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Fewer Grants For Young Researchers Causing Brain Drain In Academia
BarbaraHudson writes: Johns Hopkins University President Ronald J. Daniels has written about the decline of research grants to younger researchers. "For more than a generation, grants for young scientists have declined. The number of principal investigators with a leading National Institutes of Health grant who are 36 years old or younger dropped from 18 percent in 1983 to 3 percent in 2010. Meanwhile, the average age when a scientist with a medical degree gets her first of these grants has risen from just under 38 years old in 1980 to more than 45 in 2013. The implications of these data for our young scientists are arresting. Without their own funding, young researchers are prevented from starting their own laboratories, pursuing their own research, and advancing their own careers in academic science. It is not surprising that many of our youngest minds are choosing to leave their positions."
So, be ready to see basic research shift to another country in about 15 years.
Despite the cuts, the US still spends more per capita on R&D than any other country except South Korea, and far more than any other in absolute terms. Source: List of countries by R&D spending.
Parent is likely a troll, but I'm going into the numbers.
From 1980 to 2008, the average investigator age at NIH has gone from 39 to 51. Source: http://www.plosone.org/article...
In 1980, I had to derive the damn number (http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1982/07/rpt2full.pdf), the median worker age is approximately ~31, while the 2013 average worker age is 42.4 (http://www.bls.gov/cps/industry_age.htm).
The average age of workers has increased by 11 years while the average age of investigators has increased by 12 years.
Research grants are a "winner take all" system where the total amount of research money is roughly constant (http://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/NIHfunding-fig1.png). Essentially, the older researchers are displacing the younger ones in the field through simply outcompeting for funding and working longer careers. Younger researchers, without funding, simply leave the field, as the old eat the young for breakfast.
The USA doesn't do much of either type any more.
I don't really think that is true. Just read Science and Nature on a regular basis. Lots and lots of new insights and discoveries by mostly US centers. It can and should be better - we're on a Red Queen type journey and much of our problems can be solved either by dropping us back into the Bronze age or moving forward understanding our world and how to live in it. Standing around staring at the scenery isn't going to get society very far.
But despite all attempts to the contrary, we haven't fallen off that cliff just yet. We're getting closer and it takes multiple generations to really effect a useful turn - our decreasing literacy is very, very concerning. It would be wonderful if the US could come up with stable funding for STEM (and general) literacy from childhood to post doctoral level and we need to push and squeal for the limited resources available to us, but one needs to understand how large and robust the system really is.*
* Assuming general social stability. If the Doomers are correct then we're in a heap of trouble and the next age will be the 'Recycled Plastics' Age.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
No, not really. The vast majority of Division I schools lose money on athletics, none of the Division III schools cover their athletic expenses.
from http://www.usatoday.com/story/...
"Just 23 of 228 athletics departments at NCAA Division I public schools generated enough money on their own to cover their expenses in 2012. Of that group, 16 also received some type of subsidy — and 10 of those 16 athletics departments received more subsidy money in 2012 than they did in 2011."
Sports provides valuable marketing (for the top schools), and that has value, but don't kid yourself that sports is generating net revenue.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
A good hunk of this is just because *everyone* is older. From 1980 to 2009, the average age of a US resident went from almost exactly 30 years to 36.8 years (http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2011/tables/11s0007.pdf). That's half of your age increase right there.
I agree with another comment that what you are experiencing is a consequence of supply relative to demand for academic labor. This reflects a "big crunch" in the words of Dr. David Goodstein from 1994, then vice-provost of Caltech. He testified to Congress about this then too. Essentially, US academia had been growing exponentially since around 1900, but that era of exponential growth stopped in the 1970s, yet the production of PhDs continued at an exponential rate. There are other consequences of this trend, including "creeping credentialism" in all areas of US American life, including the social need for a college degree (or even sometimes masters now) as screening for the most basic entry-level jobs. I feel one answer to the pyramid scheme nature of all this is a "basic income" for all, because then anyoen who wanted to research or teach could live like a present day graduate student, but without the new to kowtow to a specific academic hierarchy just to survive economically (publishing in prestigious journals or getting access to expensive lab equipment might be a different issue...)
From the Goodstein article:
https://www.its.caltech.edu/~d...
"The period 1950-1970 was a true golden age for American science. Young Ph.D's could choose among excellent jobs, and anyone with a decent scientific idea could be sure of getting funds to pursue it. The impressive successes of scientific projects during the Second World War had paved the way for the federal government to assume responsibility for the support of basic research. Moreover, much of the rest of the world was still crippled by the after-effects of the war. At the same time, the G.I. Bill of Rights sent a whole generation back to college transforming the United States from a nation of elite higher education to a nation of mass higher education. Before the war, about 8% of Americans went to college, a figure comparable to that in France or England. By now more than half of all Americans receive some sort of post-secondary education. The American academic enterprise grew explosively, especially in science and technology. The expanding academic world in 1950-1970 created posts for the exploding number of new science Ph.D.s, whose research led to the founding of journals, to the acquisition of prizes and awards, and to increases in every other measure of the size and quality of science. At the same time, great American corporations such as AT&T, IBM and others decided they needed to create or expand their central research laboratories to solve technological problems, and also to pursue basic research that would provide ideas for future developments. And the federal government itself established a network of excellent national laboratories that also became the source of jobs and opportunities for aspiring scientists. Even so, that explosive growth was merely a seamless continuation of a hundred years of exponential growth of American science. It seemed to one and all (with the notable exception of Derek da Solla Price) that these happy conditions would go on forever.
By now, in the 1990's, the situation has changed dramatically. With the Cold War over, National Security is rapidly losing its appeal as a means of generating support for scientific research. There are those who argue that research is essential for our economic future, but the managers of the economy know better. The great corporations have decided that central research laboratories were not such a good idea after all. Many of the national laboratories have lost their missions and have not found new ones. The economy has gradually transformed from manufacturing to service, and service industries like banking and insurance don't support much scientific research. To make matters worse, the country is almost 5 trillion dollars in debt, and scientific research is among the few items of discretionary spending left in the national budget. There is much wringing of hands about impending shortages of trained scientific
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.