Too Few American Scientists? Maybe Not 607
An anonymous reader writes "We've been hearing about bad K-12 science education, too few American science and engineering students, and the real-soon-now employment nirvana in technical fields for, like, the last 20 years. The reality: rising undergrad enrollments and unemployment rates, long years as an underpaid postdoc for those who finish a Ph.D. The Chronicle of Higher Education article quotes Harvard economist Richard Freeman: 'They're not studying science,' he says, 'because they look and say, "Do I want to be a postdoc paid $35,000 or $40,000 at age 35, with extreme uncertainty working in somebody else's lab, and maybe getting credit for my work and maybe not getting full credit? Or would I rather be an M.B.A. and making $150,000 and hiring Ph.D.'s?"'"
I'm not surprised (Score:4, Insightful)
I think this is the primary effect of copyright and patent law. It becomes more important to be the person who controls the output of scientists than it is to be a scientist yourself.
MBA is not the end all be all (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, you can make a lot of money having this degree - but unless your passion is management, it's a waste of time - and talent.
Re:MBA is not the end all be all (Score:1, Insightful)
A little history... (Score:5, Insightful)
We've been hearing about bad K-12 science education, too few American science and engineering students, and the real-soon-now employment nirvana in technical fields for, like, the last 20 years.
Longer than that, actually. The beginning of all of this was the launching of Sputnik in 1957. It was the prospect of losing the Space Race against the USSR prompted the infamous "New Math" of the early 60's.
I'll take the Ph.D., thank you (Score:2, Insightful)
Do I want to be a postdoc paid $35,000 or $40,000 at age 35, with extreme uncertainty working in somebody else's lab, and maybe getting credit for my work and maybe not getting full credit?
Yes, yes I do. I'd rather live in relative poverty and be happy doing what I like than having a lot of money, but waste my life doing something I don't enjoy.
Re:I'm not surprised (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, but maybe USA needs more and more outsourcing and maybe some hi-tech crisis to realize that. But that's not something we'd like to see (and I'm not American).
Read what a real scientist has to say. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I'm not surprised (Score:2, Insightful)
PH.d's can't. (Score:4, Insightful)
Nothing that a few good internships couldn't solve, to keep one grounded
Re:I'm not surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:MBA is not the end all be all (Score:5, Insightful)
managers are made to maintain the Status Quo, Leaders are made to give direction and vision and to get everyone on board.
though a good leader needs good management skills to maintain the day to day garbage.
This is just wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
There should be no reason to recruit outside the USA for PhD programs. We should be able to have a good pool of undergrads in the USA to fill almost every PhD seat.
I think the fix to the problem is not undergraduate education or high schools, but what is taught in the elementary schools. I knew two people in elementary/high school who went on to get PhD's. One was a person who was always entering science fairs and was excited and interested in discovery. The father of that guy never pushed the kid to "excel", but allowed the kid to feed his appetite of wonder. The other guy I knew as a kid did not really get excited about learning, but had a dad who pushed and pushed and pushed for his kid to be the best. I can't tell you how many times I remember his father telling him "do you want to push a broomstick the rest of your life?". Both did well in high school, both got into good colleges. The one who was liked studying and did not look at school as work enjoyed his graduate school days. The one who looked at school as another hurdle to jump did not like it, and dropped out early getting a masters (and now works as a programmer because it paid the best, even though he hates it).
I think what needs to be done is schools needs to get fun at an early age. It should not be a pressure filled johnny is better than mike type environment, because johnny did well on some test (only to have mike kick johnnys ass after school). I had only one good teacher in my first 8 years of schooling (before high school), and what made that teacher great was not that he taught better but that he made everyone excited about what they were doing and made everyone feel good about their interests. Those who were interested in fiction books were no less important as people than those who were looking at leaves under a magnifying glass. The teacher always asked with an excited face "how did you like that" and "what did you learn"; and anwsered "wow". It might sound dumb, but he was one hell of a fifth grade teacher. Much better than the guy who taught me algebra in high school who always took off 1/2 a point off a right anwser just to show me who was boss (for shit like "can't read your handwriting").
Re:MBA is not the end all be all (Score:3, Insightful)
It's about time... (Score:5, Insightful)
Every job I've worked at had at least one engineer (many times a Ph.D.) who couldn't get a job in his chosen field - especially aerospace. So, he becomes a programmer. There's a reason that nobody is getting these dgrees - no jobs!
Also, why should someone with that kind of talent "waste" it in engineering when they can go to medical school and make ten times as much?
And another thing, I once was talking to some Indians about why there's so many engineers that come out of their country. Their response: "Every parent wants their child to grow up and become an engineer. If not that, then a doctor." Granted my sample size is four, but it was interesting to hear their mindset. I'm not saying that they're right or wrong, just that Engineers are held in much higher esteem there then over here.
Re:I'll take the Ph.D., thank you (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd rather work in a lab doing research that I feel might change something in society or maybe cure just one person's illness than slave with an M.B.A. dealing with the business end of the deal.
I really don't care if I'm getting 40,000 or so. To me it's not a big deal.
I think it's a hidden blessing that salaries aren't grossly overdone with Ph.D.'s because you weed out those who are in it just for the money and you're left with the people that truly care for what they are doing.
Postdoc problem (Score:5, Insightful)
An unfortunately reality in science, as it is in most of life, is that you have to have connections and you have to have timing on your side. When I was near the end of my postdoc (2 years), the academic job market was good that year. So was the industrial job market. However, two years after that, the academic job market actually shrank as the economy began to wilt and state funding for many schools shrank as well. Timing on my part was critical.
I feel for all those postdocs out there stuck in the rut of that position. I felt it was critical to my development as a scientist but man oh man, there is no way I would ever go back to that.
Supply and demand (Score:4, Insightful)
Amplifying the problem is the US's addiction to foreign graduate students. While they may work longer and harder hours, they're also cut off from their families or any social life, so they grind away in the lab early in the morning, late at night, and on weekends and holidays while us lazy Americans are off somewhere, complaining about how hard we have to work. The difference is that hard labor /= good results, and the papers these people crank out are often full of nonsense, repeat other people's work, or are completely superfluous. I've had foreign postdocs publish work with my contribution twice now, with no credit given to my input (which lasted for 15 months in one case), either out of ignorance or theft- I'm not sure which.
But, really- if you want to drive a ten-year-old car while it's your boss and administrators that roll in the big bucks (with benefits like retirement and that sort of thing), by all means- postdoc is the way to go!
Re:career decisions... (Score:5, Insightful)
More like...
Do I want to shuffle papers all day, make and remake long term plans, work 70 hours weeks becasue I'm salaried, never have time for my friends and family, and get no credit ever becasue the CEO and other vicious MBA take it becasue they are trained to...
No, a geek should not try to be a MBA, and a MBA should not try to be a geek. They should however, understand each other.
Re:PH.d's can't. (Score:5, Insightful)
The employment opportunities for U.S. Ph.D's are bleak becuase the field is competitive. There aren't that many positions outside of academia that require that specialized knoledge and there are plenty of talented people from other countries itching to plant themselves in the U.S. to get away from less than perfect conditions in their own country.
Re:My decision: (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'm not surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
And it's statements like that that get the country bombed. Way to go.
Re:I'll take the Ph.D., thank you (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I'm not surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
You can really say its about money. Money is what funds the development, money is what funds the lawyers who file the patents.
A PhD who could fund his own R&D and lawyers could have everything. The problem is that in order for them to fund it, they need their own fat savings account.
The fundamental issue with PhD salaries is that there are so many PhD's out there who are perfectly willing to work in academia withthe basics of their financial life supported that universities and companies don't NEED to pay them more. Their love for work is their motivation, not the money. Thats why they'll always generally be paid just enough to survive.
Of course... if they WERE paid more, and the costs were reflected in drug development, etc, everyone on Slashdot would scream bloody murder.
Now that's a badly written story. (Score:3, Insightful)
So, we're looking overseas for students to fill our tech programs....
"Current data suggest that the new predictions may fare no better than earlier ones. In fact, contrary to prevailing wisdom, which fixes blame on poor training in science and mathematics from kindergarten through the 12th grade, record numbers of Americans are earning bachelor's degrees in science and engineering. And unemployment rates in at least some sectors of science and engineering have topped the charts."
But we're turning out "record numbers" of AMERICAN graduates in those programs.
"University presidents, government officials, and heads of industry have joined together in a chorus of concern over the state of science and engineering in the United States. The danger signs are obvious, they say. Fewer U.S. citizens are getting doctorates in those fields."
And we seem to be producing fewer PhD's in those programs.
"In fact, even as science leaders opined about the alarming NSF report from May, the agency announced last week that graduate-student enrollment in science and engineering actually reached a new peak in 2002."
But we're enrolling more post-graduate people in those programs than ever before.
"As the number of those men entering science has declined, national leaders have sought to bring more women and minorities into the enterprise."
So fewer white men are going into tech and the difference is more women and minorities?
So is this about the decline of the white male in tech fields or is it about the rise of everyone else in tech fields or is it about how the US is declining in tech fields?
"And even if the visa difficulties fade, leaders both inside and outside academe say the education system in the United States must reform itself to maintain the country's technological edge."
So, we're in decline because we're graduating more techs than ever before, but they're mostly women and minorities and lots of them go on to post-graduate work, and that is the fault of the education system?
"The board noted in particular a rising reliance on foreign-born talent, a decline in homegrown brainpower, increasing difficulty in attracting overseas scholars, and a looming shortage of scientists and engineers."
So, we are depending more upon foreign engineers and it is becoming increasing difficult to get them to come here....
"Compounding the situation, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicted in 2001 that the number of jobs in science and engineering would grow at a rate three times that of all occupations, on average, producing a 47-percent increase in science-and-engineering jobs by 2010."
So we'll have lots of jobs available for people with tech degrees.
""Despite recurring concerns about potential shortages of STEM [scientific, technical, engineering, and mathematics] personnel in the U.S. work force, particularly in engineering and information technology, we did not find evidence that such shortages have existed at least since 1990, nor that they are on the horizon," concluded the RAND Corporation in a report this year."
So there won't be lots of jobs available for people with tech degrees.
And the rest of the article continues in the same fashion.
Is there a current shortage of techs? Is there a current surplus of techs?
Are too many of the techs foreign? Are too few foreign students entering our schools?
The only thing to be found in this article is that US-born citizens are not all working towards their PhD's and even if they did, they might not make any more money than they do right now.
That is a general problem with our current economy (Score:5, Insightful)
At the moment, there are many jobs that are not compensated for very well. Stock brokers, advertising / marketing types, lawyers, and executives make a great deal of money. Scientists, Teachers, Police, Firemen, and the like probably contribute more to civilization then the types listed above, but they certaintly dont reap much of a benefit for it.
About the only profession that makes the kind of money they ought to are Surgeons. And that is only because they have a pretty compelling way to get the compensation they deserve. "Oh, you dont want to pay me that much? Ok. Let someone else perform that arterial bypass then."
Scientists / Inventors in theory can use Patents to generate their income. But research costs money. And they end up having to sign the patents over to the company that employed them.
I think that Patents / Copyright should never pass completely beyond the control of the creator for that reason. But Patents and Copyright are broken.
However, for all my complaints, its not like I have a solution handy either.
END COMMUNICATION
Quantity over Quality? (Score:4, Insightful)
I believe that this is the larger issue. In my experience many university science professors have a distorted view of the world beyond their walls. As a result the material they teach and their methods do not serve their students. This problem is not one of teching theory over practice. I am a big proponent of universities teaching theory only. Rather it is beliefs such as "If you want to do anything in field X you require a Ph.D." Or like my professor insisting that I would not be able to find a job with such a low mark in his course. (I was already employed.) Too many of my professors taught in such a manner that the highest marked students were the ones who memorized the material prior to an exam, and proptly forgot everything when they put their pencils down. This practice of encourageing memorization is a dumbing down of university curriculum. It is great for pumping out "scientists." But it dosen't encourage science.
Egos... (Score:3, Insightful)
And - FYI - before you write me off as a mental defect, I was generally considered as being one of the top students in my program, which was at a top-10 university for that program.
Among the many reasons that I left with an MS was because I've never seen so many inflated egos in a confined space. I wouldn't say the majority of my fellow students were that way - but there were so many that it was virtually impossible to avoid them. At my present employer there are certainly a fair share of super-alpha-(fe)male managers, but they are few enough that you can accomplish at least a few tasks without one trying to take credit and you can go through 4/5 workdays without having to personally interact with one.
Other reasons that I left included a lack of faith in my advisor and the project I ended up on, a lack of people who were willing to act as mentors, and the general super-competitive atmosphere where the guy who discovers something first gets 100% of the credit, and the guy who makes a parallel discovery two weeks later is lucky to even get published at all - and will certainly not get a Ph.D. out of it.
I'm all for a fair day's work for a fair day's pay, but I don't work for the sake of working, and I don't believe that most normal people set a goal of spending 100 hours a week working at their careers.
If that's what you want to do, that's fine by me. And I could care less if you want to be a jerk with an inflated ego on the side. Just don't be surprised that nobody wants to be around you. And don't be surprised when taxpayers aren't willing to fund your research. It isn't like most people feel a moral obligation to fork over their hard-earned cash to people whose main goal in life seems to be to prove that they are better than everyone else.
If more people at the top in academics were willing to invest a little time in helping those beneath them understand science, and to help them climb the academic ladder, then perhaps more people would find it an attractive career option. To me, it just seems like a way to be underpaid while having to deal with crazy egomaniacs.
In my present job I don't necessarily work on cutting-edge science, but I do have a little spare time to follow what is going on in the world of science. And, unless I got tenure at a top-20 university I probably wouldn't be paid much more than I am now (not bad considering my salary is likely to continue to rise). I still get to solve interesting problems, and I have coworkers who aren't out to prove that they are better than me - we actually can go out to lunch once in a while and enjoy ourselves...
Re:A little history... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'm not surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
More to the point.... (Score:4, Insightful)
WTF people?!? How'd this even get on Slashdot? With all of the elitist attitudes espoused around here, I'm surprised you'd even consider encouraging the acceptance of bourgeois pricks into a field that should be filled with guys who are doing it because they're fucking CURIOUS!
[/end rant]
Anyway. Yeah, what's up with that?
Re:You're obviously not a foreign student (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What does K-12 science education matter here an (Score:5, Insightful)
Far too many pepople rely on the educational system alone to turn their obnoxious little brats into good upstanding citizens. They don't understand that the educational system is just a tool. It generally takes a good upbringing to get kids to take advantage of it.
Once someone wants to learn and sees the value in a good education, they'll get a good education, even in the "abysmal" system we currently have.
It was a lie in the '80s. It still is. (Score:5, Insightful)
In the early '90s, testimonies and hand-wringings were still going on. Only thing is, those of us who had graduated with a Ph.D. had learned of a new problem. It was called "The Glut". Most places, especially in academia, were averaging 300-400 applications for teaching and research positions. There were postdocs out the wazoo, and most of us were in a holding pattern. I was a postdoc for 6.5 years, trying to find a place to land (I finally did; many of my colleagues stopped trying and went off to sell computers or work for biotech companies as a marketer or salesman). I remember one position that I applied for in academia didn't even respond with a letter. They had so many applications, they just sent out a postcard that began "Dear Applicant:".
The Glut is still here. Don't believe the lies about getting research positions after you graduate. You may do it, but you'll need some luck. The shortage is in graduate students. Every faculty member would like 2 or 3 (or more) graduate students to work on their projects, mostly 'cause we faculty spend all day, every day writing grant proposals to keep our soft-money-funded postions on faculty. And the NIH and NSF budgets are tapped out, meaning the only way I get my grant funded is if my colleague loses his. This breeds a situation where every April, Sept., and Dec., everyone gets nervous, waiting for those grant scores to roll in. If your score isn't good, update your CV. And there's a pretty good correlation between the number of grad students you have and the score you get: more is better.
Science can be a fun occupation. I love it. But don't be deceived into thinking your going to go from graduation to a faculty position in anything less than 6 years, or that you're going to get some cushy job teaching or in academia. Trust me.
Re:I'm not surprised (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:PH.d's can't. (Score:3, Insightful)
Or do you mean they're unable to navigate the absurd sociopolitical burearacracies found in any large company? "Gee, Dr. Egghead simply doesn't get it, we can't do that... our shareholders can't understand it and Company X just laid off 4500 (a good thing for the bottom line), we have to compete with them!"
I don't personally see how you could ever have too many researchers. As a country, the more of them we have, the more technology we will have in the future (though since the payoff won't be soon, it might not look like that to retards). Or is it simply more profitable to raise generation after generation of sheep-like consumers?
another old story (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's an automotive engineering example,Smokey Yunick. Worked various pro racing because he truly could be creative, and he got paid well to do it. He even proved he could almost single handedly beat detroit in making a non racing car, but a commuter car that could get fantastic mileage and not be weird, just a normal looking car that worked much better. He did it,built it, proved it worked, that it could be done, when detroit was whining to congress it wasn't possible, and that detroit was being lamer about it,liars basically. Detroit-GM IIRC, offered him literally dick for it in terms of money, a quarter million, it was a joke offer for what he had, so he went back to racing.
These big companies, with a few exceptions, don't want to pay for the class A brains, they want to pay for snakeoil salesmen, because it's a better way for them to make profits, sell the sizzle, which is cheap and easy to do, rather than building a better cow and selling a better steak. They also tend to reward the memebers of their clique, the other managers and sales people, because that's who they grew up with and hung out together with and went to college with. It's a good ole boys network. Why share the pot with people not in your clique? that's what they think anyway. They think anyone not in their cliqie is a loser, or a nerd, sonmeone to make fun of and to soak for everything they can get from them. They put themselves in the position to do that, so they do that. They also go WAY out of their way to make sure the nerds never have an effective union, they keep telling them from day one they are different from the blue collars, they are "white collar" and despite the fact they get treated like the blue collars, the nerds keep thinking they are somehow part of that management/sales clique, even though they never will be, so they get shafted. It's almost impossible for the nerds to use collective bargaining,in most cases,because of that indoctrination, and they also make sure the government-which they control because lawyers and legislators are closer to their clique than the blue collars or nerds-always passes laws that favor them, and no one else, except for the occassional non meaty bone toss.
I am speaking in very general terms now, I know there are exceptions to the rule, but in those general terms that's how I see it being run, and it's been run like that for a long time now.
Re:That is a general problem with our current econ (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Your last sentence is nonsense (Score:2, Insightful)
If you know of a company where the cost of R&D is not factored into the price of goods, I'd love to know about it, because they'd be violating essential economic principals of business. In order to make a profit, you must be given more money than it took to develop your product.
The reasons why drug companies these days are spending so much money on marketing is because of the health care system's current state. People don't read tech journals. They don't know about new drugs. Top this fact off with the concept of HMO's limiting patients to only certain drugs, and you've essentially got a drug economy that will not make money on new drugs and will therefore not be driven to develop newer drugs. Marketing helps bridge this problem. It gets people to know about Cialis as an alternative to Viagra or a generic... information that people otherwise might not know about (unless they have email
The Job market is about Supply and Demand. If the number of out of work PhD's were to decrease, you'd instantly see salaries increase. Thats the way these things work... Even if it makes you angry.
Re:PH.d's can't. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you hit the problem on the head. Look at some of today's most successful companies, do they do research? Dell doesn't do much, neither does Wal-Mart, and yet Wall Street follows them like a hawk. Wall Street only cares about ROI and getting rid of labor, no matter what the long term cost to the company is. At a place I used to intern, they hired very expensive consultants to come in and fire people, thus concentrating a lot of critical knowledge into a few hands, which they then proceed to treat like crap and pile loads of work onto them. How is this good for the company?
Nobody wants to engage in risky R&D anymore because they won't be able to use the buzzword ROI on the project(Intel thinks that it is the governments job to do research for them)
The long term consequences of this short selling mentality will be dire IMO.
Re:More to the point.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you've missed the point, and indeed don't understand the scale of the problem. (This is not a flame, but I do wish to inject some amount of reason into this discussion.)
The major problem here is that there are plenty of people in the world who ARE curious. They're *not *doing it for the money (after all, nobody goes to school until they're 30 years old without making a dime for the money). The point is that many of these curious individuals cannot follow their passions in science because that career is just too unstable and underpaid to support a family with. I'm speaking somewhat from personal experience: until recently, I was planning on taking my bachelor's degree in physics with me to a PhD program. But doing my latest research with a 36 year old postdoc opened by eyes to the fact that, until you become a tenured professor, you're basically kicked in the balls over and over -- as a grad student for 6-7 years, then as a postdoc for several more years, you're underpaid ($0 - $30000) and overworked (80+ hrs/wk). That's discouraging to a lot of people.
For the record, I favor paying scientists more money. Arguably, they do the most important work in this world -- think about where we would be without the Newtons and Edisons of this world. And the funny thing about science is that it's internally regulated -- you'll never get to a well paying job without first proving yourself (that's what a PhD is, after all), and even then, you won't be successful and you won't have your job for long if you aren't a "curious geek" that can actually produce results that people care about.
Too many para-engineers in software (Score:2, Insightful)
As someone who holds both a bachelors and masters in computer science from the school of engineering from U.C. Berkeley, one huge problem is too many "para-engineers."
If only licensed engineers were allowed to be employed as engineers then this problem would not exist. The problem is there are too many high-school graduates, history majors, and every other discpline imaginable practicing being software engineers. And this causes untold problems with software because of the lack of formal training.
Yeah, maybe we have too many lawyers, but you know they are all licensed to practice law. A para-legal cannot be hired as a lawyer. A nurse cannot be hired as a doctored.
The problem in computer science is too many hacks are being paid and labeled as engineers when they are not. And yeah, there are lots of good programmers without degrees, but guess what, there could be lots of good lawyers and doctors without degrees too if we didn't insist on licensing them. But as a culture we realize the benefits and trade offs of licensing these professions and the same logic needs to be applied to engineering.
If we don't do this then an engineering degree isn't worth the paper its printed on. Today thousands and thousands of people filling jobs labeled as *engineers* have no formal education or have a degree in a different field.
Either an engineering degree matters or it doesn't.
Won't someone please think of the children? (Score:1, Insightful)
By Gerald W. Bracey
Friday, April 25, 2003; Page A23
In the spring of 1983 the National Commission on Excellence in Education produced a report titled "A Nation at Risk" deploring the state of American education. Although there was argument among President Ronald Reagan's advisers as to whether the report should even be accepted (the arguments centering mostly on whether it would be of political benefit), it was, on April 26.
The 36-page report soon became known as the "paper Sputnik," recalling the 1957 launch by the Soviets of the first man-made satellite. That small globe riveted attention on American schools, which took the blame for letting the Russians get into space first (an absurd charge). "Risk" also captured the nation's attention. And it restored to popularity the sport of pummeling the public schools.
The problem with the report, though, was that it was all wrong -- then and now. Written in stentorian Cold War rhetoric, it declared that "our nation is at risk . . . [from] a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people. . . . If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war." Whew.
The report followed these rhetorical flourishes with a list of indicators that illustrated the risk. A larger treasury of selected, spun and distorted statistics is hard to imagine. For instance, the booklet declared, "There was a steady decline in science achievement scores of U.S. 17-year-olds as measured by national assessments of science in 1969, 1973, and 1977."
True? Maybe, maybe not. The numbers for 1969 and 1973 didn't really exist. They were extrapolations from the 1977 assessment. Their accuracy was not verifiable. But even if the trend was true for 17-year-olds, it was not true for 13-year-olds or 9-year-olds, the other two ages assessed. Nor was it true for any of the three ages tested in reading or math. Those scores were stable or inching up. The commissioners thus had nine trend lines to look at (three ages by three subjects), only one of which could be used to support crisis rhetoric, and that was the only one they used.
Similarly, "A Nation at Risk" reported: "The College Board's Scholastic Aptitude Tests demonstrated a virtually unbroken decline from 1963 to 1980." This was true. But the College Board's own panel assembled to analyze the decline did not see it as a failure of schools. The fall occurred because of changes in who was taking the SAT and therefore aspiring to go to colleges that required it: more blacks, more women, more students from low-income families, more students with average high school records. All of these changes are associated with lower test scores.
And what, exactly, were we at risk of? According to the report, the danger now was not that the Red Menace might blow us off the globe but that our friends, especially Germany, Japan and Korea, whose students had high test scores, would outsmart us and end our dominance of the world economy: "If only to keep and improve on the slim competitive edge we still retain in world markets, we must dedicate ourselves to the reform of our educational system."
One must admire the sheer audacity of the commissioners for writing such hokum. But this snake oil served school critics well when they blamed our "lousy" schools for the recession of the 1980s. The economy came roaring back, of course, while those of high-scoring "Asian Tiger" nations faltered. Japan's students continue to ace tests, but the country has languished in recession for 12 years. By contrast, the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report 2002 ranked average-scoring America No. 2 overall (behind Finland) and No. 1 in innovative competitiveness.
Blaming public schools for social ills has a long and dishonorable history, of which the 1983 report is only one particularly egregious example. Yet in the international r
Re:Quantity over Quality? (Score:2, Insightful)
There are lots of people around who simply do terrible in school. They cannot really learn in a classroom or even by reading a book. But put them to work doing those certain things they can learn, and they learn more, and faster, than they would in school. I know I am one of these people, and I learned on the job far more than in school. I look back on my days in college as a total waste of time; I'd have learned more in the right job, which of course I'd never have gotten because the eystem doesn't allow for that. I believe there are a lot of people like this. I've met many, and it isn't just in science, engineering, or technology; I've even met business people and sales people like this. And don't forget that even Bill Gates dropped out of college to be a successful (from a financial perspective) business person.
Re:After 25 years in engineering I went elsewhere. (Score:5, Insightful)
My life as an engineer is fantastic. I love staying indoors at a desk and exercising my mind. I don't have to suck up to my boss because my industry is a meritocracy. I enjoy the freedom that comes from being able to switch jobs anytime because good people are always in demand. Life couldn't be better.
I am happy that you have finally found your calling in life. But, don't put down my industry. Leave those teenagers alone; let them find their own way. They just might enjoy engineering. I know I do.
Re:Ph.D Not So Bad (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it's fear of uncertainty... (Score:2, Insightful)
I think this is the primary effect of copyright and patent law. It becomes more important to be the person who controls the output of scientists than it is to be a scientist yourself.
People who specialize in making money are called "businessmen" [or "entrepreneurs," or "the self-employed"]. Their careers require freedom from intervention, and a system of property rights which protects the fruits of their labor.
Oddly enough, the vast, overwhelming majority of almost every population of people to be found in any locale on the face of the earth, at almost any point in human history, want nothing whatsoever to do with freedom. Rather, they choose, of their own free will, to live in a state of slavery, i.e. they choose to be employees, rather than entrepreneurs ["employment" being a polite euphemism for slavery]. As long as Massuh keeps the checks coming every two weeks, they're happy.
Entrepreneurism is terrifying - an entrepreneur never knows where his next meal ticket is coming from, and he lies awake at night worrying about little more than revenue streams [or waking up in a cold sweat when he's had another nightmare about them]. And biweekly paychecks? One of the entrepreneur's greatest worries is not that he won't get a check, but that the checks people write to him will fail to clear the bank.
The left, which would encompass pretty much 100% of all university professors, and a substantial number of those who claim to worship at the altar of the pagan religion known as "science," is terrified of the very idea of freedom - they want nothing to do with it.
But you've got a choice - if you don't like the intellectual property agreement that your employer is trying to shove down your throat, then don't sign it. Take your ideas and set out on your own. Start your own company. Own your own ideas. Tell "the man" to go screw himself.
Of course, the vast majority of people reading this missive won't have the balls to take me up on my challenge. I know who you are - you're the wage slaves who just want Massuh to keep your belly full. Well screw you - move to North Korea and let Kim Jong Il be your fearless leader.
Listen folks, despite what the left would have you believe, you've still got freedom of the will. Exercise it.
Re:I'm not surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm an engineer you insensitive clod!
Joking aside, I think it's important to point out that what we need a lot of are engineers, not scientists. Scientists are wonderful people who advance our knowledge from a 50,000 foot level, and do so for little pay. These guys dream math calculations that make my mind gloss over just thinking about it.
Engineers OTOH, use a combination of scientific research and intuition to develop real and practical devices that advance civilization. Most of these guys are also very smart, but from a far more practical standpoint. Their job is to use all that research done by really smart scientists to exploit the laws of nature for the purpose of creating advanced machines that can do "work". (In CompSci, that would be a matter of applying the proper data structures and formulas to derive a computational machine that does work.)
The primary difference here is that Scientists tend to do the research because they love it. They have a keen insight into the universe and its working, and generally won't stop research even if they can't find funding. In addition, country borders rarely mean anything to their research. They could be American, Russian, Indian, British, French, or whatever. When their research gets published, everyone benefits.
Engineers (being more practical by nature) tend to aim for either the fortune of working for hire, or the fame of engineering some really amazing project. Their focus is to find a way to achieve whatever goals are put in front of them. I could tell some Aerospace engineers that I wanted to colonize Alpha Centauri, and they should be able to tell me how it can be done, how long it will take, what technologies must be developed, and at what cost. The idea that it *can't* be done is not the way they think. It's only about whether someone is willing to fund the project to its needs.
While I'm painting something of a rosy picture here, I do have a point to this rant. The US is losing *engineers* for various reasons. One reason is lower pay. Another reason is today's poor education system that often denies potential engineers from becoming such. The most damaging thing, however, is the continuously laxing standards for "engineers". A construction worker is not an engineer. Neither is a programmer a "software engineer". Yet kids fresh out of school have scented money, and said "I'll be an engineer! I'll cram my way through the schoolwork, then I can stop learning because no one will ever make me prove myself again!" As a result, the signal to noise ratio of engineers is ever dropping.
I'm not sure what the solution is yet, but I do know one thing: we need a different system for separating the wheat from the chaff. Traditional thinking says that School Degree == Knows His Stuff. Yet the reality is that you have a lot of people who go to school, but aren't really qualified for the job. At the other end of the spectrum, you have a lot of people who've made use of today's information mediums to become qualified without a degree. It's all a very confused situation.
Re:I'll take the Ph.D., thank you (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:MBA is not the end all be all (Score:5, Insightful)
Plenty of people who got into computer science in the dotcom boom realized how much they wanted to do something else, and are frankly much happier now making less money. They made an educated guess during college about their talents and careers, and it turned out wrong.
Bless the people who were such programmers, web designers, etc. and who are now doing great jobs as artists, plumbers, teachers, etc., etc.
This Is Your Education. This Is Your Salary (Score:3, Insightful)
another way of looking at it (Score:3, Insightful)
For example, I am currently a physics graduate student. I get paid a little less than $20K a year, but have no fees.
My brother is going to law school. He gets paid nothing and will have around $150K in loans to pay off when he's done.
The balance is that he'll get paid more after he gets out, right? What happens if he can't find a good job? Not all lawyers (or MBAs for that matter) make a lot of money. What happens if he can't find any job? Unemployment among physics PhDs is always very low, almost never higher than 4%. Can MBAs or lawyers say the same?
The numbers of $40K a year for a post-doc may be right for biologists and organic chemists, but many of those guys are being replaced by robots and combinatorial chemistry. That's led to some poor job markets for them. Here [ucsd.edu] are some actual numbers (as opposed to vague generalizations). While you don't make six figures as a physicist, you're doing pretty well.
When it comes down to it, science is changing now in the same way everything else is. Computers are cheap, easy to use and more powerfull, allowing students to be replaced by a few good Labview programs. The revolution in nanoscale characterization allowed by AFM and STM has lead to new, better ways of doing chemistry and biology. Should science NOT use these tools because it means some people are now obsolete?
The article is right on when it takes Universities to task for not teaching the skills which will be needed. Grad student labor is cheap, and some of this equipment is expensive. It's not even that more money is needed. It just needs to be spent smarter. Buying used equipment, testing prototype technology and forming collaborations with other groups to pool resources are ways of providing your research group with cutting edge tools (all of which are used in the lab I work in). Of course, there's nothing wrong with building your own equipment either (what I am spending a Saturday doing, after posting here, of course). In any case, it's dishonest for a University to hand out PhDs to people who are not able to get jobs for lack of training.
Re:I'll take the Ph.D., thank you (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I'm not surprised (Score:3, Insightful)
Many people, however, like that sort of thing: the pure joy of learning and discovery.
I'm wondering why you were going to be a researcher in the first place if you didn't want to do that?
To repeat: It's fear of uncertainty. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet another thing that the entrepreneur must fear: Someone who builds a better mousetrap and sells it at an even more aggressive price.
There's always gonna be something to worry about when you're free: There will always be someone who's smarter, stronger, faster, prettier, or better-financed than you.
People who love freedom shrug these things off, and figure out a way to adapt. People who hate freedom get down on their hands and knees and beg Massuh not to take away their hot grits and chitluns.
Finance (Score:4, Insightful)
When I started grad school (I'm a second year student in math), they told me, "When you're done you will almost certainly have to teach. Really good students will be able to land a post-doc right when they get out. You
Then, after slaving away at a three-year post-doc (or, more ilkely, multiple one-year post-docs), I could maybe get a teaching job. That's a big maybe, too. People fight tooth and nail for teaching jobs.
Even if I could get a job, the pay is relatively low. Don't get me wrong, even bad teachers at mediocre colleges make enough money to get by, but the pay that you're getting for having a Ph. D in Math is lower than you would think is fair for the amount of effort you put into the degree.
So, I've decided to get a job in finance [numa.com]. There's cooler jobs than you think. For example, my bachelor's degree was in math and computer science. Well, there're these jobs called 'quantitative developers' that combine your (very high level) understanding of math with C++ or JAVA development skills. You get to do math and code, and all for pay that is (on average) much higher than what people got at the height of the tech boom in the late '90s. It's not just the money, either. You wouldn't believe how much great theoretical math there is finance. Most academics will tell you that they're in it for the science, and that's why they can put up with lower pay. I say, why bother if you can do the science in the private sector? It's not quite as nice an environment as academia, but it sure pays well enough to help blur the distinction.
With the scarcity of academic positions, people from lots of different fields, such as math, physics, and engineering are heading to the finance sector. Hopefully, I'll be at the front of the pack.
Re:I'm not surprised (Score:1, Insightful)
Your whole premise rests on a fallacy. in reality, if you "give away" a technology design, you STILL HAVE IT, but others can improve it further. That's how Open Source works, that's how the Scientific Method is supposed to work!
Patents run fundamentally counter to the scientific method, and exist solely to UNfree markets and allow vampire "businessmen" and lawyers to parasitise productive members of the human race. They produce ARTIFICIAL ADVANTAGE for the non-sharer - altruists have the advantage over the selfish in the absence of I"P" laws. It's not that people are all naturally selfish with I"P" so the system is set up to deal with that, it's that some people are selfish because the present system REWARDS THAT BEHAVIOUR. Eliminate I"P" and we could eliminate such idea-hoarders from the gene pool in a few generations.
Re:I'm not surprised (Score:3, Insightful)
If patent law causes private businesses to hire more scientists (which itself is a dubious claim, in reality they would still hire researchers but would keep their work completely closed as trade secrets), that helps employment of scientists. Yes, some businessmen get rich too, but thats a stupid thing to cry about.
Re:To repeat: It's fear of uncertainty. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:I'm not surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that while engineering traditionally pays pretty well, basic research never has (except for the elite professors, a very small fraction of the people doing the actual work). But you can't have progress in engineering without basic research. On the flip side, a lot of basic research doesn't directly result in marketable products for decades (if ever), so it's not economical for companies to spend a lot of money on it. (Besides, why should they? Your tax dollars already fund basic research, because the government cares about getting science done, not bringing products to market - that's just an occasional side benefit.)
I'm entering the second year of my PhD in biology, and I spend more time than I'd prefer to worrying about this conflict. I love basic research, and I love seeing my name in print. I love the thrill of discovery, and while I'm happy to see my research used towards improving human lives, that's not my primary goal - I simply want to expand human knowledge. Unfortunately, I'd also like to own a car, and lots of books, and various musical instruments. I've been wanting a video projector for a while too.
I don't think I'd find industry as rewarding in a purely scientific sense. But the odds of me getting a faculty job are slim, and even if I did, I'd be 40 by the time I was settled in with tenure (assuming I get it), and I'd probably still be single and working nonstop. Alternately, I could spend the rest of my career as a glorified postdoc, doing terrific science with some of the best people in the world, but making very little money and relatively little fame. The easier course would be to simply skip all this, go into biotech, and work in anonymity doing drug development, but without ever having to deal about funding problems or paying the rent.
I know this sounds shallow and materialistic, but I live in the Bay Area, and since all the women here are shallow and materialistic, I figure I don't have much of a choice unless I want to remain single for the rest of my life. The only thing less sexy than being a geeky, underpaid, overworked 25-year-old scientist is being a geeky, underpaid, overworked, 40-year-old scientist.
The Myth(tm) reborn (Score:1, Insightful)
In a word: Bullshit.
We have seen this before, and gullible young kids in college the last time (Erich Bloch's big freaking lie in 1986) went on to spend 10 years in graduate school to get a Ph.D. in Physics.
So I ask, in case (ha ha ha) any policy makers actually are reading this: Where the fuck are the jobs?
Most folks hop from postdoc to postdoc and finally quit. Tenure tracks are not opening up (and this is a good thing in disguise), because you cannot force old professors to retire. This means that, using physics as the example, there are approximately 100 new jobs (permanent or tenure track) every year, for in excess of 1500 graduates every year.
Well, this sucks, especially if you are, like me, one of those gullible kids from 1986. You can actually model this mathematically, and it absolutely sucks no matter how you tweak the model.
The folks who benefit from the vast oversupply of PhD's in the US are the universities, and the corporate world. You see, the universities get to pay physics postdocs wages that, if they had say a wife and two kids (not uncommon), they would be under the damned poverty line.
So, you study your ass off for 10+ years, because you are told by universities and companies that there will be many jobs waiting. You get there and
The supply side of market is flooded. The demand side is not good. They pay you $20k/year as a freshly minted PhD. 25k$ if you have experience.
Then you watch the little engineering weenies come out with bachelors and start at 70k$.
Ok, sure, we are getting a better education.
Now, the simple economic situation takes hold (always does). The opportunity cost of those 10 years (past BS) is at least the salary difference during that time, not to mention any career issues. At 70k$/year vs $10k/year as a TA
The opportunity cost is above one half million dollars.
Now start working out the future value of the retirement savings, the cost of living, and other things.
Is it worth the sacrifice?
Folks, I will be honest. Being called Dr. is really very little consolation when I am not working in the field that I trained in, or anything even close to it, nor is it consolation for the lost opportunity.
I am now the CEO of my own business, which I could have been without the degree.
I have met many PhD's who are not very smart. It seems that some of the "better" universities (ahem) turn out some really poor thinkers. Sadly, these are the jokers who get the tenure tracks. It is all about pedigree, not quality.
I would personally hire a bright BS or MS over a "name brand" PhD because of this issue, but I digress.
Competition is fierce. Ferocious. You do not get a job handed to you. You will get stabbed in the back by folks who work with you. You have to learn to hold your best stuff for when you are on your own.
Are you really sure you want to do this?
If I were to do it over again, I would not do physics. I would do an engineering degree, and do it fast. If an advisor wants to plan to keep you for more than 4 years, you should find another.
No one, and I repeat, no one should be in graduate school for a decade. Take it from someone who beat that by a year, and a decade is average for physics.
Also, don't consider academe. Really, it is not worth your headache.
A slave to the market (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless they get lucky, and hit it big, most entrepenuers seems to have a lot less freedom than those those that work for "the man".
It's even worse if your passion is not business. Working for a company means letting someone else deal with that crap. Working for "yourself" means you deal with it and have little time for your own passion.
Nonsense (Score:3, Insightful)
That investor could be a person, a corporation, a non-profit, a government, whatever. It doesn't matter. Any of the above have more things they could do with their money than they have money.
So with this in mind, consider your advice: "Mass disregard for IP laws is the duty of a scientist." There are plenty of countries that exhibit a mass disregard for IP laws. How does their scientific productivity compare to countries with strong IP protection? How much funding do their scientists attract?
People are not usually inspired to invest their own money in scientists who consider it their "duty" to rip off the investor.
(This does not mean that I think that the stronger the IP laws, the better. I think productivity falls off at either extreme, and the US is less productive than it could be because IP laws have gotten ridiculously constraining. The solution is not to disregard the laws and rejoin the third world, though. The solution is to fix the laws.)
Re:I'm not surprised (Score:2, Insightful)
IMO, we're "losing" engineers because we're not making real engineers. The percentage of "good" engineers, those that really have the talent and breadth to create things that just make you go "wow", was way different in the crop of the 90s versus the crop of the 50s and 60s. Good engineers are still in high demand and are still paid very well. In fact, because they are getting more and more scarce, I'd say they are in higher demand than ever. I know good engineers with just Bachelors degrees making 100K at 40 years of age and loving their work. With Masters degrees, 120K by that point isn't out of the question. I don't think I've ever known a MBA manager that loved their work.
And by the way, if you're not a teenager and you're looking to find what you can do to become a good engineer, you probably ought to find another career. Good engineers are made by more by talent and good parents than schools. Being a good engineer is not about processes, degrees or certifications. Its more about loving to create, a good sense of the "right" way to do things that can't really be taught, loving to work, always finishing what you start, and a personal responsibility for everything you do.
Re:I'm not surprised (Score:1, Insightful)
That might be vaguely true if the scientist or engineer held the patent (I personally doubt it, actually, as scientists and engineers themselves typically want to build on eachother's work like Open Source developers can do rather than hoard ideas).
But in practice, fictional legal persons (corporations) hold the patents, not the scientist or engineer.
companies would instead keep their innovative products as trade secrets and wouldn't let a soul know about them. That would create an even more restrictive world.
Rubbish. The methodology of reverse engineering is far more developed than when patents were last even vaguely a good idea. As an engineer, I'd much rather have the freedom to dismantle something to work out how it ticks than rely on the "disclosure" of patents. Have you ever read a patent? They're absurd! Particularly software patents, where -get this- it is actually prohibited to use a computer language to describe the "invention"! Patents are useless as "disclosure" and one of the major roles of specialist patent lawyers is to make sure they're useless. Then throw in the "triple damages for wilful infringement" rule, and engineers would be extremely foolish to even read any patent in the first place!
The "patents protect inventors" bullshit is just that, bullshit. In real life, you discover that pretty much smartest thing an engineer can do if he isn't man enough to fight the system is to completely ignore the existence of patents when designing something, and then be sure to be working for a large corporation with enough lawyers to work out the cross-licensing agreements.
Re:I'm not surprised (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe this is true in the pharmaceutical world, but not in 'real' biotech, ie: risky, small start-up type operations with only one or two solid products (if that), and plenty of blue-sky projects and antsy investors. I've spent the last 5 years working for a biotech 'startup' (they really can't be called a startup anymore after over 5 years I suppose), and in my experience, to use a cliche, the only constant is change. One week everything is rosy, investors are flooding in, and research projects are being approved. The next, purchase orders for critical reagents and equipment are being cancelled without explanation and there's a hiring freeze. And then the week after that, an entirely new business unit has been created with 15 new staff and everything is back on track again. Run that cycle through for 5 years and tell me it's any better than a university. At least you know you have funding for the next 2 years or whatever if you get a grant. It's maddening to not make any real progress for years at a time due to the chronic uncertainty that your project could be cancelled tomorrow, that your next order for $200 worth of antibodies will be knocked back, or university payscales are getting updated for inflation yet again, and yours supposedly 'better' commercial salary is now less than what you could get paid at a university (and get to publish your work too).
Of course, a lot of my experience derives from the fact that this particular biotech startup was (and still is) managed by vain, incompetent, and highly delusional former university scientists, whose idea of being 'business types' is to be seen reading a copy of the Financial Review or Business Review Weekly from time to time. Unfortunately for them, the 'reality distortion field' has just about worn off with investors, and some pretty serious shit is about to hit the fan. Fortunately I've recently left :-).
Anyway...the grass isn't always greener on the other side. If you're thinking about launching into the commercial world of biotech, check your facts carefully. An extra $5000 a year isn't worth it when your publication output drops off to nothing, you get stuck on dead-end underfunded project after project, and you have to deal with some of the most ignorant PHBs to sit their arses behind the wheel of an investor-funded BMW.
Re:Precisely. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I'm not surprised (Score:2, Insightful)
Do you suppose that there are talented, creative people in other disciplines that haven't found their true calling yet? Should they be locked out of mid-life course corrections?
You should be in HR; they have a lot of people who believe that folks over 30 should consider a condo in Florida to finish out their last years.
I refuse to live my life on a linear career track.
Re:PH.d's can't. (Score:3, Insightful)
Gee, that's too bad. So we discard the PhD. It's easier to fire them anyway.
Those who keep their jobs in this type of deal pick up things with minimal input
In other words, people who just happen to guess what management wants from day to day, which explains why there is no such thing as a permanent job.
Wouldn't it be better to train employees in their jobs? Since education has become worthless, it would seem to be of some importance.
Never been a shortage of engineers (Score:3, Insightful)
This article should have been written long ago. It was true then and it's true now. There has never been a shortage of engineers or scientists. There certainly have been shortages of engineering jobs. As the article pointed out, these shortage claims were made by those interested in increasing the supply of workers for the purpose of holding down their wages. What they mean is theres a shortage of engineers at the nice price. By a similar line of reasoning, I conclude theres a shortage of gasoline at the price of $1 per gallon.
Re:I'm not surprised (Score:3, Insightful)
The two primary functions of any school are to teach and to evaluate. Oh, they perform other functions too, but these two are the reason for their existence. It may seem that those two functions naturally go together, but I think it would be a very good thing to separate them.
Imagine institutions who test, but do not teach, and who place no requirements on where or how you acquired your knowlege. And I'm not just talking about the filling in circles with a #2 pencil kind of testing. That would be part of it, but it would also involve designing and completing actual projects, and evaluation of that by peers who are further along than you. And at the highest levels, evaluation by people with actual experience and recognized expertise in the field of interest.
Imagine something like a web of trust for reviewers, in which the reviewers are also subject to the scrutiny of their peers.
Imagine that this rigorous system eventually earns such trust that it becomes the standard against which traditional degrees are measured.
Imagine a system of evaluation that has no degrees, no majors, no grade levels. Instead, it uses separate variable metrics for each of a number of subject areas, which might themselves be composites of separate metrics for smaller specialties within each of those areas. No one would ever be denied credit they've earned in one area due to a deficiency in another. But neither would those deficiencies be hidden.
Self-learners would benefit by being able to get full and credible recognition of their abilities. And they would also benefit by gaining additional incentive and direction for progressing further.
The formally educated would benefit by having something that really proves that they know their stuff.
Employers would benefit in both cases by having a way of "separating the wheat from the chaff", as you say. Neither falling for credentialed fakers, nor missingo out on the talented ones among the informally educated.
And because of the separate metrics, employers could decide for themselves whether they care more about a "well rounded" education, or more about performance in specific areas.
The only losers are the fakers in the present system who somehow manage to acquire credentials without posessing the ability that those credetials are supposed to represent.
Re:No, it's fear of uncertainty... (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately, here in the real world (you should visit sometime; email me and I'll give you driving directions), much of science absolutely requires the institutional backbone and funding that established laboratories provide. There are some aspects of science that can be capitalized on, and more power to those that make hay with 'em!, but even those niches would be impossible without a tremendous amount of supporting research coming out of universities and other (largely publicly-funded) institutions. So, gosh darn it, we'd still be back in the 1940's--or even more primitive--if it were all up to entrepeneurs. The over-educated, devoted people who bring you modern medicine, biology, physics, computer science, chemisty, and so forth shouldn't be continually underpaid just because they don't own the damn company.
And so long as you're comparing much of the world to ignorant slaves for their working for or in collaboration with larger institutions, maybe you should take that logic a bit further (to its logical conclusion)--why submit yourself to the rule of law at all? If you're such a freedom-loving rebel, unwilling to let anyone boss you around (because it's soooo slavish), then why buy things when you could steal them? Why not just shoot that jerk who cut you off on the freeway? Screw 'em! Nobody's gonna boss you around, right?
Or maybe some of us are willing to be employed rather than employers because we recognize that the specialized skills that we possess require an appropriate environment in which to be employed, and that we are no more slaves for doing so than you are the arbiter of what constitutes religion, you whackjob.
Re:I'm not surprised (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:True for Me (Score:3, Insightful)
I am looking at it from the hiring manager's point of view. Their point of view is "disqualify everyone as quickly as possible so I can go play golf." I have so many examples of this it would bore everyone to the point of weeping openly.
Education level is not strongly correlated with performance.
Nonsense. Anyone with the dedication to earn a degree has the dedication to do a job. What hiring managers don't realize is that such a statement renders all education WORTHLESS. If education is not rewarded (part of that "go to school, get a good job" social contract that employers find it convenient to ignore), then we go back to 70% illiteracy, and it will be the EMPLOYER'S FAULT.
If you were told this, you were at best misinformed at worst; at worst you were lied to.
Oh, I figured that out not long after the fifth round of layoffs.
BTW, nobody outside of your family and friends gives a rat's ass about whether you get married
Congress does. There are significant financial benefits to being married.
nor do they care whether you have a family or buy a house.
Congress does. There are significant financial benefits to having a family and a house.
There are no financial benefits to being single and a temp worker. In fact, it is MORE expensive.
No, what you have promised to pay for, you lose, if you miss the payments.
That wasn't the point. I've already done the work, several times over. Employers simply ignored the agreement when payday arrived.
It's all about the hiring manager's estimation of whether you are the best choice he or she has.
Nice and subjective and all the advantages are with the employer. Businesses would NEVER agree to such an arrangement.
Business A: "Oh, we can cancel this contract based on this guy's opinion."
Business B: "My ass you can. Have a nice day."
Number of languages doesn't really matter.
Of course not, because that is one of my most important skills. See my point now? I'm not even interviewing with you and you are disqualifying me. You don't even know whether I've "shipped a product" or not.
I've hired people who have never worked in the language that we're using.
I thought experience is what counted?
The problem is that many people with a CS degree come out not being ready to contribute in any meaningful way.
They were never supposed to. Businesses seem to have forgotten that everyone must be trained to do their job. That is the entire basis of the experience that every employer claims is so important. But businesses prefer to enjoy the benefits of that experience without actually contributing to it, or paying for it. And now, since ALL businesses are like that, it is impossible for college graduates to find a good job. As I have said before, competent, intelligent, educated people are no longer welcome in the modern workplace.
People lie about their skills so there's no help there.
Yes, of course. When all else fails, call the candidate a liar.
I can call former employers and at least verify history.
But can't call the college and verify the degree?
It's always been "what have you done for me lately."
Not for my parents it wasn't. They had their jobs for DECADES without even the slightest hint of layoffs.
It's just that companies wanted you to believe that company loyalty (both directions) still existed.
Now they want loyalty from the employee (with no raises or promotions, of course), and the ability to fire anyone, any time for any or no reason at all.
Society can't function this way. It simply cannot. People must be able to depend on a reward for their own hard work, or there will be no more work.
It may not be lack of Scientists, but thinking... (Score:2, Insightful)
Back in the mid 80's a Physicist from Israel, Eli Goldratt, overwhelmed the manufacturing industries by applying scientific thought to manufacturing. There is tons of raw research out there, and the USA has some pretty good Scientists, so why aren't we seeing this type of thinking applied to other areas of the Economy and Environment? I believe it's because the HABIT of scientific thinking is acquired while we are young, and teaching these habits is mostly lacking in our educational system. I suspect that there would be plenty of demand for PhD's if there were enough thinkers to take advantage of their outputs.
An interesting note, though: I read an article in the IEEE magazine back in the 70's that said something to the effect that that the best balanced ratio between Engineers/Inventors and Pure Scientists was 7/1. If I remember the article correctly, "Pure Science" is the raw material of Engineering.
I wonder what 3M would have to say about this ratio?
Mike
Re:You're obviously not a foreign student (Score:1, Insightful)
I never had free ride through US schools. I've done my share behind the grill and the steam table trying to ean money. I've done my share cleaning tables. I've been targets of complains by students saying that I wasn't helpful even though they never asked for help in the first place. I've been targets of complaints that I graded them to hard even though the solution they presented me looked like shit you normally do on a piece of scratch paper (how can equations have no '=' sign?? what does IV refer to? or (1/2)(10)(5)^2 mean?). You really think it's easy being a grad student?
The fact is, you have to have conviction to go through graduate school, possibly sacrificing the lifestyle your BS or BA friends lead, earning much more money than you do without guarantee that when you are done, you make a comfortable living. Foreign students are needed to do things Americans do not want to do. Without foreign students, there won't be enough of good TAs or RAs, forcing students to do with less help and professors to do work that take away time from their research. Not to mention that when we publish a paper, a method, a breakthrough, etc., the US gets the prestige.
You complain about us going back to our countries and compete with the US. Well, blame your immigration policy. Some of us would love to stay in the US and be residents or citizens, but the fact is, the US prefers to get new residents from lottery than from carefully selecting creme de la creme that are already in the US with potential to contribute. The run around was unbelieable that many wasted time before giving up.