l******2
发帖数: 2994 | 1 Don't Become a Scientist!
Jonathan I. Katz
Professor of Physics
Washington University, St. Louis, Mo.
[my last name]@wuphys.wustl.edu
Are you thinking of becoming a scientist? Do you want to uncover the
mysteries of nature, perform experiments or carry out calculations to learn
how the world works? Forget it!
Science is fun and exciting. The thrill of discovery is unique. If you are
smart, ambitious and hard working you should major in science as an
undergraduate. But that is as far as you should take it. After graduation,
you will have to deal with the real world. That means that you should not
even consider going to graduate school in science. Do something else instead
which appeals to you.
Why am I (a tenured professor of physics) trying to discourage you from
following a career path which was successful for me? Because times have
changed (I received my Ph.D. in 1973, and tenure in 1976). American science
no longer offers a reasonable career path. If you go to graduate school in
science it is in the expectation of spending your working life doing
scientific research, using your ingenuity and curiosity to solve important
and interesting problems. You will almost certainly be disappointed,
probably when it is too late to choose another career.
American universities train roughly twice as many Ph.D.s as there are jobs
for them. When something, or someone, is a glut on the market, the price
drops. In the case of Ph.D. scientists, the reduction in price takes the
form of many years spent in ``holding pattern'' postdoctoral jobs. Permanent
jobs don't pay much less than they used to, but instead of obtaining a real
job two years after the Ph.D. (as was typical 25 years ago) most young
scientists spend five, ten, or more years as postdocs. They have no prospect
of permanent employment and often must obtain a new postdoctoral position
and move every two years. For many more details consult the Young Scientists
' Network or read the account in the May, 2001 issue of the Washington
Monthly.
As examples, consider two of the leading candidates for a recent Assistant
Professorship in my department. One was 37, ten years out of graduate school
(he didn't get the job). The leading candidate, whom everyone thinks is
brilliant, was 35, seven years out of graduate school. Only then was he
offered his first permanent job (that's not tenure, just the possibility of
it six years later, and a step off the treadmill of looking for a new job
every two years). The latest example is a 39 year old candidate for another
Assistant Professorship; he has published 35 papers. In contrast, a doctor
typically enters private practice at 29, a lawyer at 25 and makes partner at
31, and a computer scientist with a Ph.D. has a very good job at 27 (
computer science and engineering are the few fields in which industrial
demand makes it sensible to get a Ph.D.). Anyone with the intelligence,
ambition and willingness to work hard to succeed in science can also succeed
in any of these other professions.
Typical postdoctoral salaries begin at $27,000 annually in the biological
sciences and about $35,000 in the physical sciences (graduate student
stipends are less than half these figures). Can you support a family on that
income? It suffices for a young couple in a small apartment, though I know
of one physicist whose wife left him because she was tired of repeatedly
moving with little prospect of settling down. When you are in your thirties
you will need more: a house in a good school district and all the other
necessities of ordinary middle class life. Science is a profession, not a
religious vocation, and does not justify an oath of poverty or celibacy.
Of course, you don't go into science to get rich. So you choose not to go to
medical or law school, even though a doctor or lawyer typically earns two
to three times as much as a scientist (one lucky enough to have a good
senior-level job). I made that choice too. I became a scientist in order to
have the freedom to work on problems which interest me. But you probably won
't get that freedom. As a postdoc you will work on someone else's ideas, and
may be treated as a technician rather than as an independent collaborator.
Eventually, you will probably be squeezed out of science entirely. You can
get a fine job as a computer programmer, but why not do this at 22, rather
than putting up with a decade of misery in the scientific job market first?
The longer you spend in science the harder you will find it to leave, and
the less attractive you will be to prospective employers in other fields.
Perhaps you are so talented that you can beat the postdoc trap; some
university (there are hardly any industrial jobs in the physical sciences)
will be so impressed with you that you will be hired into a tenure track
position two years out of graduate school. Maybe. But the general cheapening
of scientific labor means that even the most talented stay on the
postdoctoral treadmill for a very long time; consider the job candidates
described above. And many who appear to be very talented, with grades and
recommendations to match, later find that the competition of research is
more difficult, or at least different, and that they must struggle with the
rest.
Suppose you do eventually obtain a permanent job, perhaps a tenured
professorship. The struggle for a job is now replaced by a struggle for
grant support, and again there is a glut of scientists. Now you spend your
time writing proposals rather than doing research. Worse, because your
proposals are judged by your competitors you cannot follow your curiosity,
but must spend your effort and talents on anticipating and deflecting
criticism rather than on solving the important scientific problems. They're
not the same thing: you cannot put your past successes in a proposal,
because they are finished work, and your new ideas, however original and
clever, are still unproven. It is proverbial that original ideas are the
kiss of death for a proposal; because they have not yet been proved to work
(after all, that is what you are proposing to do) they can be, and will be,
rated poorly. Having achieved the promised land, you find that it is not
what you wanted after all.
What can be done? The first thing for any young person (which means anyone
who does not have a permanent job in science) to do is to pursue another
career. This will spare you the misery of disappointed expectations. Young
Americans have generally woken up to the bad prospects and absence of a
reasonable middle class career path in science and are deserting it. If you
haven't yet, then join them. Leave graduate school to people from India and
China, for whom the prospects at home are even worse. I have known more
people whose lives have been ruined by getting a Ph.D. in physics than by
drugs.
If you are in a position of leadership in science then you should try to
persuade the funding agencies to train fewer Ph.D.s. The glut of scientists
is entirely the consequence of funding policies (almost all graduate
education is paid for by federal grants). The funding agencies are bemoaning
the scarcity of young people interested in science when they themselves
caused this scarcity by destroying science as a career. They could reverse
this situation by matching the number trained to the demand, but they refuse
to do so, or even to discuss the problem seriously (for many years the NSF
propagated a dishonest prediction of a coming shortage of scientists, and
most funding agencies still act as if this were true). The result is that
the best young people, who should go into science, sensibly refuse to do so,
and the graduate schools are filled with weak American students and with
foreigners lured by the American student visa. | r*******y
发帖数: 7108 | 2 the world is deteriorating | p********8
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