
U.S. pushes for more scientists, but the jobs aren’t there - rdp
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/us-pushes-for-more-scientists-but-the-jobs-arent-there/2012/07/07/gJQAZJpQUW_story.html?hpid=z1
======
jseliger
I've posted this before and will post it again: any discussion like this
should include a link to Philip Greenspun's "Women in Science":
<http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science> . Ignore the borderline
sexist stuff about women and pay attention to the institutional structure of
science and the opportunity costs of potential scientists.

Stuff like this: "Although the overall unemployment rate of chemists and other
scientists is much lower than the national average, those figures mask an open
secret: Many scientists work outside their chosen field" should demonstrate
why the smartest or most economically aware people who are interested in
science might want to think about ancillary fields (like hacking).

I've also co-written a longish guide for undergrads interested in science:
[http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/04/17/how-to-think-
about-...](http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/04/17/how-to-think-about-
science-and-becoming-a-scientist) , since many of them don't fully understand
how science really works in an institutional setting.

~~~
paulsutter
Vague platitudes like "we need more scientists!" or "a college degree will get
you a good job" are misleading and dangerous.

Data scientists are in huge demand, anthropologists not so much. Although
there are few jobs in physics, physicists are some of the most brilliant
general problem solvers that I have met.

Students with a specific and informed plan can ignore articles like this. But
few students have such a plan. The biggest problem within the education bubble
is the complete absence of guidance about what any given degree program really
can do for you.

China tracks the employment success rate of each degree program. Successful
degree programs get more funding, and failing degree programs get less.

~~~
bhickey
Perhaps my sample is a bit off, but I haven't seen economic evidence for a
demand for data scientists. The wages just aren't competitive with writing
code at big corporations. Academic labs in particular seem to harbor a bizarre
belief that they can hire and retain good people at enormous pay cuts.

~~~
paulsutter
Data scientists have big opportunities in tech startups. Data scientists
create that magic spark to give a fragile startup a strong competitive
advantage, and share in the upside. Many many startups are trying to learn how
to build a data science team.

Trevor Hastie at Stanford told me that Google revolutionized the outlook for
stats PhDs. Prior to Google, statistics was an important field but jobs were
scarce, and at places like research labs. But since Google taught the world
where the magic lies, Stanford stats grads are inundated with offers from
Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo - and most importantly - countless
startups.

Many of the best data scientists I have met studied physics. After the dry
complex problems they have faced, commercial applications are human, exciting,
straightforward, and a way to make an impact. (yes all our basic advances came
from physicists doing physics. Im just saying Data Science could be a great
alternative for some people).

I know that I'm biased, so take this with a grain of salt, but tech startups
can be an exciting place for a data scientist, where you can make a major
impact on the financial success of the business and share in that success.

Happy to give anyone specific suggestions via email.

------
kylebrown
There's a global Great Recession, and the arguments that its due to a mismatch
between available jobs and worker skills are just smoke to rationalize the
growing inequality. Peter Thiel argues that its due to the cost of energy.[1]
A recent article about the price to import coal to India supports his
argument.[2] The Superbubble has popped, and every sector is cutting back for
private equity to make inroads.

1\. The Prospects for Technology and Econimic Growth
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRrLyckg8Nc>

2\. Grinding Energy Shortage Takes Toll on India's Growth
[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230433120457735...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304331204577352232515290226.html)

------
kanzure
I am really curious about how the biotech industry might be restructured to
actually pay scientists.

I know people in both academic and corporate lab jobs making minimum wage or
nearly minimum wage. These are really smart, hard working people. And the best
we can do is employ them as cheapo alternatives to purchasing lab robotics?

On the other hand: this is really cheap, low cost, excellent labor. Are you
paying >$xx,000/mo on drugs? Just hire some scientist to make the drugs for
you, you'll give someone a job and probably save a bunch of money in the
process. (This is particularly relevant for individuals with rare blood
diseases; their medicines cost many 10's of thousands of dollars a month in
some cases.)

If I can get a postdoc for $39,000/year, what can I get for $100,000/year? How
much is a novelty Soviet scientist? And what about a mad scientist (preferably
one with a couple postdocs completed)?

edit: also, why is there no postdoc labor union?

~~~
kanzure
looks like there's a "National Postdoctoral Associaton":
<http://www.nationalpostdoc.org/>

ok then, why aren't all lab researchers unionized? I don't even know if a
labor union is the right fix to these problems.

------
res
I've always found the whole "Get a STEM degree if you want ample employment"
argument to be a bit specious. It implies that all degrees that fall under
this rather large umbrella are of equal worth, but the reality is that
prospects are better for those under the "TE" portion of this umbrella.

Even within that smaller subsection, those working on, say, Aerospace
Engineering degrees are likely envious of the prospects of Computer Science
guys, and the Computer Science guys are looking at their upper-division
coursework wondering if they shouldn't just bail out and test the waters of
whatever startup hotspot is on their minds.

It's better than worrying about what you could possibly do with your Theater
degree, but it's still stressful for the people under this giant umbrella of
promise.

At the end of the day, I guess everyone feels like the grass is greener
somewhere.

~~~
jedbrown
I have yet to meet someone with decent software development skills and a
degree in a scientific/engineering field that had any trouble finding good
work. I have seen a lot of unfilled postdoc and higher positions due to
inability to find competent people.

~~~
thaumasiotes
At the risk of whining...

I'm now three years out of college, still trying to get a tech job (during the
middle year, I was otherwise employed and not trying). My degree is a double
major in CS / math; I obviously can't provide an objective evaluation of
"decent software development skills", but I worked at CreateSpace for six
months during college with no complaints in that regard, and I got that
position by winning the contests they'd hold at my school. It's getting to the
point where I wonder if I should go back to college so I can be eligible for
internships...

Certainly, I'll take a portion of blame here for being totally incompetent at
seeking and landing jobs. But I'm so, so sick of the memes that "tech hiring
is super hot right now / it's a seller's market in tech labor / look how easy
it is to get work".

Is it, in your opinion, possible to have decent software development skills
without years of experience under your belt? Do you meet many such people?

~~~
patio11
So, those memes are true descriptions of the market right now. You have
presented persuasive evidence that you have sufficient programming skill to be
marketable at present. How about spending the next six weeks in a self-
directed boot camp for learning how to be better at seeking and landing jobs?
Treat it like you're learning a new language: wake up in the morning, go to
it, pound on it until evening, stop.

There's a billion things you can do to start here. In general, read Ramit
Sethi on the topic. Specifically, who do you know that has hiring authority?
(Buddies at CreateSpace? Have any moved on?) Who can they introduce you to?

Do you like coffee? I actually don't, but they often sell chai tea at the same
places, and you could drink pretty much infinite chai tea right now just by
saying "I can FizzBuzz, interested in getting coffee or something?" Hiring
directors at most companies needing engineers are desperate and they'd love to
hear you out, if for no other reason than you maybe be Starcraft buddies with
their next hire.

~~~
Woost
I don't see anything that mentions where he is...it's entirely possible that
he's in the middle of nowhere tech-job-wise. If that's the case, the first
move should be "go somewhere with a tech job market".

~~~
mechanical_fish
One reason why patio11 suggests the whole "coffee" angle is that a coffee
meeting is a better way to provide personalized advice. Otherwise we're
reduced to playing HN Twenty Questions. ("Startup or not a startup? Bay Area
or not Bay Area? Is your CV bigger than a breadbox?")

Having said that, "are you looking for your dream job in Zanesville, Ohio, or
in SoMA?" is a fine entry in the Twenty Questions game. My own contributions
would be:

A) "Could you put some contact information in your HN profile?"

B) "Can you describe something you've actually built? And if you haven't built
anything yet, could you build something this week and send us the link to its
Github page?"

But, of course, this is Twenty Questions, so either of these could turn out to
be silly questions once we know the context.

~~~
thaumasiotes
(A) yes, I was bitten by the "your 'email' setting doesn't show" feature. It
got me even though I'd been warned in the past. :(

(B) (1) This past week, as part of an interview, I've built a django project
that provides text and video chat to logged-in users. This is, I would say,
small-scale. (2) Some years ago, I wrote a quick scraper to download Peanuts
archives from comics.com. The main thing I learned from that was that, years
afterwards, I encountered the web page for Beautiful Soup and immediately
understood what problem it was dealing with. I'd call the scraper tiny in
scale. I'm not too sure what qualifies as a "project", but, as you guess, I
haven't done much. (3) If you have hiring authority, or even if you just know
someone who does, I'm happy to build something for you. I'm less happy to
think of something to build myself. :/

As to the pre-questions, I don't have much of an opinion on startup vs non-
startup, I'd prefer to be in the Bay Area, and my CV is, unfortunately,
smaller than a breadbox. I'm apprehensive about moving somewhere just on spec;
as a cousin post illustrates, that seems like a great way to exhaust all your
cash and still not have a job. I'm only too happy to move _for_ a job, since
Santa Cruz could be charitably described as a "dead end".

Please, anyone, email me: username at gmail

~~~
mechanical_fish
_I'm apprehensive about moving somewhere just on spec;_

One can do this by couchsurfing. That was my technique, back when I was in
your position. It needn't be expensive. Just don't wear out your welcome by
staying on any particular couch for more than a week or so.

The fact that you're in Santa Cruz, though, makes me wonder if even the couch
is strictly necessary.

Your projects sound just fine. (If that word sounds too highfalutin, call them
"hacks" or "scripts". Whatever.) Put one or more of them on Github if you can.
I have interviewed CS majors with good GPAs who had literally never built
anything that they weren't assigned to build for a class, who had (e.g.) never
deployed a page live on the web. The skills and disciplines required to build
and ship things are largely orthogonal to what they teach in undergraduate
school - it's like the difference between being an art historian and painting
a portrait, or between having a Ph.D. in linguistics and delivering a lecture
in Hungarian - so any chance you have to demonstrate them, even at small
scale, adds depth to your qualifications.

I have no hiring authority at the moment (and am on the wrong coast, alas for
both of us) but I'll give you this link to my colleagues:

<http://www.acquia.com/careers/acquia-u>

There's still plenty of work for Drupal developers, and PHP programmers in
general, if you have (or can develop) the personality to deal with it. You
will probably need a sense of humor. ;) It's not a great job for
perfectionists. But it is a job where a little knowledge can go a long way. If
you learn how to analyze queries and create strategic indices in MySQL, for
example, people will think you're some species of wizard. The wizard bar is
low.

Think of something to build yourself. It's a good thing to practice doing.
Start small and develop the habit. Heed the words of Ira Glass:

<http://youtu.be/BI23U7U2aUY>

------
Zenst
It's all very well crying out for this and that but without defining the path
and in this case the jobs, there sentiment is nothing more than a soundbite.

Anybody can say: (1) More Scientists. (2) ??????????????? (3) Profit.

Its the number two aspect the goverment needs to focus upon as well as
allowing others to focus.

How can they do that. Well they could offer TAX incentives for R&D. Tax
incentives for recruiting new people into the feild. Many many ways, though
all of those involve the carrot approach without any sticks.

Sadly there is no golden answear/solution for this and soundbiting "we need
more scientists" is not a solution unless you want to soundbite and then read
other peoples comments in the hop[e of finding that magic solution you need to
inact. good luck too them.

~~~
redwood
It's not that we need more scientists in the traditional Phd -> academic track
sense necessarily, but rather more technically trained individuals. Folks with
science degrees can find lot's of interesting work that others from humanities
backgrounds have trouble competing for and can open up new business spaces by
being part of innovative fields.

It's certainly a mistake to think most science-trained folks work as
stereotypical lab-suit-wearing scientists. Science-trained individuals have
fruitful careers across the map, and we benefit from more of that, that's all!

~~~
Zenst
I totaly agree but there again I grew up with computer studies being about
learning how computers work and writing code. As apposed to this is how we do
mail-merge type of computer studies they have today in schools.

I also suspect Wallmart have more scientific degree's working for them than
NASA does employee wise, but thats just a sign of our times.

Maybe the standards need to be raised more so that a degree means something,
though that is another issue, although related. Another related issue would be
World-wide standards. You can get a fully trained brain surgeon from say
russia who could be the best in the World and have all the top end Russian
qualifications. Though in say the UK or USA etc he would not even be allowed
to change a IV drip or a bandage and would have to redo all those exams again
to the local standard.

Education needs to be unified more perhaps world-wide so a degree from china
is the same standard as a degree from America or from France or Africa. Then
perhaps the true quality and abilities are allowed to shine thru. Again a
seperate issue though something that is relavent.

I also think that TV has over the past decade or so done wonders in removing
that sterotypical image of lab-coated scientists, though maybe they have
dumbed that image down a little too much when your cleaner calls herself a
dirt abstraction scientist!

------
genwin
> “She’s very good at everything, very smart,” Haas said of her daughter. “She
> loves chemistry, loves math. I tell her, ‘Don’t go into science.’ I’ve made
> that very clear to her.”

I've made this clear to my kids also. The cynical side of me says that the
push for more scientists is mostly about lowering wages for companies lobbying
the gov't for that.

~~~
b_emery
So what are you suggesting they go into? Math, physics, science train the
mind, and I would argue, open opportunities like no other disciplines do. If
you can do these, you can do anything, CS and programming included. The push
for more scientists, misdirected or not, is a realization that the future of
our country (speaking about the US here) will be built on science and
technology.

~~~
genwin
A science _career_ is what I'm referring to. Science and math _learning_ , and
a technology career, are fine.

------
jboggan
Sometimes I look at other people's resumes and I see their finished PhD, their
publications, their prestigious postdoc positions - and I feel a pang of
jealousy. I feel like I have little to show for my unfulfilled years of toil
in a doctoral program. Then I wonder why they are working outside of academia,
and I begin to ponder the possibility that they may be jealous of me for
understanding the system and leaving when I did.

I don't know. I'm going to keep on coding in any case.

------
teeja
Funny story? Back in the mid-1960s the Feds said there'd be a shortage of
scientists. Then in the early 1970s the Apollo program ended, and 40K+ people
with years of hard experience were dumped on the market.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

------
teyc
There really needs to be a YC-style company for scientists. Costs have come
down - e.g. DNA sequencers are a lot more affordable today. What is needed is
mentorship and some kind of exit that leads to employment.

------
ktizo
Unless the jobs appear quickly then presumably the US might see a lot of the
scientists move abroad. According to the Royal Society in London, China is set
to spend more than the US on scientific research by the year 2020 and already
publishes nearly as many scientific papers. -
[http://royalsociety.org/uploadedFiles/Royal_Society_Content/...](http://royalsociety.org/uploadedFiles/Royal_Society_Content/policy/publications/2011/4294976134.pdf)

~~~
gareim
They may spend more and write more eventually, but until they fix the quantity
vs. quality problem, the numbers mean very little. According the Reuters, the
money Beijing is pouring into research is incentivizing low quality science
articles.

"According to data gathered by the OECD, China produced 285,000 papers in
2009. That's about 0.2 papers per 1,000 head of the population. Just 0.05
percent were published in top journals.

By comparison, the United States published 473,000 papers, or 1.6 for every
1,000 people. More than half made it into top journals."

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/28/us-science-
china-i...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/28/us-science-china-
idUSBRE84R06G20120528)

Will China eventually surpass the US? Probably. They're modernizing quickly
and they have 5 times our population. If they can't one day surpass us,
something is deeply wrong. Of course, with their government the way it is
today, there could be major hurdles along the way.

~~~
aggronn
I recently did some copyediting for a chinese econ PhD student in the US. She
isn't a student at my university, or even a research assistant. She's just a
guest, who is being partially supervised by professors in our econ department.

Why is she here? In order to graduate from china with a PhD, you have to
publish a paper in a specific list of journals. If you're unable to do so in a
certain time period, you either aren't awarded a PhD, or you have to find a
university in the US which will take you for 2 years. After those two years,
you have to have your dissertation completed, and the US professors have to
vouch for you in lieu of publication.

This is just an example of some of the problems you're talking about. Each PhD
student (as far as she's described to me) who gets their degree without going
abroad MUST have their dissertation published. This is totally contrary to how
it occurs in the US where you simply have to come up with a thesis and defend
it--there are rarely requirements about publishing.

Whats more is, if you asked a US professor to talk about the problems with
academic publishing in the US, or with tenure, or whatever, its that all these
incentives line up for people to publish publish publish. Its not about
substance--its publish publish publish. Throw enough papers at the wall and
you hope to god one sticks long enough for you to get tenure.

If this is a major complaint in the US, you can just imagine how bad it must
be in Asia, where theres an (at least this is my understanding) real problem
with 'faking it until you make it', with the hope that you'll learn enough to
keep up with the Jones', while doing the bare minimum of substance or risk
taking to meet expectations.

~~~
timtadh
"there are rarely requirements about publishing."

Ha. [Hollow Laugh] If only that were actually true. Even in departments were
there is no "official" requirement, in practice there is. Your advisor will
tell you baldly publish well or don't find a good job afterwards. Most
students who are not on track drop out instead of getting a pity degree.

"Its not about substance--its publish publish publish."

Sometimes true, in practice grants are far more important than quantity of
publications. To get grants you have to be respected and known in your field.
That means not dumping a bunch of bad publications out, it means making
meaningful contributions. It also helps to be a persuasive writer.

"Throw enough papers at the wall and you hope to god one sticks long enough
for you to get tenure."

I know specific people who were denied tenure even though they had great
publication records. Once again it is about grants, not publications.

~~~
aggronn
I don't mean to try to sum up the entirety of academia in my post, just some
issues relevant to the topic at hand. Your experience, much like my post,
isn't exhaustive. Have I said something wrong that should be debunked?

~~~
batista
I think he answered that question already in his comment, in extenso.

~~~
aggronn
i couldn't tell if he was trying to assert something as truth and contribute,
or if he was just venting his graduate student frustrations.

------
excuse-me
Surprisingly enough not every one of your prof's dozen grad students gets to
be a prof. Fortunately there is a use for STEM PhDs outside the lecture hall.

It's like saying nobody should do math in school because there aren't enough
math teacher jobs for every student

~~~
greeneggs
The difference is that these people have spent large fractions of their lives
preparing for careers that they can't get into. And they are generally very
smart people, so it is to nobody's benefit for them to waste their time.

You might also say, that they are very smart people, so they should know what
they are getting into. That's valid, but it takes articles like this to spread
the word. Many very respected people are not being fully honest about the
situation, including Obama and everyone else at the top. Professors have every
incentive to lie to prospective students; they need multiple grants to get
tenure and every grant agency wants to be funding multiple students. It is
certainly a pyramid scheme.

In the short term, it is very efficient, because we get good science done for
very little money. But in the long run, it might backfire; I honestly don't
know.

~~~
nn2
Universities are still extremely expensive, just with the people (grad
students and post docs) who do most of the actual science getting very little
of the money. It's just extremely unfair and calling it a "pyramid scheme" is
charitable.

Overall universities are just extremely inefficient. Where does all the money
go to?

The person in the article who went into an administrative job may have been
onto something.

Part of the problem is also the biology/chemistry bubble. In the 90ies these
areas expanded extremely and now they are downsizing to more reasonable levels
again.

With CS degrees they would be better off.

~~~
ericabiz
"Where does all the money go to?"

Pensions: [http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-06-19/university-of-
cali...](http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-06-19/university-of-calif-dot-
faces-mounting-pension-costs) (That's one article about one university system,
but most others face similar issues.)

I've said it before and I'll say it again: College has become the most
effective means of wealth transfer from Generation Y kids to the Baby
Boomers...financed by the government, of course.

~~~
_delirium
The University of California system has actually _decreased_ its per-student
spending in real terms by around 25% over the past 20 years, so there isn't
really a case of where the money has gone there (they never got it!). It's
true that there are likely to be future problems with pensions, but they don't
at all explain the current increases in tuition. Those are due to state
funding cuts.

More specifically, if you take the total UC system budget and divide by the
total student population, the result for 1990 (inflation-adjusted) was $21,000
spent per student. The result today is $16,500 spent per student.

Tuition has gone up anyway, because taxpayers stopped funding it faster than
that rate of per-student cost decline. In 1990, state funding amounted to
$16,000 per student (inflation-adjusted) out of the $21,000 total cost,
leaving $5000 to be made up by tuition, donations, and other sources of
income. Today the state contributes only $9,500 per student, and is in the
process of cutting that to $8,500. So even with a more frugal $16,500-per-
student cost, that now leaves $8000 to be funded out of non-state funds. So
it's not surprising that tuition has gone up significantly.

