Most Popular Resources in "The Big Picture"
» Most popular resources on the site
» Most popular resources in "The Big Picture"
» Return to "The Big Picture"
» Most popular resources in "The Big Picture"
» Return to "The Big Picture"
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Doctors Without Orders: Highlights of the Sigma Xi Postdoc Survey
- Results of Sigma Xi's survey of 7600 postdocs at 46 US institutions. Very interesting discussion of salaries, training, and administrative oversight.
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The Big Payoff: Educational Attainment and Synthetic Estimates of Work-Life Earnings
- US Census, July, 2002. " This report illustrates the economic value of an education, that is, the added value of a high school diploma or college degree. It explores the relationship between educational attainment and earnings and demonstrates how the relationship has changed over the last 25 years. Additionally, it provides, by level of education, synthetic estimates of average total earnings adults are likely to accumulate over the course of their working lives. "
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The Real Science Crisis: Bleak Prospects for Young Researchers
- Chronicle of Higher Education , September 2007. "[F]or 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."
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Salaries for new CalTech PhDs
- Salaries offered to and accepted by CalTech PhDs in academia and industry by discipline. Very interesting info.
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Out of Academia
- by Annalee Newitz, Salon Magazine, Nov 6, 1998. Why do we think that Ph.D.s are only good for making someone into a professor?
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Are Graduate Admissions Fair?
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in ImmigrationAn analysis of admissions and GRE scores suggesting that universities are running an affirmative action program for US citizens with preferences for citizenship that are an order of magnitude larger than those for gender or ethnicity.
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Slaves to Science
- Salon Magazine , Feb. 28, 2000. An outsider's take on the working conditions of postdocs in science.
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Professor of Desperation
- " Bad pay, zero job security, no benefits, endless commutes. Is this any way to treat PhDs responsible for teaching a generation of college students? " Sunday Washington Post Magazine, July 21, 2002.
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NIH to NRSA postdocs: Revise and Resubmit!
- NIH cuts NRSA postdocs?
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The Science Education Myth
- BusinessWeek, October 26, 2007. "Forget the conventional wisdom. U.S. schools are turning out more capable science and engineering grads than the job market can support."
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Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering
- National Science Foundation: "This site provides data on the participation of women, minorities, and persons with disabilities in science and engineering education and employment. The data are organized by topic and are presented in tables, graphics, and spreadsheets for downloading."
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The AAAS Leadership Seminar in Science and Technology Policy
- "The AAAS Leadership Seminar in Science and Technology Policy is a 'crash course' in science and technology (S ) policy, designed for those who need to know how S policy works. It is modeled after the highly acclaimed orientation program that AAAS provides for its new S Policy Fellows each fall, but distills the key material into 4 1/2 days instead of two weeks."
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How and Why Government, Universities, and Industry Create Domestic Labor Shortages of Scientists and High-Tech Workers
- by Eric Weinstein, Project on the Economics of Advanced Training, Harvard University / National Bureau for Economic Research. Working Draft.
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Mathematicians and the Market
- The stats are all for mathematicians, but the trends and ideas apply to all the sciences. A comprehensive overview of the job market for mathematicians, plus ideas on steps toward a solution. From the November 1997 issue of the Notices of the AMS.
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The Postdoc's Plight
- by Joanne P. Cavanaugh, Johns Hopkins Magazine , February 1999. " Underpaid, overworked and often underappreciated, today's postdocs find themselves locked in a limbo that can stretch on for years. " An excellent article describing the grim working conditions of postdocs in general and at Johns Hopkins in particular. [HTML version]
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Why Americans Don't Study Science: It Doesn't Pay
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in Immigration"There they go again. Claiming they cant find enough skilled Americans, the high-tech industry has browbeaten Congress into allowing them to bring in another 20,000 foreign workers. The little-noticed legislation, inserted into an appropriations bill required for the government to continue normal operations, expands the number of foreign workers eligible for H-1b visas from 65,000 to 85,000 in 2005."
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Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook
- Projections for prospects in a wide variety of careers.
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Ph.D.s - Ten Years Later: Outcomes Assessment in Graduate Education
- " The Ten Year's Later study was designed to assess doctoral programs in terms of the career outcomes of their graduates. This study compares employment paths of doctorates across institutions, and in that process serves to advance the capability of U.S. doctorate-granting institutions to collect employment information about their alumni and to relate this information back to their doctoral programs. "
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Is Science Talent Squandered?
- We've all heard about the over supply of Ph.D.'s. This article argues that many of the most talented students leave science long before they get a Ph.D.
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Graduate School and the Job Market: A Survey of Young Geoscientists
- How bad IS the job market in the geosciences? The authors of this interesting article suggest that the more important questions is: " How bad do you THINK it is? " They present the results of a survey administered to over 500 geoscientists who were asked for their perceptions about the reseach job market, graduate school, and their preparation in science. The authors note that perceptions of the job market are highly correlated to specific sub-disciplines of science - broad aggregate numbers of either job supply or demand may be irrelevent to an individual's chances of landing a job.
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What You Should Know: An Open Letter to New Ph.D.s.
- A joint statement from the Commonwealth Parternership, an organization of twenty Pennsylvania colleges and universities, on what is expected of from faculty members at these institutions. If your graduate program doesn't prepare you to do these things, say something about it.
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UCSD Graduate Student Data
- Detailed information on how UCSD Ph.D.s have fared in the labor force, including breakdowns by department. An example that should be followed by all institutions!
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If We Need Immigrant PhDs, Why Are American PhDs Poor And Unemployed?
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in Immigration"There they go again. Another report on the (allegedly) vital role of immigrants in the U.S. science and engineering workforceimplicitly bemoaning the competence of native-born Americans."
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Scientific Elites and Scientific Illiterates
- by David Goodstein, provost of CalTech. The best-written and most disturbing essay I have read on the future of academic science.
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Graduate Education Is Losing Its Moral Base
- By Cary Nelson and Michael Berube, The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 23, 1996. " What does it mean to face an academic future in which many graduate students will have none? What are the ethics of training students for jobs that few of them will ever have? Thanks to the dramatic collapse in the humanities job market, for example, many graduate students and newly minted Ph.D.'s teach more than 30 different courses at two or three institutions and publish articles in refereed journals, before they earn a tenure-track position (if they do so at all). It is time bluntly to name the consequence: Graduate education is losing its moral foundation. "
