USA faces a crisis of sorts when it comes to science and engineering. Young PhD’s are highly unsatisfied with their degrees as most often than not, they are being forced to get into a vicious job hunt eventually driving them towards frustration. The main issues cited include the long periods of training, shortage of academic jobs and dearth of research grants looming ahead!
Thus even though the operating assumption among the academic leaders is that there is an ever increasing need for new scientists, some of the brightest brains are turning away towards greener pastures!
“The problem stems from the way the United States nurtures its developing brainpower — the way it trains, employs, and provides grants for young scientists. For decades, blue-ribbon panels have called for universities to revise graduate doctoral programs, which produced a record-high 27,974 Ph.D.’s in science and engineering in 2005. No less a body than the National Academy of Sciences has, in several reports, urged doctoral programs to train science students more broadly for jobs inside and outside academe, to shorten Ph.D. programs, and even to limit the number of degrees they grant in some fields.”
Despite such repeated calls for reform, resistance to change has been strong. Major problems persist, and some are worsening. Recent data, for example, reveal that:
Averaged across the sciences, it takes graduate students a half-year longer now to complete their doctorates than it did in 1987.
In physics nearly 70 percent of newly minted Ph.D.’s go into temporary postdoctoral positions, whereas only 43 percent did so in 2000.
The number of tenured and tenure-track scientists in biomedicine has not increased in the past two decades even as the number of doctorates granted has nearly doubled.
Despite a doubling in the budget of the National Institutes of Health since 1998, the chances that a young scientist might win a major research grant actually dropped over the same period.
The job market in science is now shifting faster than graduate programs can keep up, leading often unhappy Ph.D.’s to hunt for careers far from the academic homes where they hoped their degrees would lead.
Now quoting directly from the article!!!
“Melinda Maris sees hints of that dark future at the Johns Hopkins University. Ms. Maris, assistant director of the office of pre-professional programs and advising, says the brightest undergrads often work in labs where they can spot the warning signs: Professors can’t get grants, and postdocs can’t get tenure-track jobs.
Such undergraduates, she says, “are really weighing their professional options and realize that they’re not going to be in a strong financial position until really their mid-30s.” In particular, those dim prospects drive away Americans with fewer financial resources, including many minority students.
Despite the realities on the ground, leaders at the top of government, academe, and industry insist that the nation needs more scientists. In a high-profile report in 2005 called “Rising Above the Gathering Storm,” a panel convened by the National Academy of Sciences argued for enlarging “the pipeline” of students studying science. The report acknowledged that “the recommendations for additional support for thousands of undergraduates and graduates could be setting those students up for jobs that might not exist.” But it dismissed such fears with the vague proclamation that the number of doctorates “has not kept pace with the increasing importance of science and technology to the nation’s prosperity.”
The influential report also called for increasing support for the physical sciences, which have been relatively neglected in recent decades. Congress took those recommendations to heart and last month enacted a law that calls for doubling the budgets of the National Science Foundation, the Energy Department’s office of science, and other divisions that support physical sciences.
But the act represents a broad promise, similar in many ways to other failed pledges of money for science that Congress has made in the past. With discretionary dollars in tight supply, supporters of science are not holding their collective breath for the extra funds.”
In fact, such increase in allocation can lead to detrimental effect as was the case with biomedicine which saw a net doubling of allocation by 2003 (within 6 years) but the resulting inflation far out stripped the increase in grant!!! This has lead to erosion of the actual amount of available research!
In august 2007, the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, or FASEB, released a report showing that the number of doctorates in the biomedical sciences had risen from just over 4,000 in the mid-1980s to more than 7,000 in 2004, with no increase in the number of tenured and tenure-track positions.
Many of the younger scientists are parked in temporary positions, which almost doubled in number between 1985 and 2003, according to an analysis by Susan A. Gerbi, a professor of biology at Brown University, and Howard Garrison, of FASEB.
This issue has percolated right through the american scientific community! Even the best in the business are feeling the heat!
“This money crunch is hurting established scientists, who are spending far more of their time writing grants than they had in the past, says Glen N. Gaulton, executive vice dean at the University of Pennsylvania. Even successful researchers often have applications turned down once or twice before getting accepted, which means they can go without a grant for a year or more. Penn now spends between $5-million to $10-million a year in “bridge funds” to keep labs from getting shuttered. Many older scientists are just giving up and deciding to retire early, says Mr. Gaulton.”
“And the situation is even more desperate for younger scientists. In a talk at Harvard earlier this year, Ms. Stephan of Georgia State presented data concerning NIH’s premier grants, including the R01 grants that usually provide four to five years of support at levels of more than $350,000 a year. Young faculty members must win those types of awards to support a lab and to gain tenure. In fact, many schools are now requiring that investigators show a track record of having garnered two or three such grants to get tenure.”
“Scientists say that many of the most creative advances come from younger researchers, but their slice of the research pie has shrunk considerably in recent years. In 1995, 25 percent of the R01 and similar grants went to scientists age 40 and younger. By 2005, the fraction going to that group dropped to 15 percent, while researchers older than 51 were gobbling up almost half of the big grants.”
Some big universities have already decided to take issue into their own hands!!!
“Some administrators have finally decided enough is enough with respect to doctoral students. Brown cut its incoming class of biomedical Ph.D. students by 20 percent this year, and Penn slimmed its class by about 12 percent. The National Institute of Mental Health has trimmed its budget for graduate training in an effort to preserve the money available for research grants.”
Though the American graduate programs train students to be superb researchers. They need to do more. Departments and students must recognize that the majority of science doctorate recipients no longer become professors, and that realization should cause a shift in the culture and practice of graduate education. “There’s a mismatch between the opportunities available to students as they complete their work and their expectations and the nature of their training along the way.”
“Graduate programs, need to help students learn how to be nimble — to work at the junctions of disciplines, to collaborate as part of a team, and to be able to move from one topic to another. All of these skills, he says, are becoming increasingly important as careers evolve, both within and outside academe.
And programs will have to shake up the traditional model of doctoral education, in which a student apprentices with one faculty member who oversees the research training. “Only the American bedroom has more privacy associated with it than the relationship between the faculty member and the Ph.D. student,” says a senior researcher, “That’s not good.” He calls for a more open process, for multiple mentors, and for more involvement by the department in the care of students.
Another noteworthy issue already mentioned is the prohibitively long duration it takes to complete the doctoral programs in the States. Take for instance a PhD in chemistry which takes more than 6 years in USA while a graduate in UK will get the same degree in 3.5 years!
Beyond the length of doctoral education, reformers repeatedly point to another concern: the attitude within graduate programs to jobs outside the ivory tower. Although most Ph.D.’s in science find nonacademic positions, many mentors still look down on students who do not land a tenure-track job, say students and professors.
Graduate Studies; One step at a time!!!! 