More on Joe the Scientist
A couple of weeks ago we wrote in "Joe the Scientist Takes His Hits" about the middling wages of science post-docs. In a related article published by Science last week, Beryl Benderly notes in "Taken for Granted: Joe the Plumber and the Postdocs", that becoming a science graduate student used to mean a 4-6 year apprenticeship with a Ph.D. and academic job at graduation.
These days Ph.D. training is followed by one or more 1-4 year post-doc positions. Some time in the future, a position follows, usually 6-10 years later -- and most likely not in academia. That "implicit contract" is broken, says Benderly. She writes on the movement by Ph.D. candidates and post-docs at some universities to join labor unions. The protections these scientists in training seek from the labor unions used to be offered by the "craft unions" the students joined as graduate students, writes Benderly. Graduate students and post-docs are no longer "promising aspirants to a prestigious trade", she says, but "employees of large organizations" -- universities.
The reality of the situation is well-illustrated by employment statistics. According to Georgia State economist Paula Stephan's 2005 analysis of data from the National Science, the number of graduated biomedical Ph.D.'s younger than 35 grew 60% from 1993 to 2001. However the number of tenure-track academic positions grew by only 7%. The probability that a young Ph.D. holds a tenure track position is now 6.9%. Yet 40-50% of incoming graduate students in biomedical research hope to get tenured faculty positions. These number don't factor in the increase in non-academic positions, however Stephan says that these openings don't accommodate all graduates either. 1
Ph.D., Postdoc Training? Now For Your "Real" (ha, ha, ha) Career.
Despite the cries of from high-tech executives about lack of talent, the real problem, according to Stephan, is the lack of both federal and industry opportunities, not only in the US, but in other western countries. As many people know, there's a fine supply of scientists, biomedical as well as engineering, physics and other sciences. Here's a good summary of the situation (with humor) from a few years back. Industry constantly lobbies to hire more foreign labor in order to keep wages and benefit costs low. But there's a a real lack of demand that keeps many highly trained professionals underemployed, and persuades many a would-be-scientist to pursue other careers.
There's no pressure to change the system, where the many students trained very specifically in sciences will never use those skills. As Stephan's sees it, the post-doc system takes the pressure off faculty who take on Ph.Ds to amend the system. If all US students bowed out of science graduate education there's still plenty of supply from international students, for whom a US graduate degree is very valuable without a US faculty job at the end.
The "implicit contract", has actually long been dead. Back in April, we wrote a post, "For Glory of State, Primacy of Science", commenting on Charlie Rose's show about the state of science called "The Imperative of Science". The speakers agreed that all citizens should be more conversant in science. Some even went as far as to say that all citizens should have lab experience.
Dr. Harold Varmus, one of the speakers, spoke on expanded roles for trained scientists. He said that more and more scientists trained to the Ph.D. or post-doc level were now pursuing "journalism, biotech, law, and policy". He said that these were often referred to as "alternative careers"; which, he said, laughing, was a "somewhat disparaging term"; but, Varmus insisted, they're "real careers." It was the laugh that proceeded his insistence that puzzled me. Is it a "real career" -- or not? If so, do you really need 10 years of benchwork in a faculty science lab to get there?
1 "Job Market Effects on Scientific Productivity." Presented at Programme 2005-2006 Du "Seminaire D'Enseignment Superior"
