Schools Why are young scientists struggling to launch independent research careers?

[twofish-quant]

I don't think that point of view is ingrained at all- I think most people want *opportunity*, and adults don't equate opportunity with success.

At some point the bills come due, if you have lots of opportunity but very little success at the end, in the end the social system because very unstable.

What the US has better than other countries is the lack of a ruling class that perpetuates itself- even though vestiges of privilege continue in, for example, 'legacy admission' to college.

Not true. The US does have a self-perpetuating ruling class. I don't think it's possible to run a society without a ruling class.

It's not a class that is based on birth, but what happens is that people in the ruling class "adopt" people from outside the ruling class, and the fact that things aren't closed off increases social stability. The other thing is that the ruling class in the US to a very large extent interactions and takes direction from the middle class.

Ugh. That's not the point. The point is, who is going to pay *me* to play on a computer?

Well once you have $1000 supercomputers, then someone is going to figure out a way of taking $1000 supercomputers and generating new wealth. If that happens, there are a bunch of jobs available.

Why would someone pay *me* to do anything? I cannot demand someone pay me a salary to do what *I* want- that's obvious.

But if you understand how the game works, then you figure out ways of getting some money out of it. The key is to generate new wealth, and this is where technology and physics comes in, because physics and technology is able to generate new wealth.

There is the age old problem of figuring out who is going to work the fields so that people can talk art and philosophy, and the solution is to have machines work the fields. One you start *generating* wealth, then getting some small fraction of the new wealth generated isn't that much of a problem.

As far as creating an academic middle class. University of Phoenix has done something quite interesting is the way that they handle adjuncts. The thing here is to just tell people the odds are that you are not going to make any money in academia so don't try being an academic as a career. You make some extra money on the side, but your main job is keep the robots that work the fields working.

 

[twofish-quant]

So to summarize, you can't identify a credible person who agrees with the statement " not getting an academic position means you are a failure"

Oh. I have find lots of people that agrees with that statement. I can't find too many people that will say it explicitly, but it's one of those things in which actions speak louder than words.

As far as the names of people that really think that "not getting into academia is a failure." You can probably start with my father. He had to drop out of graduate school before getting a Ph.D. and ended up teaching community college. One thing that I didn't realize until years and years after he died and I found a bunch of old notebooks was how *brilliant* my father really was.

Then you can probably look at a lot of my teachers from elementary school to high school. There was also a dean at MIT that had a *lot* of influence, and that I can give you the names of my dissertation advisor and committee, and the faculty of the university that I did my undergraduate and graduate work.

And then you have to ask where did *they* get their ideas from, and this goes into 19th century Chinese history. One short story that is really, really relevant here is "Lu Xun's" "White Light". Another piece of work that is useful here is "A cultural history of civil examinations in late imperial China" by Benjamin Elman.

But it is interesting how the people involved here dealt with failure. I had the fortune of having a set of extraordinary teachers since elementary schools. It's only years after they taught me, and in some cases years after they died that I was able to figure out something interesting. My parents and most of my teachers were probably quite angry and bitter people, but they dealt with their anger and bitterness by being extraordinary teachers. Looking at their biographies and thinking about what they taught me, I figured out that one unspoken message was "look, we'd really rather be doing something other than teaching high school, but since we are stuck here, what we are going to do is to mold you to do things that we can't."

Also, one thing that bureaucracies are pretty good at is "getting things done" without anyone having to take personal responsibility for the dirty work. Every try to get a bank statement fixed? You'll note that you are up against a system in which you can't identity a person that is personally responsible for the problem.

You notice that some people are more successful than others, and you think a faculty appointment at a community college is comparable with a faculty appointment at a major research university.

I notice that people define success in certain ways, and I think about whether those definitions make sense or not. One thing that seems pretty obvious to me is that there is much, much more social demand for lower division community college teachers than tenured faculty at major research universities, so if the incentives are such that tenured faculty at research universities are more "successful" then we have a problem.

My response is that it's not 'society' that's out of whack, it's your worldview that needs an adjustment.

Well, the way that I look at the world comes from my parents and teachers who filled my head with a lot of dangerous ideas from the time I was five. I can change, but honestly, I don't see much reason why I *should* change the way that I look at the world. If you don't like the way that I see the world, then your big problem is to convince people not to agree with my world view.

One thing that made my parents and teachers particularly dangerous people, is that they not only gave me the motivation to change the world, but also the mental tools to do that. The most dangerous thing I think they taught me was that if you don't like the way things are done, then change them.

 

[twofish-quant]

I don't think that point of view is ingrained at all- I think most people want *opportunity*, and adults don't equate opportunity with success.

I don't think this is true at all. What I've noticed is that people are horrible at calculating odds, so if you tell someone that they have a 1 in 5 chance of being successful, they assume that because they are smarter/luckier they will win that chance. If people were good at thinking about odds, Las Vegas wouldn't exist.

The word that comes up with I think about opportunity without success is "Ponzi scheme."

This matters because when people find that their lottery tickets don't pay out, then they get very, very upset, and that sort of explains the mood of the country right now, where everyone seems angry.

The difference between adults and children is that adults have larger degrees of emotional self-control, and can hide and displace their emotions in ways that children can't. Looking back at history, I'm pretty sure that my parents and most of my teachers were angry, bitter people that were upset at what happened to them. But you can deal with anger and bitterness positively or you can deal with it negatively.

 

[Andy Resnick]

I seem to have touched a nerve... I admit that was my intention.

I can't speak to people who have given you bad advice in the past- I asked for PF posts specifically, because that *is* something I can address. I'm sure you'll agree the attitude here is much more enlightened than what you were exposed to. Personally, I was never made to feel like a failure by not meeting someone else's expectations- like I have said, I have been fortunate to have had good mentoring.

I'm a bit disappointed by your idea about an academic 'middle class'. The University of Phoenix is only the most visible 'distance learning' institution, not the only one. I've taught a few distance learning classes and I agree, it's an intriguing concept. The military has been interested in that for decades as a way to provide continuing education to members of the Navy, who are often stationed at sea for long periods of time.

However, you seem to describe something geared towards the *supply* side- adjunct faculty- rather than the *demand* side- the client (I dislike using that term, but whatever). There is a large demand for access to high-quality education, a demand much too large to be satisfied by elite schools that can only admit a few hundred students per year. My experience with distance learning is that it is very suitable for some subjects, but not for others, so it's not really a viable solution either.

Here's where public universities can really make a difference. First, tuition is significantly lower. Second, I don't have to pay my own salary- this means I can spend more time on students and their educational experience, because I don't have to submit multiple grant applications a year. Also, I have less stress. A *lot* less stress. If a student approaches me to work in my lab, I don't care if I get publishable data- that's not my goal. My goal is to teach the student. I am able to focus on helping the student reach their own goal- become more employable, go to grad school, whatever- it makes no difference to me. And if no students come around, that's fine too- my research progress does not depend on having lackeys do the grunt work.

All in all, I want to commend you for advocating non-academic career options to other posters. And I also agree with you that more people with advanced technical degrees is a good thing for society. Have you given any seminars/colloquia at physics departments lately? I suspect the students would really love hearing from you- you are offering them another option.

 

[twofish-quant]

Personally, I was never made to feel like a failure by not meeting someone else's expectations- like I have said, I have been fortunate to have had good mentoring.

The philosophy of the people that have had the most impact in my life was that if you aren't failing you aren't trying hard enough. The other point is that the important thing is not other people's expectations but rather my own. Ultimately, I can reject the ideas that people taught me, but at least on this, I've chosen not to.

One thing that was good about my upbringing is that I didn't get trapped in the "cult of success." The problem with the "cult of success" is that eventually, you will fail. You will fail because you are unlucky, you did something stupid, or for a thousand other reasons. The important thing is at that point is how you deal with failure.

The University of Phoenix is only the most visible 'distance learning' institution, not the only one.

I bring up UoP because it's viable and because I've taught there and I've seen it from the inside. Over the last decade there have been a lot of initiative in distance education, and a lot of them have blown up in big ways. One persistent problem is that universities have often seen distance education as ways of saving money, which causes some big, big problems once one realizes what the capital costs are.

However, you seem to describe something geared towards the *supply* side- adjunct faculty- rather than the *demand* side- the client (I dislike using that term, but whatever). There is a large demand for access to high-quality education, a demand much too large to be satisfied by elite schools that can only admit a few hundred students per year. My experience with distance learning is that it is very suitable for some subjects, but not for others, so it's not really a viable solution either.

I don't think that there are any magic bullet solutions. But one thing about new technologies is that they impact that you have is very limited if you just try to fit the technology into an old social structure. It takes a lot of trial and error to come up with ways of really using the new technology.

Just to give an example. UoP has close to 500,000 students with over 200 learning centers. One thing that distance learning schools can do that brick and mortar universities can't do easily is to scale up and down. If UoP gets an extra 100,000 students next year, it can handle them, because the education process is an assembly line in which you can add or remove capacity quickly.

Another example, UoP has a different academic calendar. Instead of taking four courses for three months, you are full time learning one course each month. This is really useful because it means that you can drop in and out of the program depending on your schedule.

Now there are things that you can do with brick and mortar university that you can't online, but most universities aren't doing them. One interesting thing is that you end up with *more* human contact at UoP than you get at most traditional universities. The whole learning concept is based on interactive discussions, so you are always on your toes answering e-mail.

Something that at MIT and UoP the basic learning process is very similar. Ultimately, the students don't learn too many things from the teacher, the students learn things by discussing a topic with other students. UoP and MIT both create fairly strong communities among students. One thing that I do find interesting is that UoP doesn't form particularly strong communities among teachers.

First, tuition is significantly lower. Second, I don't have to pay my own salary- this means I can spend more time on students and their educational experience, because I don't have to submit multiple grant applications a year. Also, I have less stress. A *lot* less stress.

A lot depends on the particular state. Where you have situations in which you have an electorate and state legislature that cares enough to keep the public universities funded and where you have good administrators, things will work well. But that's not the case in all universities.

The other interesting thing about UoP is that none of the adjuncts there worries about salary. If you haven't been gainfully employed for two years, UoP will not hire you. This let's UoP hire adjuncts at less than subsistence wages. One thing that I find fascinating about UoP is that they only spend 10% of their revenue on instruction. About 30% of their revenue goes into marketing, and they have a net return of something like 40%.

And I also agree with you that more people with advanced technical degrees is a good thing for society. Have you given any seminars/colloquia at physics departments lately?

If I wanted to give a colloquium or seminar I'd do it on YouTube. One big issue is something that I call "identity management". Basically by posting text, I can separate my identity as a academic rabble rouser from my other identities. If I start give video colloquiums, it's a lot harder to do that.

 

[Sankaku]

I am not sure if folks might have already seen this:

Does the U.S. Produce Too Many Scientists?
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=does-the-us-produce-too-m

 

[Mathnomalous]

Interesting read. Thanks for the link.

 

[union68]

I am not sure if folks might have already seen this:

Does the U.S. Produce Too Many Scientists?
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=does-the-us-produce-too-m

From the article:

As a result, the average age at which the minority of young scientists who do actually land faculty jobs get to launch independent research careers by winning their first competitive grant has risen to 42. At that age, scientists of previous generations, such as Albert Einstein, Marshall Nirenberg and Thomas Cech, were winning their Nobel Prizes for work done in their twenties.

Einstein had a hard time finding an academic job too!