|
|---|
|
|
|
|
|
|
v**********m
发帖数: 5516 | 1 LoginCart
SearchAdvancedsearch
Journal home>Archive>Editorial>Full Text
Editorial
Nature Neuroscience10, 1337 (2007)
doi:10.1038/nn1107-1337
Supply-side academics
Abstract
The number of biology PhDs has increased without a corresponding change in
tenure-track positions. This oversupply has led to an intense competition
for jobs and funding that may be damaging the culture of science.
Introduction
The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology recently
compiled statistics showing that the United States is producing PhD
biologists at a greater rate than academic research can absorb them.
According to the National Science Foundation, the number of biology PhDs
awarded annually has doubled over the last 20 years, while the number of
tenure-track jobs has remained steady. The percentage of PhD biologists
holding tenure-track positions has decreased accordingly, from 46% in 1981
to less than 30%.
What has happened to the other PhDs? Some remain in a holding pattern,
increasing the length and number of their postdoctoral positions while
waiting for an academic job. The age at which scientists receive their first
RO1 grant from the National Institutes of Health has risen steadily from 34
years in 1970 to 42 years in 2006. Others have turned to nonacademic
careers, particularly in industry, which now hires 30% of new PhDs, compared
with 10% in 1970. The trend toward alternative careers appears to represent
a compromise for many scientists. In 2004, 57% of postdocs aspired to a
tenure-track position, according a survey by the American Association for
the Advancement of Science (AAAS), twice the number that could realistically
expect to achieve that goal.
This situation is self-evidently difficult for young scientists, who are
asked to commit themselves to a decade or more of training after college
without any strong reason to expect that this effort will pay off with a job
in their chosen field. It is no surprise that postdocs suffer from stress,
overwork and morale problems. Biologists who rated their promotion
opportunities as "very poor" in the 2006 AAAS survey were seven times more
likely than average to rate their job satisfaction as low.
Less obviously, the situation is also bad for science. The past two decades
have brought increasing concern that researchers are reluctant to disclose
unpublished results to their colleagues at meetings or to share reagents and
data with other scientists. Such competitive behavior is a natural—and
perhaps rational—reaction to the recent demographic shifts. Even tenured
faculty frequently feel the need to behave in such ways to protect the
competitive position of young researchers from their laboratories. Increased
competition interferes with the availability of resources and collaboration
opportunities, at a time when such efforts are being promoted by many
funding agencies in an effort to improve the efficiency of their support for
research.
We see this culture of increased competition most clearly in the peer review
process, which is often shadowed by fears of being scooped, concerns about
conflicts of interest and anxiety about career advancement if a paper is
rejected. All these stresses flow from the perception that scientists cannot
get an academic job or tenure without at least one high-profile publication
. Though this perception may be correct in many cases, the correlation is
not inevitable. In more relaxed times, it was common for hiring committees
to judge the papers of candidates individually. Now, the large numbers of
applicants for most academic positions makes it difficult for anyone to read
all the candidates' output, so faculty and administrators often use high-
profile publication as a shorthand for career achievement, relying on the
judgment of editors and referees instead of evaluating the work directly.
Similar problems arise in grant review panels, which often evaluate
productivity by looking at the number of an applicant's papers, thus
encouraging the spread of the 'least publishable unit' in journals.
The laws of economics ultimately will solve the problem of PhD oversupply,
one way or another, but many of the potential solutions are unpleasant.
Absorbing the additional PhDs by increasing the length of scientific
training would appear to have reached a natural limit. Few people are likely
to be willing to wait beyond their early 40s to achieve their first
permanent professional position. Alternative careers can take up only some
of the excess. Moreover, traditional academic training costs a great deal of
time and money and does not provide optimal preparation for many
nonacademic career paths.
The approach with the lowest cost would be to train fewer PhD scientists or
to increase the number of tenure-track jobs, with the former seeming more
plausible in the current economic climate. To achieve this goal, the
scientific community would need to find new ways to meet the requirements of
stakeholders, including graduate schools that derive funding and prestige
from the number of students that they educate.
The current system is largely driven by the community's need for the
substantial amount of research and teaching that is done by graduate
students and postdocs. One possibility would be to make it easier for
researchers to hire, promote and appropriately compensate career-track
technicians capable of taking on substantial responsibility for experiments,
as is done at the RIKEN Institute in Japan. Such an approach would also
reduce turnover and the need for frequent training of new personnel. It
would also be helpful to reduce administrative and grant-writing
responsibilities to allow senior investigators to do more hands-on work in
their own laboratories.
Such efforts would benefit the scientific community by reducing the
resources currently devoted to training graduate students and postdocs who
will not end up doing academic research or other work that requires
intensive research skills. More effort could instead be invested in training
the most promising young scientists, who could then be rewarded with a fair
chance of achieving their career goal of a tenure-track position. | v**********m
发帖数: 5516 | 2 2007年，美国学界和全社会已经开始正视这个大死结，开始大量讨论如何解开死结。
2008年大牛们开始回国鼓吹基础研究，开始编织中国版死结。
文章最后两段点睛，由于基础研究实验室需要大量的trainee来完成项目，大牛们借项
目来升官发财，陈蟑螂已经开好了道路。所以海归大牛们公开鼓吹小孩学生物真不是胡
言乱语，而是老谋深算。
【在 v**********m 的大作中提到】
: LoginCart
: SearchAdvancedsearch
: Journal home>Archive>Editorial>Full Text
: Editorial
: Nature Neuroscience10, 1337 (2007)
: doi:10.1038/nn1107-1337
: Supply-side academics
: Abstract
: The number of biology PhDs has increased without a corresponding change in
: tenure-track positions. This oversupply has led to an intense competition
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
