U.S. pushes for more scientists, but the jobs aren’t there – The Washington Post.
A nice article in the Washington Post by Brian Vastag, about what PhD students in most fields face in terms of job prospects. It’s the first time I’m seeing coverage in the mainstream media about what all my grad school classmates and I quickly learned was the norm–namely, just having a PhD doesn’t mean you can get a job. Most non-scientists tend to assume that’s the case…
It does seem like that sense of entering a grad school and then realizing that it doesn’t guarantee you’ll get a job (particularly doing what you were trained to do) is not unique to science–I’ve read enough stories of would-be lawyers and journalists in the same boat. And while their grad school is certainly shorter, at least PhDs are usually funded (although not always, as the article makes clear).
But one difference is the fact that you constantly hear about how we need more scientists–that is true for some fields, but not all fields actually have jobs, and that distinction is rarely, if ever, made. Another thing that the article talks about that most people outside science are unaware of is the increasingly long post-doc period, where you spend several more years as an underpaid and overworked researcher. It’s tough to keep doing that into one’s late 30s…
Anyway, there’s been some talk of changing the system, which the article also goes into.
I just found it interesting to actually see any mainstream coverage of these issues.