Re: The Real Science Crisis: Bleak Prospects for Young Researchers
- From: Straydog <asd@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 20:07:56 -0400
Have you seen my website yet?
http://science.freeshell.org
===== no change to below, included for reference and context =====
On Fri, 12 Oct 2007, 20817 wrote:
Can any professors hacked it in the non-academic world?
Mike
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i04/04a00102.htm
http://chronicle.com
Section: Research & Publishing
Volume 54, Issue 4, Page A1
The Real Science Crisis: Bleak Prospects for Young Researchers
Tight budgets, scarce jobs, and stalled reforms push students away
from scientific careers
By RICHARD MONASTERSKY
It is the best of times and worst of times to start a science career
in the United States.
Researchers today have access to powerful new tools and techniques -
such as rapid gene sequencers and giant telescopes - that have
accelerated the pace of discovery beyond the imagination of previous
generations.
But for many of today's graduate students, the future could not look
much bleaker.
They see long periods of training, a shortage of academic jobs, and
intense competition for research grants looming ahead of them. "They
get a sense that this is a really frustrating career path," says
Thomas R. Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health.
So although the operating assumption among many academic leaders is
that the nation needs more scientists, some of brightest students in
the country are demoralized and bypassing scientific careers.
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 budg-et 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.
Academic and government leaders acknowledge some of these problems and
are attempting to correct them. Major sponsors of science - the
National Science Foundation, the NIH, and the Howard Hughes Medical
Institute - have started programs to help young scientists weather the
rough climate. And a five-year study led by the Carnegie Foundation
for the Advancement of Teaching has assessed reform programs to try to
improve doctoral education across all of academe.
But given the inertia of academic departments and the spotty results
from past reform attempts, widespread success may be elusive. Paula E.
Stephan, a professor of economics at Georgia State University who
studies the scientific work force, says, "We've known about these
problems for a long time, but we're very slow to address them."
Against All Odds
Stephen D.H. Hsu is just the type of scientist America hopes to
produce. A professor of physics at the University of Oregon, Mr. Hsu
is at the forefront of scholarship on dark energy and quantum
chromodynamics. At the same time, he has founded two successful
software companies - one of which was bought for $26-million by
Symantec - that provide the sorts of jobs and products that the
nation's economy needs to thrive.
Despite his successes, Mr. Hsu sees trouble ahead for prospective
scientists. He has trained four graduate students so far, and none of
them have ended up securing their desired jobs in theoretical physics.
After fruitless attempts trying to find academic posts, they took
positions in finance and in the software industry, where Mr. Hsu has
connections. "They often ask themselves," he says, "Why did I wait so
long to leave? Why did I do that second or third postdoc?" By and
large, he says, the students are doing pretty well but are behind
their peers in terms of establishing careers and families.
The job crunch makes science less appealing for bright Americans, and
physics departments often find their applications for graduate slots
dominated by foreign students who are in many cases more talented than
the homegrown ones. "In the long run, I think it's bad for the
nation," he says. "It will become a peripheral thought in the minds of
Americans, that science is a career path."
Melinda Maris also sees hints of that dark future at the Johns Hopkins
University. Ms. Maris, assistant director of the office of
preprofessional 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.
Double Trouble
In a perverse way, such surges in financial support could actually
exacerbate problems for young scientists. Biomedicine learned that
lesson the hard way after Congress doubled the NIH budget from $13.6-
billion to $27.3-billion between 1998 and 2003. Since then, the
agency's appropriations have not kept pace with inflation, which has
eroded the actual amount available for research.
The doubling had sweeping effects, spurring universities to go on a
building and training spree that in some cases defied budgetary
realities. One survey of 84 medical schools found that they expected
to expand their research space by 26 percent between 2003 and 2008,
and that they would need to increase the amount of NIH support they
receive, despite the tightening of that agency's budget. (See
article.) The universities added graduate students and postdocs in
biomedical departments, but the number of permanent jobs available did
not significantly increase, says Michael S. Teitelbaum, a demographer
and vice president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. "What's
happening in the biomedical sciences - it's a crisis," he says.
Last month 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.
"I've never seen a time like the current one," says Ms. Gerbi, who
pays close attention to graduate career issues and served as
chairwoman of the Association of American Medical Colleges' group on
graduate research, education, and training. Ms. Gerbi, in fact, has
felt the financial pinch herself, having recently spent a year without
grants for her own research. After nearly 20 years of getting NIH
support, she failed in attempts to win new grants there and had to
look elsewhere. She now keeps her lab afloat with money from the
Defense Department and the National Science Foundation.
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
medical school. 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.
Recognizing that problem, the NIH created smaller grants for new
investigators, but those awards are not sufficient, says Ms. Stephan.
"It's hard to start a lab off of those," she says. "It's hard to get
your first foot in the door permanently with those kinds of funds."
And they won't earn a young professor tenure, she says.
Last month that gloomy FASEB data moved the journal Nature to run an
editorial titled "Indentured Servitude," which argues that "too many
graduate schools may be preparing too many students, so that too few
young scientists have a real prospect of making a career in academic
science."
Such indictments have a familiar ring. In 1998, Shirley M. Tilghman,
now president of Princeton University, chaired a National Research
Council committee that looked at young careers in the life sciences.
That panel noted that an oversupply of graduate students and
postdoctoral fellows did provide some benefits. "To the established
investigator and the overseers of life-science research, the
availability of large numbers of bright young scientists willing to
work very hard for relatively little financial compensation is an
asset that contributes to a remarkably successful enterprise."
But the committee argued that the oversupply was untenable. The report
stated that "the committee recognizes that the number of PhD's awarded
each year might already be too high."
Ms. Tilghman's committee urged "restraint of the rate of growth." But
even that mild recommendation drew strong criticism from America's
scientific establishment. One professional society, for example, said
the research council's report was based on old data. With no
prescience, the society challenged the idea that job shortages would
continue. Graduate programs, for their part, largely ignored the calls
for restraint, and the number of doctorates surged, as recent data
shows.
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.
One other study, called Re-envisioning the Ph.D., was sponsored by the
Pew Charitable Trusts, which interviewed over 450 people involved in
training doctoral students and in hiring graduates of Ph.D. programs.
In 2003 the Pew-supported team issued its own list of recommendations,
many of which overlapped with previous reform efforts. Among its
proposals, the project called on schools to enhance communication with
graduate students, expose students to a wide variety of career
options, better prepare them to teach, and expand participation by
underrepresented minorities.
More recently, the Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate tried to put
many of those recommendations into practice through a program that
involved 84 departments in the fields of chemistry, education,
English, history, mathematics, and neuroscience. George Walker, vice
president for research and graduate dean at Florida International
University, oversaw that program, which will publish its findings
later this year. Departments in the program identified their own
weaknesses and developed fixes, which they shared with others involved
in the program.
When he recounts the lessons learned from the five-year project, Mr.
Walker raises many of the themes that have emerged from past studies.
"There are many fine reports sitting on bookshelves," he says. "Many
recommendations going back 50 or 60 years are still relevant."
Behind Closed Lab Doors
In fact, the American Chemical Society made suggestions in 1947 that
largely mirror the most recent studies, including proposals to improve
mentoring, to avoid narrow specialization, and to prepare students for
careers in industry.
Mr. Walker says that American graduate programs train students to be
superb researchers. But they need to do more, he argues. 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, he says, 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 Mr. Walker. "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.
Some programs have made significant strides, such as the neuroscience
department at Georgetown University, the chemistry department at the
University of Michigan, the mathematics department at the University
of Nebraska. (See box.) And Mr. Walker says the effort by departments
in the Carnegie project has impressed him. "I'm more optimistic than
I've been," he says.
He is also a realist. While some programs are making progress,
departments have done a poor job of sustaining reforms in the past and
of matching rhetoric with action. "I have seen so many departments
where if you look at their handbook of their graduate program, it
sounds terrific," says Mr. Walker. "But if you get into the program,
it doesn't work."
Debra W. Stewart, president of the Council of Graduate Schools, says
that graduate deans in the United States are acutely aware of the
difficulties faced by young scientists and that schools are trying to
help graduate students succeed in careers. "There is a quiet
revolution on campuses that is directly responsive to student
concerns," she says.
Universities have strived to better prepare graduate students for
teaching and for work outside of academe, she says. They have tried to
lower "career angst" by providing more professional development for
doctoral students and postdocs and by giving them opportunities to
develop skills and experience that will help them make a transition
into the job market.
Ms. Stewart also cautions against seeing Ph.D.'s in isolation from the
rest of society. While young scientists face intense career stress
these days, so do people in medicine, law, and most other professions
that have changed markedly in recent decades, she says. "It is unfair
to somehow identify this as a problem of academic science," she says.
The Clock Is Ticking
Critics of doctoral programs say that one persistent problem is the
time it takes American students to obtain a Ph.D.
In England, for example, chemistry students generally obtain their
doctorates in 3.5 years, whereas Americans take almost double that,
says Alvin Kwiram, a professor emeritus of chemistry and former vice
provost for research at the University of Washington.
Mr. Kwiram recently spent a year at the University of Oxford studying
the English graduate system. The comparison is not exact, he says,
because English students get more specialized undergraduate training.
But he adds that that difference should add only a year to American
programs, not three or four.
"The time to degree," says Mr. Kwiram, "has gotten out of control, and
the community has to face up to that. They don't want to because the
incentives are all in the opposite direction." Professors prefer to
keep graduate students for longer, he says, because their work grows
more productive over time.
The long training weighed on Steven D. Miller when he was considering
doctoral programs. A magna cum laude graduate from the University of
Maryland in 2006, Mr. Miller had planned on pursuing a Ph.D. in
entomology but gave up that goal after conducting research as an
undergraduate.
"The life of a lot of doctoral students I saw was pretty dreary," he
says. "It's easy to get yourself in a situation where instead of
taking the planned five years it takes seven, and that's a real
bummer."
Instead of spending hundreds of hours studying a minute body part on a
fly, he chose to go to medical school, which offers more variety and a
chance to work directly with people, he says.
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.
Almost every project aimed at improving graduate education suggests
that departments should expose students to the breadth of jobs beyond
academe, but faculty members still resist. When Mr. Hsu, the
University of Oregon physicist, brings his former students back to
talk about their jobs in finance or the software industry, it rankles
some other professors.
Doctoral students pick up on that bias. "It was kind of a taboo
topic," says Ms. Maris, the career adviser at Johns Hopkins, who
recently earned a Ph.D. in genetics at Emory University and did one
year of a postdoc at Hopkins before she decided to leave research.
Bruce Alberts, a former president of the National Academy of Sciences,
says universities and the nation must take better care of young
scientists. Now a professor of biochemistry at the University of
California at San Francisco, Mr. Alberts says the current system of
demoralized and underemployed Ph.D.'s cannot be sustained. "We need to
wake up to what the true situation is."
Students may be quietly starting to lead the way - to recognize that
they need to look beyond traditional ways of using their Ph.D.'s. When
Mr. Alberts's colleagues polled second-year doctoral students last
year, a full quarter of them expressed interest in jobs such as patent
law, journalism, and government - jobs that their professors would not
consider "science."
Of course, students might not be willing to share those desires yet
with their mentors. The poll was anonymous.
SNAPSHOT OF A DEPARTMENT IN TRANSITION
Problem: Hyperspecialization
Industry and academe increasingly require scientists who can jump the
fences between fields, whereas traditional Ph.D. programs encouraged
students to spend years focusing on one topic.
Solution: Research rotations
The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor's chemistry department now
requires first-year graduate students to complete two three-month
rotations in different research groups before submitting their
preferences for the one they would like to join. The department
encourages students to try groups with different specialties.
Results: Broader experiences
In the first three years of the rotations program, 75 percent of
students changed the plans they had had when they arrived at school.
Some decided to work in an entirely different subdiscipline, while
others picked a professor different from the one they had originally
hoped to work with.
Some faculty members resisted the rotations. "The faculty is not a
bunch of naïve cheerleaders," says Brian P. Coppola, a professor of
chemistry at Michigan. "There was controversy about doing this from
Day 1. There continues to be controversy."
But students have reaped the benefits, he says. They report feeling
better connected to the department, and 85 percent said they felt
comfortable collaborating with another faculty member or walking into
another research group to get advice. Five percent of students now
have multiple mentors for their dissertation work.
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