Thursday, September 07, 2006
The PhD Glut
The Scientist has an excellent article on the job-seeking woes of postdocs that uses a mix of anecdotal stories and broad survey statistics to bolster the following viewpoints:- Universities produce PhD's at a rate that far exceeds the availability of jobs, and the academic culture clings to this status quo since it generates highly skilled hands available at low cost.
- Most graduate programs are completely ineffective in training students for alternative careers.
- Particularly problematic is the rise of 'superpostdoc' positions, funded by soft money, that are marketed with an unofficial promise of a tenure track position. When this later comes up short, these Research Assistant Professors can find themselves painted as 'too academic' for industry.
- The employment prospects of the average postdoc are tragically comic in light of the heavily bemoaned need for a fatter scientist pipeline.
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A related editorial in the same issue of The Scientist, "Are We Training Too Many Scientists?" (http://www.the-scientist.com/2006/9/1/13/1/) has an interesting (but not surprising) comment----that senior scientists are training postdocs to benefit their own careers.
There are some interesting suggestions in this editorial for changes that could be made to the current training system.
Debbie
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There are some interesting suggestions in this editorial for changes that could be made to the current training system.
Debbie
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