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?"'"
True for Me (Score:5, Interesting)
career decisions... (Score:4, Interesting)
"Do I want to do cutting-edge research, find out about new things, finding solutions to problems, maybe getting patents, work with colleagues around the world, travel to conferences and workshops, or do I like to manage people and an organization, come up with visions, conduct hundreds of interviews with applicants, go to fancy dinners with my lab's sponsors or the company's clients?"
But that's part of the problem! (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:MBA is not the end all be all (Score:5, Interesting)
What does K-12 science education matter here anywa (Score:5, Interesting)
My decision: (Score:5, Interesting)
What it came down to is this... I did what made me happy. I may never make much money at all, but I love what I'm doing. I made the choice to switch over to Physics, and I have never looked back.
Mike.
Re:career decisions... (Score:3, Interesting)
Do I want to have a small chance at cutting-edge research, get taken advantage of mercilessly by entrenched professors, and distantly dream of seeing my work mentioned in a high-profile publication, or do I want to actually have a life?
(For the curious: yes, I had to make that decision, and yes, that's about the position I was faced with in grad school...3 guesses which direction I went.)
Re:Read what a real scientist has to say. (Score:1, Interesting)
$150K MBAs? (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Does a typical MBA really make $150K?
2. If (as seems to be the implicit assumption) the science PhD could do the MBA's jobs as well, any company hiring PhD's can gain competitive advantage (lowers wage costs) by hiring science PhD's instead of MBA's. Don't companies realize this? Or is there more to MBA's than we all assume?
After 25 years in engineering I went elsewhere... (Score:5, Interesting)
So my wife and I expanded her business (one of those "horribly overpayed wedding photographers") and now I work full time selling portraits, photographing weddings, doing bookeeping, and such. I couldn't be happier!
The life as an engineer was (excuse me) pathetic. Why should I spend all my life chained to a desk, living in a cube farm, and putting up with the Boss from Hell who figured he owned me as so much chattel property? Life is much better now.
So tell me again why I would even talk any teenager into becoming an engineer? They would be fools to do so.
I have to agree with this assessment (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's a good article on Newsforge that makes my case, "There may never be another software billionaire":
http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=03/03/2
Sure I'm only talking about computer science jobs but the prospects of studying some scientific field and making a living at it are rather grim. I've met my share of electrical engineers and physicists making a living by being code grunts vs. being in employed in their field of study. Nowadays there's a "nuclear engineer" on my team but the company I am currently at in no shape, way or form deals with that space.
So yeah, if I had to start all over and had the business savvy, mindset, drive and acumen I would go do something else.
After all, how many CEOs in corporate America have engineering and/or scientific degress?
Point made.
-M
Re:career decisions... (Score:3, Interesting)
"Do I want to do cutting-edge research (that only five other people in the world will genuinely understand), find solutions to problems (that will be important in a hundred years, but which don't matter at all right now), work with colleagues all around the world (via e-mail), and meanwhile struggle to pay my kid's day care bills, getting lousy benefits, and having credit stolen from me by my lab director, so that in fifteen years I can have a one in five hundred shot at a tenured position? The alternative is to go into industrial research, where I will not get to work on quite such arcane things, but will, to my surprise, get all the freedom I ever got in academe, even as a star post-doc, get to work on equally interesting problems of a slightly different nature, but using the same skills as I used as an academic, and get payed...errr...five to ten times as much. Before benefits."
I made the first choice before we had kids. After we had kids, I changed my mind. I work at Microsoft now -- I look back on my time as a tenure-track assistant professor with some nostalgia, but only because it was what I always wanted to do, not because I was any better off there than I am here.
Ph.D Not So Bad (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Read what a real scientist has to say. (Score:5, Interesting)
No, they are all acting in their members best interest. The fewer lawyers/doctors out there, less competetion, more money. The big difference is the ABA and AMA are run by the professionals, instead of those who hire the professionals. So the control they want over the supply/demand balance is different.
You cannot justify working as a Ph.D. in the US (Score:5, Interesting)
I left a comfortable job position to try for a Ph.D. at a major US institution [ohio-state.edu]. I was offered a full stipend, and it paid for pretty much everything except car insurance and clothing costs.
Unfortunately, when I got there, I found myself outclassed, and without help. Once my advisor came to realize I was not a specialist in the areas he thought I was, he rarely saw me, while discouraging me to look elsewhere.
Finally, my advisor dumped me two months before my contract with him was due to expire, well after the point all the other Ph.D. advisors had already chosen their underlings for the next year. I later found one of my friends in that research group was originally under my advisor as well, and had been dumped just prior to this advisor taking me in.
But it was too late for me. I lost a large amount of personal funding taking out loans to pay for the next two quarters. The politics in the Engineering department there were much worse than those I ever encountered working for the US government. Eventually I received a very good job offer from a private firm, and dropped out with the Masters degree I already had received at another school. But by that point in time, I estimated I wasted well over $10,000 in my own funds waiting for a new advisor I liked to take me in (it is worth noting he did come up with some funds for me, but I left just after this point).
The paranoid should look at two professors' testimony before the US Congress for some insight. The first is the testimony of Dr. David Goodstein [house.gov] about how the US Ph.D. program attempts to only breed elite members like themselves. The second is the testimony of Dr. Norman Matloff [ucdavis.edu] (revised since 1998) on how there really is not a Software labor shortage in the US (one section [ucdavis.edu] of this paper discusses why American CS students tend not to go for Ph.D. degrees).
From a 4th-year Physics Postdoc (Score:1, Interesting)
Although nobody goes into science for the money. Many of the guys I know will take what they can get just to do what they love. My dissertation supervisor invented a whole new FIELD of study (in his 3rd year of being a postdoc) and still had to wait 6 more years or so to get a permanent position. Another guy I know, who's an excellent instructor and who does good work (but who is perhaps a bit socially underdeveloped) waited...geez...like 10 years for a position in cosmology.
Personally, I'm a little sick of research, and it's become more of "job" than a "love", but... I dunno, $37K suits me just fine. I get to make my own hours, travel around the world to conferences, have challenging work to do...and sponge off the state! It's a good life!
As for Ph.D.'s "not being able to handle real world problems" --- dammit, show me a business where I can get a job simulating black holes and I'll take it, you insensitive clod! (I doubt you've got any "experience" doing that.)
(and what was that crap about patent law??)
not just the money, superstition (Score:5, Interesting)
I think in America we are losing this sense of adventure. I hear more people espousing their beliefs and superstitions as if it were The Truth. They are afraid of exploration and the unknown. Modern science does not exist to confirm personal beliefs any more that the CIA exists to promote political agendas. Both are there to discover what is, in a significantly tangible way, real about the world. Reality is often hard for us to understand and accept, but we are much better off when we have some assurance that we are close to the truth. The past few hundred years have shown one of the most reliable processes to get close to the truth is the scientific method.
But we have a few religious nuts afraid of anything that will contradict their carefully crafted fiction. These people subvert the educational process and teach our kids that the scientific method is wrong. Make no mistake. If one claims evolution is wrong on the basis of scripture, if one claims that the earth is a few thousand years old on the basis of scripture, if on claims that one can go from an a priori truth, construct a data set that fit those facts, and then claim that is science, then one is so wrong as to be the greatest enemy of science, progress, and even the free market.
When one makes these fantastic claims, that everything that does not fit your reality is wrong, even if a process that has proved successful for hundreds of years says it is correct, a thing called cognitive dissidence is set up in the mind of a child. I believe this often leads to the child falling on the side of superstition, and a scientist is lost. I believe that a whole generation of American scientists have been lost to this attack on science. An attack based on the assumption that it is preferable to get an MBA and oppress a workforce for personal profit, but not ok to challenge ancient superstitions for the sole betterment of the human race.
Let me state I am not anti-religion. I am quite for it and have seen organized religion to a great many wonderful things. I am, however, against the use of religion, or anything else for that matter, solely for the purpose of personal gain, and without respect of what it does to other people. Certainly Christianity tells us not to harm others, that the truth will set us free, and in the example of Jesus, that personal sacrifice is not only expected but necessary.
God may not play dice, but I am thankful every day for the quantum wells that make my life so much more convenient than my parent's.
Re:MBA is not the end all be all (Score:2, Interesting)
I have personally only worked with two post-docs, but they were certainly not in any danger of having their ideas and work stolen. Granted, the "head" professor will likely get his name put on any publications produced due to his supervisory role. Even as an undergrad, any paper to which I contribute will include my name and that of anyone else involved. However, I cannot assume that these two cases are indicative of the entire system. Incidentally, both post-docs moved on to full-time positions, but there are many factors involved, and they are, after all, only two people.
Doesn't the academic job market tend to fluctuate considerably from year to year? The job market is certainly not particularly good anywhere at the moment, but even in better days one would sometimes see Ph.Ds from top-notch schools taking positions at low-ranking state schools. Other years nearly the reverse may be true. It would seem that, although we shouldn't ignore potential signs of the times, we should also listen to those who would advise us not to proclaim the end of American science to be at hand.
Answer to the problem: STOP KILLING THEM. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:You cannot justify working as a Ph.D. in the US (Score:3, Interesting)
The shame is the US can be a very cool place! (Hello to the folks in Huntsville, I still LOVE little river canon!)
Re:Supply and demand (Score:1, Interesting)
Meanwhile, the new "rain man" president at Arizona State (Michael Crow) gets paid over $500,000 a year. His predecessor, whom he replaced in 2002, was pulling down something like $120,000. Crow's only policy has been to "grow grow grow!" like a tumor. No focus on excellence or improving things for students, faculty, or staff.
some observations (Score:2, Interesting)
1) Public education is very bad. I've taught intro classes, and most students can't write a paragraph, let alone an essay. They can't do simple algebra. They don't know how to study or reason.
2) We live in a society where science/engineering is tolerated but not encouraged. The amount of money earned for time spent in school is very low. There are few incentives, other than enjoyment, for higher education.
3) We live in a society that either prays on ignorance, or is distrustful and intimidated by education.
3) Most universities care as much about money as education.
4) Many of the best students start with a foreign education.
5) Some countries are creating quality higher education themselves (India for example).
6) The NSF is a shining star in an otherwise mediocre research environment.
7) If you really want pay-dirt, do research in something defense related.
8) The tenure system is a good idea.
9) Both high school and community colleges should be given enough money to attract MS and PhDs. There are enough of them.
Re:Supply and demand (Score:1, Interesting)
You've got to REALLY like the science to put up with the BS parts of the job.
Re:A little history... (Score:3, Interesting)
They were still teaching a lot of New Math in the early 70s when I was a kid. My mom was always grumbling about how she thought that it was stupid for them to teach us about all these newfangled "sets", and they weren't drilling us on enough big arithmetic problems. (Even though this was about the time my dad got his first electronic calculator, after which I gleefully breezed through all my arithmetic homework in a matter of seconds.)
Twenty years later I pointed out to her that my career designing and programming computers was largely an exercise in applied set theory, and I was glad they gave us a lot of background in it. She was still unrepentant; she always said "never trusted computers" anyway.
Re:You cannot justify working as a Ph.D. in the US (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Your last sentence is nonsense (Score:1, Interesting)
The essence of my point is that modern corporations have an awful lot of money going to pure waste, and they can afford wasting a little bit more by paying more for R&D salaries. If they are absolutely out of money, there are likely other areas they would probably be able to make cuts in more safely. They're obviously not going to if they don't have to, but if for some reason they had to, it wouldn't exactly hurt them.
I also see that there are good reasons why at the moment marketing is expensive for a drug company. I mentioned that because I was merely reflecting it is odd you seemed concerned about R&D prices driving up prices but don't seem concerned about the other costs of doing business-- such as marketing-- driving up these same prices although some of them are surely avoidable.
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,
That is not what I said. What I said is that prices are not directly affected by expenses. They aren't; expenses come in indirectly. Deciding on a price for a given good is a complicated process based around attempting to estimate, based on how demand changes with price and based on the prices being offered by likely competitors, at what price the most money will be obtained by charging that price. Expenses come in after the fact, in that once you've figured out what price is likely to make the most money and how many units you'd likely sell at that price, you have to weigh the expenses of creating the product against your overall likely revenues to determine whether the product is worth selling at all.
In a particularly competitive market, which some areas of the drug market are, expenses do have a much more noticeable effect on prices because companies will make an effort not to undercut their expenses, and consumers will not always decide which competing product to go with based only on price. But in the end the fact is that companies just don't do things like go "oh, we paid $0.01 cents per unit more than we were expecting this month on our heating bills and $0.03 cents per unit more than we were expecting on R&D overtime, we better raise our prices by $0.04 cents", because the demand for your product changes with price and so raising prices may not necessarily result in a raise in overall profits.
Re:Too many para-engineers in software (Score:2, Interesting)
What the real problem here is society historically has been filled with people who think just like you. What you really wish for, is a strongly hierarchal society and generally, people who have invested a great deal of time and money in asserting their identity and thus, seperating themselves from "common men" often feel greatly threatened/cheated when people who have not gone through this same ritual take a similar "elevated" status within society.
And since throughout history we have in fact lived in a hierarchal/caste based society, thinkers such as yourself have always prevailed...that is until demand is greater than the supply. Once this happens, the requirements on canidates to enter into the upper castes are reduced. But as things counter correct themselves, as they have done in this case, we are back to the same old hieararchy. And within that, there are quite a few people such as yourself, who are speaking based upon really what is only good for people who again, participated in the rituals you did to achieve your status level. Of course, you and people like you always deny this and always will. But it is a fact regardless. So to answer your question, does a Engineering degree matter or not? I would say it is in fact overrated and now more than anytime in history, people like yourself are not as valuable as you once were and neither is your education (although still admirable).
Never before in the history of the world has information been as readily available as it is today. Many of the same things you have learned in your course of self empowerment are in fact, available to the general public free of charge. You boast of your degree, but perhaps you aren't as smart as you thought eh? No...I don't think you are. Enjoy what little time you have left yuppie. Your era is coming to a end.
Re:Too many para-engineers in software (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, bully for you, what do you want, a fucking pony or something? As someone who holds a B.A. in political science from the University of Washington I can say that categorically you're full of shit. Licensing doesn't exist to protect consumers, it exists to protect the class of people being licensed, as an example look at the Bar, you can be admitted to the Bar in one state but not in another, does this protect people seeking legal counsel? Well, not really, but it does protect lawyers from too much competition, which leads to such things as judges in the state of Texas attempting to ban software from Nolo press because it allows people to write wills without consulting a lawyer (See http://www.nolo.com/texas/index.cfm for more on this) If you had taken a couple of basic political economy classes insetead of wanking your way through some of formal education that you got in CompSci (hint: no one uses Scheme or Eiffel in the real world) you would have learned about how these state sanctioned monopolies work.
Oh, by the way, another reason that your whine really pisses me off, aside from the obvious chip on your shoulder and the snivelling sense of entitlement you carry around because of your degrees (notice that I didn't say "education") is because I consider myself a systems engineer, despite my lack of formal training (well I took courses at the U of Wa, but they were mostly a waste of time, my best training was OJT working in a lab there). Why do I consider myself an engineer? Well, because I designed, procured and managed large scale systems that came in on time on budget and worked in high intensity production environments for years. I worked with a lot of other people who did similar things without any benefit of this formal education that you speak of (What does that consist of anyways? showing up for class, sitting up front, kissing your professor's ass whenever possible?)
Of course if I had a dollar for every piece of shit code that had been written by a CSci graduate who called himself a software engineer, and which burned CPU cycles, leaked memory and hammered my systems into the ground I wouldn't ever have to work again. Formal education is no guarantee of quality in computer code, I'll testify to that from experience, and it's not much of a guarantee of quality in medicine or law either, if it were malpractice wouldn't be the problem it is in those fields.
You write The problem in computer science is too many hacks are being paid and labeled as engineers when they are not. well if you had ever worked in the real world you'd realize that a lot of those hacks have CSci degrees and have studied software engineering, and despite this their codes still sucks ass. Let's face it, if the only way you can get and hold a job is to have the government artificially lock out competition then you're a worthless piece of shit.
Of course there's also the interesting question of what the Professsional Engineer's exam would look like for software engineering. Given the way government works you'd probably have lots of questions about the best way to manage loading data from tapes when programming in Cobol and Fortran. If we had the kind of government regulation that you want to protect your worthless ass then we wouldn't have a computer industry, Hell, it would still be the early 1970s with a bunch of geeks wearing clip-on ties and birth control glasses [billybobpacifiers.com]loading tapes into IBM 360s and entering instructions in assembler via a TTY.
Of course if you don't like it here in the US of A you could always move to Germany and work there, the Germans are really credential happy (I speak from experience having worked there for a year) and might give you the adulation that you think you deserve for getting those shiny Berkeley degrees, and if they don't you can always go on welfare there, which given the obvious welfare mentality that you manifest in your post wouldn't be too hard for you.
Re:I'm not surprised (Score:3, Interesting)
I happen to be a software writer (call me an engineer or a programmer, whatever you like).
In my field, I have two ideas that are somewhat related.
1. Create a certification program for various software disciplines. It should be by engineers/programmers for engineers/programmers. It should be free (as in speech) and as close to free (as in beer) as possible. Possibly developed using a model where certified practitioners give feedback and continue to contribute to the test as part of their continued certification. I know there are many problems with this, but I would love to see a better system.
2. Form a union. Please don't flame me, I'm a strong conservative and against most incarnations of unions, but they are created for situations just like our own where the workers in an industry are not being treated appropriately by the employers.
I would completely disagree with wage negotiation on the part of a union, however. I would see their primary role as promoting certification to both engineers and employers.
I'm by no means happy with this suggestion, but I thought I'd throw it out there. The central point I would like to make is that (in the software and IT industry) the wages are low and we get little respect because there are a whole lot of very unqualified, unprofessional, and unproductive people in the field and employers have gotten to the point that low productivity and poor quality are what's expected, lower wages which further lowers moral, productivity and quality.
Re:into becoming an engineer? (Score:1, Interesting)
That's why I love the rural gone suburbia areas. You have the easy capacity of having a mid-range 6 figure home, make $40-60k a year on the line working 40 hour weeks, have a nice family and community, life is good.
I probably chalk up as one of those "losers" except that at 29, I'm easily further along monetarily than you (you can keep the tail you imply you heavily get), simply because I spun off other things which paid off well. I'm celibate, like anime, outside of exercise do not go out even for movies, a few friends. And like you said, I'm quite comfortable in my life buying stuff on ebay.
Your professional life though is your sales job. An engineer or scientist sometimes wakes up and spins off lucrative deals you dream of but have no capability of carrying out (whether that be by intelligence or patience or time) on your own. My parents were the same; father was an engineer that also got into real estate and is currently making gonzos despite being retired.
I'd be careful what you say of your engineering friends. They probably think you are a friendly, cool guy but utterly brainless and clueless when it comes to anything of what they consider substance. I know that for myself, when I decided to make a course change, I was happy not dealing with salepersons and the like, and that was easily worth $100k a year--because I exchanged that for several multiples.
Remember, the grass is always greener when you compare yourself to someone you already consider lower than you.
How to Make Lot's of Money (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Read what a real scientist has to say. (Score:2, Interesting)
I think it is agreed that most people that go on for Ph.D's don't do it for the money.
In academia there is a lot of money that get's blown on stuff that could be used to increase grad students pay. In addition to low pay, post-docs also tend to get walked on-- especially if you are in an industry post-doc. It's just another opportunity for PI's to get low income work out of qualified people.
After everything is said and done with, most people come out of graduate school disallusioned and burnt out. They'll be lucky if their stipends actually average out to minimium wage. After that, what do they have to look forward to? Another 3 years in a post doc getting paid crap. And those are the lucky ones that actually make it through. 1/3 of all ph.d students drop out before the end.
A couple of years ago Yale University grad students protested and tried to get unionized to increase wages. I'm not sure of the outcome now but they were very roughly shunned at first because everyone argued that they were students and not workers. In reality, these students are put through hours/conditions that would make the labour board turn it's head.
The whole point of a Ph.D program is to train people into independently thinking scientists. Many people would argue that the whole point of post-docs is to further train people to become independent scientists. In reality, ph.d students are much more of an asset to the school than a liability that the "training" claims to be and they should be getting recognition.
Behind every good graduate school is a good set of graduate students
The good news is that stipends are beginning to be pushed up. This is partly due to the large discrepency in NSF fellowships as compared to university stipends (which is around a $5,000-10,000 difference per year). I'm glad to see that at least someone is paying attention the well being of the grad students.
Re:not just the money, superstition (Score:1, Interesting)
I thought it was just more anti-US propaganda until I met some american tourists who seemed to be completely unable to understand why every ordinary Irish person they met hated Bush and particularly Ashcroft. I'm in Ireland, which if you were to believe the hollywood propaganda, is full of devout godfearing catholics and, uh, leprechauns. I believe that it is that propaganda that left the americans apparently wandering about in a state of shock at the materialistic godlessness of the Irish people. Was probably good for them in the long run to have their expectations so roundly smashed.
Here's Another Avenue (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Nonsense (Different AC) (Score:3, Interesting)
I lived in Asia for many years. I lived in three different Asian countries and traveled frequently (for business and fun) to most of the others.
While I don't experience India the way an Indian would, I have a pretty good feel for cross-country comparisons. I can assure you that anyone who claims that "the vast majority of Americans live in grinding poverty" and then proclaims life in India to be better is either mentally defective or is attempting to take advantage of other people's lack of confidence in their knowledge of "foreign countries" to deceive them for some reason. Perhaps he's one of the virulent strain of Hindu nationalists that have been growing in number over the last several years.
I don't know, but I DO know that his opinions are worthless.
If you want a reasonable Asian comparison with the US in terms of living standards, you would be talking about Japan, Hong Kong, or Singapore, not India, China, Indonesia, etc.
And your comments about the trends in the US and India leading to a meeting in the middle are borderline nonsense because you clearly don't understand the enormous difference between and the enormous inertia of two such huge nations. While it's true that a small sliver of Indians are now solidly 1st world economically (as is true in China), I don't think you can imagine what it's like to have more than a billion fellow countrymen living as they did centuries ago, steeped in leftist "equality by confiscation" dogma, and viewing you with growing envy and hostility--as a pocket ripe for picking rather than as a role model to emulate.
I don't see India and the US "meeting in the middle" anytime in the next century, given the enormous inertia, though I can easily imagine tens of millions of Indians and Chinese (still just a sliver of the total in each country) living better than the *average* American before long.