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Carolyn Johnson reports in the Boston Globe that in recent years, the position of postdoctoral researcher has become less a stepping stone and more of a holding tank as postdocs are caught up in an all-but-invisible crisis, mired in a underclass as federal funding for research has leveled off, leaving the supply of well-trained scientists outstripping demand. “It’s sunk in that it’s by no means guaranteed — for anyone, really — that an academic position is possible,” says Gary McDowell, a 29-year old biologist doing his second postdoc. “There’s this huge labor force here to do the bench work, the grunt work of science. But then there’s nowhere for them to go; this massive pool of postdocs that accumulates and keeps growing.” The problem is that any researcher running a lab today is training far more people than there will ever be labs to run. Often these supremely well-educated trainees are simply cheap laborers, not learning skills for the careers where they are more likely to find jobs. This wasn’t such an issue decades ago, but universities have expanded the number of PhD students they train from about 30,000 biomedical graduate students in 1979 to 56,800 in 2009, flooding the system with trainees and drawing out the training period.
Possible solutions span a wide gamut, from halving the number of postdocs over time, to creating a new tier of staff scientists that would be better paid but one thing people seem to agree on is that simply adding more money to the pot will not by itself solve the oversupply. Facing these stark statistics, postdocs are taking matters into their own hands recently organizing a Future of Research conference in Boston that they hoped would give voice to their frustrations and hopes and help shape change. “How can we, as the next generation, run the system?” said Kristin Krukenberg, 34, a lead organizer of the conference and a biologist in her sixth year as a postdoc at Harvard Medical School after six years in graduate school. “Some of the models we see don’t seem tenable in the long run."
(Score: 2) by keplr on Tuesday October 07 2014, @09:31PM
A change that would be as positive as it is unlikely, is for society to view education itself as a sort of occupation, without any explicit goal of making money directly, and supported through state subsidy. But that's socialism! Yes, it is. So let's list the alternatives:
1. Run a giant social experiment called "What happens to the 1% when a hundred million people (with three guns each [gunpolicy.org]) can't afford food and shelter?"
2. There is no option 2.
Choose your own adventure, libertarian edition!
I don't respond to ACs.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday October 07 2014, @09:42PM
I proposed that exact idea on HN, great minds thinking alike and all that, and hilariously on HN the startup kids assumed inability to get a job is exclusively and forever solely a lower class minority proto-criminal problem because thats been the propaganda for decades, so they freaked out that "those people" would be allowed in "their" schools, and no amount of explaining about the long term effects of permanent economic decline could get thru their thick heads that the perma unemployed of the future ARE todays very same Uni students. Kids these days, so stupid. I was young once but I was never that dumb, or so I like to think.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Wednesday October 08 2014, @12:33AM
The problem isn't that this is socialism, but rather that it is a stupid perversion of education. The original goal of education was to provide a means to survive in the world and be able to do something useful. Even the more contemporary view of education as creating well-rounded people who can think for themselves is just an elaboration of that original idea. But to turn education into a process that people do without any consideration of value to the rest of society, that's an abomination. You might as well just pay people to dig ditches. It's cheaper and they're actually doing something productive.
They move to another country and the hundred million people eat each other.
There's a better approach. Make a society where one isn't punished for creating something of value or employing people. Then those hundred million people are doing productive things and buying their own groceries. No need for revolutions when you can just fix the problems.
(Score: 1) by lonestar on Wednesday October 08 2014, @04:42AM
Thank you x 1000 for posting something sane.
I get really weary of reading some of the quasi-fascist crap that passes for enlightened thought these days.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday October 08 2014, @09:17AM
I think you are over-simplifying here. There are multiple types of education. Vocational is to learn a trade and survive, but there is also education designed to improve oneself, or simply to be a part of "higher" society.. Producing knowledge for its own sake is also seen as a worthy pursuit.
They can move to another country, but real estate and other local assets can, and probably will, be seized by those they leave behind.
Making a society like that may work, but when the ~50,000 I make each year is taxed at >30%, while those who make millions are taxed < 5% then they are playing with fire.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 09 2014, @05:10PM
And what is really different between vocation and education? It's still about survival and improving oneself. As to producing knowledge for its own sake, even supporters of the idea usually won't use their own money. That indicates to me that it's not seen as that worthy a pursuit.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 09 2014, @05:11PM
And what is really different between vocation and education? It's still about survival and improving oneself. As to producing knowledge for its own sake, even supporters of the idea usually won't use their own money. That indicates to me that it's not seen as that worthy a pursuit.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 09 2014, @05:16PM
And what is really different between vocation and education? It's still about survival and improving oneself. As to producing knowledge for its own sake, even supporters of the idea usually won't use their own money. That indicates to me that it's not seen as that worthy a pursuit.
Those local assets are worthless to the rich person by the ease with which they get seized. And the resulting kleptocracies tend to run assets into the ground, because there's no long term incentive to improve the asset. It'll eventually get taken from them in turn. My view is that we are already well into a cycle of such theft in much of the developed world, particularly, the US. Such things as preferential tax rates and being rewarded for short sighted business planning are examples. Stealing from them to create yet another class of short sighted undeserved wealthy elite is sure to end well.
That last sentence also indicates where the rich can flee. They can just move over to become the new elite for another country that's at a different stage of the kleptocracy cycle.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday October 08 2014, @04:10PM
What country do you think they can move to that will be more tolerant of gross accumulation of unearned wealth? France? Good luck with that.
The other flaw is you have assumed the 1% are productive, useful members of society. Doctors are useful, engineers are useful, and many other classes of professionals and skilled workers are useful. Hedge fund managers are not useful, and contribute nothing of value to the world. That covers nearly every sort of person at investment banks who get the big bucks. We could tie them in a sack full of rocks and toss the lot into the Gulf Stream and nothing of value would have been lost. Well, perhaps the Zeta cartel might miss the guys at HSBC who launder billions of their drug dollars for them [bloomberg.com], but the rest of us won't.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 09 2014, @05:25PM
The same country in about ten to twenty years. I view it as a cycle where the old rich get robbed by the next generation of rich. Just move out for a few years and wait till the laws favor rich people again. Even hardcore destruction of the wealthy is temporary. The USSR, for example, was a hostile place for about 80 years, but it's back to business now.
Then why do they exist? It's not like people are keen on paying others with getting something in return.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday October 14 2014, @02:39PM
I think it goes deeper. Why sink your fortunes into technologies and things that can be rendered obsolete by innovation? Why not figure out a way to fleece the world without actually having a real basis to your wealth that can be rendered obsolete? For the 18th and 19th and 20th centuries, it has been a wildly successful model for them. Except now we've reached the end stage where that dodge has become known to everyone, and everyone has become aware that it is really, truly, and materially subverting the survival of the human species because it is diverting energy and resources from activities that matter. The bankers will soon all be put to death, and they really deserve to be put to death. Their crime: smothering the genius of human innovation, and with it, the lives and dreams of billions, in the cradle.
The flow of money is central to human economic activity, but it ought to be treated as public infrastructure, in the same way that the interstate highway system replaced the privately-owned toll roads. No one ought to be able to charge transaction costs anymore. If we can get that, mankind will get another 10,000 year lease on life. If not, we might all be done in 100 years.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 15 2014, @04:28AM
The flow of money is central to human economic activity, but it ought to be treated as public infrastructure, in the same way that the interstate highway system replaced the privately-owned toll roads.
I'd rather have bankers than politicians controlling the flow of money.
No one ought to be able to charge transaction costs anymore.
Nonsense. There are transaction costs. And it is entirely reasonable for the people benefiting from the transactions to pay for those costs.
This is just a typical poorly thought out screed. End result is that the bankers move out while the society eats itself and return when circumstances change again.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 15 2014, @04:31AM
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday October 08 2014, @05:05PM
What exactly do you mean by "punished"?
If I had to hazard a guess, what you mean is that they're taxed. I don't really see that as a punishment. There are three reasons why:
1. If you have, for example, $11 billion because you created Tesla Motors, but with taxes you would have made $14 billion, what exactly would that extra $3 billion have done for you? I mean, with $11 billion, you can already completely fund all sorts of other businesses, own multiple mansions complete with a staff of servants, earn about $500 million a year without really trying very hard, travel anywhere you want on the planet, take about as many trips on Spaceship One as you want, and so forth.
2. Many taxes are regressive, and actually hurt poor people more than rich people. Investment income is taxed far less than wages and salaries, and wages and salaries above $120K are in fact taxed at a lower rate than they might appear thanks to the FICA cap.
3. Most people in US society at least naturally defer to rich people. For example, one fun social experiment some folks in Vermont tried was sitting at green lights timing how long it took for somebody to honk, using various cars - a Mercedes had a good 10-15 seconds longer than a VW bug to move along. Basically, whenever someone with billions in their name walks into a room, almost everyone there is falling over themselves trying to keep that billionaire happy.
A lot of non-masochists would dream of being punished in that way.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 09 2014, @05:28PM
Disincentives to employ others such as higher costs, more bureaucratic regulations, and increased liability.
(Score: 1) by mmarujo on Friday October 10 2014, @05:06PM
Do you really believe that an employer hires someone as a function of either of those factors? As in "If I paid less tax I would hire someone just because."?
An employer hires the minimum amount necessary in order to fulfill his business labor need, no more, no less.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 10 2014, @05:30PM
Yes, but keep in mind that you're asking the wrong questions. Does the cost of an employee which includes all those goverment-related costs outweigh the benefit I get from hiring that additional employee in a particular position? They aren't hiring employees just because. But neither are they looking for the absolute minimum number of employees to theoretically do the job, regardless of cost or profit.
Further, even if we lived in a magical world where the considerable government overhead of employing someone somehow was never a factor, employers would still have less resources available to employ people because of those costs.