Required Reading

Things about science and science education that all scientists should know.

Improving Graduate Education	Labor Market for PhDs
Improving the Postdoctoral Experience	Scientist Shortages?

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."
Trends in the Early Careers of Life Scientists: Executive summary of a 1998 National Research Council report that recommends (1) the life-science community constrain the rate of growth in the number of graduate students, (2) every life science department receiving federal funding for research or training should be required to provide to its prospective graduate students specific information regarding all predoctoral students enrolled in the graduate program during the preceding 10 years, and (3) all federal agencies that support life-science education and research [should] invest in training grants and individual graduate fellowships as preferable to research grants to support PhD education.
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.
PhD's and Unemployment on NPR's Talk of the Nation: Dec 1, 1998. "Most students figure if they spend many years and lots of money pursuing a graduate degree, the job market will be wide open on graduation day. But today's Ph.D candidates are facing a grim reality if they hope to find work as college professors; the jobs are few and the pay is meager. And as the number of positions shrinks, the pool of qualified doctoral candidates grows. Join Ray Suarez and his guests to discuss Ph.Ds and the future of academia." (Requires a RealAudio player)
Going Adjunct: By Andreas Killen, Salon Magazine. "When all the postal workers have been sedated and locked away, will adjunct professors follow in their gun-powdered footsteps?"
Nice Work If We Can Keep It: Confessions of a Junior Professor: by Kathy Newman, Academe, May-June 1999. "After two years on the academic ladder, a lonely, anxious, and overworked assistant professor recommends collective action to give junior faculty members more control over their situation."
The Big Crunch: by David Goodstein. "Exponential expansion cannot go on forever, and so the expansion of science, unlike the expansion of the Universe, was guaranteed to come to an end. I will argue that, in science, the Big Crunch occurred about 25 years ago, and we have been trying to ignore it ever since."
Slaves to Science: Salon Magazine, Feb. 28, 2000. An outsider's take on the working conditions of postdocs in science.
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]
Uncontrolled Experiment: by Scott Stossel, The New Republic, March 29, 1999. An interesting and balanced article about the rise in scientific immigration and its consequences.
The Great Ph.D. Scam: It's worse in the humanities. Much worse. Notes from the field on the annual meeting of the Modern Languages Association.
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.
Doonesbury: Faculty Hiring at Walden College: Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury (9/9/96-9/14/96) looks at the faculty hiring process at the fictitious Walden College.
Contemporary Problems in Science Jobs: Art Sowers' overview of the academic job market and the nature of jobs in academia.
Cargo Cult Science -- Revisited: by T. M. Georges. "So now we see scientists whining in the journals about 'the present climate of budget cutting in Washington,' and a coalition of 23 scientific organizations calling for a 7% across-the-board increase in research funding for fiscal 1998, as though we were experiencing some kind of temporary political aberration. As though cold war levels of funding for science might miraculously return, if only the politicians would come to their senses! Like the cargo cults, they don't understand the underlying cause of their predicament: The cold war was the aberration, a funding 'bump' for many branches of science."
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.
Reshaping the Graduate Education of Scientists and Engineers: A 1995 National Academy of Sciences report recommending important changes in graduate education.
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.
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.
Casual in Blue: Yale and the Academic Labor Market: An analysis of teaching at Yale. The findings: * 70% of the undergraduate teaching is performed by non-permanent teachers, graduate students, and instructors not on the tenure track. * The pool of graduate teachers has almost tripled in the last thirty years, while the number of tenure-track faculty has declined. * Yale has preferred to lower the rate of endowment spending rather than maintain or increase the size of its faculty.
Unlocking Our Future: Toward a New National Science Policy: A new congressional vision statement intended to guide federal funding of science and science education well into the next century. Contains important sections on graduate education.
Malthus And Graduate Students: Checks On Burgeoning Ranks Of Ph.D.'s: Jesse Ausubel, The Scientist, February 5, 1996. "Universities must reconsider production of Ph.D.'s and the invisible hands of franchise expansion, recruiting to sustain the enterprise, and stars that propel it. We should seek positive checks on population rather than suffer the academic equivalents of famine, war, and ill health."
Presidential Views: Unity in the Mathematical Sciences Community: Responses of the presidents of the mathematical societies to questions about the future of mathematics. (Requires Adobe Acrobat)
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.
Scientific World's Low Tolerance For Controversy May Be What's Excluding Young Investigators: The Scientist, Vol:8, #24, p.13, December 12, 1994. "Of all the information recently brought out on sponsored research, one fact is truly alarming. This is the decrease in the number of young scientists who apply for grants. According to a new report by the National Research Council (NRC), applications for National Institutes of Health funding from researchers under 36 years of age declined about 55 percent between 1985 and 1993.... If this trend continues, it will lead to the decline, if not the extinction, of academic research in the United States."
The Tragedy of the Commons and the Science Community: Brian B. Schwartz, APS and CUNY Brooklyn. Presented at the March 1970 APS Meeting. (Requires Adobe Acrobat)
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?
Careers and Rewards in Bio Sciences: the disconnect between scientific progress and career progression: by Richard Freeman, Eric Weinstein, Elizabeth Marincola, Janet Rosenbaum, and Frank Solomon, August, 2001.
At Cross Purposes: What the experiences of today's doctoral students reveal about doctoral education: Results of a University of Wisconsin survey on graduate education. Key findings: "The training doctoral students receive is not what they want, nor does it prepare them for the jobs they take." and "Many students do not clearly understand what doctoral study entails, how the process works and how to navigate it effectively."
Technology and Courage: by Ivan Sutherland, a CS pioneer. Some personal perspectives on success in technology research. Well written, thoughtful, and thought-provoking.
The Tenure Chase Papers: Dana Mackenzie's poignant tale of a tenure case gone awry.
What Hath English Wrought: The Corporate University's Fast Food Discipline: by Cary Nelson, Workplace. Does the collapse in the market for English PhDs point the way to the future in the sciences?
Changing Career Paths of Young Scholars in the United States: Example of the Life Sciences: An interesting presentation by economist Paula Stephan showing a restructuring of careers for young life scientists.
Into the Eye of the Storm: Assessing the Evidence on Science and Engineering Education, Quality, and Workforce Demand: "Recent policy reports claim the United States is falling behind other nations in science and math education and graduating insufficient numbers of scientists and engineers. Review of the evidence and analysis of actual graduation rates and workforce needs does not find support for these claims. U.S. student performance rankings are comparable to other leading nations and colleges graduate far more scientists and engineers than are hired each year. Instead, the evidence suggests targeted education improvements are needed for the lowest performers and demand-side factors may be insufficient to attract qualified college graduates."

PhDs.org Science, Math, and Engineering Career Resources

Required Reading