Slashdot Mirror
Why Science Is a Lousy Career Choice
Hugh Pickens writes "President Obama had a town hall meeting at Facebook's headquarters last week and said that he wanted to encourage females and minorities to pursue STEM disciplines (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). However, Pastabagel writes that the need for American students to study STEM is one of the tired refrains in modern American politics and that plenty of people already study science, but they don't work in science. 'MIT grads are more likely to end up in the financial industry, where quants and traders are very well compensated, than in the semiconductor industry where the spectre of outsourcing to India and Asia will hang over their heads for their entire career.' Philip Greenspun adds that science can be fun, but considered as a career, science suffers by comparison to the professions and the business world. 'The average scientist that I encounter expresses bitterness about (a) low pay, (b) not getting enough credit or references to his or her work, (c) not knowing where the next job is coming from, (d) not having enough money or job security to get married and/or have children,' writes Greenspun. 'Pursuing science as a career seems so irrational that one wonders why any young American would do it.'"
Think. Which job position will get outsourced more likely? Engineering or managing? Before you answer, consider: Managers make that decision.
Do I need to write anything more?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Solution: destroy "financial services" industry. At this point it serves no purpose whatsoever, just sucks resources. Trade and investment can be handled without giant middlemen running their scams.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Tell us, Mr.President, why did you major in law instead of engineering?
And these days, that Chinese or Indian scientists will probably be of higher calibre than the American.
You obviously don't work in the sciences.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
I found this Wikipedia article rather interesting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohlberg's_stages_of_moral_development
Of the various stages of ethical development I take pride in guessing (not necessarily objectively, mind you) that I may be at stage 6 of ethical development. But take what you know of the typical corporation and they are almost always at stage 2. Only the smaller ones who have a large stake in the communities in which they operate, ie not investor-owned, and tied to a single community, even reach conventional development. I find it interesting that the justifying "philosophies" of libertarianism and objectivism would reject this model, saying that only stage 1 and stage 2 exist, stage 2 obviously being morally superior, and any further stages are still manifestations of stage 1. But our culture as well as our economy do not reward anything beyond stage 2, they disregard it or even punish it.
"It was a game, a very interesting game one could play. Whenever one solved of the little problems, one could write a paper about it. It was very easy in those days for any second-rate physicist to do first-rate work. There has not been such a glorious time since. It is very difficult now for a first-rate physicist to do second-rate work." -- P.A.M Dirac, DIRECTIONS IN PHYSICS, 1978, P. 7