overproduction of phds and us science

Overproduction of PhDs and U.S. Science Education

Peter Fisk and Geoff Davis of PhD.org fame report on their

participation in White House Round Table on topics related to Graduate

Science and Technology Education. Interesting read, a lot of topics

related to overproduction of PhDs.

This is relevant to my previous exchange with sylow. Yes, I suppose

wiping out any and all federal support may solve PhD overproduction

problem. An even easier (and equally insane) approach is to simply

institute $100,000 application fee for graduate studies.

One of the solutions proposed at the round table - support graduate

students directly from funding institutions (through fellowships), as

opposed to grants is an interesting one. It sounds like a good idea at

first - until you start thinking it through. This measure will shift

control over overproduction of PhDs from universities to the funding

agencies. But then what? If DOE or NSF wants to get their science

funded in the most efficient way, offering more graduate fellowships

may still be the way to go. So we are back to where we started -

doubling of NSF or NIH is likely to lead to similar increases in PhD

production, which are left on the street after funding plateaus.

Besides, under current system each department aims to admit only as

many students as they can afford to support - primarily through

research grants. If students become "free" as far as the department is

concerned, what stops my department from admitting 30 more graduate

students next year, if the system was implemented? Better yet, what

stops me from accepting 10 more students to work in my lab - if I

don't have to pay their salaries?

Overall I am not so sure this system is any better. Maybe the first

step is to institute a rule that graduate students in certain fields

with overproduction of PhDs (physics, life sciences, etc.) should be

exempt from paying tuition and overhead from what their cost to

research grants. I have always felt that tuition (and to large degree

overhead) is a highway robbery by the universities - graduate students

don't take classes, and the advising they get from their PhD advisor

is more than compensated by the research they provide - at very low

cost. If universities benefit from getting more PhD students (as long

as they can be supported through federal grants on which universities

can charge "tuition" while students attend no classes), and if PIs

benefit from more students (cheap labor), should we really be

surprised there are so many more PhDs than jobs?

On a related note, has anyone listened to a recent Science Friday with

Ira Flatow on NPR? There was a program last week about Science and

Math Education in the US. It discussed a recent and highly

controversial report by Urban Institute which basically claims that

(paraphrasing here):

1. US is not falling behind other countries in Science and Math

education, it actually fares among the best.

2. Even if it does not fare well, it does adequately.

3. Even if it does poorly, so what? We can compensate by creativity,

and our economy has been strong despite poor Science and Math

education.

4. Even if poor Science and Math education is a problem for economy,

we can always hire more foreigners to do those jobs - and they are

cheaper anyways.

It's actually a somewhat fascinating way of looking at things, even

though I exaggerrate the positions of the author of the report (but

not by much). For a long time I automatically assumed that it's a

well-accepted fact that US does NOT fare well in Science and Math

education, and that it DOES present a big problem as we live in a

digital age and future workforce has to rely on high-tech

technologies.

For someone to so boldly contradict both of those long-held