Dr. Socrates P. Aristotle
Provost
Stellar University
Dear Dr. Aristotle,
Is it possible that we are training too many scientists?
In the biology department where I work, every position we have open, is greeted with 200 resumes. What is disheartening is that some of these people are in their second or third post-doc. As you know these positions pay very little, have very little responsibility and are dead end.
I checked around and found out that the number of Ph.D. applicants in biology rose from 16,827 in 2000 to 21,745 last year. Also the number of graduates that get academic positions are about 22% of the graduating doctorates.
Also, I understand that 61% of our graduates in 1964 found tenure track positions within 10 years, while the 38% of the 1986 graduates were able to do the same. Now it looks like only 22% of the 1996 graduates made it. Are you concerned?
Is it possible that we might be misleading these students? With the reduction in research funding and open positions, should we be training them for other types of jobs.
Do you remember Dante Locke? He was our best student several years back. I heard today that he is testing water samples on the effluent of a sewer plant in East St. Louis. What a waste. (no pun intended)
My colleagues tell me to keep my mouth shut. They say that without the post-docs we might have to teach three classes instead of two. Some how that doesn't seem right to me.
Regards,
Barney Drosophilia Ph.D.
Professor of Biology
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Comments: 21
Now that university science has joined with the business community so closely, the competition is more like that in the business community.
Maybe the PhDs need to become more resourceful about how to make their living.
Barney
Its not about merchandising scientists. It is about giving them counseling on what they can expect in the job market. I can tell you that after 20 years of education all I wanted to know is how can I pay back all the loans.
University professors tend to dissuade their graduate student from work outside the Temple of PhuD. the net effect is an underclass of highly educated poor.
They would rather cut their tongues out that suggest that the young Ph.D. teach high school.
It is especially sad when there is a shortage of well educated engineers and the like.
Best regards, Ben
Author "Leading People to be Highly Motivated and Committed"
On graduation a B.S. chemical engineer will earn more initially than almost any Ph.D. not in engineering.
Let's take CNN Money as an example.
On one hand they state that a college professor is the second best job:
2. College professor
Why it's great While competition for tenure-track jobs will always be stiff, enrollment is rising in professional programs, community colleges and technical schools -- which means higher demand for faculty. (<--- so it may be easier to get a job - mmike)
It's easier to break in at this level, and often you can teach with a master's and professional experience. Demand is especially strong in fields that compete with the private sector (health science and business, for example).
The category includes moonlighting adjuncts, graduate TAs and college administrators.
http://money.cnn.com/popups/2006/moneymag/bestjobs/frameset.2.exclude.html
On the other:
Big jobs that pay badly
Some careers cost time and money to take up. But don't expect a big paycheck.
Academic research scientists
A career with one of the most disproportionate ratios of training to pay is that of academic research scientist.
A Ph.D. program and dissertation are requirements for the job, which can take between six and eight years to complete. (See correction.) Add to that several years in the postdoctoral phase of one's career to qualify for much coveted tenure-track positions.
During the postdoc phase, you are likely to teach, run a lab with experiments that require you to check in at all hours, publish research and write grants � for a salary that may not exceed $43,000.
The length of the postdoc career has doubled in the past 10 years, said Phil Gardner, director of the Collegiate Employment Research Institute at Michigan State University. "It's taking longer and longer to get there. You can't start a family. It's really tough."
And it's made tougher still by the fact that in many disciplines, there aren't nearly as many tenure-track positions as there are candidates.
So, to those who earn their MBAs in two years and snag six-figure jobs soon after graduation, your jobs may be hard, but maybe not quite as hard as you think.
Correction: An earlier version of this story understated the number of years it takes to get a PhD in the sciences. CNN/Money regrets the error. (Return to story.)
http://money.cnn.com/2005/08/15/pf/training_pay/index.htm
I don't have your experience Dr. Reid Cornwell ( I remember you had a recruitment firm ) but I feel that with the increase on information society there will an increase in academic (both research and teaching) jobs.
Also, if the recent phd graduates can't find job, perhaps there is a new recruitment firm business model here.
I personally started a phd because I have an idea that is really interesting to me. Unfortunatelly, nobody at my university has any idea what I am talking about (my supervisor has just passed away) - so I am trying to transfer somewhere eles - USA perhaps (funding is hard, though). Anyway.. I would like to have a phd because I have an idea to investigate. Moreover, I feel it would help distinguish myself from other workers on the job market (not an academic one). My dream life would be working at the university and doing a freelance consulting on the side.
Dr. Reid Cornwell, I would love to read your article on, what it takes to a successful academic. Is there a chance for it?
Last note: I once lived with a grear professor of Atmospheric Sciences in Seattle. He told me that when working at the university: you will never be rich but you never be poor neither.
I would be happy with that.
In an earlier posting you asked if I would write an article on "what it takes to be a successful academic." To this end I would like to recomend a book that is now in its second edition. Academic Tribes and Territories: "Intellectual Enguiry and the Culture of Disciplines" by Tony Becher and Paul R. Trowler. ISBN 0-335-20627-1
I think some of the answers you seek may be there.
Reid
Aside from MBAs, very few take on the trauma and financial burden of graduate school without a genuine love for their discipline. :-)
The story is a bit different across the disciplines, of course. There is already a shortfall of several thousand Business PhDs on the market, due to the fact that nearly everyone stops at the MBA.
Universities are already competing with one another to fill the positions of retiring Business Administration, etc. profs. A friend of mine just finished her Admin. PhD and had a handful of offers to choose from, almost immediately. However, in most other disciplines, it's well documented that there is a critical shortage of tenure-track jobs. Most grads barely get by on a mix of part time work and adjuncting (of course, neither set of employers provides necessary benefits, like health care, retirement plans, etc.).
In some disciplines, it seems that we're producing a class of indentured servants.
echo dan s.
A quick response from a professor ("indentured servant?") who teaches at the undergraduate and graduate levels.
You said above:
"University professors tend to dissuade their graduate student[s] from work outside the Temple of PhuD. the net effect is an underclass of highly educated poor."
On the contrary, I encourage all of my students to find their strengths and their passions, check out the job market, and pursue their dreams. Some dream of writing; others dream of the publishing world. In any case, I advise them to check out the job market. To do less would be a disservice.
You also said:
"They would rather cut their tongues out that [sic] suggest that the young Ph.D. teach high school. "
I don't know why you dismiss all university professors with such sweeping, graphic generalizations, Reid. I have never met a colleague who fits the profile you describe, and I've been teaching at the university or college level for 20 years. None of my colleagues would dissuade a graduate student from high school teaching as a rewarding career. Here in Florida the pay is very low, but the demand is very high. Public school teaching is likely for all of our graduates--from the B.A. to the Ph.D. levels. To advise them to avoid public school would be to ignore the needs of our community.
Again, I don't know why you are so negative about college professors, Reid. In my experience, we come to our professions with a genuine desire to advance knowledge in our fields, educate students, and make a positive difference. It is, above all, a profession of service. Perhaps you should brouse the Humanities, Languages, or Fine Arts departments to find professors worthy of your respect.
Prof. Reid - Yes, I am concerned.
One swallow doesn't make a summer. I applaud your efforts.
I travel among many universities. I have for the last 30 years. I have often found the advice offered to undergraduate and graduate students not in touch with the realities of the market place. Not because there is some dark underbelly of incompetence or insensitivity, but because of the naive assumption that the protected enviroment of academia is how it is everywhere.
I am not the first to voice this nor will I be the last. I.e. The Ivory Tower
I admire smart people and I think that educators have the most important jobs in our society, but I also don't see the emperor's new clothes. My comments are about provoking thought. Hopefully they are constructive and not just pugnacious.
I am also an educator, psychologist, career counselor and author. I'm a club member. I have spent my entire adult life in and around academia and as a liason between business and the universities.
If I offend you, I am deeply sorry, but my comments are based in my informed observations, empirical evidence, and what I consider to be common sence.
If the betterment of students was the primary motive then tests wouldn't take 3 weeks to return and tenured professors, not graduate students, would teach freshman courses and distinguished practitioners would be more abundant on campus.
Reid
I, for one, am not convinced that the "betterment of students" is directly related to "the marketplace," nor am I convinced that the amount of time it takes to return a test is a measurement of teacher commitment. On the contrary, the amount of time it takes to return a test is, in my experience, directly related to the number of tests there are to grade and the amount of time available to grade them. Please trust me: Teachers don't hold on to tests because they love to have them in their possession. That my science colleagues teach undergraduate seminars of 300 students or more is a testament to their inability to control the ways in which the "marketplace" demands have marched into the university to the detriment of quality over the dictates of quantity.
The "marketplace" is everywhere on my campus. Witness: the Student Union is now a shopping mall, complete with a "Food Court," neon signs, and overpriced shops. Places for students to quietly study, or meet to plan an event must be scheduled a year in advance because of scarcity.
The demands of the "marketplace" have changed our curricula so that liberal studies, humanities, and the arts are not required courses for many disciplines. The decision to limit them is directly related to the perceived needs of the "marketplace." Students are encouraged to forgo extra courses in favor of "intern-" and "externships," which require them to work off-campus to earn favorable resume qualities that will make them more attractive to the "marketplace." New degree programs are sprouting up in all disciplines in order to appease the greedy demands of the "marketplace" They argue that higher educational expenses will be rewarded with higher paying jobs only insofar as students perceive that there's a connection. They come to campus in order to "purchase" a degree that will, in turn, pay for itself with a good job. In between, there should be a minimal amount of intellectual engagement so that professors don't stand in the way of students and the grades they've purchased. Students are the consumers, and professors have become peddlers in a scheme that undermines the very foundation of intellectual achievement.
In my field of English Studies, the "marketplace" has repeatedly asked us to create better writers for them to hire; however the surge of students onto our campuses prohibits our ability to teach them to write in ways that are consistent with empirical research, which finds that smaller class sizes are required for research-based pedagogical practices to become successful student writing. They make the classes larger and larger, they hire fewer and fewer professors (and instead use adjuncts and graduate students to teach these larger classes because they don't complain as much), and target the needs of the "marketplace" as justification for these changes.
Please don't tell me that the universities are not responding to market forces. There's too much evidence to the contrary, and I don't see that the professors themselves are to blame. Perhaps you have mistakenly collapsed "teachers" into "administrators," or corporate "Boards of Trustees," which would explain how you manage to cite the teachers—who are getting more and more scarce (which you'd see as a good thing?)—for the ills of the university. But certainly there's little evidence that the university is ignoring the dictates of the "marketplace."
As a grad student, I have encountered a lot of what he talks about. There is little control of the PhD flow out of schools relative to the number of jobs that might be available; there is little knowledge of the types of jobs that might be available outside of the classroom. There is a distain for jobs that are not research.
The professors may not be directly responsible, but they may be complicit or at least complacent about the situation.
Universities, especially public ones are being asked to do the impossible: educate more students from more diverse educational backgrounds in a more thorough way that prepares them both for citizenship and the job market with less faculty and smaller budgets without raising tuition and while meeting a host of local, state and federal compliance issues and forms while running under a revolving, directionless leadership. Good times.
My intent in writing the "Dear Dr. Aristotle:" series to to try to take dry statistics (not my own), add a little irony, and with a dash of sarcasm create a chuckle.
Don't get me wrong, all humor has at its core something that is deadly serious. I to am serious about the subjects. So folks laugh along with me while we talk about important issues.
Reid