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Glut of Postdoc Researchers Stirs Quiet Crisis In Science
HughPickens.com writes: Carolyn Johnson reports in the Boston Globe that in recent years, the position of postdoctoral researcher has become less a stepping stone and more of a holding tank. Postdocs are caught up in an all-but-invisible crisis, mired in an underclass as federal funding for research has leveled off, leaving the supply of well-trained scientists outstripping demand. "It's sunk in that it's by no means guaranteed — for anyone, really — that an academic position is possible," says Gary McDowell, a 29-year old biologist doing his second postdoc. "There's this huge labor force here to do the bench work, the grunt work of science. But then there's nowhere for them to go; this massive pool of postdocs that accumulates and keeps growing." The problem is that any researcher running a lab today is training far more people than there will ever be labs to run. Often these supremely well-educated trainees are simply cheap laborers, not learning skills for the careers where they are more likely to find jobs. This wasn't such an issue decades ago, but universities have expanded the number of PhD students they train from about 30,000 biomedical graduate students in 1979 to 56,800 in 2009, flooding the system with trainees and drawing out the training period.
Possible solutions span a wide gamut, from halving the number of postdocs over time, to creating a new tier of staff scientists that would be better paid. One thing people seem to agree on is that simply adding more money to the pot will not by itself solve the oversupply. Facing these stark statistics, postdocs are taking matters into their own hands, recently organizing a Future of Research conference in Boston that they hoped would give voice to their frustrations and hopes and help shape change. They ask, "How can we, as the next generation, run the system?"
Possible solutions span a wide gamut, from halving the number of postdocs over time, to creating a new tier of staff scientists that would be better paid. One thing people seem to agree on is that simply adding more money to the pot will not by itself solve the oversupply. Facing these stark statistics, postdocs are taking matters into their own hands, recently organizing a Future of Research conference in Boston that they hoped would give voice to their frustrations and hopes and help shape change. They ask, "How can we, as the next generation, run the system?"
Historically university posts were open to people with a BA (e.g. John Wesley and John Newman at Oxford in the 18th and 19th century) That it now takes a PhD and post doctoral work to get the same post means that we are training too many. Therefore the only solution is to row back on the PhDs being generated; given that governments are looking for money saving measures, this would seem an obvious starting point.
Maybe, the thing we need is sTEM, or even just TEM.
How I got taught about how governments determine shortages is, they look at other markets or economies, ones which they'd like to imitate, and see what sectors that market is stronger at. Then compare to their market, and see where the shortages and over supplies are. Strong economies that do well, are going to tend to have high productivity with decent exports of innovative products.
So, the reason we keep hearing for more STEM is not because there actually is a shortage, but because they think the economy would be better with more of it. It's a matter of, "train" them up and they'll find jobs, rather than jobs and careers are there waiting to be filled. In some sectors, sure there are shortages, but in others, not so much. I'm in Australia, and I keep hearing about engineer shortages, but it's very difficult to find jobs at the moment. Companies aren't training, and just want someone with years of experience immediately. Statistics I keep on hearing that the majority of engineering graduates don't work in engineering here, they end up doing sales or other things where by virtue of completing an engineering degree, likelihood of having a dope is much lower than say an arts degree.
Science degrees for the most part aren't very useful (in Australia) unless you're aiming to get into academia, or one of the incredibly few research jobs. Because of the loans program for students (no upfront costs for study, minimal interest rate for repayment [below inflation iirc], and minimum income before you have to pay it off), a lot of people study, because they might as well. The issue with it is, a lot of people study things that really won't get them a career. Science is one of those areas of study which has many students, but not many careers afterward.
Best example I can give is from my university statistics. Science has the worst employment rate for graduates and postgraduates. https://www.uts.edu.au/...
Universities have a perverse incentive when it comes to producing doctoral students.
University departments are bureaucratic systems. A bureaucratic system's primary objective is to grow. It may take 20 undergraduate students to 'make' a class. It only takes 10 masters students and 5 doctoral students. The more classes that make: the more professors are needed: the bigger the department.
This means the fastest way to grow your department is to increase the number of doc students. Since almost every Ph.D. is an industry-useless research degree, this, then, leads to the glut of researchers we see today.
The solution has already been hit upon by business schools. The AACSB accredits only 120 universities to produce doctoral students. Of those each field (accounting, finance, marketing, management, information systems) has about 80 universities that are accredited for that sub-field. Each field graduates about 3 students a year. Without an AACSB accredited professor-pool it is hard for a business school to get AACSB accreditation. But why does the business school care?
The masters program produces a degree that is valuable outside of academia and a premium is charged for it. While accreditation is no guarantee that your business school is good, if it does not having it you can be almost certain that it is bad. The MBA is NOT a research degree and in no way prepares you to be a professor.
What is needed is for the highest caliber departments (in each glut field) in the US to join together in an association. The association limits how many doctoral programs are accredited. The association maintains the highest standards for undergraduate, masters, and doctoral programs. The association limits how many doctoral students are admitted relative to the number of research active faculty in a department.
Combine this then with a masters program that is entirely focused on practical work in the field. Do not give doc students a masters and do not focus on research skills that are not valuable in industry in masters programs. Presently: Nursing, Business, and Engineering are all viable directions to go for someone interested in research and teaching. Perhaps you notice a pattern?
And the pay? 150k is not an unheard of starting pay for an assistant professor of accounting.
I wonder if part of this PhD glut is a delayed effect of the recession, which decreased employment opportunities over the last 6 years or so. Given the choice between taking your bachelor's to work at Starbucks or living on a similar salary as a grad student but with the prospect of an advanced degree a few years down the road, it was a rational thing to do. Of course, the "best" available option is not necessarily a "good" option.
Clearly we need less STEM. There are way too many educated in STEM...the days of the "good job" you could get just by virtue of being a reliable and educated worker are long gone. Companies don't want to hire STEM people at any level. If they must, they'd rather hire H2B workers at a fraction of the price for staffing the company nerdery to save a few bucks. Nerds don't get moved up into positions of management, they get used up like so much toilet paper and flushed when they've done their job.
I've never understood those demanding that the US needs more STEM education. Why? Where are these mythical high paying jobs that you just need a college degree to get? I actually went to grad school just because I couldn't find anything with my BS in Math. I could have gone down the path of trying the Post doc gig indefinitely, but after my first Post Doc (which I only took because it paid well) I went straight to teaching at a community college just because it was a solid teaching job, no requirements for bullshit grant applications and spewing out dreck research, and have been happy since. I would never encourage anyone to go into STEM fields unless they *truly* loved the work...there are many better options for someone just looking for a paycheck, particularly in fields like finance, law and medicine.
There are so many huge problems in the world that need solving - where scientific progress is a major part of the solution. For example, there are cures for every cancer - we just don't know what most of them are yet. It's like a lottery where there's a way for everyone to know the winning lottery number and for everyone to win the entire jackpot for themselves. Through science we can figure out the cures for cancer and apply those cures to everyone in the world who needs them.
It's crazy that we have these vast hordes of people trained up and desperate to work hard for scientific progress. But our economy can't find a way to provide them with jobs doing science. Yes, money is limited: if we were to devote more of our economy to scientific progress then less of our economy would be available to make designer handbags for rich people. But given the choice between having our grandchildren grow up in a world where they no longer have to fear dying slowly and painfully before their time from cancer - or rich people in the present having a few extra designer handbags - do we really prefer that the rich people have their designer handbags?
Even if you feel that funding for scientific research shouldn't grow to at least meet inflation (and NIH funding hasn't grown to match inflation in many years now), there is still a problem in the funding of scientific research in the US. The big problem here comes down to how funding mechanisms pay for people who actually DO research. Grants are, more often than not, structured around the very meager pay that we have for graduate students. Faculty and other Principal Investigators (PIs) often have no choice but to hire grad students as they are the only people they can afford to hire - or are allowed to hire - under the terms of the grant.
However, PIs are not allowed to keep their grad students forever, either. Those grad students have to be let go (preferably with PhD in hand) at some point; it doesn't look good for anyone to keep a grad student around too long.
The idea of establishing a new rank of "senior scientist" - with common understanding of what it entails and a livable wage to go with it - is a great one. The problem is figuring out a way to pay those senior scientists.
That said, i don't have any pity for someone in their late 20s on their second postdoc. I know plenty of people in their mid-30s who are only on their first.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
You are seemingly missing the context here. There is an expectation in todays world that our technology and sciences will continue to grow in leaps, consistently providing us with novel solutions to the problems we are consistently creating. But this progress must come from somewhere, right? Instead, things are only going backwards, if anything. There is already a war on higher education, and even high-school education. It is becoming more expensive, and it is becoming less geared towards science and more towards "doing something useful" (for some arbitrary value of useful that is decided by whoever has most money and political influence at the moment).
And then, instead of trying to shift priorities so that we can sustain more scientists and researchers, we should rather make sure we create more of the problems we expect science and technology to solve for us?