Leonid Positselski

Фигня какая, честное слово. Кто сказал, что наука - это карьера? Это призвание, а не карьера. Автор статьи дает совет не идти в науку, а заняться медициной, программированием или стать юристом, "just pick what you like best". Well, I like science best, or I would not be doing it.

Правильный совет был бы такой: идите в науку только если вы уверены, что иначе не будет вам в жизни счастья.

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Я совершенно согласен с тобой, конечно. О том и речь.

С другой стороны, можно сделать поиск в Гугле на "academic career" в кавычках. 9 миллионов 300 тысяч результатов.

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chaource.livejournal.com

I do wish that PhD students today should get some objective information about the current state of affairs on the academic job market. Professors should honestly say: You want to do pure research, you want to learn science - fine, it is your choice, and be prepared to sacrifice quite a lot personally. The information is that a much higher level of personal sacrifice is required today than 30 years ago.

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I agree that students should get objective information about the state of affairs on the job market, and professors should provide some of it. In particular, science is not a suitable occupation for most people, including very smart ones. But I do not like that the author of the article tries to discourage everybody from going into science.

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clovis3.livejournal.com

Уважаемый leblon,

идите в науку только если вы уверены, что иначе не будет вам в жизни счастья.

Мне тоже кажется, что ошибка автора в утверждении:

Science is a profession, not a religious vocation, and does not justify an oath of poverty or celibacy.

Во всяком случае, 40 лет назад, может быть, это было по-другому, но сейчас это именно так, и хорошо бы аспирантам и постдокам уяснить это. С другой стороны, автор справедливо замечает, что даже будучи уверенным, что без науки нет счастья, надо понимать, что вероятность счастья с наукой тоже весьма невелика хотя бы уже потому, что лишь немногие добираются до уровня (не только служебного, но и научного), на котором счастье возможно. А если во-время уйти в другую область, то, глядишь, стерпится-слюбится. Во всяком случае, денег и жизненных удобств будет больше.

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Да, наличие множества возможностей для академической карьеры - это было временное явление периода холодной войны. И к тому же я подозреваю, что это было чисто американское явление.

А счастья на свете нет, только покой и воля.

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There has never been such a time except immediately after the war. It is precisely in the early 1970s (he got his PhD in 1973) when the physics PhD's were overproduced: the peak was in 1970, and it was the year of the worst academic prospects. Check this
http://web.mit.edu/dikaiser/www/Kaiser.ColdWarReq.pdf
My senior colleagues remember the attrition of the early 1970s; we've seen nothing like it in many years. Today the # of PhDs in physics is as low as it was in 1962, about 1000 a year. If you take 1950 as the post-war year (before the Sputnik expansion), that is just 2X higher than then. Having 2:1 chance of finding a job in academia is fantastically high if you consider that the average probability of getting your first grant funded is about 5-10%. I faced much greater odds. The chemistry departments grew at 50% rate of the physics departments, and the odds in chemistry are worse. Actually, we are again approaching the 1950s equilibrium of the Cold War; it was the Sputnik era expansion that bloated the numbers. Kaiser says that the academic demand for PhD's was fully satisfied by 1950, despite the doubling of PhD positions since 1945. The supply outstripping the demand was already in place. To put this in perspective, at the APS placement meeting in 1971, 1000 PhD's competed for 53 jobs!

It's wrong for this guy to discourage young people from becoming academic physicists even from the jobs prospects standpoint (not to mention more obvious things). These prospects are good, with the baby boomers retiring and the recession freezes over. He was beating much worse odds himself. If his department hires people in their late 30s, it is their problem. Strong young candidates do not apply to U Miss. We just hired a guy in his mid-20s, who was a postdoc (his first time!) for less than five months. In these numbered months he has achieved what other folks do in their entire lifetime, and this is good enough for us. If this chap is so concerned about not hiring bright young things, he should go and do it in his own department. It blows my mind that this guy serves as a DOE science adviser! I can imagine what his other advice is like...

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Something did change for the worse since the 1970s though. I had an impression that in the 1970s if you did not land a real job in the academia (i.e. an assistant professorship or a non-temporary research position) right after getting a PhD., you just looked for a job outside the academia. You did not go looking for postdoc positions. Nowadays, it is very unusual to get a real job immediately, almost everybody does at least 1 postdoc, and usually more than that. This traps the people in the academic track for years, and it is very unhealthy. I am not sure why this happened; perhaps there were no postdoc positions in the 1970s, and now there are. But why?

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What used to be a domestic "market" became a global one. Those numbers were of PhD awards given to US citizens (!); if you look at the TOTAL number of PhD awards given in the US, then we have indeed reached the level of the 1970 once again. What changed is that 1/2 of these PhD awards are given to foreign nationals, whereas in 1950-1965 this fraction was zilch and in 1970 it was about 10%.

What really ruins the prospects of ambitious American PhDs is that against the steadily declining domestic supply, which works in their favor, there is a growing international pool that works against them. Top-tier US universities show little preference in hiring Americans over foreign nationals, so today's PhD's are competing globally for the best academic positions. Therein the research credentials are valued more than teaching skills. However, in most of the national universities and colleges (which are, generally, small and private) teaching skills matter above everything else, as these are teaching universities, and they give clear preference to the Americans.

For native-born PhD's the situation, just as I said, is indeed better than it has been in many years (if one considers filling in acedimic positions regardless of their quality), but for foreign nationals looking for an academic job in the US, it is as bad as in the 1970s. Ditto for American PhD's aiming at the top. If you want the return of the1950s bonanza, you should persuade your colleagues to stop accepting foreigners into their PhD programs or hire only yanks. One can't have the icing on a cake without the cake.

I've profited from the openness of our system in so many ways, and I want to keep it this way. If this means increased competition, so be it. If this comes with a longer period of apprenticeship, so be it. The purpose of this arrangement is to get the best people regardless of their origin into our best universities. It does a passable job of providing American-born PhDs with broad academic opportunity; it is not supposed to place mediocre people into good institutions. The rest does not really concern me either as a scientist or a citizen. If this arrangement makes some postdocs unhappy, it is, basically, their problem; it is not necessarily a systemic failure. There are a lot of people in India and China that would take their jobs. I am getting dozens of applications each week.

I can think what is best for my science. I can think what is best for my country. I am not going to think what is best for a 39-year old fellow looking for his first academic job in U Miss. I definitely do not want academia to be geared towards solving the problems of this fellow.

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kobak.livejournal.com

You are not interested in the fate of a 39-year-old postdoc without any big achievements, and I can understand it. But I do know a couple of people like that. They are around 40, they had done numerous postdocs, and it is very unlikely that they will ever get any permanent job in academia, the reason being that they simply fail to be good scientists. You can dismiss this as being their fault, and you will be right, of course. But I think it is not ONLY their fault. They should never have gotten that far; it is the whole system that allows such cases.

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This is a risk inherent in doing science. Being or becoming a scientist is a high-risk enterprise. Nothing can be done about that, except perhaps frankly communicating this notion to the prospective students in a way they could understand.

Nobody but the person himself can know whether he wants to bet his fortunes on the unknown proposition of him having a potential of becoming a good scientist. Nobody but him can know whether it is worthwhile to continue with this bet or he should better quit now and cut his losses. Given that he choses to continue, finding somebody willing to finance him becomes a technical problem. Some people are better at solving such problems than the others, quite irrespectively of their scientific potential. No system can guarantee that all the right people get their money and all the wrong people don't, if only because there is no way of knowing who are the right people.

What if this 39-year-old postdoc makes a breakthrough the day before turning 40? Or the day after?

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Then we'll hire him the next day.

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Yes, but it would also prove that the assertion that he shouldn't have gotten this far was not correct.

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I didn't make such an assertion. All I've said is that a system can't be shaped to deal with such exceptional cases. I've never seen such a late postdoctoral bloomer making a major discovery. If that happens, perhaps it is very rare, and should be dealt with on a case to case basis.

On my memory, exceptions were made to talented people in unusual circumstances. I was in a department that hired a 52-year old postdoc. He was a full professor in Costa Rica expelled from his country He sought asylum in the UK. His English was poor, he was unable to find a teaching job and spent 6 years in various postdoctoral positions. Everyone understood his situation, and no one hold it against him. I know other such cases (when established scientists from Eastern Europe, for various reasons, slavered as postdocs). These were talented people with the track record, known to the community, having a lot of people speaking on their behalf, etc.

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Such cases existed, exist, and will exist under any system that allows competition or meritocracy. Very little can be done past a certain point.

I do not necessarily think that the fault is all theirs. Neither do I consider landing an assistant professorship as a happily ever after.The competitiveness, the pressure, the responsibility, the need for sound judgment, etc. will only increase. The odds will be lower and the stakes will be higher. Not getting tenure at U Miss would feel immeasurably worse than not being hired by U Miss.

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I do not see openness as a problem. Rather, it seems obvious that PhDs are overproduced, in the sense that most of them will not get academic jobs. But I do not understand why one needs a long postdoctoral "training" (I do not think much training is happening, actually) where one did not need it before. This just wastes people's time and efforts, for no good reason. And it is not only Americans who dislike it. It ruins people's lives regardless of their citizenship.

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PhD's have always been overproduced in this sense. The majority went to the industry, government, etc. So if you have less demand there (eg due to the recession) then academia becomes PhD employer of the last resort. Many of our postdocs like to stay because they are looking for the best outside offer. Of course, calling this "training" is pure hypocrisy. My point was that if you look specifically at native-born PhDs, there is no "overproduction" (after all, you do need some competition). If you look at foreign PhDs then you should ask why people stay in academia rather than find industry jobs. In many cases this is the consequences of policies, e.g. visa policies - and not even necessarily the US policies (eg, hiring practices in India or China). If there were no "good reasons" people would not do that en masse. I can tell you that limiting stay engenders its own sorrows. At the national labs, the stay is limited to 3 years max and the hiring is limited to within 3 years from PhD award. The result is a lot of turmoil. Universities do not like hiring them because they have less teaching experience, and industry has its ups and downs. They cannot go to other labs, because of these rules. Seeing this, I do not think that administrative restrictions would have the desired effect. "Before" there were a lot of military-industrial jobs that consumed the excess. This opportunity does not exist today, and for many foreign-born PhDs it is out of reach anyway.

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Well, if this (lack of industrial jobs for PhDs) is true, then PhDs are now overproduced in an absolute sense, while before they only were over produced relative to the academic jobs. The obvious solution would be to cut down on the number of PhDs produced. Say, by exercising more quality control at all stages of the graduate school.

By the way, is it really true that four-year colleges give preference to Americans when hiring professors? This does not seem to make much sense.

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It makes perfect sense, because the students going to such colleges prefer professors speaking perfect English. It is hard enough for them to follow their courses without additional burdens. I remind you that these are not the brightest students.

As for the "oversupply", why should the universities cut the supply if there is demand? We cannot control the demand for PhDs in Asia and other countries. If you increase the "quality control", fewer Americans relative to foreigners will be awarded, putting our nationals at disadvantage when looking for academic positions at large. Again, the system is not aiming at the goals you suggest. It matches the demand and the supply, and if the demand is distorted, so will the supply. It matches the best universities with the best talent in a fully open way. And it gives broad employment opportunities to the nationals. It is not designed to provide any visiting PhD from any country with an academic or some other job in the US. "Make it impossible to be a posdoc for 10 years" is not the goal, and it is not clear why should it be the goal. It far from obvious to me how such a goal can be addressed without undermining more important goals. Eg, if you give more H visas to clear the house, then even more people from Asia would come for their PhDs, sustaining the glut. If you create research professorship, this means even more meagre funding for research, etc. Personally, I do not think that such a goal can be reached at all without protectionist measures, like they do in the EU. It is an option, but my personal preference goes for a more open system.

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guyz30.livejournal.com

As for me, I don't care.

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dr-pilger.livejournal.com

Все правильно: если нет настоящего интереса именно к научной деятельности, то в науке делать нечего. Но мы ведь и раньше это знали :)

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hippie57.livejournal.com

+1

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oder_k

Ну какая же она "очередная", когда ей сто лет в обед - 1999. Пик активности Young Scientists' Network - это вообще первая половина 90-х. Кое-кто даже успел тогда сделать себе маленькую карьеру на пропаганде "непривлекательности академической карьеры" http://www.aps.org/programs/honors/prizes/prizerecipient.cfm?last_nm=Aylesworth&first_nm=Kevin&year=1996

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Я не уверен насчет датировки -- внизу html-страницы стоит дата 1999, но внутри статьи имеется ссылка на некий выпуск Washington Monthly от мая 2001.

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oder_k

Ну, это не сильно меняет дело. На моей памяти такие песни поются по крайней мере с конца 1980-х, с публикациями даже в Science и Nature (http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-12154468.html). Типа: "Нас обманули! Говорили, что будет нехватка ученых, мы пошли в град скул, потратили многие годы на учебу, а теперь мыкаемся постдоками и ничего больше не можем найти..."

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Песни про "нас обманули", "невозможно найти работу" и т.п. я слышал в бытность мою аспирантом в середине 90-х, конечно. Но вот чтобы прямо писали, что научная карьера не имеет смысла, такого я в те времена не помню. Это мне кажется более поздним явлением.

Спасибо за ссылки.

Edited Date: 2012-03-09 04:46 pm (UTC)

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oder_k

научная карьера не имеет смысла

Точно в таком же смысле, в каком "карьера рок-звезды не имеет смысла", "голливудская карьера не имеет смысла", "карьера Президента США не имеет смысла" ...

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Да, примерно так. С той разницей, что наука таки реально сделалась достаточно массовой профессией. Не в смысле даже численности "ученых", а именно в смысле того, что понятие "карьеры в науке" выпало из ряда, который вы перечисляете, и попало в один ряд с врачами и адвокатами, например.

Ситуация эта ненормальна; и именно неготовность большинства наблюдателей дать себе отчет в этой ненормальности проявляется в появлении статей, подобных этой статье Каца.

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oder_k

Просто не надо понятия "карьера в науке" и "tenured professorship in a research university" использовать как синонимы, коими они и не являются. Врачи и адвокаты тоже сильно разными бывают.

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Это как сказать, что не надо путать понятия "демократия" и "свободные выборы с честным подсчетом голосов".

Вся процедура и механизм принятия решений о предоставлении tenured professorships in research universities основаны на предположении, что нанят должен быть человек, внесший вклад в науку. Если это предположение не соответствует действительности и поддерживается только как общепринятая фикция, это значит, что имеет место массовая деятельность по имитации научной работы.

В последней ситуации почти никому не будет хорошо -- ни настоящим ученым (за исключением горстки знаменитостей), ни имитаторам (за исключением самых отъявленных и отвязанных), ни собственно науке. Об чем, собственно, и пишутся жалобные письма вроде обсуждаемого.

Врачи, в противоположность этому, просто лечат своих пациентов. Ничего не имитируют.

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oder_k

я-то имел в виду как раз обратное: карьера в науке совсем не обязательно должна ограничиваться формулой "tenured professorships in research universities".

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birdwatcher.livejournal.com

Нет, разница огромная. В случае с Перельманом публика, затаив дыхание, следила за судьбой, страшно сказать, одного миллиона долларов. Представители упомянутых вами профессий зарабатывают столько в год.

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I've read such complaints being made in the mid 1960s and I know people who have heard them in the late 1940s.

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Антон Фонарёв (from livejournal.com)

Напишу, как аспирант. То есть наиболее близкий к target audience человек.

Я пошел работать с первого курса. Не потому, что моя совершенно обычная семья не смогла бы меня обеспечивать, а потому что внутри что-то говорило, что так правильно. До последнего момента пятого курса я не был уверен, что пойду в аспирантуру — мне нужно было написать хоть какую-нибудь статью, чтобы убедить себя же самого, что я на что-то годен. Сейчас я безумно боюсь, что не напишу кандидатскую, которая будет мне нравиться и казаться осмысленной. Большинство старших знакомых советуют об этом не думать, но страх воистину физический и очень мешает. Отвлекает.

Несмотря на все страхи, я во что-то верю где-то в глубине души. Так что мой ответ таков: http://wp.me/paNRj-39

Edited Date: 2012-03-09 10:08 pm (UTC)

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