tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1812431336777691886.post2439288110611821767..comments2024-02-29T03:57:00.088-05:00Comments on The Mermaid's Tale: The post-doc glut: who's responsible? We all are!Anne Buchananhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09212151396672651221noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1812431336777691886.post-8729262388761593182014-10-12T11:33:45.234-04:002014-10-12T11:33:45.234-04:00Reply to Anon
If the same money is just moved to s...Reply to Anon<br />If the same money is just moved to some other 'cause', even if it is investigator-initiated RO1s and not big-science except where that's really warranted, the problem won't change.<br /><br />What needs change are the real aspects that are responsible and are so via the university self-interest and empire building mentality.<br /><br />First, stop paying faculty salaries on grants. Expect faculty to work for their university, not NIH, and to put in a substantial role teaching (those students can then do research in the private sector, or practice health-care professions, etc.).<br /><br />Second, greatly pare back overhead and put restrictions that prevent the incentive to grow.<br /><br />Of course, 'more' is the only word the 'developed' world seems to understand, so that's a major problem. Second, as I adverted to in an earlier comment, how we pare back equitably without just letting the big, rich private universities hog all the action (or, explicitly deciding they'll do what's needed and the rest need to pay attention to their primary educational mission), is the question.<br /><br />Quotas and such have advantages, but also serious societal and equity limitations. So gradually tapering back seems to most likely, fairest, way to go....somehow.Ken Weisshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02049713123559138421noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1812431336777691886.post-20769517383475122032014-10-11T18:24:29.011-04:002014-10-11T18:24:29.011-04:00I would argue that the real flaw is centrally plan...I would argue that the real flaw is centrally planned science controlled by few agencies, whereas everything else you point out are the symptoms. The central planning agencies dictate that everyone needs to work on curing cancer or some other disease and spreads a large amount of money to support its 'mission'. Over time, the few projects with the blessing of central planning agency survive and we get into this monoculture of every other postdoc working on p53 gene, amyloid plaque or GWAS. That lack of variety is the real reason for post-doc glut, not the training itself. I do not see how a society can get hurt by training people with advanced skills or by letting competent 70 or 80 year old persons continue to work. The transmission system controlled by central planning agency is broken.<br /><br />Shut down NIH, NSF and a few other agencies, and you will see free market clean up the problem within years.<br /><br />Manoj<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1812431336777691886.post-17192329597298565372014-10-10T16:51:32.384-04:002014-10-10T16:51:32.384-04:00I'm referring to graduate and PhD students. I...I'm referring to graduate and PhD students. I think most scholars taught few if any grad students and most universities were not growing. Many grads probably taught high school or something. Many traditionally scratched out a living, became clergy or military etc. historically. I'm no expert, of course.<br /><br />In any case, US universities greatly expanded after WWII and I think much more after the Viet Nam era. The expanding population and funding pools etc. contributed.<br /><br />Even in my day, there were the routine jokes about classics PhDs driving taxis. The big expansion has been in the sciences and 'paying' areas, I think.<br /><br />Regardless of these points, and the facts would be ascertainable, clearly the explosion of funding sources contributed to the production of PhDs etc. I have witnessed this directly myself. Soft-money salaries and the growth of overhead etc. contributed.<br /><br />Clearly universities are shrinking or coming under pressure as (1) state support shrinks; (2) the student pool may be shrinking; (3) grant pools are not increasing much if at all. In some areas, such as the humanities, they don't bring in much money and Deans are replacing retirees with (say) chemists or business profs. More universities are trying to become status operations ("Research1"s) and are growing their graduate programs (but not, I think, by increasing faculty).<br /><br />In addition, we don't have mandatory retirement. People are living healthily longer.<br /><br />Whatever the mix of causes, it does not seem to be imaginary that we are producing more than there are jobs for. Maybe the retirement/death/disgust of faculty will lead to lots of vacancies and the crisis will ease.<br /><br />To me the bottom line is that we know what we've been doing, and are doing, and we can't seem to stop or slow down voluntarily. Whatever the cause, should we be continuing to train so many? I think not, but I have no good solution for how to taper back--which universities would be restricted from taking new grad students, for example? Ken Weisshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02049713123559138421noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1812431336777691886.post-10427796912325355862014-10-10T16:00:14.758-04:002014-10-10T16:00:14.758-04:00This commentary is quite meaningless, because it d...This commentary is quite meaningless, because it does not point out the real flaw. Teachers /professors /scholars had been training students in various societies for thousands of years, and in all such systems, teachers got rewarded for training more students as well as better students. So, if the system did not fail in the past, why is it failing now? What is so unique about the current situation?<br /><br />ManojAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com