Does the US produce too many scientists?

[antlers]

Scientific American has an interesting article (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=does-the-us-produce-too-m) on the broken labor market in the U.S. for scientists.

Interesting points:


The U.S. K-12 education system is at least as good as all other industrialized countries in math and science, as long as you're not a minority.
There are way more candidates for science research faculty positions than there are jobs available.
Most research labor is done by post-docs who are poorly paid and have little chance of ever getting a grant-receiving faculty position.
It's very easy to get a visa for a researcher; since they come with a visa, these post-docs are much more attractive for foreign junior scientists than they are for Americans.
.

[JeffL]

Scientific American has an interesting article (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=does-the-us-produce-too-m) on the broken labor market in the U.S. for scientists.

Interesting points:


The U.S. K-12 education system is at least as good as all other industrialized countries in math and science, as long as you're not a minority.
There are way more candidates for science research faculty positions than there are jobs available.
Most research labor is done by post-docs who are poorly paid and have little chance of ever getting a grant-receiving faculty position.
It's very easy to get a visa for a researcher; since they come with a visa, these post-docs are much more attractive for foreign junior scientists than they are for Americans.

.

No time to read the article now (will when I get home) but is the article only addressing University jobs? Since the vast majority of scientists in the country do not work in academia.

[antlers]

No time to read the article now (will when I get home) but is the article only addressing University jobs? Since the vast majority of scientists in the country do not work in academia.

The article focuses on basic research, which is largely done in universities and federally funded.

[Pogo]

Hence reinforcing the matter of my physics degree being useless.

[Staff Sergeant]

Hence reinforcing the matter of my physics degree being useless.

This is just the absolute last thing I need to read right before an exam period.

[Daniel Ford]

I think the system is near perfect from a consumer standpoint. You don't want to spend the last five years of your life in a nursing home being fed through a tube, so you give money to the government, who dispenses NIA grants to various labs that study the aging process. As a consumer, you can be assured that these labs are well run, because the competition for grants is brutal (at one point less than 10% of the grants in our field were being funded). The competition for a chance to start a lab is even worse, and it's not unusual for a faculty position to have hundreds of applicants. When the grant is funded, the research is conducted for dirt cheap prices by highly skilled labor. In short, the current system is getting you a lot of quality scientific research for very little money.

Obviously the system is less awesome for the highly skilled professors, postdocs, and graduate students it's composed of. I personally consider getting a PhD to have been a mistake, since I don't think it was worth the seven year opportunity cost. Still, it's not like I have anyone to blame but myself.

Most college science graduates have enough sense to avoid academia, and the resulting labor gap is filled in with international students, mostly from China and India. These are the people who I do feel really bad for, because despite the fact that they had to work ten times as hard as I did to get into the same program, they have one-tenth the options when they finish. Most of the US citizens who finished my program went into industry, but others became political science advisers, started careers as science writers, joined the military as a scientist, or got full-time teaching positions. For most international students, the shortage of H1 visas makes those opportunities very difficult to pursue. Their options are most often limited to getting a postdoc or going home. And that's the one thing I would change if I could.

[Rimbo]

Competition is a good thing. I'd say that you WANT to produce more scientists than you actually need.

[JeffL]

Well, again, the comment that we produce more scientists than we need is inaccurate - we need a LOT of them in the industrial side. And we do a lot of fundamental, basic research on that side. One of my first projects in industry was a very fundamental structure-property study on the effect of certain substituents on the motion of macromolecules, using a very cool combination of low temp NMR, FTIR, and fracture mechanics. I've worked on vectoring studies for anti-cancer agents, RNA analysis, and more. But that also doesn't mean that science that is more applied isn't "real" science.

So yeah, if you want a job in academia and a lot of money from the government, that is a pretty competitive world. Though again, I know a pretty substantial number of Ph.D.s who decided to go into academia, and none of them were unable to find a job. In some cases they had to start at smaller schools, but then they eventually ended up at Notre Dame, Michigan, Illinois, etc.

[Rimbo]

Yeah; point is, doesn't seem to me that antlers' comment that the labor market is "broken" is accurate at all.

[JeffL]

Yeah; point is, doesn't seem to me that antlers' comment that the labor market is "broken" is accurate at all.

In fact, one issue we've seen in the last 10 years in the industrial science world is so many fewer kids going into science, choosing instead to go into law, business, etc. The one area that has grown is forensic science, as a result of all the CSI type shows (I work with a couple of academic forensic science programs) - most of them are disappointed when they realize the job is not much different from any analytical lab job and they will not be carrying guns, interrogating or even seeing suspects, etc.

[Brettmcd]

This is just the absolute last thing I need to read right before an exam period.

Well in Pogos case its quite doubtful its the degree that is useless, just the degree holder, so you should be fine.

[espressojim]

Obviously the system is less awesome for the highly skilled professors, postdocs, and graduate students it's composed of. I personally consider getting a PhD to have been a mistake, since I don't think it was worth the seven year opportunity cost. Still, it's not like I have anyone to blame but myself.



I decided not go to go grad school, and instead picked up a second set of skills to help my biology/wetlab skills. Bioinformatics was just an amusing curiosity in the mid 90's, but now it's the hot place to be. I find that I get to work with plenty of incredibly smart grad students / post docs / PIs (the PI refers to them as "your post docs" as I get to mentor them a bit), and have been payed very well since I traded in my micropipet for a keyboard. One of the side benefits is that since I've worked with many of these guys closely and had successful projects, I've always got a network of people to go to if I get bored where I am - I haven't interviewed for a job in a formal way since 1999.

I'm never going to make quite what PIs are making, but they put in far more hours than I do. I've got a lot of respect for people who sink the time into getting a degree, as it's a hard slog...but I'm glad its a route I didn't go down.

[ckessel]

Competition is a good thing. I'd say that you WANT to produce more scientists than you actually need.

An abundance of scientists relative to the job market is not good from a national point of view. It means you've got highly educated citizens contributing little because the job market doesn't support them. A lot of researchers don't go into it for the money since, as the article noted, pay isn't terribly great. Further, a lot of them likely took government subsidized loans, so the government is losing out twice: unemployed (or underemployed) high value citizens and the same citizens at risk of repaying their loans.

Of course, I'm arguing with Rimbo, which is pointless.

[Daniel Ford]

Further, a lot of them likely took government subsidized loans, so the government is losing out twice: unemployed (or underemployed) high value citizens and the same citizens at risk of repaying their loans.As a quick clarification, it's very rare for a science PhD student to need additional student loans. Your tuition and stipend is paid for by either a grant, fellowship, or teaching assistantship. By the end of graduate school, my stipend was a little under $2000 a month, which was more than enough to pay for rent and food. I was living in a high cost of living city, and our department was well funded compared to others, so most aren't going to be that high.

[JeffL]

An abundance of scientists relative to the job market is not good from a national point of view. It means you've got highly educated citizens contributing little because the job market doesn't support them. A lot of researchers don't go into it for the money since, as the article noted, pay isn't terribly great. Further, a lot of them likely took government subsidized loans, so the government is losing out twice: unemployed (or underemployed) high value citizens and the same citizens at risk of repaying their loans.

Of course, I'm arguing with Rimbo, which is pointless.

But again, I would argue that here is NOT an abundance of scientists relative to the job market. The vast majority of the scientist job market is not academia.

As for the value of the Ph.D., depends on what you want to do. I have never regretted getting mine. It opened a lot of opportunities in my career. For example, without the Ph.D. I would have never had the opportunity to lead a large organization of scientists doing fairly long range R&D in a global organization (and 80% of that lab were Ph.D.s.) When I needed to go find a new job, the Ph.D. helped me get opportunities to interview for a lot of jobs where the Ph.D. was a requirement. On top of that, there are skills and competencies I learned in getting the Ph.D. that were extremely valuable to me.

But as far as the money - unless you are going to lead R&D in a very political area like, currently, Climate Change, science is not the area to go into. If you want a profession that maximizes your income., there are a LOT that provide more opportunities. No doubt you can make money in the sciences - I was paying a several scientists in one of my labs in my previous company $100K +, and in most of the labs I've led there were several scientist (and some of them fairly young) making $100K +. In almost all cases (but not all) these guys and gals were Ph.D.s, just doing research. FWIW.

[JeffL]

As a quick clarification, it's very rare for a science PhD student to need additional student loans. Your tuition and stipend is paid for by either a grant, fellowship, or teaching assistantship. By the end of graduate school, my stipend was a little under $2000 a month, which was more than enough to pay for rent and food. I was living in a high cost of living city, and our department was well funded compared to others, so most aren't going to be that high.

Yeah, I never knew any of my peers in graduate school who had to pay tuition and books. You had to pay your housing and food, but everyone had some type of school provided funding. (Though back in my day - hitching my pants up to my chest - my stipend was $550 a month. But it was plenty for my cheap housing and board, and I worked part time in a jewelry store to earn beer money.)

[Strollen]

I only skimmed the article and I never considered a PHd...

It seems me that crux of their argument is we make PHd slave away at pretty poorly paying jobs for many years. Once they graduate there are more applicants than jobs and the ones who don't get into academy are forced to take jobs unworthy of their education.

JeffL has it right IMO the vast number of science math jobs are in industry and I contend that is good thing. One of the strengths of America is transforming scientific research into practical application which enhance the world's living standards. I reject that a CS, or Math PHd that can't find a professorship and has to take a job at Google or Microsoft Lab has job which is unworthy of them. The same thing would be true for PHd in material science taking a job at Intel, a molecular biologist at Genetech or many others. It is common for science PHd to move back and forth between academics and industry, unlike say PHd in philosophy or Woman's studies and I think that is also a good thing.

Finally looking using wages and means for judging the supply and demand isn't the right approach. A better way is to look at the unemployment rate. I don't have any data, but I would guess the number of folks with science/math PHd who aren't employed in their chosen field is very small. (I am not counting those who by choice go to Wall St. or become professional poker players).

In contrast let's look at the NCAA players this year. I would imagine that the majority of starting seniors in the tournament effectively majored in basketball, and virtually all of them their top career choice would be NBA player. Who can blame them with an average NBA salary of $4.9 million. If salary is the right way to judge demand, obviously our schools are not producing enough basketball majors :). On the other hand if you look at the underemployment rate for basketball majors it is probably 80-90% even for the elite who start in the NCAA, and much higher for the thousand of other college basketball players.

[MikeP]

As for the value of the Ph.D., depends on what you want to do... It opened a lot of opportunities in my career. For example, without the Ph.D. I would have never had the opportunity to lead a large organization of scientists doing fairly long range R&D in a global organization (and 80% of that lab were Ph.D.s.) When I needed to go find a new job, the Ph.D. helped me get opportunities to interview for a lot of jobs where the Ph.D. was a requirement. On top of that, there are skills and competencies I learned in getting the Ph.D. that were extremely valuable to me.

All of the benefits of having a PhD that you listed all had to do with being credentialed, and nothing to do with what you actually learned or did to get that PhD... (ok, you did in the last sentence)

I'm about a fortnight from a PhD myself, and my biggest gripe with the system is the lack of any sort of scientific middle class. If you don't get a PhD, and still want to do science, you will likely get stuck being a technician doing grunt work for PhDs. Alternatively, you can work 5-6 years for low pay, sacrifice social opportunities like having children, and have the potential to maybe research something you like, or go into industry and get paid more to research what others like. There is no middle path.

In retrospect, I would advise my pre-college self to get an engineering degree (probably biomedical) since that has a much wider range of opportunities.

[MikeP]

It is common for science PHd to move back and forth between academics and industry

This is not true in biological sciences, to my knowledge. Once you leave academia, it is hard to get back in.


In contrast let's look at the NCAA players this year.

This is not a fair comparison.

[skedastic]

It isn't true that the vast majority of science PhDs work outside of academia. A slight majority of physical science PhDs work outside the academy, a slight majority of life and social science PhDs work within the academy. Overall, it's about even.

As others point out, the article is much too pessimistic. A freshly minted PhD may not get that cushy tenure track position, but there are lots of opportunities in the private sector and government, at least in the sciences and related fields. The average pay for a PhD is substantially higher than for any other degree except some professional degrees.

[Huzurdaddi]

The average pay for a PhD is substantially higher than for any other degree except some professional degrees.

I have heard this many times, especially when I was going to graduate school. However is this true if you control for SAT scores? I bet it is not.

[Strollen]

I'm about a fortnight from a PhD myself, and my biggest gripe with the system is the lack of any sort of scientific middle class. If you don't get a PhD, and still want to do science, you will likely get stuck being a technician doing grunt work for PhDs. Alternatively, you can work 5-6 years for low pay, sacrifice social opportunities like having children, and have the potential to maybe research something you like, or go into industry and get paid more to research what others like. There is no middle path.



First congratulations.


I am curious what you think would be a good middle path?
I imagine this forum is filled with people who loved to get paid to do research on computer games. Being able to pick your own subject of research would even better. I know of one guy Ed Castronova (http://terranova.blogs.com/about.html)that actually has been doing this for a number of years. In order to get to the point where society would pay him to study the economics of MMOs, he had to complete a PHd in Economics.

I am sure in his case the credential was probably much more important, than any stuff he actually learned in school. I also imagine that this forum has people that know as much or more than Ed on the subject. However lacking a PHd and professorship, they are forced to do grunt work, or for those with a lot of talent they are able research on subjects that the industry found profitable. For those without a strong programming background, they make living (and not a high paid one) by writing about computer games. Finally, if we can't program or write we have to pay money to study computer games and hang around forums like these :).

No doubt that getting a PHd requires a lot of sacrifice, and for most people you probably come out economically behind. However, it potentially gives you a tremendous opportunity to work on things that you are interested and passionate about. I've been retired for a number of years but I would, trade retirement for being a tenured professor in a nanosecond. It is really a sweet "job".

[skedastic]

However is this true if you control for SAT scores? I bet it is not.

I don't know, but that's getting at the much more difficult question of the causal effect of education on earnings. The raw averages demonstrate the simpler point that it isn't like PhDs typically have poor labor market outcomes.



In order to get to the point where society would pay him to study the economics of MMOs, he had to complete a PHd in Economics.

I am sure in his case the credential was probably much more important, than any stuff he actually learned in school. I also imagine that this forum has people that know as much or more than Ed on the subject.


The professor in question earned a PhD (not "PHd") in 1991, long before MMOs existed. Fairly recently he started doing research using data from virtual worlds, but the methods he uses are drawn from conventional econometrics. Econometrics is stuff that graduate students in economics learn---no one could do this research without a strong background in a branch of mathematical statistics, nor could anyone just intuit the results. The questions he asks really do require fairly advanced analysis.

A PhD is a research degree: you learn how to do research. Professors are primarily researchers. For research positions, a PhD is certainly not just a credential you get while learning irrelevant stuff. The first two or three years of a PhD are courework bringing you to the cutting edge of your field, and the remainder you're actually doing research.

[Jupiter Jones]

Hence reinforcing the matter of my physics degree being useless.

We have a new "Director Of Web Technology" at work. He has a physics degree. He's useless at the Director job. Therefore, I believe a physics degree is useless.

[Rimbo]

Of course, I'm arguing with Rimbo, which is pointless.

It would help if you would stop being so wrong so often.

[Huzurdaddi]

The raw averages demonstrate the simpler point that it isn't like PhDs typically have poor labor market outcomes.

Sure, but that's not really an interesting point since people in PhD programs are, generally, pretty bright people and, generally, they would have pretty solid labor market outcomes.

Further, I wonder if you take out all of the people who got into a tenure track position (IMO, this is the brass ring) and then look at the rest and controlled for SAT scores (or whatever is your metric of choice) if they would have done better had they not gotten the PhDs? Hmm ... upon further consideration this is probably not fair since I am eliminating the brass ring from one side and not the other. I suppose one could strip out the top N% on both sides.

[Morberis]

It would help if you would stop being so wrong so often.

But then he wouldn't be arguing with you would he?

[Janster]

I guess we just gotta tell people, stop staring at the stars, we need nurses to wipe old peoples behinds.

[mouselock]

No doubt that getting a PHd requires a lot of sacrifice, and for most people you probably come out economically behind. However, it potentially gives you a tremendous opportunity to work on things that you are interested and passionate about. I've been retired for a number of years but I would, trade retirement for being a tenured professor in a nanosecond. It is really a sweet "job".

The point of the article is that the idea that you get a PhD and this enables you to "work on what you want" simply isn't true, or anywhere close to true, in a system which produces far more PhDs than has waiting grants/available faculty jobs. Its great if you can become a tenured professor, but statistically speaking, most PhDs these days can't. There's no particular institutionalized setting that absorbs the excess "unlucky". So you're left with, at best, getting into an industry job. But at that point, are you really better off having gone for a PhD? Perhaps, if you can use that to leverage yourself into the research you want to do in industry, but that's a whole lot more hit or miss.

In academia, to research your desired area you have to convince a grant review committee that you are qualified (generally moreso than most others) and have an interesting idea. No small order, but it at least tends to pass good ideas through. In industry, it doesn't matter how good my idea is; if it has nothing to do with my employer's economic interests it's not happening. There are effectively no real pure research labs left in industry (PARC perhaps?). Lucent/Bell and IBM Research are things of the past.

So the end result is you can pursue a PhD and hope you get lucky enoughto land a faculty job that makes it worthwhile, but the numbers say you won't, or you can get a PhD and go to industry and hope you have more latitude than you would as a senior employee and that this will make up the economic difference, or you can just get a job straight out of your undergrad degree and build up a career that way, for similar or better economical benefits and questionably lesser opportunity within the industry.

[mrmolecule88]

Phew. Glad I'm getting an English degree!

[Rimbo]

But then he wouldn't be arguing with you would he?

Well, no, I have been wrong before, and will be again. Just not on anything that ckessel's ever attempted to argue about. At least, not yet.

[Jafisob]

All this tells me is that we need to loosen up the H1B visas even more, because, no matter how many highly educated Americans we have out of work or how low the pay scale slides for highly educated positions, we can always make it worse for those of us not at the absolute top. Flat earth and all that.

[espressojim]

This is not true in biological sciences, to my knowledge. Once you leave academia, it is hard to get back in.


Not a PhD, but I've worked at both start ups and in academia as a geneticist/computational biologist. I did a round trip from a very academic lab @MIT to a pure start up (I was brought in with some other people from the lab), then moved to a research hospital, then back to MIT. Seems like academia around here (MIT/Harvard) is more than willing to hold hands with industry to get some extra money out of the deal. We generally provide infrastructure for data generation, and expert level analysis, and in return industry gets some lead time (2 months) on data that then goes public. Our partners get first pick of the drug-target litter, we get extra funding and publications.

[JeffL]

The point of the article is that the idea that you get a PhD and this enables you to "work on what you want" simply isn't true, or anywhere close to true, in a system which produces far more PhDs than has waiting grants/available faculty jobs. Its great if you can become a tenured professor, but statistically speaking, most PhDs these days can't. There's no particular institutionalized setting that absorbs the excess "unlucky". So you're left with, at best, getting into an industry job. But at that point, are you really better off having gone for a PhD? Perhaps, if you can use that to leverage yourself into the research you want to do in industry, but that's a whole lot more hit or miss.

In academia, to research your desired area you have to convince a grant review committee that you are qualified (generally moreso than most others) and have an interesting idea. No small order, but it at least tends to pass good ideas through. In industry, it doesn't matter how good my idea is; if it has nothing to do with my employer's economic interests it's not happening. There are effectively no real pure research labs left in industry (PARC perhaps?). Lucent/Bell and IBM Research are things of the past.

So the end result is you can pursue a PhD and hope you get lucky enoughto land a faculty job that makes it worthwhile, but the numbers say you won't, or you can get a PhD and go to industry and hope you have more latitude than you would as a senior employee and that this will make up the economic difference, or you can just get a job straight out of your undergrad degree and build up a career that way, for similar or better economical benefits and questionably lesser opportunity within the industry.

Here's the flaw in the entire article: it presumes that people getting a Ph.D. in science are doing it because they want to get an academic job. Very, very few of the people in my graduate program considered a professorship as their #1 choice. The majority didn't "settle" for a job in industry - they wanted it. To portray Ph.D.s taking a job in industry as having failed and settling is just purely false and makes me doubt the credentials of the person writing the article.

As far as "working on anything you want" - man, you want politics, go into academia. Kissinger said the politics in universities are so nasty precisely because they are over such trivial matters, and my experience is that this is true. Yeah, there are a lot of benefits to being a prof. But there are a lot of downsides. Most professors I work with work on the projects they work on because that's where they can get funding, not because it is their life's interest. And I run quite a few programs in which profs are doing R&D for us (a company in industry) and turn down more proposals from profs, by far, than I accept.

The idea that the majority of Ph.D.s who go into academia with, say, a Ph.D. in Chemistry and just work on whatever they like is very flawed. As is the premise that most people getting their Ph.D.s in the sciences, such as Chemistry, Material Science, etc., with the goal of becoming a professor and only take a job in industry as a alternative or as a failure (I was just at the U of Michigan and the U. of Minnesota talking to grad students - I only ran into 3 out of about 100 who were looking to become profs.)

[MikeP]

Not a PhD, but I've worked at both start ups and in academia as a geneticist/computational biologist. I did a round trip from a very academic lab @MIT to a pure start up (I was brought in with some other people from the lab), then moved to a research hospital, then back to MIT. Seems like academia around here (MIT/Harvard) is more than willing to hold hands with industry to get some extra money out of the deal.

I fully admit this could just be my myopia, since no one here even acknowledges industry exists. Also, the discipline you work on will determine how fluid the barriers are. Chemistry PhDs probably all go to pharma to turn out drug products, while Cell Bio PhDs may have more difficulty transitioning. How translational your work is also probably matters a lot.

[mouselock]

As far as "working on anything you want" - man, you want politics, go into academia. Kissinger said the politics in universities are so nasty precisely because they are over such trivial matters, and my experience is that this is true. Yeah, there are a lot of benefits to being a prof. But there are a lot of downsides. Most professors I work with work on the projects they work on because that's where they can get funding, not because it is their life's interest. And I run quite a few programs in which profs are doing R&D for us (a company in industry) and turn down more proposals from profs, by far, than I accept.

This is all true, but my point is that there's at least still some latitude there. There's a lot of "We'll underpromise and deliver what they absolutely require, but in the meantime we'll do this sideproject that's stuff we're interested in and justify it as being vaguely tangentially related."

You're leaving out the biggest benefit of an industry job, though: Not having to fucking write. God, I love science but I -hate- writing. (Which is just great since I'm a computational/theoretical type of person, so those industry jobs are exceedingly rare. :/ )



The idea that the majority of Ph.D.s who go into academia with, say, a Ph.D. in Chemistry and just work on whatever they like is very flawed. As is the premise that most people getting their Ph.D.s in the sciences, such as Chemistry, Material Science, etc., with the goal of becoming a professor and only take a job in industry as a alternative or as a failure (I was just at the U of Michigan and the U. of Minnesota talking to grad students - I only ran into 3 out of about 100 who were looking to become profs.)

My viewpoint is probably skewed because there's not much of an industry inpath for me (or at least if there is, I sure as hell haven't been able to find them). But over on the theory/computational (non-bio.. comp bio right now is teh hot shit!) side of stuff, the academia level life is all the same, but the industry side of things has not been as you've described. I would guess that the article viewpoint is more from a pure science standpoint whereas what you've previously described sounds to me like "applied science" even though you've called it "fundamental research". I'd further guess that what you consider "more applied" is basically what I would consider non-scientific grunt work.

(That's not to be a denigration, btw; we all have our particular biases and what one person considers interesting work someone else doesn't. I can't really get excited about the thought of hands on work, while other people would be bored silly sitting behind a computer all day. Science interlocks like that, it's cool.)

[Karen]

In retrospect, I would advise my pre-college self to get an engineering degree (probably biomedical) since that has a much wider range of opportunities.

Ah ha ha ha... My BS is in BioEngineering. Although it was a great major, and I learned a lot, it's not the most easily marketed Engineering degree. (I have two MS eng degrees on top of it).

If you go for a Biomedical type of engineering degree, you have to be able to really sell yourself and your talents. Many recruiters don't really understand the course work and how it can apply to industry. You need to get creative.

In the US, we woefully under-educate people in Science and Technology. We would be better off if we increased science and engineering literacy by at least 10x. That said, not every one with a science and/or engineering degree is going to be able to do design / development work. However, having your sales, marketing, finance, law, political etc. people understand how things work leads towards less scientific misunderstanding of how our world works.

[Karen]

You're leaving out the biggest benefit of an industry job, though: Not having to fucking write. God, I love science but I -hate- writing. (Which is just great since I'm a computational/theoretical type of person, so those industry jobs are exceedingly rare. :/ )


What industry are you in, where you don't have to write? That's just crazy talk. Granted, we don't have to write dissertations, but myself and my employees have to write specs, reports, white papers etc. We need to communicate to those who come after us (or who work with us) what we were thinking at the time. Luckily for me, our admin. is a great writer, editor and grammarian, and she loves reviewing our work. I don't expect quality writing out of engineers, but I do expect them to write down what they are doing.

[skedastic]

Here's the flaw in the entire article: it presumes that people getting a Ph.D. in science are doing it because they want to get an academic job. Very, very few of the people in my graduate program considered a professorship as their #1 choice.


Most people pursuing PhDs do intend to get academic jobs. It is at the same time true that that proportion is lowest in your particular field, but even there it's over one-third, not a vanishingly small fraction. In my own anecdotal experience, non-faculty positions were definitely consolation prizes, and even colleagues who now work on Wall Street and make multiples of my salary entered grad school intending to be profs. Putting anecdotes aside, the statistical evidence suggests most grad students do intend to be profs, some data are presented in this report (http://www.phd-survey.org/report%20final.pdf). ("Unmistakably, the vast majority of students enter a doctoral program with a faculty career in mind... Although students also reported interest in research-related jobs, and reported increased interest in such positions, this interest is clearly secondary to faculty careers.")

I don't agree with you that academics don't get to choose what they work on. Sure, you are constrained to do work which will be publishable (and hence can attract funding), but you have wide leeway even under that constraint. Nor do I agree with you that office politics are worse in academia than in the private sector---tenure and non-hierarchical organizational structure tend to reduce such conflict. As someone, I forget who, recently put it on this forum---



My ideal outcome of this would actually be a real change. I'd LOVE to be a professor, and there's actually a prof job opening at the place I got my Ph.D. Don't know if it's my age, or what, but I'm weary of the dog eat dog world of industrial product development.... And associate prof job is something that typically goes to a young person, with the corresponding pay, but I'm pretty convinced that if I managed to figure out how to live on a lot less, my quality of life would be MUCH better if I was in a professor role.
Such benefits are why we see the features of the academic job market highlighted in the article---faculty positions, and a small army of post-docs and other young researchers vying for those positions. If an academic job weren't a prize, we wouldn't see people paying large opportunity costs in the hopes of winning the lottery.

However, the inference the author makes from this observation that there are too many graduate students in science is mistaken. The number of science grad students we "need" is an ill-defined concept, and that there are more grad students who want faculty positions than there are faculty openings is not evidence that there are too many grad students.

[JeffL]

My viewpoint is probably skewed because there's not much of an industry inpath for me (or at least if there is, I sure as hell haven't been able to find them). But over on the theory/computational (non-bio.. comp bio right now is teh hot shit!) side of stuff, the academia level life is all the same, but the industry side of things has not been as you've described. I would guess that the article viewpoint is more from a pure science standpoint whereas what you've previously described sounds to me like "applied science" even though you've called it "fundamental research". I'd further guess that what you consider "more applied" is basically what I would consider non-scientific grunt work.

(That's not to be a denigration, btw; we all have our particular biases and what one person considers interesting work someone else doesn't. I can't really get excited about the thought of hands on work, while other people would be bored silly sitting behind a computer all day. Science interlocks like that, it's cool.)

Someone else addressed the writing part: all of my folks are required to write research reports, presentations, and many write papers to be published in journals - many of those journals the same ones that the profs write for.

The range of R&D varies by company and by company philosophy, to be sure. But, while the technicians do what might be called "grunt work" (but even with them, I work on career development in which they grow to own full fledged scientific projects,) almost all of my chemists (B.S., M.S., and Ph.D.) do real research. For example, fundamental structure property relationships in complex catalysts, physics of fracture mechanics and the contribution of certain molecular motions, etc. That's applied for us, in that it will provide the tools we need for our product lines. But it's hardly grunt work. I did some work with Flory (he was at another school, but I had developed a chemistry in my grad work that was enabling for some work he was doing) when I was in grad school that was pure fundamental (Flory won the Nobel, for those who don't keep up with such things) but I've done work in industry that was every bit as fundamental and in many cases more interesting.

Not to say there isn't some drudge work in some labs in industry, but as you say, some people without deep science backgrounds find some of that work fascinating.

As for the stats on most people entering to get their Ph.D.s with the intent of being profs, I guess my personal experience is just very different. Almost all the folks I knew who went in to get their Ph.D. had no desire to work in academia, and most kids I talk to at a number of Chemistry, Polymer Science, and Material Science grad schools have no intent to go into academia. Perhaps it's just the fields I'm in.

[Strollen]

The point of the article is that the idea that you get a PhD and this enables you to "work on what you want" simply isn't true, or anywhere close to true, in a system which produces far more PhDs than has waiting grants/available faculty jobs. Its great if you can become a tenured professor, but statistically speaking, most PhDs these days can't. There's no particular institutionalized setting that absorbs the excess "unlucky".

There are effectively no real pure research labs left in industry (PARC perhaps?). Lucent/Bell and IBM Research are things of the past.

So the end result is you can pursue a PhD and hope you get lucky enoughto land a faculty job that makes it worthwhile, but the numbers say you won't, or you can get a PhD and go to industry and hope you have more latitude than you would as a senior employee and that this will make up the economic difference, or you can just get a job straight out of your undergrad degree and build up a career that way, for similar or better economical benefits and questionably lesser opportunity within the industry.

I always thought that a PHd was a necessary but not sufficient condition to obtaining a tenured professorship. Perhaps the marketing of PHd programs since when I went to school in the 80s, has changed cause I never heard that if you got a PHd, worked a few years as Postdoc student, your tenure was assured. I always thought becoming a tenure professor was competitive. Albeit less competitive for hard sciences, engineering and math where industry actually hired PHd than say liberal arts.

I've never met a PHd in math or science that wasn't really intelligent about statistics. I would think that data about the number of faculty position opening vs PHd supply would be readily available and pretty easy to figure out.

When I worked in Silicon Vally I called stock options lottery tickets. Unlike Powerball tickets which can be purchased by anyone, the number of stock options you got was heavily dependent on your education, skill, hard work, and risk taking. However, once you earned your options the probability of having them worth a lot was primarily a factor of luck. I and many of friends got lucky, but I know a ton of folks who were smarter, and worked harder who never made a dime with stock options.

A PHd is a lottery ticket into a particular type of lifestyle. The ability to do work/research on something that you are passionate about rather than having your work focus dictated by someone else. I suspect that for many people this is very desirable. There are other way of obtain this level of freedom. You can extremely rich so can fund your SETI, Vaccine, space project etc. Or you can start your own company do applied research which is what we are seeing in the biosciences.

Not only is PHd is a requirement to become a professor which is the only way to do pure research, but if is very very helpful if you want to start a company and do applied research. If you enjoy learning for its own sake, I seems me that a PHd is the best credential. If you more interested money probably not. For such a desirable opportunity, I would hope the supply of PHd would far exceed the demand. What should we do differently?

[Rimbo]

I agree with JeffL's critique, but it doesn't go far enough. The problem isn't merely the idea that all PhD candidates want academic jobs, it's the idea that those who've paid their dues are somehow owed jobs. Inherent within this suggestion is the idea that any one scientist's work has the same value as another's. And this is clearly not the case, not on any level.

Hell, I know of at least one professor -- a full, tenured professor, mind you -- who essentially gained this position by publishing like mad, no matter how small the new piece of info was. Once he finally got tenured, the journals effectively blacklisted him -- "OK, you've got your tenure, now do some real work before you take up our pub space again." Granted, this is Computer Science which is less of a science than most social sciences, so one may argue that this is not really relevant to this discussion because academic behavior in other fields don't necessarily translate to those for the real, hard sciences and I'll probably have to go "uhm, herr" and scratch my head and hope JeffL or someone chimes in and says something intelligent.

Anyway. Point is... I think the value system that says "all who put in the work shall have jobs!" is completely bogus and perverse and wrong and nonsense.

[mouselock]

What industry are you in, where you don't have to write? That's just crazy talk. Granted, we don't have to write dissertations, but myself and my employees have to write specs, reports, white papers etc. We need to communicate to those who come after us (or who work with us) what we were thinking at the time. Luckily for me, our admin. is a great writer, editor and grammarian, and she loves reviewing our work. I don't expect quality writing out of engineers, but I do expect them to write down what they are doing.

Setting down what/how/where/when and even why isn't a problem. I particularly loathe all the introductory preamble to writing journal articles, wherein you are effectively obligated to prove to people that your research is very important in a field by citing other big names in the field, what they should have done but didn't (or couldn't) and what you've now done. I find it very tedious, but it tends to be very standard in the journals I publish in. The ostensible purpose is to provide sufficient background for the interested reader to understand the context of your work, but realistically it does no such thing in this day and age. At best, if you're good at it, it produces a string of references that you can chase back to try and figure out how the current article fits in to others. And it is useful for this purpose (again, if done well; very often it's not done well at all). But it's still tedious.

Writing out techniques, observations, all of the actual science (and deductive reasoning) is nowhere near as frustrating to me. So when I mentioned "not writing" I was being glib with the fact that generally most industrial positions don't push for or require formal journal articles and the godawful introduction. It's generally pretty clear what the context is for work done in a specialized field, and maintaining that information for in-business research context strips away the necessity of trying to track down tangentially related research to prove you've done sufficient due-diligence to justify the work you've done.

[Rimbo]

Or, as is the case with the aforementioned CS prof, the introduction serves as a tool to make something that really isn't notable at all seem that way.

[Damien Neil]

I agree with JeffL's critique, but it doesn't go far enough. The problem isn't merely the idea that all PhD candidates want academic jobs, it's the idea that those who've paid their dues are somehow owed jobs. Inherent within this suggestion is the idea that any one scientist's work has the same value as another's. And this is clearly not the case, not on any level.

I'd say that it would be highly wrong for universities to lure people into lengthy and expensive PhD programs, followed by years of underpaid post-doc work, if the pool of jobs for people at the end of the process was far smaller than the number of people seeking those jobs.

To the best of my knowledge, however, that describes liberal arts education, not scientists.

[strategy]

Or, as is the case with the aforementioned CS prof, the introduction serves as a tool to make something that really isn't notable at all seem that way.

What - you mean to say that this revolutionary new method that I've devised that increases the speed of parsing XML documents by 5% every time the moon is blue won't save the world as we know it? Fie on you.

That aside, when I worked at the AT&T Research Labs in New Jersey, I found it rather interesting to observe how such a large proportion of the people working there (as scientists) were non-US citizens. Heh - I suspect the number of Indians alone probably outnumbered the US citizens. I've often wondered what would happen if the US economic crisis deepens and all of those really brilliant scientists decided to return to India, Germany, and all the other places that they hail from.

How can a system that subsists on so many foreign scientists be producing too many?

[Jafisob]

What - you mean to say that this revolutionary new method that I've devised that increases the speed of parsing XML documents by 5% every time the moon is blue won't save the world as we know it? Fie on you.

That aside, when I worked at the AT&T Research Labs in New Jersey, I found it rather interesting to observe how such a large proportion of the people working there (as scientists) were non-US citizens. Heh - I suspect the number of Indians alone probably outnumbered the US citizens. I've often wondered what would happen if the US economic crisis deepens and all of those really brilliant scientists decided to return to India, Germany, and all the other places that they hail from.

How can a system that subsists on so many foreign scientists be producing too many?
Supply exceeds demand. The supply includes foreign scientists which lowers the demand for domestic scientists. The excess supply causes lower salaries and causes many scientists to be out of work or take jobs outside of their field. It is in the best interests of those using the scientists for their to be an excess supply of the type of people they want to hire as that drives down salaries and increases retention of those already in their employ.

Once the public understands what is going on, less and less domestic people want to go into these fields. As less people go into these fields you have employers testifying in congress that we need to import even more people at lower than industry salary standards into these fields. "America must suck because we are not educating more of Field X." We can't have the supply equalize against the demand because that would give too much power to the worker.

[antlers]

Supply exceeds demand. The supply includes foreign scientists which lowers the demand for domestic scientists. The excess supply causes lower salaries and causes many scientists to be out of work or take jobs outside of their field. It is in the best interests of those using the scientists for their to be an excess supply of the type of people they want to hire as that drives down salaries and increases retention of those already in their employ.

Once the public understands what is going on, less and less domestic people want to go into these fields. As less people go into these fields you have employers testifying in congress that we need to import even more people at lower than industry salary standards into these fields. "America must suck because we are not educating more of Field X." We can't have the supply equalize against the demand because that would give too much power to the worker.

That's kind of the problem in a nutshell, as I see it.

While the current system may be very efficient economically, it tends to knock Americans off the academic science career ladder, which may in the long run hurt the country.

[strategy]

I suppose my experience just seems to indicate it is the other way around. Scientists are paid poorly, which leads to few people seeing the benefit of doing Ph.D., which leads to too few domestic candidates for the positions, which leads to the positions being filled by foreigners. Having a Ph.D. is no guarantee of a larger paycheck afterwards in the industry either.

That's based on my experience of course (which is primarily European), but I recall vividly how one of my fellow students did the math of lifetime earnings involved with taking a Computer Science degree. The conclusion was very definitely that taking a Ph.D. was a stupid, stupid decision from an economic point of view. Of course, that was in the late 90s - the dot-com bust brought a lot of people running back to academia again, heh. I doubt the equation has changed much, though.

I would draw the parallel to teaching, which is another vastly underappreciated vocation (i.e. in financial terms).

[JeffL]

Once the public understands what is going on, less and less domestic people want to go into these fields. As less people go into these fields you have employers testifying in congress that we need to import even more people at lower than industry salary standards into these fields. "America must suck because we are not educating more of Field X." We can't have the supply equalize against the demand because that would give too much power to the worker.

The problem with that thought process relating to the topic is that a Ph.D. chemist who came here from, say, India, is not paid a substandard wage relative to an American. I've hired a lot of Ph.D.s in several companies, and if the degree and skill set is the same, the pay is the same. This isn't picking lettuce.

[Tortilla]

The problem with that thought process relating to the topic is that a Ph.D. chemist who came here from, say, India, is not paid a substandard wage relative to an American. I've hired a lot of Ph.D.s in several companies, and if the degree and skill set is the same, the pay is the same. This isn't picking lettuce.

Actually, that's not an argument against that thought process. It's not that imported labor is working for lower prices, it's that imported labor is skewing the supply part of the supply/demand equation. If you remove the imported labor, scientists get scarcer and thus get paid more. Once they are paid more, more domestic scientists will crop up.

[JeffL]

Actually, that's not an argument against that thought process. It's not that imported labor is working for lower prices, it's that imported labor is skewing the supply part of the supply/demand equation. If you remove the imported labor, scientists get scarcer and thus get paid more. Once they are paid more, more domestic scientists will crop up.

Ah, OK. Although I'm not sure the market forces in this area are that sophisticated. I am "them" - the guy running the technical functions of a company, and I know a lot of my peers (more "them") and we just aren't that clever and manipulative. We don't have any plans or programs to "keep the workers down" and manipulate the supply/demand via proactive salary planning. Also, in almost 30 years of hiring scientists, I've never been in a situation where we felt here was a glut of great scientists out there on the market - my entire career, when we found a really good scientist, we fought to hire him/her. Even today, with this economy, there are more good scientists in the market than in normal years, due to layoffs, but they usually aren't the cream of the crop.

I.e. - don't go looking for conspiracies here, we ain't that smart. ;)

[Tortilla]

Ah, OK. Although I'm not sure the market forces in this area are that sophisticated. I am "them" - the guy running the technical functions of a company, and I know a lot of my peers (more "them") and we just aren't that clever and manipulative. We don't have any plans or programs to "keep the workers down" and manipulate the supply/demand via proactive salary planning. Also, in almost 30 years of hiring scientists, I've never been in a situation where we felt here was a glut of great scientists out there on the market - my entire career, when we found a really good scientist, we fought to hire him/her. Even today, with this economy, there are more good scientists in the market than in normal years, due to layoffs, but they usually aren't the cream of the crop.

I.e. - don't go looking for conspiracies here, we ain't that smart. ;)

Supply/demand for labor in particular fields adjusts over a much longer term, which is why quicker fixes like importing labor are often popular. If left purely to supply and demand, I think the theory that would be kids in high school/college who are pondering career paths will be attracted to being scientists if scientist looks like a job that pays well. So if imported labor is removed, the upswing in people entering the field doesn't show up for 5 years minimum and the upswing in experienced scientists doesn't show up for 15-20 years.

Supply and demand interacts with careers and employment so oddly and inefficiently that it's one area I don't mind seeing the market very heavily regulated.

[mouselock]

I.e. - don't go looking for conspiracies here, we ain't that smart. ;)

I don't think it's a conspiracy thing so much as it is an honest question:

Is it detrimental if more of the scientist workforce switches from domestic to foreign scientists? The argument being made is that the influx of foreign scientists, coupled with the structure of the system is devaluing the traditionally high value of scientists (in general), leading to a cascade effect. Effectively, a PhD degree is becoming commoditized.

Now in terms of industry and societal production, that's a great thing (even if it sucks for the scientists) if the quality is keeping its traditional growth curve. It's bad if the quality growth curve is flattening (or, worse, declining).

Any feelings on whether or not, in general, the quality of candidates you see across all origins and backgrounds is constant, or are there societal differences that you think play a role? (The latter seems to be the case where I work, but it's hard to correct for differences in the educational institution I attended for PhD and the one I'm at now, which is probably just as important of a factor.)

[JeffL]

Any feelings on whether or not, in general, the quality of candidates you see across all origins and backgrounds is constant, or are there societal differences that you think play a role? (The latter seems to be the case where I work, but it's hard to correct for differences in the educational institution I attended for PhD and the one I'm at now, which is probably just as important of a factor.)

You know, over the decades of doing this, I have made some observations, but I rarely share them because, quite frankly, I fear that it will sound racist. I suppose the mere fact that one states generalisms based on origins is inherently racist. But it is also fallacious to ignore them. For example, certainly some years ago, putting a Japanese Ph.D. under a female manager was not an effective approach. Similarly, I have had problems in the past with an Indian Ph.D. who was from the higher caste in India, who was assigned to work for a manager who was from the lower caste in India - major problems. Just a couple of examples.

In terms of intellect, research capabilities, etc.: a lot of scientists from China tended to think in much more linear processes than European and Americans. I had a good friend, Ph.D., who is from mainland China tell me that this was something he also observed, and he said it was based on the primary - high school education system in China as well as just a cultural thought process.

That said, overall when I am recruiting (as I am right now) I can say that I don't choose based on preconceptions because the nature of people at the Ph.D. level in the hard physical sciences is such that variation abounds.

[mouselock]

In terms of intellect, research capabilities, etc.: a lot of scientists from China tended to think in much more linear processes than European and Americans. I had a good friend, Ph.D., who is from mainland China tell me that this was something he also observed, and he said it was based on the primary - high school education system in China as well as just a cultural thought process.

This has essentially been my observation. The students here tend to be good at following directions, but often have to be told to look at things that, to me, seem "obviously related". In my mind, that makes them poorer as scientists, since most of the truly cool stuff in science is found when you get odd answers and make semi-intuitive leaps to understand what's going on.



That said, overall when I am recruiting (as I am right now) I can say that I don't choose based on preconceptions because the nature of people at the Ph.D. level in the hard physical sciences is such that variation abounds.

Tell me more about this recruitment.. ;)

Seriously though, I think trying to generalize to "all of X are Y" is folly. I do wonder if pushing the influx of trained scientists in America toward foreign students (especially as it seems to be dominated by Chinese and Indian researchers, at least in my field (which is also your field, so feel free to comment there)) is a bit of disservice to American science in general. It seems to me this was one of the questions raised by the original article which touched off this discussion.

[Rimbo]

What - you mean to say that this revolutionary new method that I've devised that increases the speed of parsing XML documents by 5% every time the moon is blue won't save the world as we know it? Fie on you.

Ahhh, I see that you, too, are familiar with the professor and his work. :)

[Rimbo]

Supply exceeds demand. The supply includes foreign scientists which lowers the demand for domestic scientists. The excess supply causes lower salaries and causes many scientists to be out of work or take jobs outside of their field. It is in the best interests of those using the scientists for their to be an excess supply of the type of people they want to hire as that drives down salaries and increases retention of those already in their employ.

Once the public understands what is going on, less and less domestic people want to go into these fields.

I think the problem has a far simpler explanation than that: Science demands the best and brightest, and foreigners outnumber Americans. Europe has double our population, India triple and China quadruple. So simply by looking at the law of averages -- and without even taking into account Africa or South America or other parts of Asia -- you're going to have only one domestic guy scientist for every ten at best. Why do they come here? Because the USA still has more high-quality research universities than anywhere else. And by having them come here, it perpetuates the cycle; it keeps the universities good, and thus continuing to make them attractive to the rest of the world's best.

Bringing in the rest of the world's brightest and best is a GOOD thing ... for America! *national anthem plays, flag displays on background*

And if they go into industry -- particularly US industry -- as their "backup plan," for those who can't get academic jobs... is that really a loss?

[Rimbo]

Actually, that's not an argument against that thought process. It's not that imported labor is working for lower prices, it's that imported labor is skewing the supply part of the supply/demand equation. If you remove the imported labor, scientists get scarcer and thus get paid more. Once they are paid more, more domestic scientists will crop up.

Yes, but then you've lowered the overall quality of your labor pool by eliminating 90% of it. What's more, you've lowered the overall intelligence of your population by cutting off immigration from the world's best and brightest.

[mouselock]

Bringing in the rest of the world's brightest and best is a GOOD thing ... for America! *national anthem plays, flag displays on background*

Not if there's a notable quality difference between the rest of the world's brightest and best, and the local brightest and best who end up displaced as a result. If you're filling a position with a foreign scientist who's every bit as capable, no big deal. If you're filling positions with a foreign scientist who's the best you can find, because interest in domestic scientists has declined significantly, it's probably important.

[JeffL]

Not if there's a notable quality difference between the rest of the world's brightest and best, and the local brightest and best who end up displaced as a result. If you're filling a position with a foreign scientist who's every bit as capable, no big deal. If you're filling positions with a foreign scientist who's the best you can find, because interest in domestic scientists has declined significantly, it's probably important.

I would propose that is not the case - the guys and gals who come over here and get accepted into the good graduate programs are at least as good as the ones in the programs from America. Certainly not in the fields of Chemistry, Polymer Science, Material Science, and related.

[Tortilla]

Yes, but then you've lowered the overall quality of your labor pool by eliminating 90% of it.


Yes, but that is not by itself an a complete argument. It's just an observation. Eliminating slavery probably did a lot of damage to labor pools for certain industries. Didn't make it a bad thing.



What's more, you've lowered the overall intelligence of your population by cutting off immigration from the world's best and brightest.

Proof that scientists are comprised of the world's best and brightest?

[mouselock]

I would propose that is not the case - the guys and gals who come over here and get accepted into the good graduate programs are at least as good as the ones in the programs from America. Certainly not in the fields of Chemistry, Polymer Science, Material Science, and related.

I don't really know what you mean by "the good graduate programs", though. If you're talking top 10 (Let's see, for your fields that's, what, MIT, UIUC, University of Michigan, UCSB, Cornell, Penn, Stanford, UW-Madison, UMass-Amherst, ...? less knowledgeable about the Chemistry side of things..) then that rather goes without saying. The question is when you say that you have trouble finding qualified scientists, does that mean that you run out of interested candidates, or you reach a threshold where despite having a PhD the people you interview are no longer worth hiring? If the latter, what is it you find when you consider the demographics of that group? If the only viable scientists are the top 20%, then I think I'd take that as evidence that we are indeed producing too many scientists, and that the excess serve to confuse the employment market rather than clogging it. That's a different beast than not being able to find scientists no matter where you look.

[JeffL]

I don't really know what you mean by "the good graduate programs", though. If you're talking top 10 (Let's see, for your fields that's, what, MIT, UIUC, University of Michigan, UCSB, Cornell, Penn, Stanford, UW-Madison, UMass-Amherst, ...? less knowledgeable about the Chemistry side of things..) then that rather goes without saying. The question is when you say that you have trouble finding qualified scientists, does that mean that you run out of interested candidates, or you reach a threshold where despite having a PhD the people you interview are no longer worth hiring? If the latter, what is it you find when you consider the demographics of that group? If the only viable scientists are the top 20%, then I think I'd take that as evidence that we are indeed producing too many scientists, and that the excess serve to confuse the employment market rather than clogging it. That's a different beast than not being able to find scientists no matter where you look.

Interesting questions. Makes me think. ;)

At the Ph.D. level, my personal experience over about 25 years of recruiting, hiring, coaching, firing, etc. - with the note that experience is knowing what the mistakes look like - is that "smart" is usually not the differentiation between the scientists who are extremely effective and those who aren't. It tends to be motivation, proactive nature, etc. That doesn't seem to trend with country of origin, sex, intelligence, etc. It's just a person to person individual thing. It's also one of the more difficult things to determine during the interview process, though I've learned to make it a priority when interviewing (I find a lot of people interviewing Ph.D.s and scientists in general are so focused on the technical knowledge that they often hire really intelligent Ph.D.s who don't get anything done.)

I don't think this aspect is unique to scientists, BTW,

Let me think some more on this question.

[Ezdaar]

So, say someone with a PhD in math was thinking of hopping into industry because the market for tier one academic research jobs is the suck right now. What tips would you industry types have to offer said person?

[mouselock]

So, say someone with a PhD in math was thinking of hopping into industry because the market for tier one academic research jobs is the suck right now. What tips would you industry types have to offer said person?

I'd be interested in the answer to this too. My background is actually Chem/Mat Sci, but theory/computation so the job market is probably closer to what a math PhD would see than what an experimental Chemist/Polymer Engineer would see.

I will say (as it relates to the original topic) that possibilities in industry were never really discussed as I was getting my scientific upbringing. It was always assumed that myself and the grad students I worked with would go into academia or, perhaps, into government research labs.

[Ezdaar]

I'd be interested in the answer to this too. My background is actually Chem/Mat Sci, but theory/computation so the job market is probably closer to what a math PhD would see than what an experimental Chemist/Polymer Engineer would see.

I will say (as it relates to the original topic) that possibilities in industry were never really discussed as I was getting my scientific upbringing. It was always assumed that myself and the grad students I worked with would go into academia or, perhaps, into government research labs.

It's a bit sad that in (pure, or fundamental if you prefer) math at least, industry is almost a bad word. Math PhDs jump through ridiculous hoops to stay in academia, often taking very low paying jobs at small satellite campuses of schools you've never heard of with a 5/5 teaching load.

Part of this is an issue of pure vs. applied math (which is a terrible and arbitrary split that should be banished forever), but there is definitely a sort of class distinction between those who stay in academia and those who leave.

On a whim, I scheduled a few interviews with some industry places at a recent conference that has a huge math employment center. I was very impressed with the places I talked to and am looking forward to my upcoming longer interviews and possible employment. I am currently on an academic postdoc and have another one available for next year, but I think if I am offered an industry position I will take it.

[mouselock]

It's a bit sad that in (pure, or fundamental if you prefer) math at least, industry is almost a bad word. Math PhDs jump through ridiculous hoops to stay in academia, often taking very low paying jobs at small satellite campuses of schools you've never heard of with a 5/5 teaching load.


How much of this has to do with a general lack of knowledge about opportunities in the field? For me, given all the conferences and recruiting sessions and job searches I ran through leading up to my degree, I saw very little evidence that there was much job market outside of academia for my area of interest. I had always assumed that this was similar for most people in heavily theoretical areas (of which I'd peg pure math). Perhaps its true in my field and not in yours, or perhaps there's just not a particularly good bridge between the industry positions that exist and the students being trained in the field and this explains some of the bias. (The rest is probably explained by the fact that if you're in an academic environment, getting opinions from your professors primarily, the environment self-selects to prefer academia over industry.)

[Ezdaar]

How much of this has to do with a general lack of knowledge about opportunities in the field? For me, given all the conferences and recruiting sessions and job searches I ran through leading up to my degree, I saw very little evidence that there was much job market outside of academia for my area of interest. I had always assumed that this was similar for most people in heavily theoretical areas (of which I'd peg pure math). Perhaps its true in my field and not in yours, or perhaps there's just not a particularly good bridge between the industry positions that exist and the students being trained in the field and this explains some of the bias. (The rest is probably explained by the fact that if you're in an academic environment, getting opinions from your professors primarily, the environment self-selects to prefer academia over industry.)

I imagine that is a very large part of it. We had a Preparing Future (Math) Faculty program which focused a bit on different job types, but even then, didn't say a whole lot about industry.

[Rimbo]

Yes, but that is not by itself an a complete argument. It's just an observation. Eliminating slavery probably did a lot of damage to labor pools for certain industries. Didn't make it a bad thing.

Eliminating slavery expanded all labor pools. Or at least it should've. It didn't really get that effect until the Civil Rights era.


Proof that scientists are comprised of the world's best and brightest?

By the standards that most immigration services are looking for, they are. You might have a million Eddie Van Halens, but no country is looking for that as much as they are someone who can make a breakthrough to give their military an edge.

[Rimbo]

Not if there's a notable quality difference between the rest of the world's brightest and best, and the local brightest and best who end up displaced as a result. If you're filling a position with a foreign scientist who's every bit as capable, no big deal. If you're filling positions with a foreign scientist who's the best you can find, because interest in domestic scientists has declined significantly, it's probably important.

Anecdote: Back in '96, when I asked my undergraduate advisor in CS about quotas and affirmative action (a hot-button issue at UT at the time, due to a judge ruling that UT admissions policies were unconstitutional or some such thing), he said that without some kind of activity in that front, the Top 5-ranked CS graduate school at UT would be filled with nothing but Indians "and the occasional Chinaman." (He was not using the preferred nomenclature.)

(I would suspect that there would be more Chinese today, based on the improvements to that country since then leading to a larger pool of highly-educated students to choose from.)

So if anything, the opposite of what you said is the case, which makes clear sense if you look solely at the educational and economic systems available worldwide, the availability of quality higher educational institutions, and the relative population sizes and ignore your own patriotic/xenophobic/racist tendencies.

Put it this way. If a one in a billion genius is born today, there is basically a 95% chance that he is NOT born in the United States. Put another way, 95% of the top 10% of the greatest minds in the world are not from the United States. Now if the Brain Drain that started since WW2 continues for an extended period of time -- on the order of centuries -- then you might end up with a substantial shift in that number to where, say, only 90% of the top 10% brains are being born here.

The USA is only 300 million in a planet of 6 billion. And we aren't any smarter than the rest of the world. We have too many Nickelback fans for me to believe otherwise. So if all the best undergraduates want to come here for graduate school -- and preferably stay -- LET THEM.

[Strollen]

)

So if anything, the opposite of what you said is the case, which makes clear sense if you look solely at the educational and economic systems available worldwide, the availability of quality higher educational institutions, and the relative population sizes and ignore your own patriotic/xenophobic/racist tendencies.

Put it this way. If a one in a billion genius is born today, there is basically a 95% chance that he is NOT born in the United States. Put another way, 95% of the top 10% of the greatest minds in the world are not from the United States. Now if the Brain Drain that started since WW2 continues for an extended period of time -- on the order of centuries -- then you might end up with a substantial shift in that number to where, say, only 90% of the top 10% brains are being born here.

The USA is only 300 million in a planet of 6 billion. And we aren't any smarter than the rest of the world. We have too many Nickelback fans for me to believe otherwise. So if all the best undergraduates want to come here for graduate school -- and preferably stay -- LET THEM.

Tom Friedman makes a pretty similar argument in Sunday's NY Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/opinion/21friedman.html).

Went to a big Washington dinner last week. You know the kind: Large hall; black ties; long dresses. But this was no ordinary dinner. There were 40 guests of honor. So here’s my Sunday news quiz: I’ll give you the names of most of the honorees, and you tell me what dinner I was at. Ready?
Linda Zhou, Alice Wei Zhao, Lori Ying, Angela Yu-Yun Yeung, Lynnelle Lin Ye, Kevin Young Xu, Benjamin Chang Sun, Jane Yoonhae Suh, Katheryn Cheng Shi, Sunanda Sharma, Sarine Gayaneh Shahmirian, Arjun Ranganath Puranik, Raman Venkat Nelakant, Akhil Mathew, Paul Masih Das, David Chienyun Liu, Elisa Bisi Lin, Yifan Li, Lanair Amaad Lett, Ruoyi Jiang, Otana Agape Jakpor, Peter Danming Hu, Yale Wang Fan, Yuval Yaacov Calev, Levent Alpoge, John Vincenzo Capodilupo and Namrata Anand.
No, sorry, it was not a dinner of the China-India Friendship League. Give up?
O.K. All these kids are American high school students. They were the majority of the 40 finalists in the 2010 Intel Science Talent Search, which, through a national contest, identifies and honors the top math and science high school students in America, based on their solutions to scientific problems. The awards dinner was Tuesday, and, as you can see from the above list, most finalists hailed from immigrant families, largely from Asia.




Interestingly enough Erica DeBenedictis, the winner. (http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-10469016-76.html)of the Intel Science Talent search is non-immigrant although I bet 2nd and 3rd place. are from immigrant families. I find Erica (http://www.debenedictis.org/erika/)extraordinarily impressive and she doesn't even look like a geek. :)