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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.'"
We must not allow a MINE SHAFT GAP...err...science gap...
The youngest and brightest are being sucked up by the field that pays: structured finance. As a country you've put financial innovation ahead of scientific and this is the natural outcome.
Let's not kid ourselves - the real reason those gifted enough to excel shy away from science is that this path is not conducive to having a life. It requires working long hours, frequently 7 days per week, for little pay (NIH stipends for graduate students are around $20'000), and in a highly stressful environment (those who've done research know how emotionally crushing doing scientific research can often be), just to become a sub-$40k post-doc for another decade thereafter, and then desperately search for a faculty position, to spend the next 20 years stressing over grant deadlines that threaten to destroy whatever little autonomy you've managed to gain, in an environment where something like 5% of the projects get funded.
In an environment, where most work to the limit of their bodily ability, and get paid less than their intelligence and time commitment would yield them elsewhere, young men and women find it difficult to acquire and hold onto a mate, and those who want to have families find themselves unable to support them, as well as spend adequate time with them.
And people wonder why in many top-tier institutions 75% of the graduate students in science are foreign-born?
...that someone is raising the real issue. I'm in the UK and studied for a science degree and from people I still know who graduated, only one of them is actually working in science now (5 years later). Of other friends I've made in the field most have left their science jobs. The most recent has just retrained as an accountant. She got made redundant from her previous job with a big pharma as they moved her whole lab out to china where they said they could have 6 equally qualified people for what they were paying her. People aren't stupid, they aren't going to study for something where there's no jobs, or what jobs do exist are all low paid rubbish with no chance of advancement. They'll all go become accountants and lawyers. Say hello to globalisation...
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.
For grad school in the sciences, loan debt is uncommon--- students typically get paid stipends as research assistants or teaching assistants, which cover full tuition plus a modest salary (~$16k-30k or so, depending on field and institution). Of course, students often have undergrad loan debt, but I don't think grad school makes it worse at least.
I think the biggest problem is, as you point out, post-PhD. There are too many PhDs being produced relative to good research jobs, so typically one has to do several postdocs, might have to take a lecturer position somewhere, etc., in hopes of eventually, maybe when you're 40 or something, getting a tenure-track faculty position. Oh, and that's a tenure-track position, which is basically 6-7 years of probation (but at least you're getting paid well at that point).
Not entirely sure how to fix that. Making PhD studies themselves more attractive won't fix the problem, I don't think; if anything, it'll make it worse, by encouraging the production of even more PhDs who there aren't research jobs for. Somehow the post-grad-school part has to be fixed. There have to be more research positions, either in academia, in industry, or at government labs. Or, if we aren't going to open up more of the top-level (tenured-faculty-tier) types of positions, at least there have to be more attractive lower-level ones, something better than a post-doc. Maybe one where you still work in someone else's lab (i.e. you aren't the lab head), but you get paid better and have somewhat more research freedom. But that requires funding, too.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
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.
While there is always much waving of hands and gnashing of teeth about it, the reality is that the USA by far leads the world in science. And speaking as a science grad student, it's much easier to get into science here than anywhere else in the western world. I know plenty of foreign grad students in the US, but almost no US students that had any motivation to study overseas. Personally, even though I'm originally from Canada, I have no plans to go back, because it's so much easier to get funded as a scientist here.
It seems to me most of the of the people who complain about the "science gap" are those who aren't actually working in the field...
This is a rediculously over-simplified misunderstanding of how society works. How do you propose "making" a job doing basic research? Research has to be funded, that's how it's done in our society. I'm afraid you're living in a fantasy world. This has nothing to do with anyone being "owed" a job. It has to do with setting priorities as a society. We've set up a system in which the priority is short term quarterly gains, and that's what we get. If you want a viable society in the long term, you have to invest in basic research.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
I agree.
Assertion: history shows that using cheap labor stifles scientific development. Here are some examples:
What do we learn from this? That using cheap labor is short-termism at the expense of our development. Three of my four examples use the extreme examples of slavery, but the principle is the same. If anybody has counter-examples, I'd be pleased to see them.
--- "We've always been at war with Eastasia."
We used to have an economy that wasn't so beholden to quarterly earnings reports that businesses actually invested in technologies that couldn't reasonably be expected to bring profits for a decade+.
Gone are the days of Bell Labs.
I have a degree in engineering and worked in a R&D department of a company who not only built it's (now fading) empire on pure science. In reality, they had been cutting their R&D budget for decades, and the corporate demographic is extremely bimodal with experts with 30+years of experience who are set to retire at one end and newbies with 10- years experience with no loyalty (like me) at the other, and nothing in between. When the boomers finally start retiring en masse so much institutional knowledge will be lost I don't think this 200 year old company is going to make it through the next 30.
Add to that the prevalent corporate notion that only PhDs can do research and I can easily see that structural problems will handicap the US' continued scientific ascendancy.
Robots are fuckin' boring.
I found the Mars Rovers a million times more fascinating than the ISS. It might have had something to do with the Rovers actually doing stuff, rather than hanging out in space, swapping out CO2 scrubbers.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.