Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Are We Training Too Many Scientists
FEATURE Are We Training Too Many Scientists? | |
 | A glut of postdocs, too few desired positions, and a faculty invested in the status quo point to a need for change. Who will take responsibility? By BIJAL P. TRIVEDI |
 © JASON VARNEY|VARNEYPHOTO.COM | After |
Icenhour's experience is mirrored in the lives of many other ambitious
postdoctoral fellows seeking the tenure track. With rising numbers of newly
minted life science PhDs, fewer tenure track positions open, and bulging ranks
of increasingly frustrated postdocs, many want to know why the number of PhDs
and the focus of their education is out of balance with job prospects and career
expectations. "These are some of the lowest paid PhDs in academia," says
Harvard economist Richard Freeman.
the number of PhDs and the focus of their education
is out of balance with job prospects
and career expectations.
Between 1983 and 2003 the number of doctorates earned annually in the life
sciences, including agricultural, biological, and medical sciences, almost
doubled, rising from 4,777 to 8,163, according to the National Science Foundation's
Science and Engineering Indicators 2006. The majority of these graduates immediately
entered the postdoctoral arena, catapulting the number of postdocs in these
fields at US universities from roughly 14,000 to more than 33,000.
Yet, the percentage of doctoral recipients holding tenure and tenure track
appointments continues to shrink. For PhDs overall, after five years only about
22% of graduates hold a tenure track position. For life science PhDs specifically,
between 1993 and 2003 the percentage of graduates who held tenure or tenure
track positions four to six years after receiving their degrees fell from almost
25% to 18%; the trends were even more pronounced for those in the biological
sciences, with percentages falling from 25% to 15%. "You talk to anyone
running a faculty job search anywhere and they are getting on average 200 candidates," says
postdoc Chris Blagden, who earned his PhD in molecular biology from Kings College
London in 1999. After failing to find a full-time research job while working
in postdoc positions, he grew discouraged enough to shift his goals to a nonresearch
career.
Career disappointment for postdocs is not just about finding a job, it's
finding a job that is rewarding: one that pays reasonably well and offers a
career path. The recent prospects for PhDs - rising numbers of postdocs,
few tenure track positions, and poor funding - do not live up to that
expectation. Rather, current prospects are similar to conditions in the 1990s
that spurred the NSF to organize a committee to issue the critical report, "Recent
Trends in the Careers of Life Scientists." This 1998 analysis highlighted
bleak prospects for life scientists on the road to independent research careers.
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The report revealed that the average age of a PhD recipient was about 32
years old, and after the typical fellowship postdocs were between 35 and 40
years old before they landed their first permanent position. Moreover, the
committee saw opportunities for postdocs narrowing: 61% of PhDs who graduated
in 1963 and 1964 secured tenure track positions within 10 years of receiving
their degrees; of the students graduating with a PhD in 1985-1986, only 38%
had tenure track positions 10 years later. "So basically, at the time, the supply
of PhDs was rising and the demand for tenure track faculty was declining," says
Paula Stephan, a labor economist at Georgia State University in Atlanta, and
a member of the 1998 committee.
The unintended consequence of the shortage of faculty positions was longer
postdoctoral fellowships as young scientists received low wages, endured
little job security or respect, and delayed starting families while waiting
for a job. Other postdocs and PhDs accepted nontenure track and part-time
jobs to stay afloat. The committee's recommendations were blunt. Topping
the list was that "there be no further expansion in the size of existing
graduate-education programs in the life sciences and no development of new
programs."
Another suggestion was to ensure that graduate programs offered incoming PhD
candidates job-placement data revealing the fates of departed PhDs and their
jobs and starting salaries. The suggestion was seen as another mechanism to
deflate the postdoc bubble by allowing students to make more informed career
choices. William Brinkley, vice president for graduate sciences at Baylor College
of Medicine in Houston and a coauthor of the report, says the conclusion was
based on concerns that "PhDs were just being hired for benefit of mentors
and their careers, treated as hired hands, and true mentoring wasn't
taking place."
The report was met, perhaps predictably, with outcry from a faculty that
was happy with the way things were. And any momentum for change the report
may have created was smothered with money: Shortly after it was issued the
economy began its upswing and Congress began the doubling of the NIH budget. "The
future looked very promising then," says Brinkley. "I thought ... we
are going to double the opportunities in America for research and biomedical
science and therefore we needed graduate students and there was a great future
for them. In 2003 it all looked so optimistic."
Since then, of course, the NIH budget has flattened, and Brinkley's
optimism has fallen. Additionally, while the total amount of R01 grants awarded
annually has been holding steady at approximately $1.3 billion since 2000,
the success rate has been falling from about 26% six years ago to just shy
of 18% in 2005, according to the NIH. Even if the number of R01s awarded had
remained at its high of 4,521, the success rate - thanks to an increase
in applicants from 16,827 to 21,745 - would be just 20.8%. In other words,
the drop can't be fully explained by reduced funding levels. "We
don't want to train too many in any field and ignore their ability to
find work, that's my view as the dean," says Brinkley. "We
need to be concerned about what we say to young people who are coming into
graduate school about the market."
Others, however, deny that the problem exists. Most faculty, who depend on
the graduate student and postdoctoral workforce, disagree that the system is
churning out too many PhDs or that the numbers of incoming graduate students
should be curbed to match annual funding. "If the academic job market
was the only one out there, then we are almost certainly educating too many
life science PhDs," says Norma Allewell, dean of the College of Chemical & Life
Sciences at the University of Maryland in College Park. But, she adds, so many
opportunities are open to life science PhDs that the four to six years spent
in graduate school are not a waste.
While the employment stats do seem to support Allewell's notion that
most life science PhDs do find jobs, most postdocs would say that is not the
point. The average rate of unemployment in 2003 for those with biological,
agricultural, and environmental life science PhDs hovered around 2.0%, according
to the NSF. This was slightly less than unemployment rates for PhDs in the
physical sciences and math, which were 2.6% and 2.4%, respectively, and slightly
above rates for PhDs with degrees in health or the social sciences, which were
1.4% and 1.5%.
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Of those life science PhDs finding employment in 2003, the majority (55.5%)
found jobs in academia. The rest joined industry (34%) or government (10.5%).
The academic jobs were scattered between the coveted full-time faculty positions
and the less appealing nontenure track, full-time, nonfaculty positions: research
associates, lecturers, adjunct and administrative positions, as well as postdoctoral
fellowships and part-time positions. And as Chris Blagden and many other postdocs
will tell you, it is about the quality of the job, not just having a low-paying,
seemingly dead-end position.
While the numbers and postdocs tell one story, others say it doesn't
matter: Science is above supply-and-demand issues, and the only thing the system
lacks is more funding. "When it comes to training scientists you are
training smart people to think for themselves, to create ... the job of
a scientist is to do something entirely original," says Robert H. Tai,
an assistant professor of science education at the University of Virginia. "But
that's the thing about science, you never know which one of those minds
out there is going to come out with the next big thing. It's basically
a horse race ... and every now and then you have a horse that you didn't
think was going to do it." That happens often enough, says Tai, that
predicting which graduate students will succeed is very difficult and thus
nobody should be discouraged from going into science. "Like any competitive
field you encourage everybody, and the best rise to the top."
Although Tai is concerned by the growing ranks of postdocs and the shortage
of faculty positions, he is adamant that the root of the problem is not too
many graduate students. He says the problem is due to waning public support
and interest in science, which undermines support for science funding and
scientific careers. "You can't turn the PhD spigot on and off
based on these funding trends," says Tai. He wants more money from
state and federal funds to establish and support tenure track positions,
as opposed to NIH grants that he says empower more established scientists
and do little to relieve the pressure inside the postdoctoral bottleneck. "Academia
needs to take responsibility for educating the public and explaining the
hard science and why it is worth doing. If the public understands the value
of the research they will push Congress for more money ... something
similar has happened with the grassroots movement in terms of stem cell research."
Marguerite Evans-Galea has spent nine years in fellowships, first at the University
of Utah and currently at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis,
Tenn., while tirelessly searching for a tenure track position. "Most
young graduate students have aspirations of becoming a great scientist and
winning a Nobel. It's a very impressionable stage," says Evans-Galea.
Thus, it's essential that graduate programs expose the students to a
broad range of careers choices and be frank about their chances of making it
in academia, she says. This was one of the recommendations of the 1998 report,
but unlike law, medical, or business schools, few life sciences departments
appear to track salaries or jobs of recent graduates, and thus have no starting
point for such career counseling.
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While Evans-Galea is returning home to Australia to accept a senior research
fellowship, what she describes as "a glorified postdoc," other
postdocs are leaving the bench permanently. Blagden, who earned his PhD in
the UK, has now been a postdoc at NYU School of Medicine for six years. After
approximately four years he began his job search. "I got basically no
interest in my job application and I realized that this wasn't going
to go anywhere and I moved on. For the last 2.5 years I've been training
myself in non-profit leadership [grant management]. That's what I'm
intending to move into ... I need a strong scientific background for this,
so I don't see myself as leaving the field completely."
Robert Palazzo, biology professor and director of the Center for Biotechnology
and Interdisciplinary Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy,
NY, says that Blagden and others who can't make tenure or achieve independence
in the academic sector because of the competition for resources often leave
the field or the country. "If they drop out you can't recover them," says
Palazzo. "They might go into patent law or consulting or other areas,
but they won't be in that primary innovative stew that we need so badly
to remain competitive globally ... they won't be contributing to
the areas where the country has invested in them."
Industry has been filling in some of the gap. A comparison of the 2003 and
1993 stats reveal a dramatic shift in employment, with 34% of biological, agricultural,
and environmental science postdocs choosing a career in industry versus 26%
in 1993. "In chemistry most grads go into industry, and life sciences
may be transitioning into that situation not because there is less of a need
in academia, but because there are a lot of other opportunities that weren't
there before," says Peter Bruns, vice president for grants and special
programs at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Chevy Chase, Md. "A
lot of attitudes have changed," says Georgia State's Stephan. "Industry
is no longer considered a second-rate job because of the higher salaries, the
resources and equipment, and the change in publication policies that allow
scientists to publish in the top journals."
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The National Postdoctoral Association in Washington, DC, which represents
more than 40,000 postdocs, counsels new graduate students against relying solely
on the goal of a tenure track position. "[We tell them] only a minority
get those jobs; you need to have a plan B right now, not at the end of postdoc," says
Alyson Reed, the executive director. "There is a huge disparity between
expectations and outcome, and we see it in the data and hear it anecdotally;
they can't find jobs and then shift to plan B," says Reed. This,
Reed points out, does not mean she believes there are too many PhDs; rather,
that schools accepting these students have the responsibility to train beyond
the career model of PI at a research university and provide a realistic set
of expectations about possible careers after earning a PhD. "There is
more to life than academia and honestly, most of it is better paid," says
Blagden.
The interdisciplinary approach is catching on, and several institutes now
have specific programs offering students broader career-oriented training.
While most admit that change in academia usually lags external forces, Allewell
says that the University of Maryland is doing more to prepare students for
other kinds of jobs, including those at biotech companies or government labs,
while still training people who want academic careers. San Diego State University
has established a PhD-MBA program to train PhDs in science in addition to offering
students the skills to manage people and budgets, conduct strategic planning,
or take complicated science and translate it for the layperson. (see J. Williamson, "Bridging
the Gulf," The Scientist, 20(8):76-7, August 2006.)
Though graduate programs may show glimmers of change, faculty stress
that exposing graduates to more career choices will not obviate the
problems caused by lack of funding, which will eventually cripple
opportunities in both academia and industry. New discoveries made at
academic health centers and basic research labs are the wellspring for
biotech, says Baylor's Brinkley. Given that NIH funding is linked to
academic employment, cutbacks in NIH funding would ultimately slow the
growth of research in industry, he says.
The situation, at least at Baylor, may be self-correcting. There was
a 36% reduction in applicants from 2003-2004 to 2005-2006. The size of
the incoming 2005-2006 class dropped by 12% compared to 2004-2005.
Brinkley says he isn't sure whether such a phenomenon reflects a
nationwide trend. But, he knows that when funding is bad and faculty
have a tough time getting grants the word spreads through the student
population, leading many to steer away from PhD programs. And while it
is almost impossible to get departments to voluntarily reduce the class
size of incoming graduate students, Brinkley says that when faculty
start losing grants, then recruiters are obligated by school policy to
recruit fewer students.
Others believe the core issue is how funding is used. NIH funding
"has got to be directed in a different way than to the 55-year-old
senior scientists for more bodies in his or her lab," says Harvard's
Freeman. Give more money to postdocs and grad students when they are
young and let them do their work, he says. "That way if they end up
leaving the field we won't have taken advantage of their love of
science." Frank Solomon, a biology professor at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, agrees with Freeman but goes further, taking
aim at the underpinnings of science curricula: "We are training too
many PhDs to become independent researchers ... the growth of biotech
hasn't kept up with the number of postdocs, and lots of life science
companies haven't been able to flourish." Solomon says that the system
is broken, and the only way to fix it is to uncouple the funding of
training and research positions. He adds that the life sciences need to
legitimize the job of a career scientist who wants to continue working
at the bench and isn't looking to run an independent lab.
For Icenhour, serendipity intervened. She decided to move on to a
postdoc at Duke University where a training program might give her the
skills to land a tenure track position. She attended grant-writing
workshops and hired and trained an undergraduate student to work in the
lab while she worked for her postdoctoral advisor. But after just one
year a physician from the University of Virginia approached her to join
a new molecular diagnostics startup.
"I just couldn't pass it up," says Icenhour even though she had
never really considered going into industry. "I'm essentially running
the company and am vice president and director of research, and we have
one small grant." In addition she was offered an adjunct assistant
professorship in the department of medicine at Duke. "So I feel like I
have got a bit of both worlds." But most of Icenhour's colleagues have
chosen a different path when they were not able to get a tenure track
position. The marketplace is changing and funding is fickle, says
Icenhour, "I think many postdocs still aren't [open to other
opportunities] because they have spent so much time preparing for one
type of career."
[Comment posted 2006-09-08 03:45:08]
reading this article, and feeling that the future is bleak, I was
surprised that one point was not touched upon. That point being the
'dead wood' tenured professors, whom should have retired long ago, yet
remain in their positions. At every point along my training, from small
liberal arts collage, to state university, to prestigious university
for my present postdoctoral position, there have been a number of
faculty in each department along the way, which were stewing in their
positions, while younger, more eager faculty could not break into the
permanent tenured slot. While I am aware of the issues touched upon in
your article, it would have been nice to see a nod thrown toward those
programs set up in the 1960s-'80s in which some faculty set up camp,
tenured, and have remained as nothing more than a lump collecting their
pay, as younger researchers trying to do research and perform struggle
to make ends meet.
[Comment posted 2006-09-08 03:45:19]
agree with Mr. Utzat in the effect that has the number tenured
professors that should retire and yet remain in their positions. I
finished my Ph. D. in 2002 and even today there is faculty in the
department that has a laboratory, doesnt do research, and it use to
have a technician with the solely duty of moving a liquid nitrogen
tank. Nice! After my Ph. D., I moved on to a postdoctoral position at
NIH and 2 years later I accepted my current job. Today, Im a Research
Associate with a false promise that a faculty appointment would be
offered after 2 years. So far, nothing yet. The excuse has been the
difficulties of getting funding through NIH to support my salary. Two
years ago I started applying for different job positions (government
and biotech) but the journey has been very difficult. I have gotten
some interviews and nothing else. Right now a faculty position for me
is out of my options. What is frustrating for me and I think for many
people is that no matter how many degrees and training you have that
doesnt warranty getting that nice job you are looking for. In my case,
I obtained a B.S. in Microbial Technology, a M.S. in Microbiology and
Molecular Biology, a Ph. D. in Microbiology and Immunology and 5 years
of postdoctoral training. Im still struggling.
[Comment posted 2006-09-08 17:37:32]
last two issues of The Scientist have illuminated deep problems with
our University research system. Are we training too many scientists
and The Inequality of Science are well-documented articles that
clearly show the faults of the current system. However, the articles
also show a possible solution to both problems. Create more
opportunities to become faculty through equitable funding of our
current institutions. Capping grant funds that any one Principal
Investigator (PI) can receive as well as the number of Post-Docs that
answer to a single PI are straightforward ways to create more faculty
positions. The one exception to the cap might be for equipment
grants, just as long as the grant is for equipment and not personnel.
If the idea is huge and worthwhile, then finding several PIs to band
together to meet a larger goal should be simple enough. While this step
should expand the tenure-track ranks overnight and solve the too many
scientists problem it is not enough. There should also be regulation
to level the field, as far as funds go, between the have and the
have-not institutions. There are many models to follow in setting
institutional caps. Which one should be followed I do not know, but I
do know in the end there would be true competition instead of the
near-monopoly that exists today. Therefore, in the situation I propose
I suspect many institutions would finally find viability and
competition thereby allowing them to grow and hire even more PIs. My
proposal would also foster more collaboration between PIs that should
lead to new possibilities and more collegiality. The biggest winners in
all this would be We, The People as more researchers doing quality
work in more communities will expand our knowledge economy and maybe
even make the world a better place, which should be the goal of all
education.
Sincerely- DL Wilcox
Bloomington, IN, USA
lonbordin@hotmail.com
[Comment posted 2006-09-12 15:00:15]
too many that want to academics. That has been a problem forever - and
one that universities nurture because professors create more like
themselves - both because they know nothing different and because a new
generation of academics reflects well on them personally.
[Comment posted 2006-09-12 16:31:54]
article paints a bleak picture for many post-docs who are currently
aspiring to academic independence. However, lets not forget that by
design, the career track to inpendent academic P.I. is competitive and
cannot assure a high success rate while maintaining a selection for
excellence. If we told any high school athlete that he or she would
have a 20% chance to make it in professional sports they would be
elated. What I believe is the most important aspect here is honesty at
all levels of training. Let's be honest with our graduate students when
they are marginal and suggest them to leave. Let's be honest with
post-docs who have become "lifers" as to how we rate their
competitiveness and what their options are. At least we will not create
lost careers.
[Comment posted 2006-09-12 15:56:09]
problem is common to all the sciences. For example, in my field
(astronomy) a two-tier system has developed, with a small number of
prize fellowships whose recipients are nearly guaranteed the choice
positions, and the dregs left over for common postdocs. It is not
uncommon for postdocs to have to search for several years to find
tenure-track positions, if indeed they find them at all. Thus many
astronomers looking for tenure-track positions apply for long-term NASA
and NSF grants as a bridge - a track I took successfully. Even then, it
took me over six years to find my first tenure track job, which I'll
take up in January. And unlike in the life sciences - which benefited
from the doubling of NIH's budget in the late 1990s - federal funding
for the physical sciences has been flat since 1990, meaning that the
inflation-adjusted budget has been declining every year.
[Comment posted 2006-09-12 17:33:37]
but having served on several search committees in the past several
years, I must say expectations of post-doctoral fellows do not often
match with their demonstrated success. We hired two faculty who both
had demonstrated the ability to do truly independent cutting edge
research and had published over 20 refereed papers. On the other hand,
there were many applicants with 3-6 papers, with only a few first
author papers. You tell me what is the problem!
At the end of the day, a post-doctoral fellow must be productive,
publish well thought out papers in respected Tier I journals.
Productivity wins more often than not. In this competive business, who
will take a risk on hiring someone who has a three year post-doc and 1
or 2 papers ? No one will nor should they. It is a competive world and
academic science is the major leagues, not everyone in the minors will
get called up.
[Comment posted 2006-09-12 19:33:06]
organization, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and many
others, are increasingly focusing on knowledge
translation/mobilization/exchange, and the need to ensure that research
that is done becomes known to and taken up by those who can make use of
the findings and apply them to current problems in health. Effective
application of research is a resource-intensive process that requires,
inter alia, persons who have an in-depth understanding of the research
and can serve as "knowledge brokers". Supply and demand in research
training may actually be in balance, if we are able to figure out a way
of engaging those with the expertise (i.e. "surplus" postdocs) in the
knowledge translation process. A few changes would have to happen
before this happy balance can be achieved: those with advanced degrees
would have to become interested in working as knowledge brokers, and
organizations would have to recognize the value of knowledge brokers
and be willing to pay them. There would also have to be a change in
values in the training environment so that this career path is not
dismissed as something for failed researchers.
[Comment posted 2006-09-12 19:40:06]
world trains too many scientists and expects physicians to disemploy
those who are trained. Many physicians must garner Federal government
grants to advance academically; this pressure, with requests by medical
organizations upon funding entities to sponsor "clinical scientists",
decreases employment of scientists, who would almost certainly generate
more knowledge per dollar spent.
One solution is to refuse to fund physicians as principal investigators unless they relinquish the practice of medicine.
[Comment posted 2006-09-12 19:59:58]
not! The problem is that both the scientific and medical workforces are
being seriously threatened by the "dumbing down of America". When the
public's perception of science is largely media (TV) derived, when
scientifically ludicrous "infomercials" openly preach daily
anti-scientific ideologies to a listeners with generally no scientific
background, and when the president of the USA himself can't even
pronounce the word "nuclear", we have the makings of a serious problem.
Until the scientific and the biomedical communities recapture public
understanding, confidence, and support, we will continue to have
beaurocratic politicians and their idiotic rhetoric undermining the
future of our scientific and medical work forces.
[Comment posted 2006-09-12 22:26:08]
am glad to see that this debate is going on right now and as a graduate
student I know this is a very complex problem. Most of the students I
know and talk with go into other fields such as medicine or law because
they are scared of the problems with finding a tenure-track position.
Others have gone into industry or as science writers for magazines or
books. And yes, I too believe that some faculty should retire at the
appropriate time, but I still believe that there is enough room for
everyone. As a student, I feel that you should expose yourself to
everything to find out what you like and not to depend on your
university to hold your hand and show you the way. I also think that
there should be more feedback in the application process. If you apply
for a fellowship or job and you don't get it, then why? What areas were
weak and what areas were strong in the application? I also think that
post-docs should get more feedback in their work and not be treated
like employees or hired help. All universities should set up
guidelines, like the ideas pointed out by this website, and give
post-docs a voice in their development as independent researchers. In
the end, I hope things will change and that this will not become
continued rhetoric in the years to come.
[Comment posted 2006-09-12 22:46:14]
course not! This country needs badly more scientists and a lot more
funding for medical research in order to find real solutions to many
devastating diseases. It is in fact a shame and a tragedy for our
society to have leaders so short-sighted and stingy in allowing enough
resources to medical research.
Another big problem in academic career is the lack
of standarization and quality control in the research funding
allocation. All post-docs should have to work hard and publish well in
order to get promotions and RO1 funding, however is frustrating to see
the lack of uniformity in the application of these criteria. After
publishing papers in Cell, Nature, Science, etc. I am still struggling
to get a modest RO1 application funded, whereas many other people
manage to get funding and promotions only because they are well
connected. If arbitrary and subjective criteria are continuing to be
applied to NIH RO1 funding, the future of young scientist will remain
dark as now.
[Comment posted 2006-09-12 23:56:42]
issue of mentorship is important in this discussion. A lot can be said
about how things can be improved about the career of scientists, but in
the end it is a competition, and this really is not a problem, as this
is clear to postdocs and grad students from the very start. What is not
clear is how good or how bad their mentors are. How do you know? What
is happening is that scientists are not being mentored well enough to
make them competitive, and they don't even know it.
There is no pressure whatsoever for the PI to mentor well. The PI
does not suffer if the postdoc or student does not move forward in
their career. The postdoc and the student need to be empowered if they
are to be truly independent, but in the end the PI can treat them in
whatever way he wishes to.
Somehow, the PIs must be made accountable for how they mentor and
in general, must show greater respect for them. Simple things can be
done. 1) The NIH should make the postdoc salary scale mandatory. PIs
with NIH grants rountinely give salaries way below the salary scale.
How can a postdoc develop their confidence and self respect when you
are paid less than what the NIH says you should be paid? 2) The NIH
should require a report on the progress of the trainee-scientists paid
through the grants, in terms of publications and employment and
salaries after training, among others, and this report should be part
of the evaluation for grant renewal. Taxpayer money must be used
efficiently in that the trainees must become productive. Thus, a bad PI
cannot run through postdocs willy-nilly and not be accountable. A lot
of money, and a lot of careers, are wasted because of bad mentoring. 3)
The NIH should include postdoc/student training and development as a
large part of the grant application. The research has to be done by
these scientists and the science progresses as they progress. The NIH
first and foremost should recognize this tie in its grant requirements.
The NIH does not do enough to protect the postdocs and students
that do the research in the first place. Science does not happen
without them. Research articles do not spring fully written and
published from trees. The NIH should actively promote through policy
the concept that people, like postdocs and students, make the science
and not the other way around.
[Comment posted 2006-09-13 00:04:02]
US Department of Defense has a reported Discretionary Budget listed as
$401.7 billion (ref 1). As private citizens we are told incessantly by
many sources (spanning popular media and government) that we have
entered an era of chemical and biological weaponry that is difficult to
stop with current technology and that poses great immediate threat to
our nation. We are also told that energy is a big concern for all
people on earth. Now, I'm not an expert in public policy, but one would
think that, given that the US DoD is now spending more than the GDP of
many other nations combined (ref 2), US scientists from academics to
national laboratories would find (eventually) themselves a substantive
"war-time-effort's" worth of funding. AT LEAST scientists should be
well funded to do everything we can to defend against the eminent
threat of chemical and biological attacks, or even perhaps, reposition
America for the future so we have better alternative energy solutions
that don't precipitate future world conflicts. However, this does not
seem to be the case at this time. A look at the recent US spending
architecture is indeed staggering toward this growing fact of funding
disparity in the US (ref 3, see table S-3). Ostensibly, the US
government is spending more than ever on combative military
infrastructure (new tanks, planes, ships, subs, manpower, etc) and it
seems to continue to subtract funding from things that are so very
needed now, such as basic education and scientific research. This at a
time when many feel the US government is supporting bad science (ref
4). The US is growing (ref 5) at about a net of 1 person every ten
seconds (currently we are around 300 million people in US). If the US
does not want to become a country that falls behind others, perhaps
becoming less than a first-world country, this trend in funding needs
to stop or else about every ten seconds we will grow backwards.
There are not too many postdocs. We are not spending our tax dollars where we need to.
-BK
P.S. Harald Sontheimer compared (in this comment section) the
elation of a high school athlete with that of a scientist, given a 20%
chance of "making it" in their respective professions. This comparison
is sickening to me. Raising the bar is one thing, but there are larger
issues at play here. And, while Monday Night Football is fun for many
of us, it isn't as important to our society as science. If sporting
events (which are merely entertainment) are to be the measure of what
is appropriate funding structures in a functioning society, then I
think people need to get off the competition kick, and start getting a
grip on where the world is headed. This isn't about weeding out the bad
students, this is about a system that is broken, and is getting worse.
Refs.
(1) http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2005/defense.html
(2)
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DATASTATISTICS/Resources/GDP.pdf
(3)
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2006/tables.html
(4)
http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html
http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html
(5)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_Integrity_in_Policymaking
[Comment posted 2006-09-13 11:59:41]
Koss is right to point out the need to expand the search for an
alternative approach to energy. However, he underestimates the economic
importance of sport. It is not just entertainment; it is big business,
and it is, in a way, big science.
Offhand I can't think of an area of life sciences that does not
have an implication for sports, and material sciences help hugely in
improving performance and safety.
I would feel happier to see more research money spent on getting
people to increase their involvement and competence in sports than in
killing each other. We might all live longer, healthier, happier lives.
And yes, I am aware that sport started as training for war. I find
it ironic that the Ancient world stopped warring while the Olympics
were on. It suggests people were more civilised than today.
[Comment posted 2006-09-13 13:51:54]
perspective I would like to put forward is that post docs are
considered by many institutions to be source of cheap labor. I am
tenured research scientist in a federal laboratory that has no federal
appropriation to support our costs. I therefore compete for grant money
from other government agencies such as DOE, ONR, NASA, DARPA, etc. I
have no choice but to try to reduce my costs in order to improve my
odds of maintaining funding. The difference in program cost is
considerable - ~$120K vs. ~$275K. That is why my colleagues and I look
to hire post docs when funded instead of hiring permanent colleagues.
There are other issues as well. It is much more difficult now than even
a few years ago to maintain continuity of funding which is necessary to
hire someone permanently. Also, many sponsors are toying with the
DARPA high risk/high gain model/fast pace - model of funding in which
you are expected to meet milestones in 3 month intervals or else you
are cut. Finally, the retraction in growth of federal monies to support
basic research is directly due to the high cost of the war.
[Comment posted 2006-09-13 19:10:20]
a recently employed faculty in a tenure track position, I understand
how painful, demoralizing, and insidious the process of the job search
is. In any other field, when a person takes a part-time position and
makes a favorable impression on her employer, eventually she will be
hired full-time. It is in her favor to work hard so they will know
she's good and that they can count on her. In academia, if a person is
doing an excellent job and everyone is impressed, she can count on NOT
being hired when a full-time position is advertised.
Before I got my job I was a freeway flier, working 4-6 part time
positions on as many campuses just to pay rent. My pay-per-hour looked
great on paper, but it was only for contact time. When
I figured in the time spent on preparation, grading and meeting
with students , I didn't make much more than minimum wage. This is a
common experience for new PhDs
I was told that if I wanted a Community College job, then I would
need a Ph.D. Now, because funds for professors are limited, the hires
are going to MAs and MSs who are considerably cheaper to hire. So, even
though I'm better educated and more skilled, I ruined my chance to get
a Community College position because I pursued an advanced education.
Not addressed in the article is the inordinately high wages given
to administrators and the expansion of administrative positions.
Coupled with all of the additional perks for such hires (housing,
spousal hires, private cars, travel, etc...); we are draining the
moneys that might otherwise be invested in new faculty, research, and
students.
We've taken our best and brightest minds, people who are deeply
committed and hard working and we're destroying them intellectually,
emotionally, and spiritually.
[Comment posted 2006-09-13 20:33:24]
Grant makes a good point in saying that BIG things such as sport
businesses can have a good economic, or otherwise positive, influence
on society, such as, perhaps not obvious to a common citizen, some
scientific endeavors related to sport technology. However, not once
have my comments intentionally underestimated sports' economic
importance, contrary to Ian's remark. The sports businesses are doing
just fine last time I checked, Ian. But, a lot of basic science isn't
in many areas that it should be right now. From the classroom to the
lab-bench, from academics to the national labs, lack of funding for
research in the basic sciences is THE PROBLEM ABOVE ALL OTHERS.
The comparison I made before in my earlier post wasn't advocating
any decrease in the presence of sports or funding for
sports...(cough...don't make me whip out a comparison of average
salaries of scientists versus sports players)...it was that we should
try to decrease solely combative military spending now and give a
little from that pot to other places in the government, like research
and education.
In the history of the US, government once put a lot of money and
focus into understanding radar, sonar, nuclear energy, aeronautics,
etc, for all kinds of immediate reasons, many of which were associated
with our war efforts. AMAZINGLY, as a result of those collective
pursuits, the mutualistic relationship between science and government
and society that emerged in the US led to many great things...from the
microwaves that we use to cook our food, to the radios that are in our
cars, to communication systems used around the world.
Perhaps if there is something to learn from that era about how
science has perpetuated through the years, is that the government has
historically played a huge role in the state of science, and that
science doesn't function well without substantive government support
and focus.
An interesting and open review of this subject, is growing, can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_funding_of_science
[Comment posted 2006-09-20 00:54:51]
anyone see beyond academia? It's the most hidebound, dead-end segment
of American and global culture. If scientists and technical researchers
want to make a difference, go work with or start up a profit-seeking
company. That's where the real action in science is. That's where it
will be more and more as we move into the future.
The system of begging-for-money from ensconced, if originally
well-meaning bureaucrats, is killing science. Read Gregory Benford and
Michael Rose's Amazon Short "Motes in God's Eye" for a gimlet-eyed
evisceration of the grant system and how it is destroying the soul of
science. Academia and the political state have transformed modern
science from the world's most exciting collaborative adventure into a
profession of bureaucratic drudges and lap-dog supplicants.
Bureaucratic science is killing the natural wonder, excitement, and
risk-filled sense of adventure that once drove the advance of
knowledge.
What puzzles me is how blind most are to a rather obvious
contradiction in their point of view. They are upset at being denied a
secure tenure track by the deadwood of aging tenured professors. Is
that what they aspire to? The tenured Big Easy? To become the very
deadwood for which they show such contempt? Maybe that's the real
source of their frustrations. They've been in academia so long they've
forgotten how to take risks in the great adventure of innovation and
discovery.
In the private profit-seeking sector, you create your own future.
Yes, it's hard. Yes, it's full of risk, frustration, and far more work
than anything seen inside of an ivy-covered wall. But on the other
hand, with courage and pluck, you make your own way into an open-ended
evolutionary future where the only limits are your imagination and
willingness to persist. Oh and you'd better be able to handle real
competition as brilliant minds in myriad parallel ventures pursue
meaningful discoveries and innovations. In doing so, they will be
competing with you for resources, both intellectual and financial, but
the competition is based on competence, character, and demonstrable
results. Bueno suerte.
[Comment posted 2006-09-28 16:52:46]
than 15 years, I found your editorial entitled 'Are we training too many
scientists?' extremely refreshing and on the mark. The Scientist is one of
the few (although growing) voices that speak out against the status quo in
the life sciences, and especially in academia. I too read Carrie Wolinetz's
piece last year, which prompted me to ask her to come as one of the
featured speakers in a Career Day event I was organizing with other fellow
graduate students. Since very early in my science education, I have been
confronting aspects of the academic research system which I thought made
absolutely no sense. To the point that after I finish what I hope will be
my only postdoc, I plan to join the ranks of industry scientists.
I think, however, that the problem is deeper than what the article
and the editorial describe. I think that the problem is not that we are
training too many
scientists, but that we are not training too many scientists well. As I
have heard repeatedly at my institution, they receive hundreds of
applications for faculty position openings, but most of them do not even
make the first cut. I truly believe that this is because many PIs are
irresponsibly allowing people to earn PhDs without really deserving them.
The lab where I got my PhD had a very low success rate. Of every four
students who started a PhD thesis, only one would actually earn a PhD. But
those of us who made it, were able to get very good postdocs in no time,
and I am confident that we'll succeed because we have a strong scientific
foundation. I have seen how other labs allow people to graduate without
publications, or with no first author publications. Others do have the
first author publications, but due to the lack of enforcing appropriate
authorship standards in academia, their intellectual contribution to the
papers are little or nothing. These people are then obligated to complete
their training doing multiple postdocs, which requires them to have mentors
willing to fill in the holes. As we all know this happens very
infrequently, because postdocs are hired with the understanding that they
are trained and that they need to demonstrate independence.
This is a problem that is fed from two directions. At one end, you have a
lot of students starting graduate school with the wrong idea. Many think
this is an extension of their undergraduate education, and fail to realize
that this is more like being a student who also holds a job that demands a
lot of hours and responsibility. In my experience most graduate students
lack this kind of responsibility due to immaturity. Since they can barely
achieve what is demanded of them, it is unrealistic to expect them to
overachieve and get involved in activities that would give them the edge
for future job hunts. Most graduate programs that I have been in contact
with, suffer from an endemic apathy. Nobody wants to get involved in
committees, hosting seminars, or organizing events. These kind of
activities taught me a lot about how research institutions operate, allowed
me to network with all kinds of people, and gave me experience in
activities in which I would have to get involved if I decided to be a
faculty member at an academic institution. I too suffered from many of
these ailments when I started my PhD the first time. At that time due to
many reasons, both personal as well as professional, I decided to get a
Master's degree. After I worked as a technician for a few years, I realized
that I was ready to earn my PhD, and this time I approached it in a much
more focused and mature way.
At the other end, you have PIs in academic institutions who gave up on
trying their hardest after tenure, and do not invest the appropriate amount
of time in training their graduate students. There are also arrogant and
selfish scientists who want to have successful scientific careers but do
not give much thought about their role as mentors, and see graduate
students, as cheap hands to the work. Even those who try hard to be good
mentors, manage their lab poorly, thus achieving the opposite of what they
were intending. This is due to a serious lack of mentoring, managing, and
teaching skills in most PIs, which is in turn a result of the way they were
trained. Since the days of my Master's I have realized, that we need to get
training in administration, and money management, as well as teaching. This
is a set of skills that you'll need as a PI in BOTH academia and industry.
As The Scientist pointed out as well in last month's issue, companies are
finding that the scientists they hire have difficulties with the team
concept, and to be able to work with scientists from other disciplines as
well as non scientists. These are things, that ironically, scientists also
need to be able to do in academia today.
I would like to emphasize the points in your outline for solving this
problem relating to quality of training, and opportunities to educate
scientists in business, and administration. I also would like to add, that
a better system to screen graduate students is also of great importance. I
think a Master's degree or work experience should become part of the
requirements, to ensure students will be willing to meet the demands of a
PhD thesis. Finally, given the way the global economy is evolving, it is
important to realize that future generations will be obligated to educate
themselves, perhaps even beyond Bachelor's degrees, because low skill high
paying jobs will no longer be available in industrialized countries. We all
know that in the life sciences we have a lot more questions that we are
being able to address with the current supply of scientists, which allows
one to envision this as a field that will always have jobs to be filled.
But until we do not make this system attractive for young people, by making
the process less painful and better remunerated, we will never be able to
fill in the gap.
Sincerely,
J. Marcela Hernandez.
[Comment posted 2006-10-03 20:03:44]
am glad that finally a full size article was published on the
horrifying fate of Ph.D.s. (Are We Training Too Many Scientists, by
Brijal P. Trivedi, Sept. 2006).
Its a very sad situation that many Ph.D.s in biology are
constantly worried about their career and jobs, even at an age when
fellow friends and relatives in other industry are looking forward to a
comfortable retirement. Both of my children on the other hand pursued
their higher education in areas other than science (thanks to dads
advice) and have stable jobs with more secure future; whereas poor
scientist dad is still worried about his own job. Many of my
colleagues have either retired as post-docs after working in several
labs or resigned to other non-science professions.
Here is my analogy for plenty of post-docs with no or fewer permanent research jobs, beside lack of federal research funds.
(a) Many investigators offer cheap salaries to their postdocs,
which allow them to hire two postdocs, instead of one. Such
individuals are readily available mainly from India and China. They are
more than happy to work overtime even for less than half of salary.
(b) Established investigators are too greedy. They neither want
to retire (even in their 70s) nor support their productive postdocs for
writing grants and becoming independent. On top of all this there is no
respect for these hard working individuals and always treated as second
grade scientists.
[Comment posted 2007-01-12 00:55:13]
number of scientists needed equals funding minus costs of supplies and
labor followed byu division by a constant adjusted for inflation. The
number of trainees was increased by a greater factor than the funding,
yielding an oversupply.
One must increase funding or decrease the number of trainees. One
might eliminate funding for physicians, who should be caring for
patients. Physicians, who earn quite nice salaries without a bit of
grant money, should help scientists perform their tasks. As it is,
physicians disemploy hard working scientists.
[Comment posted 2007-01-12 02:26:53]
This question of whether or whether we are not training too many
scientists, has been the subject of debate for a number of years. This
is not a recent phenomenon. My son, who works in the music industry in
New York had this discussion some time ago and he pointed out that a
similar problem exists in the field of music, dance, art and acting.
Each year thousands upon thousands of aspiring young artists flock to
New York and other cultural capitals hoping to "make it big"...but of
course, most do not and end up in other jobs to earn a living. He felt
that mentors and teachers only have the moral obligation to tell these
students that the odds of employment and success in these fields are
really small. As long as they understand this, then they have the right
to choose whether or not they want to pursue an artistic career. As
some others here have commented, as long as they know the odds, why
should they be discouraged NOT to pursue their passions, be it science
or art or humanities? Its hard to argue against this idea.
Having said this, I also think that many faculty who are already
established (young or old) do have a vested interest in keeping people
"indentured" in the laboratory as post-docs or senior technicians;
however, it is not completely the fault of the faculty themselves, but
rather those university senior administrations who refuse to use
university resources and endowments to cover their share of the
scholarly and research endeavor demanded in academia. Is the money
there? That's always a valid concern but it is sometimes hard to
justify such a stance when one considers CEO academic salaries; not to
mention what many institutions of higher learning pay their athletic
coaches and team managers.
The pressure on faculty in the sciences to obtain grants for the
purposes of providing income in the form of staff salaries and indirect
cost recovery, puts enormous and unending pressure on faculty at all
levels to "play the grants game". Many faculty are told that they must
have multiple grants to get tenure and are expected to pay almost all,
if not all, of their salaries on grants. One cannot generate the 'big'
grants with just one person working in the lab. On top of that, many
schools want the grantees to cover full tuition for the graduate
students and trainees as another source of revenue generation for the
institution. The conflicts between doing good research and the
pressures to generate income are almost never-ending. I believe this to
be an immoral and unethical stance on the part of higher education
because it permits the research universities to avoid their
responsibilities and obligations to support scholarship and the search
for knowledge. This is one of the reasons that so many faculty feel the
need to sustain the status quo when it comes to training students--its
likely the only way that they can survive to--especially if they have
to generate their livelihoods through grant income. So it becomes a
vicious circle in the final analysis. This unrelenting pressure has
contributed mightily to the problems we are facing in today's research
climate. The fault lies not so much in Federal funding or Congressional
sympathies, but rather in the way universities continue to conduct
their educational and academic mission. Much needs to be changed in
this context if scholarship, teaching and research are to succeed in
this country.
[Comment posted 2007-01-12 16:28:22]
conflict between idea of science and profit in university is more ever
increasing. Competition in grant and publication is ever intense. As in
every business, competition breeds frauds. Particularly in biological
science, withouth rigorous equations, largely dependent on personal
interpretation and presentation ( called spin), and endless variations
in systems, biological science research abounds in incentives to tell
untruth, opportunities to tell untruth and impunities to tell untruth.
The result of this narrow mindness of revenue producing policy is the
corruption of science in American science.
In my 12 years in this field ( immunology), research in US has
become more and more insipid, creativeness become less and less
evident.
other factor is the nature of biological research itself. Unlike
other branches of science, biomedical research require less advanced
training, the ideas can be readily grasped by a person with superficial
knowledge. Most of work is physically demanding and the result depends
on numerous trials with a lot of failure. Where fortune is blind, large
number of manpower is required to get lucky. Because of this nature,
the entry barrier in biological science in lower than other fields;
physicians and scientists alike can join the competition. Because the
idea is simple in logic, a professor can spend all his life spinning
without touching the experiments. I can hardly imagine a real physicist
who does not calculate the equation on his/her own skill .
As biological research become more and more mature, large scale
experimentation will require fewer and fewer independent investigators.
As application of knowledge in marketplace become faster and faster,
with more vigorous, real life test in the market place, biological
industry actually is the brightest spot in research.
Together With a culture that rewards "salemanship" more handsomely
than other skills, creative and groundbreaking biological science in
Unite States like its manufacture will be facing long term challenge.
[Comment posted 2007-01-22 14:02:11]
After
graduating with a Ph.D. in immunology from the University of California
in 1989, I did seven years of postdoc work, which included four years
as an NIH fellow, over 30 publications, and a three-year job search
that ended with maybe two interviews. I eventually opted out for law
school. Currently, I am employed at a state agency and I am helping a
friend to start up a biotech company. After reading this article, I can
say that the employment situation has not improved. In fact, one of my
current supervisors said that during the 1970s he left biology for law
school because of the ominous job market in the life sciences.
What keeps this postdoc/science/university system going? Is the
system faulty or do people not understand the system? The following is
my point of view.
My current job allows me to compare the work environment of a state
research university to a more conventional state agency. The most
striking difference is that universities resemble for-profit
corporations. During graduate school, I observed that my major
professor operated as a small business owner. He needed outside
investments (government and private funding) to conduct his business
(research). Employees (graduate students and postdocs) did the everyday
labor and a middle manager (staff scientist) oversaw the labs
day-to-day operation. The products he generated included information
(publications) and graduates. He was adept at networking, building
alliances, making deals, managing time and money, writing, and all the
other skills needed to run his business. He maximized output by
lowering overhead costs (i.e., paying the graduate students and
postdocs minimal wages). This was balanced by the trainees optimism
that the education and training that the professor provided would, in
time, bring their own rewards. Financially, he appears successful.
Through the San Francisco Chronicles recent reports on UC executive
pay, I glanced at the linked employee compensation list. My former
major professor was among the top 30 most highly compensated employees
in the entire University of California.
Although all workplaces openly promote teamwork and cooperation,
the university is inherently based on competition. There is competition
between students for classes, grades, internships, jobs, etc. There is
competition among professors for lab space, grants, publications,
reputation, promotions, tenure, etc. Departments compete for
facilities. Universities compete for high-performance students and
executive officers, U.S. News and World Report rankings, well-funded
professors from prestigious universities, funding and more funding,
alumni contributions, goodwill, etc. Competition is the universal
university mentality.
There is little motivation to reduce the numbers of science Ph.D.s
since people continue to want these degrees and universities exist to
grant them. Career counselors and professors are not likely to be very
open about career prospects since they directly or indirectly benefit
from the postdoc system. Besides, they do not want postdocs to dismiss
potential opportunities or become prematurely discouraged from
following their aspirations.
Some professors could provide better mentorship, but that might be
asking for too much. First, professors are highly taxed since they are
trying to excel in a system that can show little compassion for those
that fall behind. They are burdened with responsibilities to many
people within and without the institution. Second, there may be a
subtle form of conflict-of-interest at play. In any group, trust is
important. Professors may be guarded about training their own potential
future competitors for grants, publications, etc. Postdocs are greatly
desired as affordable and competent sources of professional knowledge
and labor. However, postdocs gain intimate knowledge of their
professors lives, work, and ideas. This becomes another balancing act
and potential source of concern for everyone involved.
Students, faculty, and staff are acknowledged citizens of the
university community. They enjoy protections and privileges not given
to postdocs who are essentially independent contractors (not unlike
foreign migrant farm workers).
For improved chances for success and/or happiness, students and postdocs might consider the following suggestions:
Consider professional school rather than graduate school. Law,
medicine, business, etc. curricula seem to be more highly structured
and directed toward the attainment of specific skill sets for specific
jobs.
Realize that more formal education and training (especially more of
the same) may not be beneficial. Interdisciplinary training not only
makes you more applicable to a broader range of jobs, but you will be
exposed to a wider range of materials, and possibly find other things
that you would like to do. You may become a more interesting and
well-rounded person, and that can only help you.
Obtain certificates from community colleges for immediately useable
job skills and experience. One of my friends dropped out of a Masters
program in electrical engineering and will soon receive an accounting
certificate from a community college. Unlike electrical engineering,
she will find decent jobs anywhere, anytime. Or, if you are considering
something like medical school, but are not sure that its for you, get
a certificate as an emergency medical technician or a medical
assistant. Work at this for a while and see if it suits you. You may
decide that medicine is not for you. But you will still have a paycheck
while you explore further. University career counselors might not
recommend this since it would be like an employee at Costco suggesting
that you try Sams Club (or vice versa).
Understand the flow (e.g., the corporate culture) and work with it.
If you cannot live with the system, get out and find one that fits you.
Or adjust your expectations to fit the system. As the Chinese say, In
times of chaos, there is both danger and opportunity. Chaos is a
constant condition. Therefore, there are always opportunities to find
and dangers to avoid. It is okay to change career directions. I know of
an insurance agent who was a veterinary student. My own physician said
that he wished he had pursued engineering. Another friend left physics
and became a business school professor. A former tenure-track computer
science professor realized that his labor lawyer wife had a higher
income. He became a patent attorney. I know career counselors that were
postdocs. For survival, its better to be a moving target than a
sitting duck.
Improve your understanding of people and learn to handle all types
of interpersonal situations. Every job requires teamwork, and all hires
and promotions involve political considerations. People favor coworkers
that are likeable and trustworthy, as well as competent. I developed an
interest in social and evolutionary psychology, negotiation and
mediation, etiquette and manners, and other similar topics. People in
the hard sciences can benefit from the information that social
scientists are discovering about us all.
People really make the job. No matter how much a person enjoys her
or his specific duties, difficult coworkers degrade the work
atmosphere. Conversely, great coworkers can make almost any job
wonderful. Become one of these great people that everyone wants.
Are We Training Too Many Scientists
FEATURE Are We Training Too Many Scientists? | |
| A glut of postdocs, too few desired positions, and a faculty invested in the status quo point to a need for change. Who will take responsibility? By BIJAL P. TRIVEDI |
© JASON VARNEY|VARNEYPHOTO.COM | After |
Icenhour's experience is mirrored in the lives of many other ambitious
postdoctoral fellows seeking the tenure track. With rising numbers of newly
minted life science PhDs, fewer tenure track positions open, and bulging ranks
of increasingly frustrated postdocs, many want to know why the number of PhDs
and the focus of their education is out of balance with job prospects and career
expectations. "These are some of the lowest paid PhDs in academia," says
Harvard economist Richard Freeman.
the number of PhDs and the focus of their education
is out of balance with job prospects
and career expectations.
Between 1983 and 2003 the number of doctorates earned annually in the life
sciences, including agricultural, biological, and medical sciences, almost
doubled, rising from 4,777 to 8,163, according to the National Science Foundation's
Science and Engineering Indicators 2006. The majority of these graduates immediately
entered the postdoctoral arena, catapulting the number of postdocs in these
fields at US universities from roughly 14,000 to more than 33,000.
Yet, the percentage of doctoral recipients holding tenure and tenure track
appointments continues to shrink. For PhDs overall, after five years only about
22% of graduates hold a tenure track position. For life science PhDs specifically,
between 1993 and 2003 the percentage of graduates who held tenure or tenure
track positions four to six years after receiving their degrees fell from almost
25% to 18%; the trends were even more pronounced for those in the biological
sciences, with percentages falling from 25% to 15%. "You talk to anyone
running a faculty job search anywhere and they are getting on average 200 candidates," says
postdoc Chris Blagden, who earned his PhD in molecular biology from Kings College
London in 1999. After failing to find a full-time research job while working
in postdoc positions, he grew discouraged enough to shift his goals to a nonresearch
career.
Career disappointment for postdocs is not just about finding a job, it's
finding a job that is rewarding: one that pays reasonably well and offers a
career path. The recent prospects for PhDs - rising numbers of postdocs,
few tenure track positions, and poor funding - do not live up to that
expectation. Rather, current prospects are similar to conditions in the 1990s
that spurred the NSF to organize a committee to issue the critical report, "Recent
Trends in the Careers of Life Scientists." This 1998 analysis highlighted
bleak prospects for life scientists on the road to independent research careers.
|
The report revealed that the average age of a PhD recipient was about 32
years old, and after the typical fellowship postdocs were between 35 and 40
years old before they landed their first permanent position. Moreover, the
committee saw opportunities for postdocs narrowing: 61% of PhDs who graduated
in 1963 and 1964 secured tenure track positions within 10 years of receiving
their degrees; of the students graduating with a PhD in 1985-1986, only 38%
had tenure track positions 10 years later. "So basically, at the time, the supply
of PhDs was rising and the demand for tenure track faculty was declining," says
Paula Stephan, a labor economist at Georgia State University in Atlanta, and
a member of the 1998 committee.
The unintended consequence of the shortage of faculty positions was longer
postdoctoral fellowships as young scientists received low wages, endured
little job security or respect, and delayed starting families while waiting
for a job. Other postdocs and PhDs accepted nontenure track and part-time
jobs to stay afloat. The committee's recommendations were blunt. Topping
the list was that "there be no further expansion in the size of existing
graduate-education programs in the life sciences and no development of new
programs."
Another suggestion was to ensure that graduate programs offered incoming PhD
candidates job-placement data revealing the fates of departed PhDs and their
jobs and starting salaries. The suggestion was seen as another mechanism to
deflate the postdoc bubble by allowing students to make more informed career
choices. William Brinkley, vice president for graduate sciences at Baylor College
of Medicine in Houston and a coauthor of the report, says the conclusion was
based on concerns that "PhDs were just being hired for benefit of mentors
and their careers, treated as hired hands, and true mentoring wasn't
taking place."
The report was met, perhaps predictably, with outcry from a faculty that
was happy with the way things were. And any momentum for change the report
may have created was smothered with money: Shortly after it was issued the
economy began its upswing and Congress began the doubling of the NIH budget. "The
future looked very promising then," says Brinkley. "I thought ... we
are going to double the opportunities in America for research and biomedical
science and therefore we needed graduate students and there was a great future
for them. In 2003 it all looked so optimistic."
Since then, of course, the NIH budget has flattened, and Brinkley's
optimism has fallen. Additionally, while the total amount of R01 grants awarded
annually has been holding steady at approximately $1.3 billion since 2000,
the success rate has been falling from about 26% six years ago to just shy
of 18% in 2005, according to the NIH. Even if the number of R01s awarded had
remained at its high of 4,521, the success rate - thanks to an increase
in applicants from 16,827 to 21,745 - would be just 20.8%. In other words,
the drop can't be fully explained by reduced funding levels. "We
don't want to train too many in any field and ignore their ability to
find work, that's my view as the dean," says Brinkley. "We
need to be concerned about what we say to young people who are coming into
graduate school about the market."
Others, however, deny that the problem exists. Most faculty, who depend on
the graduate student and postdoctoral workforce, disagree that the system is
churning out too many PhDs or that the numbers of incoming graduate students
should be curbed to match annual funding. "If the academic job market
was the only one out there, then we are almost certainly educating too many
life science PhDs," says Norma Allewell, dean of the College of Chemical & Life
Sciences at the University of Maryland in College Park. But, she adds, so many
opportunities are open to life science PhDs that the four to six years spent
in graduate school are not a waste.
While the employment stats do seem to support Allewell's notion that
most life science PhDs do find jobs, most postdocs would say that is not the
point. The average rate of unemployment in 2003 for those with biological,
agricultural, and environmental life science PhDs hovered around 2.0%, according
to the NSF. This was slightly less than unemployment rates for PhDs in the
physical sciences and math, which were 2.6% and 2.4%, respectively, and slightly
above rates for PhDs with degrees in health or the social sciences, which were
1.4% and 1.5%.
|
Of those life science PhDs finding employment in 2003, the majority (55.5%)
found jobs in academia. The rest joined industry (34%) or government (10.5%).
The academic jobs were scattered between the coveted full-time faculty positions
and the less appealing nontenure track, full-time, nonfaculty positions: research
associates, lecturers, adjunct and administrative positions, as well as postdoctoral
fellowships and part-time positions. And as Chris Blagden and many other postdocs
will tell you, it is about the quality of the job, not just having a low-paying,
seemingly dead-end position.
While the numbers and postdocs tell one story, others say it doesn't
matter: Science is above supply-and-demand issues, and the only thing the system
lacks is more funding. "When it comes to training scientists you are
training smart people to think for themselves, to create ... the job of
a scientist is to do something entirely original," says Robert H. Tai,
an assistant professor of science education at the University of Virginia. "But
that's the thing about science, you never know which one of those minds
out there is going to come out with the next big thing. It's basically
a horse race ... and every now and then you have a horse that you didn't
think was going to do it." That happens often enough, says Tai, that
predicting which graduate students will succeed is very difficult and thus
nobody should be discouraged from going into science. "Like any competitive
field you encourage everybody, and the best rise to the top."
Although Tai is concerned by the growing ranks of postdocs and the shortage
of faculty positions, he is adamant that the root of the problem is not too
many graduate students. He says the problem is due to waning public support
and interest in science, which undermines support for science funding and
scientific careers. "You can't turn the PhD spigot on and off
based on these funding trends," says Tai. He wants more money from
state and federal funds to establish and support tenure track positions,
as opposed to NIH grants that he says empower more established scientists
and do little to relieve the pressure inside the postdoctoral bottleneck. "Academia
needs to take responsibility for educating the public and explaining the
hard science and why it is worth doing. If the public understands the value
of the research they will push Congress for more money ... something
similar has happened with the grassroots movement in terms of stem cell research."
Marguerite Evans-Galea has spent nine years in fellowships, first at the University
of Utah and currently at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis,
Tenn., while tirelessly searching for a tenure track position. "Most
young graduate students have aspirations of becoming a great scientist and
winning a Nobel. It's a very impressionable stage," says Evans-Galea.
Thus, it's essential that graduate programs expose the students to a
broad range of careers choices and be frank about their chances of making it
in academia, she says. This was one of the recommendations of the 1998 report,
but unlike law, medical, or business schools, few life sciences departments
appear to track salaries or jobs of recent graduates, and thus have no starting
point for such career counseling.
|
While Evans-Galea is returning home to Australia to accept a senior research
fellowship, what she describes as "a glorified postdoc," other
postdocs are leaving the bench permanently. Blagden, who earned his PhD in
the UK, has now been a postdoc at NYU School of Medicine for six years. After
approximately four years he began his job search. "I got basically no
interest in my job application and I realized that this wasn't going
to go anywhere and I moved on. For the last 2.5 years I've been training
myself in non-profit leadership [grant management]. That's what I'm
intending to move into ... I need a strong scientific background for this,
so I don't see myself as leaving the field completely."
Robert Palazzo, biology professor and director of the Center for Biotechnology
and Interdisciplinary Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy,
NY, says that Blagden and others who can't make tenure or achieve independence
in the academic sector because of the competition for resources often leave
the field or the country. "If they drop out you can't recover them," says
Palazzo. "They might go into patent law or consulting or other areas,
but they won't be in that primary innovative stew that we need so badly
to remain competitive globally ... they won't be contributing to
the areas where the country has invested in them."
Industry has been filling in some of the gap. A comparison of the 2003 and
1993 stats reveal a dramatic shift in employment, with 34% of biological, agricultural,
and environmental science postdocs choosing a career in industry versus 26%
in 1993. "In chemistry most grads go into industry, and life sciences
may be transitioning into that situation not because there is less of a need
in academia, but because there are a lot of other opportunities that weren't
there before," says Peter Bruns, vice president for grants and special
programs at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Chevy Chase, Md. "A
lot of attitudes have changed," says Georgia State's Stephan. "Industry
is no longer considered a second-rate job because of the higher salaries, the
resources and equipment, and the change in publication policies that allow
scientists to publish in the top journals."
|
The National Postdoctoral Association in Washington, DC, which represents
more than 40,000 postdocs, counsels new graduate students against relying solely
on the goal of a tenure track position. "[We tell them] only a minority
get those jobs; you need to have a plan B right now, not at the end of postdoc," says
Alyson Reed, the executive director. "There is a huge disparity between
expectations and outcome, and we see it in the data and hear it anecdotally;
they can't find jobs and then shift to plan B," says Reed. This,
Reed points out, does not mean she believes there are too many PhDs; rather,
that schools accepting these students have the responsibility to train beyond
the career model of PI at a research university and provide a realistic set
of expectations about possible careers after earning a PhD. "There is
more to life than academia and honestly, most of it is better paid," says
Blagden.
The interdisciplinary approach is catching on, and several institutes now
have specific programs offering students broader career-oriented training.
While most admit that change in academia usually lags external forces, Allewell
says that the University of Maryland is doing more to prepare students for
other kinds of jobs, including those at biotech companies or government labs,
while still training people who want academic careers. San Diego State University
has established a PhD-MBA program to train PhDs in science in addition to offering
students the skills to manage people and budgets, conduct strategic planning,
or take complicated science and translate it for the layperson. (see J. Williamson, "Bridging
the Gulf," The Scientist, 20(8):76-7, August 2006.)
Though graduate programs may show glimmers of change, faculty stress
that exposing graduates to more career choices will not obviate the
problems caused by lack of funding, which will eventually cripple
opportunities in both academia and industry. New discoveries made at
academic health centers and basic research labs are the wellspring for
biotech, says Baylor's Brinkley. Given that NIH funding is linked to
academic employment, cutbacks in NIH funding would ultimately slow the
growth of research in industry, he says.
The situation, at least at Baylor, may be self-correcting. There was
a 36% reduction in applicants from 2003-2004 to 2005-2006. The size of
the incoming 2005-2006 class dropped by 12% compared to 2004-2005.
Brinkley says he isn't sure whether such a phenomenon reflects a
nationwide trend. But, he knows that when funding is bad and faculty
have a tough time getting grants the word spreads through the student
population, leading many to steer away from PhD programs. And while it
is almost impossible to get departments to voluntarily reduce the class
size of incoming graduate students, Brinkley says that when faculty
start losing grants, then recruiters are obligated by school policy to
recruit fewer students.
Others believe the core issue is how funding is used. NIH funding
"has got to be directed in a different way than to the 55-year-old
senior scientists for more bodies in his or her lab," says Harvard's
Freeman. Give more money to postdocs and grad students when they are
young and let them do their work, he says. "That way if they end up
leaving the field we won't have taken advantage of their love of
science." Frank Solomon, a biology professor at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, agrees with Freeman but goes further, taking
aim at the underpinnings of science curricula: "We are training too
many PhDs to become independent researchers ... the growth of biotech
hasn't kept up with the number of postdocs, and lots of life science
companies haven't been able to flourish." Solomon says that the system
is broken, and the only way to fix it is to uncouple the funding of
training and research positions. He adds that the life sciences need to
legitimize the job of a career scientist who wants to continue working
at the bench and isn't looking to run an independent lab.
For Icenhour, serendipity intervened. She decided to move on to a
postdoc at Duke University where a training program might give her the
skills to land a tenure track position. She attended grant-writing
workshops and hired and trained an undergraduate student to work in the
lab while she worked for her postdoctoral advisor. But after just one
year a physician from the University of Virginia approached her to join
a new molecular diagnostics startup.
"I just couldn't pass it up," says Icenhour even though she had
never really considered going into industry. "I'm essentially running
the company and am vice president and director of research, and we have
one small grant." In addition she was offered an adjunct assistant
professorship in the department of medicine at Duke. "So I feel like I
have got a bit of both worlds." But most of Icenhour's colleagues have
chosen a different path when they were not able to get a tenure track
position. The marketplace is changing and funding is fickle, says
Icenhour, "I think many postdocs still aren't [open to other
opportunities] because they have spent so much time preparing for one
type of career."
[Comment posted 2006-09-08 03:45:08]
reading this article, and feeling that the future is bleak, I was
surprised that one point was not touched upon. That point being the
'dead wood' tenured professors, whom should have retired long ago, yet
remain in their positions. At every point along my training, from small
liberal arts collage, to state university, to prestigious university
for my present postdoctoral position, there have been a number of
faculty in each department along the way, which were stewing in their
positions, while younger, more eager faculty could not break into the
permanent tenured slot. While I am aware of the issues touched upon in
your article, it would have been nice to see a nod thrown toward those
programs set up in the 1960s-'80s in which some faculty set up camp,
tenured, and have remained as nothing more than a lump collecting their
pay, as younger researchers trying to do research and perform struggle
to make ends meet.
[Comment posted 2006-09-08 03:45:19]
agree with Mr. Utzat in the effect that has the number tenured
professors that should retire and yet remain in their positions. I
finished my Ph. D. in 2002 and even today there is faculty in the
department that has a laboratory, doesnt do research, and it use to
have a technician with the solely duty of moving a liquid nitrogen
tank. Nice! After my Ph. D., I moved on to a postdoctoral position at
NIH and 2 years later I accepted my current job. Today, Im a Research
Associate with a false promise that a faculty appointment would be
offered after 2 years. So far, nothing yet. The excuse has been the
difficulties of getting funding through NIH to support my salary. Two
years ago I started applying for different job positions (government
and biotech) but the journey has been very difficult. I have gotten
some interviews and nothing else. Right now a faculty position for me
is out of my options. What is frustrating for me and I think for many
people is that no matter how many degrees and training you have that
doesnt warranty getting that nice job you are looking for. In my case,
I obtained a B.S. in Microbial Technology, a M.S. in Microbiology and
Molecular Biology, a Ph. D. in Microbiology and Immunology and 5 years
of postdoctoral training. Im still struggling.
[Comment posted 2006-09-08 17:37:32]
last two issues of The Scientist have illuminated deep problems with
our University research system. Are we training too many scientists
and The Inequality of Science are well-documented articles that
clearly show the faults of the current system. However, the articles
also show a possible solution to both problems. Create more
opportunities to become faculty through equitable funding of our
current institutions. Capping grant funds that any one Principal
Investigator (PI) can receive as well as the number of Post-Docs that
answer to a single PI are straightforward ways to create more faculty
positions. The one exception to the cap might be for equipment
grants, just as long as the grant is for equipment and not personnel.
If the idea is huge and worthwhile, then finding several PIs to band
together to meet a larger goal should be simple enough. While this step
should expand the tenure-track ranks overnight and solve the too many
scientists problem it is not enough. There should also be regulation
to level the field, as far as funds go, between the have and the
have-not institutions. There are many models to follow in setting
institutional caps. Which one should be followed I do not know, but I
do know in the end there would be true competition instead of the
near-monopoly that exists today. Therefore, in the situation I propose
I suspect many institutions would finally find viability and
competition thereby allowing them to grow and hire even more PIs. My
proposal would also foster more collaboration between PIs that should
lead to new possibilities and more collegiality. The biggest winners in
all this would be We, The People as more researchers doing quality
work in more communities will expand our knowledge economy and maybe
even make the world a better place, which should be the goal of all
education.
Sincerely- DL Wilcox
Bloomington, IN, USA
lonbordin@hotmail.com
[Comment posted 2006-09-12 15:00:15]
too many that want to academics. That has been a problem forever - and
one that universities nurture because professors create more like
themselves - both because they know nothing different and because a new
generation of academics reflects well on them personally.
[Comment posted 2006-09-12 16:31:54]
article paints a bleak picture for many post-docs who are currently
aspiring to academic independence. However, lets not forget that by
design, the career track to inpendent academic P.I. is competitive and
cannot assure a high success rate while maintaining a selection for
excellence. If we told any high school athlete that he or she would
have a 20% chance to make it in professional sports they would be
elated. What I believe is the most important aspect here is honesty at
all levels of training. Let's be honest with our graduate students when
they are marginal and suggest them to leave. Let's be honest with
post-docs who have become "lifers" as to how we rate their
competitiveness and what their options are. At least we will not create
lost careers.
[Comment posted 2006-09-12 15:56:09]
problem is common to all the sciences. For example, in my field
(astronomy) a two-tier system has developed, with a small number of
prize fellowships whose recipients are nearly guaranteed the choice
positions, and the dregs left over for common postdocs. It is not
uncommon for postdocs to have to search for several years to find
tenure-track positions, if indeed they find them at all. Thus many
astronomers looking for tenure-track positions apply for long-term NASA
and NSF grants as a bridge - a track I took successfully. Even then, it
took me over six years to find my first tenure track job, which I'll
take up in January. And unlike in the life sciences - which benefited
from the doubling of NIH's budget in the late 1990s - federal funding
for the physical sciences has been flat since 1990, meaning that the
inflation-adjusted budget has been declining every year.
[Comment posted 2006-09-12 17:33:37]
but having served on several search committees in the past several
years, I must say expectations of post-doctoral fellows do not often
match with their demonstrated success. We hired two faculty who both
had demonstrated the ability to do truly independent cutting edge
research and had published over 20 refereed papers. On the other hand,
there were many applicants with 3-6 papers, with only a few first
author papers. You tell me what is the problem!
At the end of the day, a post-doctoral fellow must be productive,
publish well thought out papers in respected Tier I journals.
Productivity wins more often than not. In this competive business, who
will take a risk on hiring someone who has a three year post-doc and 1
or 2 papers ? No one will nor should they. It is a competive world and
academic science is the major leagues, not everyone in the minors will
get called up.
[Comment posted 2006-09-12 19:33:06]
organization, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and many
others, are increasingly focusing on knowledge
translation/mobilization/exchange, and the need to ensure that research
that is done becomes known to and taken up by those who can make use of
the findings and apply them to current problems in health. Effective
application of research is a resource-intensive process that requires,
inter alia, persons who have an in-depth understanding of the research
and can serve as "knowledge brokers". Supply and demand in research
training may actually be in balance, if we are able to figure out a way
of engaging those with the expertise (i.e. "surplus" postdocs) in the
knowledge translation process. A few changes would have to happen
before this happy balance can be achieved: those with advanced degrees
would have to become interested in working as knowledge brokers, and
organizations would have to recognize the value of knowledge brokers
and be willing to pay them. There would also have to be a change in
values in the training environment so that this career path is not
dismissed as something for failed researchers.
[Comment posted 2006-09-12 19:40:06]
world trains too many scientists and expects physicians to disemploy
those who are trained. Many physicians must garner Federal government
grants to advance academically; this pressure, with requests by medical
organizations upon funding entities to sponsor "clinical scientists",
decreases employment of scientists, who would almost certainly generate
more knowledge per dollar spent.
One solution is to refuse to fund physicians as principal investigators unless they relinquish the practice of medicine.
[Comment posted 2006-09-12 19:59:58]
not! The problem is that both the scientific and medical workforces are
being seriously threatened by the "dumbing down of America". When the
public's perception of science is largely media (TV) derived, when
scientifically ludicrous "infomercials" openly preach daily
anti-scientific ideologies to a listeners with generally no scientific
background, and when the president of the USA himself can't even
pronounce the word "nuclear", we have the makings of a serious problem.
Until the scientific and the biomedical communities recapture public
understanding, confidence, and support, we will continue to have
beaurocratic politicians and their idiotic rhetoric undermining the
future of our scientific and medical work forces.
[Comment posted 2006-09-12 22:26:08]
am glad to see that this debate is going on right now and as a graduate
student I know this is a very complex problem. Most of the students I
know and talk with go into other fields such as medicine or law because
they are scared of the problems with finding a tenure-track position.
Others have gone into industry or as science writers for magazines or
books. And yes, I too believe that some faculty should retire at the
appropriate time, but I still believe that there is enough room for
everyone. As a student, I feel that you should expose yourself to
everything to find out what you like and not to depend on your
university to hold your hand and show you the way. I also think that
there should be more feedback in the application process. If you apply
for a fellowship or job and you don't get it, then why? What areas were
weak and what areas were strong in the application? I also think that
post-docs should get more feedback in their work and not be treated
like employees or hired help. All universities should set up
guidelines, like the ideas pointed out by this website, and give
post-docs a voice in their development as independent researchers. In
the end, I hope things will change and that this will not become
continued rhetoric in the years to come.
[Comment posted 2006-09-12 22:46:14]
course not! This country needs badly more scientists and a lot more
funding for medical research in order to find real solutions to many
devastating diseases. It is in fact a shame and a tragedy for our
society to have leaders so short-sighted and stingy in allowing enough
resources to medical research.
Another big problem in academic career is the lack
of standarization and quality control in the research funding
allocation. All post-docs should have to work hard and publish well in
order to get promotions and RO1 funding, however is frustrating to see
the lack of uniformity in the application of these criteria. After
publishing papers in Cell, Nature, Science, etc. I am still struggling
to get a modest RO1 application funded, whereas many other people
manage to get funding and promotions only because they are well
connected. If arbitrary and subjective criteria are continuing to be
applied to NIH RO1 funding, the future of young scientist will remain
dark as now.
[Comment posted 2006-09-12 23:56:42]
issue of mentorship is important in this discussion. A lot can be said
about how things can be improved about the career of scientists, but in
the end it is a competition, and this really is not a problem, as this
is clear to postdocs and grad students from the very start. What is not
clear is how good or how bad their mentors are. How do you know? What
is happening is that scientists are not being mentored well enough to
make them competitive, and they don't even know it.
There is no pressure whatsoever for the PI to mentor well. The PI
does not suffer if the postdoc or student does not move forward in
their career. The postdoc and the student need to be empowered if they
are to be truly independent, but in the end the PI can treat them in
whatever way he wishes to.
Somehow, the PIs must be made accountable for how they mentor and
in general, must show greater respect for them. Simple things can be
done. 1) The NIH should make the postdoc salary scale mandatory. PIs
with NIH grants rountinely give salaries way below the salary scale.
How can a postdoc develop their confidence and self respect when you
are paid less than what the NIH says you should be paid? 2) The NIH
should require a report on the progress of the trainee-scientists paid
through the grants, in terms of publications and employment and
salaries after training, among others, and this report should be part
of the evaluation for grant renewal. Taxpayer money must be used
efficiently in that the trainees must become productive. Thus, a bad PI
cannot run through postdocs willy-nilly and not be accountable. A lot
of money, and a lot of careers, are wasted because of bad mentoring. 3)
The NIH should include postdoc/student training and development as a
large part of the grant application. The research has to be done by
these scientists and the science progresses as they progress. The NIH
first and foremost should recognize this tie in its grant requirements.
The NIH does not do enough to protect the postdocs and students
that do the research in the first place. Science does not happen
without them. Research articles do not spring fully written and
published from trees. The NIH should actively promote through policy
the concept that people, like postdocs and students, make the science
and not the other way around.
[Comment posted 2006-09-13 00:04:02]
US Department of Defense has a reported Discretionary Budget listed as
$401.7 billion (ref 1). As private citizens we are told incessantly by
many sources (spanning popular media and government) that we have
entered an era of chemical and biological weaponry that is difficult to
stop with current technology and that poses great immediate threat to
our nation. We are also told that energy is a big concern for all
people on earth. Now, I'm not an expert in public policy, but one would
think that, given that the US DoD is now spending more than the GDP of
many other nations combined (ref 2), US scientists from academics to
national laboratories would find (eventually) themselves a substantive
"war-time-effort's" worth of funding. AT LEAST scientists should be
well funded to do everything we can to defend against the eminent
threat of chemical and biological attacks, or even perhaps, reposition
America for the future so we have better alternative energy solutions
that don't precipitate future world conflicts. However, this does not
seem to be the case at this time. A look at the recent US spending
architecture is indeed staggering toward this growing fact of funding
disparity in the US (ref 3, see table S-3). Ostensibly, the US
government is spending more than ever on combative military
infrastructure (new tanks, planes, ships, subs, manpower, etc) and it
seems to continue to subtract funding from things that are so very
needed now, such as basic education and scientific research. This at a
time when many feel the US government is supporting bad science (ref
4). The US is growing (ref 5) at about a net of 1 person every ten
seconds (currently we are around 300 million people in US). If the US
does not want to become a country that falls behind others, perhaps
becoming less than a first-world country, this trend in funding needs
to stop or else about every ten seconds we will grow backwards.
There are not too many postdocs. We are not spending our tax dollars where we need to.
-BK
P.S. Harald Sontheimer compared (in this comment section) the
elation of a high school athlete with that of a scientist, given a 20%
chance of "making it" in their respective professions. This comparison
is sickening to me. Raising the bar is one thing, but there are larger
issues at play here. And, while Monday Night Football is fun for many
of us, it isn't as important to our society as science. If sporting
events (which are merely entertainment) are to be the measure of what
is appropriate funding structures in a functioning society, then I
think people need to get off the competition kick, and start getting a
grip on where the world is headed. This isn't about weeding out the bad
students, this is about a system that is broken, and is getting worse.
Refs.
(1) http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2005/defense.html
(2)
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DATASTATISTICS/Resources/GDP.pdf
(3)
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2006/tables.html
(4)
http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html
http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html
(5)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_Integrity_in_Policymaking
[Comment posted 2006-09-13 11:59:41]
Koss is right to point out the need to expand the search for an
alternative approach to energy. However, he underestimates the economic
importance of sport. It is not just entertainment; it is big business,
and it is, in a way, big science.
Offhand I can't think of an area of life sciences that does not
have an implication for sports, and material sciences help hugely in
improving performance and safety.
I would feel happier to see more research money spent on getting
people to increase their involvement and competence in sports than in
killing each other. We might all live longer, healthier, happier lives.
And yes, I am aware that sport started as training for war. I find
it ironic that the Ancient world stopped warring while the Olympics
were on. It suggests people were more civilised than today.
[Comment posted 2006-09-13 13:51:54]
perspective I would like to put forward is that post docs are
considered by many institutions to be source of cheap labor. I am
tenured research scientist in a federal laboratory that has no federal
appropriation to support our costs. I therefore compete for grant money
from other government agencies such as DOE, ONR, NASA, DARPA, etc. I
have no choice but to try to reduce my costs in order to improve my
odds of maintaining funding. The difference in program cost is
considerable - ~$120K vs. ~$275K. That is why my colleagues and I look
to hire post docs when funded instead of hiring permanent colleagues.
There are other issues as well. It is much more difficult now than even
a few years ago to maintain continuity of funding which is necessary to
hire someone permanently. Also, many sponsors are toying with the
DARPA high risk/high gain model/fast pace - model of funding in which
you are expected to meet milestones in 3 month intervals or else you
are cut. Finally, the retraction in growth of federal monies to support
basic research is directly due to the high cost of the war.
[Comment posted 2006-09-13 19:10:20]
a recently employed faculty in a tenure track position, I understand
how painful, demoralizing, and insidious the process of the job search
is. In any other field, when a person takes a part-time position and
makes a favorable impression on her employer, eventually she will be
hired full-time. It is in her favor to work hard so they will know
she's good and that they can count on her. In academia, if a person is
doing an excellent job and everyone is impressed, she can count on NOT
being hired when a full-time position is advertised.
Before I got my job I was a freeway flier, working 4-6 part time
positions on as many campuses just to pay rent. My pay-per-hour looked
great on paper, but it was only for contact time. When
I figured in the time spent on preparation, grading and meeting
with students , I didn't make much more than minimum wage. This is a
common experience for new PhDs
I was told that if I wanted a Community College job, then I would
need a Ph.D. Now, because funds for professors are limited, the hires
are going to MAs and MSs who are considerably cheaper to hire. So, even
though I'm better educated and more skilled, I ruined my chance to get
a Community College position because I pursued an advanced education.
Not addressed in the article is the inordinately high wages given
to administrators and the expansion of administrative positions.
Coupled with all of the additional perks for such hires (housing,
spousal hires, private cars, travel, etc...); we are draining the
moneys that might otherwise be invested in new faculty, research, and
students.
We've taken our best and brightest minds, people who are deeply
committed and hard working and we're destroying them intellectually,
emotionally, and spiritually.
[Comment posted 2006-09-13 20:33:24]
Grant makes a good point in saying that BIG things such as sport
businesses can have a good economic, or otherwise positive, influence
on society, such as, perhaps not obvious to a common citizen, some
scientific endeavors related to sport technology. However, not once
have my comments intentionally underestimated sports' economic
importance, contrary to Ian's remark. The sports businesses are doing
just fine last time I checked, Ian. But, a lot of basic science isn't
in many areas that it should be right now. From the classroom to the
lab-bench, from academics to the national labs, lack of funding for
research in the basic sciences is THE PROBLEM ABOVE ALL OTHERS.
The comparison I made before in my earlier post wasn't advocating
any decrease in the presence of sports or funding for
sports...(cough...don't make me whip out a comparison of average
salaries of scientists versus sports players)...it was that we should
try to decrease solely combative military spending now and give a
little from that pot to other places in the government, like research
and education.
In the history of the US, government once put a lot of money and
focus into understanding radar, sonar, nuclear energy, aeronautics,
etc, for all kinds of immediate reasons, many of which were associated
with our war efforts. AMAZINGLY, as a result of those collective
pursuits, the mutualistic relationship between science and government
and society that emerged in the US led to many great things...from the
microwaves that we use to cook our food, to the radios that are in our
cars, to communication systems used around the world.
Perhaps if there is something to learn from that era about how
science has perpetuated through the years, is that the government has
historically played a huge role in the state of science, and that
science doesn't function well without substantive government support
and focus.
An interesting and open review of this subject, is growing, can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_funding_of_science
[Comment posted 2006-09-20 00:54:51]
anyone see beyond academia? It's the most hidebound, dead-end segment
of American and global culture. If scientists and technical researchers
want to make a difference, go work with or start up a profit-seeking
company. That's where the real action in science is. That's where it
will be more and more as we move into the future.
The system of begging-for-money from ensconced, if originally
well-meaning bureaucrats, is killing science. Read Gregory Benford and
Michael Rose's Amazon Short "Motes in God's Eye" for a gimlet-eyed
evisceration of the grant system and how it is destroying the soul of
science. Academia and the political state have transformed modern
science from the world's most exciting collaborative adventure into a
profession of bureaucratic drudges and lap-dog supplicants.
Bureaucratic science is killing the natural wonder, excitement, and
risk-filled sense of adventure that once drove the advance of
knowledge.
What puzzles me is how blind most are to a rather obvious
contradiction in their point of view. They are upset at being denied a
secure tenure track by the deadwood of aging tenured professors. Is
that what they aspire to? The tenured Big Easy? To become the very
deadwood for which they show such contempt? Maybe that's the real
source of their frustrations. They've been in academia so long they've
forgotten how to take risks in the great adventure of innovation and
discovery.
In the private profit-seeking sector, you create your own future.
Yes, it's hard. Yes, it's full of risk, frustration, and far more work
than anything seen inside of an ivy-covered wall. But on the other
hand, with courage and pluck, you make your own way into an open-ended
evolutionary future where the only limits are your imagination and
willingness to persist. Oh and you'd better be able to handle real
competition as brilliant minds in myriad parallel ventures pursue
meaningful discoveries and innovations. In doing so, they will be
competing with you for resources, both intellectual and financial, but
the competition is based on competence, character, and demonstrable
results. Bueno suerte.
[Comment posted 2006-09-28 16:52:46]
than 15 years, I found your editorial entitled 'Are we training too many
scientists?' extremely refreshing and on the mark. The Scientist is one of
the few (although growing) voices that speak out against the status quo in
the life sciences, and especially in academia. I too read Carrie Wolinetz's
piece last year, which prompted me to ask her to come as one of the
featured speakers in a Career Day event I was organizing with other fellow
graduate students. Since very early in my science education, I have been
confronting aspects of the academic research system which I thought made
absolutely no sense. To the point that after I finish what I hope will be
my only postdoc, I plan to join the ranks of industry scientists.
I think, however, that the problem is deeper than what the article
and the editorial describe. I think that the problem is not that we are
training too many
scientists, but that we are not training too many scientists well. As I
have heard repeatedly at my institution, they receive hundreds of
applications for faculty position openings, but most of them do not even
make the first cut. I truly believe that this is because many PIs are
irresponsibly allowing people to earn PhDs without really deserving them.
The lab where I got my PhD had a very low success rate. Of every four
students who started a PhD thesis, only one would actually earn a PhD. But
those of us who made it, were able to get very good postdocs in no time,
and I am confident that we'll succeed because we have a strong scientific
foundation. I have seen how other labs allow people to graduate without
publications, or with no first author publications. Others do have the
first author publications, but due to the lack of enforcing appropriate
authorship standards in academia, their intellectual contribution to the
papers are little or nothing. These people are then obligated to complete
their training doing multiple postdocs, which requires them to have mentors
willing to fill in the holes. As we all know this happens very
infrequently, because postdocs are hired with the understanding that they
are trained and that they need to demonstrate independence.
This is a problem that is fed from two directions. At one end, you have a
lot of students starting graduate school with the wrong idea. Many think
this is an extension of their undergraduate education, and fail to realize
that this is more like being a student who also holds a job that demands a
lot of hours and responsibility. In my experience most graduate students
lack this kind of responsibility due to immaturity. Since they can barely
achieve what is demanded of them, it is unrealistic to expect them to
overachieve and get involved in activities that would give them the edge
for future job hunts. Most graduate programs that I have been in contact
with, suffer from an endemic apathy. Nobody wants to get involved in
committees, hosting seminars, or organizing events. These kind of
activities taught me a lot about how research institutions operate, allowed
me to network with all kinds of people, and gave me experience in
activities in which I would have to get involved if I decided to be a
faculty member at an academic institution. I too suffered from many of
these ailments when I started my PhD the first time. At that time due to
many reasons, both personal as well as professional, I decided to get a
Master's degree. After I worked as a technician for a few years, I realized
that I was ready to earn my PhD, and this time I approached it in a much
more focused and mature way.
At the other end, you have PIs in academic institutions who gave up on
trying their hardest after tenure, and do not invest the appropriate amount
of time in training their graduate students. There are also arrogant and
selfish scientists who want to have successful scientific careers but do
not give much thought about their role as mentors, and see graduate
students, as cheap hands to the work. Even those who try hard to be good
mentors, manage their lab poorly, thus achieving the opposite of what they
were intending. This is due to a serious lack of mentoring, managing, and
teaching skills in most PIs, which is in turn a result of the way they were
trained. Since the days of my Master's I have realized, that we need to get
training in administration, and money management, as well as teaching. This
is a set of skills that you'll need as a PI in BOTH academia and industry.
As The Scientist pointed out as well in last month's issue, companies are
finding that the scientists they hire have difficulties with the team
concept, and to be able to work with scientists from other disciplines as
well as non scientists. These are things, that ironically, scientists also
need to be able to do in academia today.
I would like to emphasize the points in your outline for solving this
problem relating to quality of training, and opportunities to educate
scientists in business, and administration. I also would like to add, that
a better system to screen graduate students is also of great importance. I
think a Master's degree or work experience should become part of the
requirements, to ensure students will be willing to meet the demands of a
PhD thesis. Finally, given the way the global economy is evolving, it is
important to realize that future generations will be obligated to educate
themselves, perhaps even beyond Bachelor's degrees, because low skill high
paying jobs will no longer be available in industrialized countries. We all
know that in the life sciences we have a lot more questions that we are
being able to address with the current supply of scientists, which allows
one to envision this as a field that will always have jobs to be filled.
But until we do not make this system attractive for young people, by making
the process less painful and better remunerated, we will never be able to
fill in the gap.
Sincerely,
J. Marcela Hernandez.
[Comment posted 2006-10-03 20:03:44]
am glad that finally a full size article was published on the
horrifying fate of Ph.D.s. (Are We Training Too Many Scientists, by
Brijal P. Trivedi, Sept. 2006).
Its a very sad situation that many Ph.D.s in biology are
constantly worried about their career and jobs, even at an age when
fellow friends and relatives in other industry are looking forward to a
comfortable retirement. Both of my children on the other hand pursued
their higher education in areas other than science (thanks to dads
advice) and have stable jobs with more secure future; whereas poor
scientist dad is still worried about his own job. Many of my
colleagues have either retired as post-docs after working in several
labs or resigned to other non-science professions.
Here is my analogy for plenty of post-docs with no or fewer permanent research jobs, beside lack of federal research funds.
(a) Many investigators offer cheap salaries to their postdocs,
which allow them to hire two postdocs, instead of one. Such
individuals are readily available mainly from India and China. They are
more than happy to work overtime even for less than half of salary.
(b) Established investigators are too greedy. They neither want
to retire (even in their 70s) nor support their productive postdocs for
writing grants and becoming independent. On top of all this there is no
respect for these hard working individuals and always treated as second
grade scientists.
[Comment posted 2007-01-12 00:55:13]
number of scientists needed equals funding minus costs of supplies and
labor followed byu division by a constant adjusted for inflation. The
number of trainees was increased by a greater factor than the funding,
yielding an oversupply.
One must increase funding or decrease the number of trainees. One
might eliminate funding for physicians, who should be caring for
patients. Physicians, who earn quite nice salaries without a bit of
grant money, should help scientists perform their tasks. As it is,
physicians disemploy hard working scientists.
[Comment posted 2007-01-12 02:26:53]
This question of whether or whether we are not training too many
scientists, has been the subject of debate for a number of years. This
is not a recent phenomenon. My son, who works in the music industry in
New York had this discussion some time ago and he pointed out that a
similar problem exists in the field of music, dance, art and acting.
Each year thousands upon thousands of aspiring young artists flock to
New York and other cultural capitals hoping to "make it big"...but of
course, most do not and end up in other jobs to earn a living. He felt
that mentors and teachers only have the moral obligation to tell these
students that the odds of employment and success in these fields are
really small. As long as they understand this, then they have the right
to choose whether or not they want to pursue an artistic career. As
some others here have commented, as long as they know the odds, why
should they be discouraged NOT to pursue their passions, be it science
or art or humanities? Its hard to argue against this idea.
Having said this, I also think that many faculty who are already
established (young or old) do have a vested interest in keeping people
"indentured" in the laboratory as post-docs or senior technicians;
however, it is not completely the fault of the faculty themselves, but
rather those university senior administrations who refuse to use
university resources and endowments to cover their share of the
scholarly and research endeavor demanded in academia. Is the money
there? That's always a valid concern but it is sometimes hard to
justify such a stance when one considers CEO academic salaries; not to
mention what many institutions of higher learning pay their athletic
coaches and team managers.
The pressure on faculty in the sciences to obtain grants for the
purposes of providing income in the form of staff salaries and indirect
cost recovery, puts enormous and unending pressure on faculty at all
levels to "play the grants game". Many faculty are told that they must
have multiple grants to get tenure and are expected to pay almost all,
if not all, of their salaries on grants. One cannot generate the 'big'
grants with just one person working in the lab. On top of that, many
schools want the grantees to cover full tuition for the graduate
students and trainees as another source of revenue generation for the
institution. The conflicts between doing good research and the
pressures to generate income are almost never-ending. I believe this to
be an immoral and unethical stance on the part of higher education
because it permits the research universities to avoid their
responsibilities and obligations to support scholarship and the search
for knowledge. This is one of the reasons that so many faculty feel the
need to sustain the status quo when it comes to training students--its
likely the only way that they can survive to--especially if they have
to generate their livelihoods through grant income. So it becomes a
vicious circle in the final analysis. This unrelenting pressure has
contributed mightily to the problems we are facing in today's research
climate. The fault lies not so much in Federal funding or Congressional
sympathies, but rather in the way universities continue to conduct
their educational and academic mission. Much needs to be changed in
this context if scholarship, teaching and research are to succeed in
this country.
[Comment posted 2007-01-12 16:28:22]
conflict between idea of science and profit in university is more ever
increasing. Competition in grant and publication is ever intense. As in
every business, competition breeds frauds. Particularly in biological
science, withouth rigorous equations, largely dependent on personal
interpretation and presentation ( called spin), and endless variations
in systems, biological science research abounds in incentives to tell
untruth, opportunities to tell untruth and impunities to tell untruth.
The result of this narrow mindness of revenue producing policy is the
corruption of science in American science.
In my 12 years in this field ( immunology), research in US has
become more and more insipid, creativeness become less and less
evident.
other factor is the nature of biological research itself. Unlike
other branches of science, biomedical research require less advanced
training, the ideas can be readily grasped by a person with superficial
knowledge. Most of work is physically demanding and the result depends
on numerous trials with a lot of failure. Where fortune is blind, large
number of manpower is required to get lucky. Because of this nature,
the entry barrier in biological science in lower than other fields;
physicians and scientists alike can join the competition. Because the
idea is simple in logic, a professor can spend all his life spinning
without touching the experiments. I can hardly imagine a real physicist
who does not calculate the equation on his/her own skill .
As biological research become more and more mature, large scale
experimentation will require fewer and fewer independent investigators.
As application of knowledge in marketplace become faster and faster,
with more vigorous, real life test in the market place, biological
industry actually is the brightest spot in research.
Together With a culture that rewards "salemanship" more handsomely
than other skills, creative and groundbreaking biological science in
Unite States like its manufacture will be facing long term challenge.
[Comment posted 2007-01-22 14:02:11]
After
graduating with a Ph.D. in immunology from the University of California
in 1989, I did seven years of postdoc work, which included four years
as an NIH fellow, over 30 publications, and a three-year job search
that ended with maybe two interviews. I eventually opted out for law
school. Currently, I am employed at a state agency and I am helping a
friend to start up a biotech company. After reading this article, I can
say that the employment situation has not improved. In fact, one of my
current supervisors said that during the 1970s he left biology for law
school because of the ominous job market in the life sciences.
What keeps this postdoc/science/university system going? Is the
system faulty or do people not understand the system? The following is
my point of view.
My current job allows me to compare the work environment of a state
research university to a more conventional state agency. The most
striking difference is that universities resemble for-profit
corporations. During graduate school, I observed that my major
professor operated as a small business owner. He needed outside
investments (government and private funding) to conduct his business
(research). Employees (graduate students and postdocs) did the everyday
labor and a middle manager (staff scientist) oversaw the labs
day-to-day operation. The products he generated included information
(publications) and graduates. He was adept at networking, building
alliances, making deals, managing time and money, writing, and all the
other skills needed to run his business. He maximized output by
lowering overhead costs (i.e., paying the graduate students and
postdocs minimal wages). This was balanced by the trainees optimism
that the education and training that the professor provided would, in
time, bring their own rewards. Financially, he appears successful.
Through the San Francisco Chronicles recent reports on UC executive
pay, I glanced at the linked employee compensation list. My former
major professor was among the top 30 most highly compensated employees
in the entire University of California.
Although all workplaces openly promote teamwork and cooperation,
the university is inherently based on competition. There is competition
between students for classes, grades, internships, jobs, etc. There is
competition among professors for lab space, grants, publications,
reputation, promotions, tenure, etc. Departments compete for
facilities. Universities compete for high-performance students and
executive officers, U.S. News and World Report rankings, well-funded
professors from prestigious universities, funding and more funding,
alumni contributions, goodwill, etc. Competition is the universal
university mentality.
There is little motivation to reduce the numbers of science Ph.D.s
since people continue to want these degrees and universities exist to
grant them. Career counselors and professors are not likely to be very
open about career prospects since they directly or indirectly benefit
from the postdoc system. Besides, they do not want postdocs to dismiss
potential opportunities or become prematurely discouraged from
following their aspirations.
Some professors could provide better mentorship, but that might be
asking for too much. First, professors are highly taxed since they are
trying to excel in a system that can show little compassion for those
that fall behind. They are burdened with responsibilities to many
people within and without the institution. Second, there may be a
subtle form of conflict-of-interest at play. In any group, trust is
important. Professors may be guarded about training their own potential
future competitors for grants, publications, etc. Postdocs are greatly
desired as affordable and competent sources of professional knowledge
and labor. However, postdocs gain intimate knowledge of their
professors lives, work, and ideas. This becomes another balancing act
and potential source of concern for everyone involved.
Students, faculty, and staff are acknowledged citizens of the
university community. They enjoy protections and privileges not given
to postdocs who are essentially independent contractors (not unlike
foreign migrant farm workers).
For improved chances for success and/or happiness, students and postdocs might consider the following suggestions:
Consider professional school rather than graduate school. Law,
medicine, business, etc. curricula seem to be more highly structured
and directed toward the attainment of specific skill sets for specific
jobs.
Realize that more formal education and training (especially more of
the same) may not be beneficial. Interdisciplinary training not only
makes you more applicable to a broader range of jobs, but you will be
exposed to a wider range of materials, and possibly find other things
that you would like to do. You may become a more interesting and
well-rounded person, and that can only help you.
Obtain certificates from community colleges for immediately useable
job skills and experience. One of my friends dropped out of a Masters
program in electrical engineering and will soon receive an accounting
certificate from a community college. Unlike electrical engineering,
she will find decent jobs anywhere, anytime. Or, if you are considering
something like medical school, but are not sure that its for you, get
a certificate as an emergency medical technician or a medical
assistant. Work at this for a while and see if it suits you. You may
decide that medicine is not for you. But you will still have a paycheck
while you explore further. University career counselors might not
recommend this since it would be like an employee at Costco suggesting
that you try Sams Club (or vice versa).
Understand the flow (e.g., the corporate culture) and work with it.
If you cannot live with the system, get out and find one that fits you.
Or adjust your expectations to fit the system. As the Chinese say, In
times of chaos, there is both danger and opportunity. Chaos is a
constant condition. Therefore, there are always opportunities to find
and dangers to avoid. It is okay to change career directions. I know of
an insurance agent who was a veterinary student. My own physician said
that he wished he had pursued engineering. Another friend left physics
and became a business school professor. A former tenure-track computer
science professor realized that his labor lawyer wife had a higher
income. He became a patent attorney. I know career counselors that were
postdocs. For survival, its better to be a moving target than a
sitting duck.
Improve your understanding of people and learn to handle all types
of interpersonal situations. Every job requires teamwork, and all hires
and promotions involve political considerations. People favor coworkers
that are likeable and trustworthy, as well as competent. I developed an
interest in social and evolutionary psychology, negotiation and
mediation, etiquette and manners, and other similar topics. People in
the hard sciences can benefit from the information that social
scientists are discovering about us all.
People really make the job. No matter how much a person enjoys her
or his specific duties, difficult coworkers degrade the work
atmosphere. Conversely, great coworkers can make almost any job
wonderful. Become one of these great people that everyone wants.
