Slashdot Mirror
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."
When the distant future is only next quarter, this kind of thing happens. No one cares about consequences that will only happen after they have left the job... So, be ready to see basic research shift to another country in about 15 years.
You just have to be researching solar panels.
When the public funds crappy studies that are designed to keep people employed at a University what do you expect?
They'll have to wait for their parents to die before they get those cushy floor-washing jobs. It's not like just anybody can push a mop around, 10 years of experience is absolutely required.
Johns Hopkins has an endowment of about $3,000,000,000 (25th highest in the US). Instead of complaining about the lack of grants, the president of Johns Hopkins should be issuing grants.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Look, you brain-dead anonymous clown, without gov't money the entire modern world wouldn't exist. But I'm sure you'd be happy taking a horse to work and writing letters to communicate.
With 5+ postdocs for every position, .... now if they only had a postdoc in fear mongering maybe they could get some of the $500+ billion in government security spending in the US this year. Who needs medicine or basic research when there is terrists.
Illogical world - that's what this is.
This is really a general issue with our society right now. Young people can't be researchers because they don't get grant money, because no one trusts them to be doing research. Young people can't get jobs because everyone knows that you need at least 10 years experience to get a job -- never mind how you get 10 years of experience these days when no apprenticeships or similar seem to exist anymore. If you're lucky enough to find some job that doesn't make a big deal about experience, then young people aren't allowed enough pay to actually cover their bills and student loans. Instead of supporting educated young people and thinking of them as an investment that will bring us new ideas, new businesses, etc., I feel the elders tend to look at this young generation as lazy entitled bums (which is not true at all, at least not in general).
I was a young person college instructor for a few years before I quit. Why? Because pay is low as an adjunct, and the number of courses you can count on kept declining because I was continually at the mercy of what the elder teachers decided to do. (If one of them wanted a class, I was bumped and simply lost pay because I was contract and they could do that.). I had excellent ratings from all my students, many telling me personally that I was one of the best professors they had because I put effort into my lectures... and now academics has lost me, probably for good, because of how I was treated. (Not that I mean to be tooting my own horn here, but I hope you understand it as a situation that is probably being repeated across the country right now with people much more intelligent than I). There was a movement to form an adjunct union at one of my schools, and when I spoke up saying that we young professors need to be able to pay bills and given a chance to grow our careers, I was shouted down by elders saying I was entitled and need to go work a full time job and teach on the side if I wanted to be a professor and heaven forbid also be able to pay my monthly bills. I don't recall past professors having to do all that extra work, but it is expected of a young person now. So I took their advice and got a full time job... but left teaching entirely. I don't want to be in an environment like that, and it's not fair to my students to half-ass a class because I'm exhausted from my full time job. Most of those professors were at least in their 60s -- what will universities do in 10 years when they start to retire, and they've driven off of all the people like me that wanted to teach?
There just doesn't seem to be any opportunity left for a young person, especially in the technical fields. The older people are eeking out what they can until retirement, but at the cost of preventing younger people from having access to jobs where they can build their skills. I fear that in 10 years, our country will be in trouble as the Boomers retire for good and there will be no one left to replace them.
The article talks about the number of principal investigators with a leading National Institutes of Health grant and the average age of principal investigators who get these grants. To me, there is a very important missing data point; the age distribution of principal investigators submitting grant requests. This will show whether or not the age difference is due to the selection process or the age distribution of the grant requests. It is not a given that the age distribution of grant requests is the same year by year.
The science job system is broken. The main problem is the federal subsidy of Graduate Student Stipends and Postdoctoral Fellowship salaries from grants. This has led to the situation of an oversupply of bright people in what amount to full time jobs with no benefits with little chance to achieve a rare faculty post. The fix is to stop the subsidy. Institutions need to take on fewer graduate students, pay them more and train them fully. Bolster the Master's degree for the less committed. The Postdoc should be eliminated and replaced with the term Contract Researcher which should be treated like a job. These people should be paid market rates so they can move to whomever is smart enough to get a grant.
For the kids out there, the current system is a sort of feudal concoction built to maximize imperious egos and is fundamentally exploitive.
Advise: go into science if you have the desire. Go to a good undergraduate school but if you do not get into one of the best institutions for grad school DO NOT GO.
It's that bad out there and it's winner take all.
Colleges and Universities compete with one another for grant getting researchers as much as they do for enrollment. From my vantage point, college today is big business with posh offerings for both faculty and students while being short on rigor and learning. What the article doesn't say is that there are more grants available now than at any time. The fact that older researchers are getting them may point to the fact that young people simply aren't being trained in grant writing techniques or they are being sucked up by corporations that need them and don't need to apply for grants. Obviously a person who wants to do research is someone that can think and they seem to be few and far between these days, even with a four year degree.
I just got a fairly substantial grant for a project from an external agency. However, as things stand, on this project I will not be the PI (primary investigator ) - that will be our head of dept. So why do I call it my grant? Because I wrote the proposal, handled all interactions with the funding agency, wrote the budget and arranged everything. My boss simply signed on a dotted line and shook a few hands. A symptom of the endless cycle of postdocs is that you don't have a permanent post until you're quite far on in your career. Therefore your own institution won't let you be the PI. The way around it is that you get a figurehead to be in charge, but you really end up running things.
This has its advantages and disadvantages. The big advantage is that you tend to have a fairly heavy hitter politically to back you up. He (and it's so often He that it's an insult to my female colleagues to pretend that they are equally represented) should have your back in exchange for drawing a fraction of his salary from your grant. The disadvantages are that you aren't officially PI for the sake of your CV - when you apply for jobs you are asked "Wasn't that X's grant?" when you talk about it - an it doesn't count as much for you. Likewise, they pay is miniscule. One of the things you learn writing a budget is just how much more a senior academic makes than a postdoc. It's depressing both how large the ratio is, and how relatively low the higher figure actually is.
Of course the whole process is a vicious cycle: You can't be PI, so you don't have PI positions on grants on your CV, so you have a hard time getting a permanent job, and so you can't be a PI... You just spend three of four months working on a proposal, sacrifice your dignity to the gods of the funding agency, ask someone else to take 90% of the credit, and prepare for hard work. On the plus side, you might just get paid enough to live and do what you love.
Like grants to fund research to create cute catgirls! Where are the grants?
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Make all the young researchers play football.
Wouldn't that cut into sports team funding?
Does Johns Hopkins have a sports team? I don't know.
I was being recruited for Hopkins' football team, which was Division III. They are actually well known for their lacrosse team, which is Division I and is one of the top collegiate lacrosse teams in the country.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
It happens in both directions. There is a "Goldilocks age" of between about 7 to 17 years of experience (varies per industry). If you are young, the profiling is that you don't have enough practical experience; and if you are old, the profiling is that you don't adapt to new technologies and trends.
When the economy is tight and international competition strong, then companies can pick and choose who they hire, and they prefer the Goldilocks age range.
The profiling may not be accurate for any given individual, but as a short-cut under pressure, hiring profiling happens.
Table-ized A.I.
Scientists typically do their most creative work before the age of forty. With the average age of grant recipients being over 45, I'd expect to see a drop off in breakthroughs.
"I improvise. It's my greatest talent. I prefer situations to plans..." --Wintermute, William Gibson's "Neuromancer"
Ha!
I do believe he was working in the patent office at the time or thereabouts. He was looking for a job in academia if I remember the documentary correctly. Not quite the QuickieMart, but not really in his degree area either.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Their basketball team is also Division III. So they have sports, but they don't have big money sports.
Back when people rode horses relatively few people did it. In the 1870s US, the cost to keep a horse in stable would cost almost a third of a typical laborer's daily wage ($0.50 out of $1.75), most of which was already spoken for.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Back when I was in school (1980's), the NSF recognized this problem and had a special grant ("NSF Young Investigator Award") that would issue small to medium sized grants to faculty under a certain age. I took a quick spin on Google, couldn't tell if the program (or something similar) still exists. Even though the grants weren't large, it enabled junior faculty to get a "Principle Investigator" line on their CV, hopefully enabling future funding.
This is really driven by the glut of postdocs. With half a dozen post docs per professorial position, there's no surprise that the average age of the professors is creeping up, and therefore the average age of the PI is creeping up.
Supply and demand. The US elderly have voted themselves a limitless supply of funding for their medical care, so demand for doctors is very high and every other prerogative of our nation is pushed down the list. We've got Medicare paying for 74 year old gender reassignments. You want to know where they've spent your dreams?
So you take your little degree and your dreams of academic success and sod off. We have millions upon millions of knees and hips to replace. Find something that pays well too, mule; we're going to need you to cover that ACA mandate no matter how high it climbs.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
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?
Sorry, but nobody's well known for their lacrosse team.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
In the physics and engineering proposals I have reviewed, it seems that young researchers still get a significant preference in the distribution of grants. But there is a problem that the proposals from young researchers are often much weaker. It is really hard to write a great grant proposal and new faculty members usually struggle long and hard to get good at it. You have to have great ideas, preliminary work, and a great presentation. And you have to know how to market your ideas to the diverse set of people who will be reviewing the proposal. Maybe 30 years ago, people could get research grants just by describing some potentially interesting research, but in the current environment, you have to write a proposal that is better than 80 or 90% of the others, and that is hard for young people to do. Maybe the bias toward younger researchers should be stronger. But I don't think it helps them to set a low bar and then they will fail to get their grants renewed. I would recommend that grant agencies more aggressively limit the number of grants that can be accumulated by the big names. No one can effectively mentor 5 post-docs and 10 graduate students, and letting them suck up all the funding just because they are able to spit out a large number of strong proposals limits the number of new researchers who can be funded.
It's the knock-on effects that are important. As you can see from browsing the comments, people HAVE left their field because of age bias.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Even if they *do* "pay for it" (i.e., free tuition + small stipend as a phd student), it's still a huge opportunity cost -- you could be getting a real job, and making real money.
PhD programs are basically an unsustainable pyramid scheme: become a professor, get lots of grant money to stay employed/receive tenure, hire lots of grad students, make them all PhDs, with the expectation that they will mostly go out and get professor jobs and universities, rinse and repeat.
Right now, we've reached saturation, and nobody really needs any more university professors, not even in STEM/CompSci, etc. You now have the 500 applicants per tenure track job opening, 4 post-docships in a row and still no job prospects, permatemp adjuct instructor positions at lame 40k/year salaries, and so on.
The bubble is in the process of bursting, it was nice while it lasted, great for whomever managed to get tenure, it's going to suck for everyone but a few brilliant (at self promotion) people.
The NSF budget has gone from $3.2 Billion in 1998 to $7.1 Billion in 2014. A bigger issue might be that demographics of native born Americans shows there are many more 40 somethings than 20 somethings. America is making up this deficet of young people by allowing a lot of immigration. The possibility is that many 1st or 2nd generation immigrants are not taking enough school to become researchers.
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.
5 postdocs per research position is great, compared to the number of potential candidates per tenure-track professor position. Getting rid of people at the postdoc stage means they're not stringing them along pretending there's an upward career track in academia, and means they'll be less tempted to take an adjunct job while waiting for the real thing. (And yes, it sucks.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
We are losing the best and brightest and their lines of research, I am one of them.
No you're not. You have trouble making simple decisions about the future.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I got free health insurance and several minor fringe benefits in graduate school. As a postdoc, I get a number of subsidized benefits. The details of the benefits vary from program to program. The thing that early career scientists do not get in my experience is a retirement benefit. Graduate students also do not get social security.
Simon's Rock College
Considering that penicillin came out of gov. Funded academia, and I.C.E. theory also came from centuries of academia theory, I think he would have an easy time doing so.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
In my opinion, if Medicare and Social Security were available to all from birth, the USA would be a much happier and fairer society.
Your point on doctors for the elderly connects with my previous post here mentioning Philip Greenspun's writing on why women avoid academic science careers.
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
"What about women? Don't they want to impress their peers? Yes, but they are more discriminating about choosing those peers. I've taught a fair number of women students in electrical engineering and computer science classes over the years. I can give you a list of the ones who had the best heads on their shoulders and were the most thoughtful about planning out the rest of their lives. Their names are on files in my "medical school recommendations" directory."
Still, even given that, the fact is that we spend very little on medical research relative to the total amount we spend on medicine. If we spent, say, 20% of our US$2+ trillion annual medical budget on medical research, that would be US$400 billion a year, which is a lot of researchers. Likely such an investment would be tremendously cost-effective at avoiding costs. But we spend about 4%, and much of that is on "me too" drugs, like a fifth version of Viagra or whatever.
http://www.researchamerica.org...
BTW:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
"A major flaw and vulnerability in biomedical research appears to be the hypercompetition for the resources and positions that are required to conduct science. The competition seems to suppress the creativity, cooperation, risk-taking, and original thinking required to make fundamental discoveries. Other consequences of today's highly pressured environment for research appear to be a substantial number of research publications whose results cannot be replicated, and perverse incentives in research funding that encourage grantee institutions to grow without making sufficient investments in their own faculty and facilities. Other risky trends include a decline in the share of key research grants going to younger scientists, as well as a steady rise in the age at which investigators receive their first funding."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Ok, I'll bite.
Howso? What specific policies are in place as a result of Republican votes that caused this? Can you tie any policies to specific acts of Congress and/or specific Governors and their policies? Did Democrats, while they held both houses of Congress and the White House, take action to reverse these policies? Is there a third-party option that you prefer instead, and can you explain how said third-party's platform fixes the problem?
It's really difficult for me to make a connection to a partisan political perspective here. Maybe you have a point, but you certainly didn't make it.
I am an Assistant Prof at a tier one research univ and reading this depressed the hell out of me.
Oh well, back to work!
Running existing (budgeted) operations is not the same as controlling the budget. Essentially the GOP has controlled the budget by blocking everything and threatening to shut down the gov't.
Table-ized A.I.
Acts of Congress? You mean Non-acts? See nearby message about obstruction. True, we can't tell for sure what would pass if GOP didn't exist because the reality is that they exist and DNC has to work their politics taking them into account. In general, GOP has favored reducing basic research. They believe that tax-cuts ALONE will cause co's to spend sufficiently on research.
Table-ized A.I.
Perhaps building your career around a model that assumes that someone will simply give you money to do what you want is a foolish choice? Is it unsurprising in a country that is trillions of dollars in debt, that there seems to be less interest in continuing to do that?
There's however a reasonably successful model close to that, where they give you money to do what THEY want - it's called a JOB. Of course, then there are things like expectations and consequences if you don't, usually stopping the flow of money.
"Next up on Slashdot: complaining about the corporatization of science!"
-Styopa
In the 60's all you needed for brain drain was a six pack and a lid. Now get off my lawn!
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Telling lies won't convince anyone. Fleming worked for St. Mary's, which was founded as and still was a voluntary hospital (funded by private philanthropy) at the time.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Oh and the jet engine was developed on government money too.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Duke is.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Fleming worked at st Mary' medical school, which was distinctly separate from the hospital. And without gov support, st Mary' hospital and med school, never would have happened.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Telling lies won't convince anyone.
Maybe you should follow your own advice then. Fleming was a professor at the University of London at the same time that he was working at St. Mary's, and it was in this capacity that he was conducting the research.
But they can earn 3x as much by going into the non-academic private sector and doing their research for profit-driven corps that will patent and secret the hell out of it, rather than using it for the good of all. Because the general public doesn't want to own the essential everyday technologies of the future; they'd rather it be kept inside high corporate walls and be forced to pay through the nose for it to wealthy billionaires.
And because bright young researchers actually have to eat, and actually want a life, they grudingly go where the money is, knowing full well they're contributing to deep social problems to come. Myself included.
But why would I settle for a string of one-year postdoc contracts that pay like entry-level jobs and require superhuman hours and commitment when I can go earn six figures at a proper nine-to-five, with revenue sharing, great benefits, and job security? Yes, the company owns everything I do. But I get to pay my bills and build a personal future. Of course, society's future is much dimmer as the result of so many people making the same choice that I have, and so much good work ending up in private hands rather than public ones.
But them's the beans. If you want to own the future, public, you've got to be willing to pay for it.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
The US highway system enabled the mass adoption of the automobile, and was entirely or largely federally funded. BAM.
You say that as if it's a good thing. The railroads, which were privately funded, happened much sooner, and with greater positive effect.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law