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."

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)

Salon Magazine, Feb. 28, 2000. An outsider's take on the working conditions of postdocs in science.

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]

Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury (9/9/96-9/14/96) looks at the faculty hiring process at the fictitious Walden College.

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."

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.

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."

by Eric Weinstein, Project on the Economics of Advanced Training, Harvard University / National Bureau for Economic Research. Working Draft.

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."

Results of Sigma Xi's survey of 7600 postdocs at 46 US institutions. Very interesting discussion of salaries, training, and administrative oversight.

Dana Mackenzie's poignant tale of a tenure case gone awry.

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."

An interesting presentation by economist Paula Stephan showing a restructuring of careers for young life scientists.

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.