Re: modern science = underfunded projects



On Sat, 25 Feb 2006, Old Pif wrote:


drocillo wrote:

My intern finished his employment with us. One of my bosses was so
happy with our work that he offered the student a casual employment,
one day a week. The project would be formulated by me and would be done
under my supervision. The student said it would take too much time from
him. I wonder what is going on ? These are very good money. When _I_
was undergraduate student, I would kill for an opportunity to work one
day a week and do what I liked to do and get a good pay. This is is a
Y-Gen'er. He does not care about money. He needs a perfect fit of the
job with his plans. Where the society is going to. I am starting to
feel that I would like to bring an immigrant student from overseas...
he will be doing stuff without complaining or without looking for
better fit between the job and his private life. He will not have a
private life... hur-hur-hur...


I always have been surprised what a good nose the young generation has
on this sort of things. They feel where the opportunities are and go
for them. I don't think they deserve the blame. What has happened to
their parents tells that the hard work is the worst road to prosperity.
In science in particular. Academic establishment has to embellish the
situation and manipulate the facts to attract the youngsters. Even with
that shameless propaganda they have difficulties.

If you look back at the golden years of physics, it was more like a
cultural phenomenon rather than the work per se. It was a way of life.
Aristocracy of spirit. Nothing even close to the portrait of enslaved
postdoc on the verge of starvation.


The '50s-'60s were a golden age of rapid and extensive expansion of colleges and universities in the USA and thus Phd production could not keep up with the real demand for faculty. As the granting agencies continued to expand their budgets, the health science centers expanded like crazy over the easy money all in the '70s-'80s, All duiring this 2-3 decade period, the campuses got the bright idea to "soak" the govt for expanded _overhead_ charges and so overheads went from 10-20% on up to 100-130^ of direct costs (a big windfall for the campuses), and after that, chairs started to move overhead costs to direct costs, thus effectively increasing the "dean's tax" (more windfall for the administrators), and so, today, more than half of the grant money flowing is basically "scammed" money. then you throw in the bloated salaries of all the NIH grants administrtors, managers, and other fluffy-cushy types, and we have our own built-in administrators imperialism where virtually all of the risk is on the backs of the underlings who sweat at night worrying about their grants, tenure, backstabbs and the adminstrators who sit back and smoke cigars.





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