Physics Gender Bias in Particle Physics?

[Geezer]

(however, females are usually the better caregiver).

Let me just say that this statement is bogus. For example, my husband is most definitely the better parent to our child. I may have breastfed her for nearly two years, but he's still the primary parent and the one our child is closest to. He's a better dad than I am a mom.

 

[f95toli]

I'm a grad student doing condensed matter physics, but this has been my experience as well. There's a lot of sexism, especially by older males---the younger profs seem less sexist, in my experience---and the suspicion that a female might get pregnant is regarded as a legitimate excuse to avoid hiring women, even though it's technically illegal to do so.

Part of the problem is the way the funding works. If you get funding for a three year project and some of the money is allocated to hiring a post-doc you HAVE to use the money during those three years, if the post-doc goes on maternity leave (or is absent for any other reason) for a while that can cause serious problems for the project as a whole. AFAIK the rules are more or less the same all over the world.

The only long-term solution to this problem is if the funding rules are changed AND men start taking more responsibility for raising children (meaning they ALSO stay at home, at least some of the time). This is happening in e.g. Sweden which has legislated paternity leave (time which can't be used by the mother).
However, one consequence of this has -it is rumoured- been that some professors now avoid hiring people -men and women- who they think might be planning to have children, i.e. anyone who is in a long term relationship.

 

[ParticleGrl]

Part of the problem is the way the funding works. If you get funding for a three year project and some of the money is allocated to hiring a post-doc you HAVE to use the money during those three years, if the post-doc goes on maternity leave

This is less a problem in the US because there is no maternity leave, so other then the time spent actually having the kid, you don't take time off work (barring pregnancy complications). I've known women scientists who had kids and taken < 2 weeks off total across their pregnancy (which was within their 'sick time').

And either way- its illegal to inquire about whether a family is planning to have kids- and its becoming less likely that the woman will be the care giving family (I know 3 phds (1 physics) who went the stay-at-home-dad route because their earning potential was so much less than their wives)

 

[f95toli]

This is less a problem in the US because there is no maternity leave, so other then the time spent actually having the kid, you don't take time off work (barring pregnancy complications). I've known women scientists who had kids and taken < 2 weeks off total across their pregnancy (which was within their 'sick time').

True, although I suspect that there are plenty of PIs out there who's ideal candidate for a post-doc is someone who can work at least a 60 hour week, late evenings and most weekends, and you are less likely to get that from someone who has a newborn baby at home.

Hence, I don't think the system in the US necessarily makes it less of a problem (not to mention the fact that universities and institutes in the UK have "gender equality" programs, so we are more or less actively encouraged to hire women).
Choosing a suitable candidate is not an exact science and formal qualifications are never enough at this level, and if there are more than one applicant (and there always are) it is often very hard to prove that someone was not choosen because of his/her gender.
Laws can never really fully solve that problem (which does not mean that one shouldn't try).

I hope that it is obvious that I am no way defending this system. I am just passing on what I've heard from some of my older collegues (male AND female), both in Sweden and in the UK.

 

[Locrian]

There is no mandatory maternity leave in the US, but plenty of companies have maternity leave. The company I work at has both maternity and paternity leave.

 

[ParticleGrl]

There is no mandatory maternity leave in the US, but plenty of companies have maternity leave. The company I work at has both maternity and paternity leave.

I think companies generally have maternity leave and place, as do many universities. However, postdocs seem to rarely come with any benefits besides maybe health insurance. I would suspect the generosity of benefits correlates with the strength of the labor market.

 

[Locrian]

Oh yea, I must have misunderstood. Postdocs have it bad. From what I can tell, there two downsides to being a postdoc - the money, and everything else that isn't money.

 

[StatGuy2000]

Oh yea, I must have misunderstood. Postdocs have it bad. From what I can tell, there two downsides to being a postdoc - the money, and everything else that isn't money.

From what I understand, there is basically no upside whatsoever to being a postdoc besides having the ability to conduct research in your chosen area.

 

[Locrian]

And the autonomy postdocs sometimes have to do so is sometimes very nice. Many I worked around didn't have the administrative and teaching issues that new instructors had.

So maybe I was being a little hyperbolic. . .

(But not much)

 

[X89codered89X]

Assuming that you could quantify "working twice as hard", I think your 1.2 is as baseless as the 2.5 figure that the OP mentioned. I think the intent was to convey that women have in general to work harder to get to the same place as men and not to convey the precise amount of hard work. It's kind of like saying "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse" to indicate that you are hungry.

I completely agree that it's just a saying. And yes I did pull the 1.2 basically out of nowhere. But my point was that there are a limited number of hours in the week, and working 80 hours /week doesn't leave much more time for anything but sleep, hygiene, and domestic chores, etc. Using this .. I'd say a max might be closer to 100 hours/week this is roughly a 25% percent increase on how much time i was putting in on average.

 

[twofish-quant]

The only long-term solution to this problem is if the funding rules are changed AND men start taking more responsibility for raising children (meaning they ALSO stay at home, at least some of the time).

That's not a solution at all, because you'll get knocked out of the market if you are male and you want to spent lots of time with kids.

The point that Wall Street requires lots of hours that takes time from family is well taken, but I'd have to say that investment banks are more family friendly than academia even if you take into account work hours. Something else that matters is money. If you have large sums of money, you can do things like hire a maid service or buy a car that doesn't break down every three months.

Choosing a suitable candidate is not an exact science and formal qualifications are never enough at this level, and if there are more than one applicant (and there always are) it is often very hard to prove that someone was not chosen because of his/her gender.

If you are hiring large numbers of people, it's not that hard. If you are hiring 20 or 30 people (or firing 20 or 30 people), then you can run statistics if something seems "odd" then people can do things about it. This is why the companies that I have worked in hire and fire in "batches" because if you hire/fire people in groups you can prove that there isn't any funny business.

If you are hiring one person at a time, it becomes difficult.

Laws can never really fully solve that problem (which does not mean that one shouldn't try).

It's a matter of laws and tight labor markets and managers that can't be fired. When there are lots of jobs available, then there is lots of pressure to comply with the law. The other thing is that in most industrial companies, HR is extremely powerful (i.e. they can order you to hire/fire someone), whereas HR is extremely weak in most academic settings.

The other problem is that if you have X jobs and 5X applicants, it becomes difficult to do anything because if you give person Y a job, that means that person Z doesn't get it, and person Z will get annoyed.

 

[Feodalherren]

Swedish

That's the key word. Sweden is one of the most radically leftists countries in the world. I've always thought that most of these crazy feminists are full of it... There's no reason why you should expect to be treated differently in the United States.

From my experience there are many times more men than women in science and math classes. I don't know why men tend to gravitate toward these fields more often, that's another question. I've never heard of any of the women in my classes claiming to be treated differently. It's just leftist propaganda where they want to erase the fact that there are two sexes within the human species.

By the way, wasn't it in Sweden that they were just trying to make up a new word to replace "he" and "she"?

 

[MathematicalPhysicist]

However, one consequence of this has -it is rumoured- been that some professors now avoid hiring people -men and women- who they think might be planning to have children, i.e. anyone who is in a long term relationship.

What's the basis for this rumour?

 

[Zarqon]

The only long-term solution to this problem is if the funding rules are changed AND men start taking more responsibility for raising children (meaning they ALSO stay at home, at least some of the time).

That's not a solution at all, because you'll get knocked out of the market if you are male and you want to spent lots of time with kids.

The point is that the funding rules have to be forgiving. If the rules state that your project ends after 3 years, then someone taking a 6-month maternity leave during that time is a huge hindrance. But if the rules state that the project ends at 3 years + X, where X is non-zero if someone has taken maternity/paternity leave, then at least you have removed some of the disadvantage the employer gets from hiring someone that goes on leave.

 

[twofish-quant]

But if the rules state that the project ends at 3 years + X, where X is non-zero if someone has taken maternity/paternity leave, then at least you have removed some of the disadvantage the employer gets from hiring someone that goes on leave.

The trouble is that is that budgeting happens like clockwork according to the fiscal year. Funding often depends on a legislature allocating money on a yearly budget and you aren't going to change that easily.

Also, budgeting rules are extremely rigid and are designed specifically to make it difficult or impossible to move money from year to year or from project to project. It's easier (note I didn't say easy, just easier) to move money in private companies.

But ultimately the problem is that we have such a supply/demand imbalance that no one is going to make it easier for you to do physics. If you leave the field because you want to have kids, then *GOOD*, that's one less person that's competing for jobs.

 

[StatGuy2000]

The trouble is that is that budgeting happens like clockwork according to the fiscal year. Funding often depends on a legislature allocating money on a yearly budget and you aren't going to change that easily.

Also, budgeting rules are extremely rigid and are designed specifically to make it difficult or impossible to move money from year to year or from project to project. It's easier (note I didn't say easy, just easier) to move money in private companies.

But ultimately the problem is that we have such a supply/demand imbalance that no one is going to make it easier for you to do physics. If you leave the field because you want to have kids, then *GOOD*, that's one less person that's competing for jobs.

The issue pointed out with funding is not unique to physics, but is endemic in all scientific endeavours in academia. I would also suspect that the supply/demand imbalance is a problem in all scientific disciplines (although I concede that the situation is probably worse in physics than in other fields).

On another note, one might conclude that there are two ways to reduce the imbalance between supply and demand in physics:

(1) Increase the demand for physics PhDs by putting more federal/state dollars in R&D (given the current budgetary situation, this is unlikely to occur in the short term),

or

(2) Reduce the supply (for example, by drastically reducing the number of PhDs granted in physics or by reducing the number of postdoc positions, or by actively discouraging students from applying to PhD programs in physics).

 

[twofish-quant]

The issue pointed out with funding is not unique to physics, but is endemic in all scientific endeavours in academia. I would also suspect that the supply/demand imbalance is a problem in all scientific disciplines (although I concede that the situation is probably worse in physics than in other fields).

I don't think it is worse. There is a lot of grousing about how awful things are here, but I know people in the humanities that are a *LOT* worse off.

Something to point out here is that no one really cares what happens to 1000 physics Ph.D.'s. However the issues with physics Ph.d.'s is I think a symptom of a much larger problem. The same sorts of issues that we have with physics Ph.D.'s is now happening with *every* degree.

On another note, one might conclude that there are two ways to reduce the imbalance between supply and demand in physics

I think that there more than two. Also, imbalances will self-adjust. One thing that people assume happens is that we disagree, we have a big meeting, we come to a consensus, and then we implement a plan. That's usually *NOT* how things work. Usually, we have meeting after meeting in which people can't agree on what to do, the system goes into auto-pilot, and then "stuff" happens based on the auto-pilot settings.

In the case of physics hiring what is happening is that people are being forced into industry. Also, the system requires people to incur more and more pain and sacrifice more and more to get the job which might not exist.

One reason I try to encourage younglings not to talk about "passion" is that a system in which people have to become monks in order to do physics is the logical result of the talk about passion and sacrifice to do science. I'm trying to get young people to realize that there are limits to passion and sacrifice.

(2) Reduce the supply (for example, by drastically reducing the number of PhDs granted in physics or by reducing the number of postdoc positions, or by actively discouraging students from applying to PhD programs in physics).

Which isn't going to happen either. The problem is that Ph.D.'s are the "grunt workers" of academia, and if you have fewer Ph.D. students, you are going to have fewer tenured faculty. If you drastically reduce the number of physics Ph.D.'s then you have to start shutting down departments. The trouble is that this will cause a negative spiral which will get us back to where we were before World War II before the age of big science.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Twofish is, once again, letting his bitterness get the best of him, to the point of his arguments becoming illogical.

The reason there is an "oversupply" of PhD's has nothing to do with universities and "grunt labor". If that were driving it, we'd see the same level of PhD production and funding for philosophers and art historians as physicists. The reason that external funding for producing physicists is orders of magnitude higher than for producing philosophers is because the citizens of the United States, through their elected representatives, have decided that it is worth the money to produce of stream of physicists who will enter industry and make better computers and cell phones, to improve searching for oil wells and developing alternative energy, strengthen the banking system, and maybe figure out how to keep our strategic deterrent forces working in a world where every twelve years half of our tritium decays away.

The 10% or so who become professors are a tax on this - an unavoidable loss in the system if you want to keep it working. Make no mistake, from the point of view of Washington, the reason that the creation of physics PhDs is funded is for the public interest.

I suspect that a Congressman's reaction to "I wanted to be a professor and couldn't get a job doing that" would be along the lines of "So you didn't get your first choice of jobs. Well boo freaking hoo. Welcome to the real world, kiddo." What is a personal tragedy to you is exactly how the system is supposed to work.

This is not the only place this happens. Annapolis admits about 1100 students a year. Pretty much all of them want to be admirals some day, but there are only 220 admirals in the entire navy. Should they therefore admit only 25 or 30 a year? The US government doesn't care that 97% of them will never make admiral, so long as they get some utility out of them.

Now, onto the topic at hand. I see a lot more "everyone knows" and "rumor has it" and "I heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend" and even "this is the way I think the world should be" but precious few actual facts. A fact would be nice, I think.

 

[twofish-quant]

Twofish is, once again, letting his bitterness get the best of him, to the point of his arguments becoming illogical.

Funny thing. I'm a lot less bitter than most other people in the field.

Also, I didn't invent this.. There are two particularly influential papers in this field

http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1991PASP..103...90T (The Production of Astronomers: A Model for Future Surpluses)

http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/528878 (The Production Rate and Employment of Ph.D. Astronomers)

The reason there is an "oversupply" of PhD's has nothing to do with universities and "grunt labor". If that were driving it, we'd see the same level of PhD production and funding for philosophers and art historians as physicists

US produces about 150 or so art history Ph.D.'s each year. That's roughly the same number as the number of particle physics Ph.D.'s.

http://cnx.org/content/m13978/latest/?collection=col10377/latest

Also you can use the Thronson model to model things other than astrophysics production. What ends up happening is that if you adjust the level of funding then it saturates at a different level. In the case of art historians and philosophy, you end up with an oversupply at a much lower level of funding. In other fields like CS and finance, you don't get an oversupply because students don't become "breeders."

The reason that external funding for producing physicists is orders of magnitude higher than for producing philosophers is because the citizens of the United States, through their elected representatives, have decided that it is worth the money to produce of stream of physicists who will enter industry and make better computers and cell phones, to improve searching for oil wells and developing alternative energy, strengthen the banking system, and maybe figure out how to keep our strategic deterrent forces working in a world where every twelve years half of our tritium decays away.

And that's a good thing. The trouble is that there is no reason to think that this funding shouldn't be taken for granted. Funding for physics is highly variable, and if people in the United States start thinking that physics Ph.D.'s aren't doing anything useful, then funding is going to get cut. Personally I think that would be a bad thing.

We've already seen this happen in one situation. Personally, I think it's a *very* bad thing that the Higgs Particle was found at CERN rather than in Texas, and that was because Congress was not convinced that it was worth spending several tens of billions of dollars on the SSC.

Also, if the purpose of the physics Ph.d. is to do improve industry (and I think it would be), then there are a lot of things that could be done to improve things. Listening to people that have moved from academia to industry rather than dismissing their opinions would be a start.

One problem with "more funding" is that it changes the equilibrium, but it doesn't prevent saturation. If you increase the amount of funding but don't change the way that Ph.D.'s are trained then you change the equilibrium level, but you still end up with a lot more people looking for work than getting it.

I suspect that a Congressman's reaction to "I wanted to be a professor and couldn't get a job doing that" would be along the lines of "So you didn't get your first choice of jobs. Well boo freaking hoo. Welcome to the real world, kiddo." What is a personal tragedy to you is exactly how the system is supposed to work.

If an auto worker said that or an investment banker, they wouldn't have the same reaction. The difference is that there are maybe 1000 or so disgruntled physicists whereas we are looking at a million or so auto workers or investment bankers. Politicians can count. If you have enough votes, they aren't going to *think* "get a life."

If you watch auto makers talk to congress people, it's "give us jobs or we'll find someone that will." Personally, I think it would be a better world if particle physicists and adjunct faculty had that sort of clout. Part of this is that I've seen first hand how banks formulate the rules to stay in business, and I think it would be good if scientists had that sort of political power.

One other thing is that it feels *good* to talk to a politician. Politicians know what to say to make you feel good, and every Congressperson I've ever met up close has this "feel good" aura. They might be thinking "get a life, you worthless bum", but as long as you are a registered voter they won't say anything like that.

Now, onto the topic at hand. I see a lot more "everyone knows" and "rumor has it" and "I heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend" and even "this is the way I think the world should be" but precious few actual facts. A fact would be nice, I think.

One problem with facts is that the system deliberately is structured to hide facts. You can't *prove* anything.

 

[twofish-quant]

It's really weird that I get accused of being bitter since I'm more or less satisfied with the ways things turned out. The big question (and someone asked me this over private e-mail) is whether or not I would encourage people to go into science.

The answer is HELL YES!

The trouble is that ethically, I can't encourage someone to go into theoretical physics without warning them ahead of time about the problems that they are likely to face. But at the end of the day, I think that society would be a lot better with more physicists and mathematicians, and if our economic and social system isn't set up to handle this, then that's a problem with our economic and social system.

I'm amazed that people have a problem with this. Yes, I'm bitter, but I'm probably one of the less bitter people you'd find. I still believe in the system, and most of the people that I know have just given up on that.

 

[ParticleGrl]

I suspect that a Congressman's reaction to "I wanted to be a professor and couldn't get a job doing that" would be along the lines of "So you didn't get your first choice of jobs. Well boo freaking hoo. Welcome to the real world, kiddo." What is a personal tragedy to you is exactly how the system is supposed to work.

Most physics phds I know are upset that they couldn't get a job that uses ANY skill they learned in graduate school. We do feel like we were used for cheap labor and then we scrambled into jobs we could have had after undergrad.

I know STEM phds in various disciplines who have gone back and got nursing degrees, stats degrees, econ phds, law degrees, etc. Before I had landed my job, I had worked through most of the material for a statistics masters in my spare time. If the system "working" is 5-years of grad school and then complete retraining to scramble into a job where physics isn't value added, its a stupid system.

This is not the only place this happens. Annapolis admits about 1100 students a year. Pretty much all of them want to be admirals some day, but there are only 220 admirals in the entire navy.

Every single Annapolis grad gets a job in the navy (in fact, its required they TAKE a job in the navy). Yes, they might not get a job as Admiral some day- but they do get jobs in their field. If getting a physics phd required signing a 5 year commitment to a national lab or even a specific companies scientific lab I'd be much happier with the system.

I went and got my physics phd not because I insist on becoming a professor (my first choice job) but because I wanted to do science for a living in any way, and that hasn't worked out at all, and it hasn't worked for many of the physics phds I know.

 

[Zarqon]

The trouble is that is that budgeting happens like clockwork according to the fiscal year. Funding often depends on a legislature allocating money on a yearly budget and you aren't going to change that easily.

Also, budgeting rules are extremely rigid and are designed specifically to make it difficult or impossible to move money from year to year or from project to project. It's easier (note I didn't say easy, just easier) to move money in private companies.

But ultimately the problem is that we have such a supply/demand imbalance that no one is going to make it easier for you to do physics. If you leave the field because you want to have kids, then *GOOD*, that's one less person that's competing for jobs.

Ok, it may be hard, but from what I can tell these rules make a significant systematic disadvantage for women (and others who stay home with family). If we're actually serious about equality then it has to change in some way, hard or not. All the gender issue seminars and forums threads in the world can't be expected to create an equal society if the infrastructure of the real world doesn't support it.

 

[StatGuy2000]

I think that there more than two. Also, imbalances will self-adjust. One thing that people assume happens is that we disagree, we have a big meeting, we come to a consensus, and then we implement a plan. That's usually *NOT* how things work. Usually, we have meeting after meeting in which people can't agree on what to do, the system goes into auto-pilot, and then "stuff" happens based on the auto-pilot settings.

In the case of physics hiring what is happening is that people are being forced into industry. Also, the system requires people to incur more and more pain and sacrifice more and more to get the job which might not exist.

One reason I try to encourage younglings not to talk about "passion" is that a system in which people have to become monks in order to do physics is the logical result of the talk about passion and sacrifice to do science. I'm trying to get young people to realize that there are limits to passion and sacrifice.

I don't have an issue with physics PhDs being forced into industry, so long as those physics graduates are actually using the skills they have acquired in their newfound roles there. ParticleGrl and others have argued that for them (and for many others) that this is not the case. In which case we have to ask ourselves (a) are the skills they are acquiring really preparing them for the "real world" of work, whether in academia or in industry, (b) what can we do to address the supply/demand imbalance -- can we find some way to generate more demand for physics (or more generally, science) graduates in areas that make full use of their skills, and (c) perhaps too many departments are producing too many PhDs.

Which isn't going to happen either. The problem is that Ph.D.'s are the "grunt workers" of academia, and if you have fewer Ph.D. students, you are going to have fewer tenured faculty. If you drastically reduce the number of physics Ph.D.'s then you have to start shutting down departments. The trouble is that this will cause a negative spiral which will get us back to where we were before World War II before the age of big science.

If we accept for argument's sake the premise that the US government (either at the state or the federal level) has only limited funds available to fund both higher education and/or science, then it is only logical that the government should be selective about where that funding should go. One could argue that if there are too many PhD students, then there are too many physics departments in too many schools, so it would be logical to shut down some of these departments. This argument can also be applied to lawyers and other professions in which there is an oversupply.

BTW, I don't personally accept this argument, but I would suspect that there are some (if not many) who do, and one needs to make strong counter-arguments against this view.

 

[StatGuy2000]

Most physics phds I know are upset that they couldn't get a job that uses ANY skill they learned in graduate school. We do feel like we were used for cheap labor and then we scrambled into jobs we could have had after undergrad.

I know STEM phds in various disciplines who have gone back and got nursing degrees, stats degrees, econ phds, law degrees, etc. Before I had landed my job, I had worked through most of the material for a statistics masters in my spare time. If the system "working" is 5-years of grad school and then complete retraining to scramble into a job where physics isn't value added, its a stupid system.



Every single Annapolis grad gets a job in the navy (in fact, its required they TAKE a job in the navy). Yes, they might not get a job as Admiral some day- but they do get jobs in their field. If getting a physics phd required signing a 5 year commitment to a national lab or even a specific companies scientific lab I'd be much happier with the system.

I went and got my physics phd not because I insist on becoming a professor (my first choice job) but because I wanted to do science for a living in any way, and that hasn't worked out at all, and it hasn't worked for many of the physics phds I know.

Would you agree with me then that a physics PhD is a waste of time, and not worth pursuing (a conclusion I have reached based on the experiences of many on these forums, including yourself)? What about other science PhD programs such as chemistry, biochemistry?

 

[StatGuy2000]

If an auto worker said that or an investment banker, they wouldn't have the same reaction. The difference is that there are maybe 1000 or so disgruntled physicists whereas we are looking at a million or so auto workers or investment bankers. Politicians can count. If you have enough votes, they aren't going to *think* "get a life."

If you watch auto makers talk to congress people, it's "give us jobs or we'll find someone that will." Personally, I think it would be a better world if particle physicists and adjunct faculty had that sort of clout. Part of this is that I've seen first hand how banks formulate the rules to stay in business, and I think it would be good if scientists had that sort of political power.

One other thing is that it feels *good* to talk to a politician. Politicians know what to say to make you feel good, and every Congressperson I've ever met up close has this "feel good" aura. They might be thinking "get a life, you worthless bum", but as long as you are a registered voter they won't say anything like that.

A politician's response to what an auto worker or investment banker's statement will largely depend on whether he/she can assume whether or not the auto worker or investment banker will ever support him/her or his/her party, either with fundraising or with votes. If the answer is no because, for example, it is inconceivable that an investment banker will vote Democrat, then a Democratic House member or Senator could easily say "screw you".

Now as far as feeling "good" talking to a politician -- to me, what a politician tells me has absolutely no weight unless he/she, or specifically his/her political party actually takes up my cause and provide actionable results. Whether I feel good or not is completely irrelevant.

In the US, if you care about science and technology and the role of US in maintaining its role, then the only logical choice is to vote Democrat. I find it highly disturbing that the Republican party has mutated into such a blatantly anti-science party, with members proudly rejecting the theory of evolution and endorsing creationism and other such nonsense, and otherwise rejecting all facts that do not fit in with their narrow ideology.

 

[twofish-quant]

A politician's response to what an auto worker or investment banker's statement will largely depend on whether he/she can assume whether or not the auto worker or investment banker will ever support him/her or his/her party, either with fundraising or with votes.

Sure, but most registered voters aren't branded with the people that they are going to vote for.

If the answer is no because, for example, it is inconceivable that an investment banker will vote Democrat, then a Democratic House member or Senator could easily say "screw you".

One bit of education that I got over the last few years was to see how real legislation gets done. New York is a blue state, and so the Congress people from New York and Connecticut are very heavy boosters of the finance industry. New York is a pretty solid blue state, and you have people like Chuck Schumer who is very pro-investment banking. There are also Chris Dodd and Barney Frank who have been *extremely* helpful.

The lobbyists that I've seen in action care about issues and not about parties. It's a seriously bad thing if one party thinks that they've got you in their pocket during the financial crisis, people were on the phone with people in both parties. In 2004 and 2008, the banks tended to contribute to Democrats. This election cycle, things are going Republican.

There's also "political microphysics". Hedge funds and big investment banks love each other on some things hate each other on others. Then you have big banks versus small banks versus credit unions versus Walmart. Foreign banks versus local banks. One thing that keeps people polite is that your worst enemy today could be your best friend tomorrow.

 

[twofish-quant]

I don't have an issue with physics PhDs being forced into industry, so long as those physics graduates are actually using the skills they have acquired in their newfound roles there.

I don't have a problem with Ph.D. getting forced into industry as long as industrial Ph.D.'s are seen as "first class Ph.D.'s." I sometimes get the feeling that there is this attitude that if you aren't a tenured professor, you have no right to comment on your experiences. One thing is that you can talk the talk but can you walk the walk. If industrial Ph.D.'s are "first class" then people's views should be represented in professional societies and should influence the curriculum.

There was someone that tried to justify the current system by saying that not every that joins the Navy gets to be an Admiral. But I think that we need a really serious talk about whether that model in which academic professors are the admirals really makes sense.

ParticleGrl and others have argued that for them (and for many others) that this is not the case. In which case we have to ask ourselves (a) are the skills they are acquiring really preparing them for the "real world" of work, whether in academia or in industry, (b) what can we do to address the supply/demand imbalance -- can we find some way to generate more demand for physics (or more generally, science) graduates in areas that make full use of their skills, and (c) perhaps too many departments are producing too many PhDs.

I'm unusual here because I happen to think that my Ph.D. training was perfect for the type of work that I'm doing, and I really wouldn't change a thing about the curriculum I got. Also, I am skeptical of anything that requires a committee meeting to change. One of the things that was very important is that I was able to get the support (both emotional and intellectual) of a lot of individual people. As long as my adviser and my committee thought I was doing the right things, everyone else could jump in the lake.

I think what "we" can do may be the wrong question since different people may disagree too much to get anything done, and one thing that happens in consensus driven systems is that talking about "we" means that people have vetoes and nothing gets done.

The question I ask myself is what can *I* do.

If we accept for argument's sake the premise that the US government (either at the state or the federal level) has only limited funds available to fund both higher education and/or science

It's not true. The US government can print and borrow vast sums of money, and if as I believe that science and technology is the main economic driver, then printing or borrowing vast sums of money is going to have huge returns.

One could argue that if there are too many PhD students, then there are too many physics departments in too many schools, so it would be logical to shut down some of these departments. This argument can also be applied to lawyers and other professions in which there is an oversupply.

Except that the United States is not a dictatorship in which the President can order schools to shut down. You can limit funding through Congressional funding, but that's a political process, and people quite intentionally set up a system in which it's hard to zero out funding.

There comes a time in which you just have to say that one's mind is made up. I believe that science is vital for global prosperity and even global survival. I don't think that there are too many Ph.D.'s, and if I had my way, we'd increase the number of physics Ph.D.'s by factors of 100x or 1000x. You just aren't going to change my mind on this. Now if you can't convince me and I can't convince you, then we both get out our lobbyists and fight this out in Congress.

BTW, I don't personally accept this argument, but I would suspect that there are some (if not many) who do, and one needs to make strong counter-arguments against this view.

Or maybe not. If you've got the votes, you don't have to argue. Also there is an aspect to politics which is a lot like chess. Rather than coming up with an grand argument, you move the pieces to be where you want them to be so that you get what you want. There's also an aspect to politics that involves emotion. Yes, more money for science might be a good thing in the abstract, but are you going to get someone out of their chair to do something. There's also nose counting. There is someone in my company (and indeed a whole team of people) that looks at every vote that happens before congress and plans out corporate strategy around those.

And then there is "reproduction." People get old. People die. One important part of any sort of ideological system is to take values and transmit them from the old to the young. It worries me that this isn't happening. If you have young Ph.D.'s that are disillusioned by science, then who is going to fight tomorrow's battles, because we are going to have to keep the flame alive until we move off this rock to Alpha Centauri and beyond so that we've going somewhere to go when the sun goes red giant.

 

[ParticleGrl]

Would you agree with me then that a physics PhD is a waste of time, and not worth pursuing (a conclusion I have reached based on the experiences of many on these forums, including yourself)?

It depends on what you want to get out of it, I guess. I enjoyed my program, and loved being able to do the research, but I don't think I get much (any) benefit out of holding the degree.

what can we do to address the supply/demand imbalance -- can we find some way to generate more demand for physics (or more generally, science) graduates in areas that make full use of their skills

I think the government needs to be actively pursuing policies that push us back to full-employment. I think that generalists are hurt particularly badly by a weak labor market because when a company can find a specialist for any open spot they have, they aren't going to hire the generalist. Why hire "trainable" when you can hire "trained"?

A lot of people I talked to who were able to move into jobs closer to what I'd prefer to be doing had a story along the lines of "they couldn't find someone to fill the position, so they hired me." That hasn't worked for my cohort because most of us graduated after the crash in 2008 and even after some of have done postdocs, the labor market hasn't recovered.

 

[mal4mac]

I think it's a *very* bad thing that the Higgs Particle was found at CERN rather than in Texas...

Why?

 

[daveyrocket]

Would you agree with me then that a physics PhD is a waste of time, and not worth pursuing (a conclusion I have reached based on the experiences of many on these forums, including yourself)? What about other science PhD programs such as chemistry, biochemistry?

I would certainly agree. I wish there had been some honest discussion about the career prospects for a physics PhD before I started it because I might have made different choices. But there was this attitude that "physics is the best, physics is versatile, every one wants to hire a physics PhD" which is really easy to believe because it feeds the ego.

It depends on what you want to get out of it, I guess. I enjoyed my program, and loved being able to do the research, but I don't think I get much (any) benefit out of holding the degree.

I started out grad school being really excited about it. But that slowly died off after doing years of research and seeing first hand almost all of my creative ideas get crushed by reality. Now, I wish I had never done it.

I don't have a problem with Ph.D. getting forced into industry as long as industrial Ph.D.'s are seen as "first class Ph.D.'s." I sometimes get the feeling that there is this attitude that if you aren't a tenured professor, you have no right to comment on your experiences. One thing is that you can talk the talk but can you walk the walk. If industrial Ph.D.'s are "first class" then people's views should be represented in professional societies and should influence the curriculum.

Yeah it's funny about not having a right to comment if you aren't a tenured professor. I often see in this forum and other places that people often dismiss others' experiences and arguments by saying "oh that person is bitter, there is no point in listening to him." The fact that this is common should be enough to point out a problem with the system. And certainly part of it is what you say -- anyone who leaves physics for a job in industry that isn't related to their field is seen as some sort of failure, a "second class PhD" as you might put it. And their experience/opinions don't matter and aren't worth listening to, even though the system is designed to produce a large number of them.