy to see why a Ph.D. won't catch up to the M.S., even though many Ph.D.'s end up being the boss of the M.S., and very rarely the other way around.
One way to look at the long years of crap pay a Ph.D. scientist endures is simple supply and demand: we have too many science Ph.D.'s and too few M.S. That and whenever you hear about a "shortage" of Ph.D.'s in this country, remember that news of the shortage comes from the exact same people demanding an increase in H1B's because of the critical shortage of qualified computer programmers.
It's a quote from "Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb," a satiracle film about the state of the military at the time. Mine shafts were to be the future homes for humanity, and the country that had the most would "win" after the fictionalized nuclear holocaust.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.