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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: 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