Jim Frankenfield - Science & Engineering Pages
The Employment Situation and the State of Science
These pages go back to the 1990's, which was a difficult economic time. Higher Education does in general produce far more PhD's than society really needs and this was a particularly acute problem in the 1990's. Furthermore, when the economy is bad more STEM people choose to go back to graduate school since jobs are scarce. On the + side this does make graduate assistanceships more competitive which attracts better students, as long as they can tolerate their role as cheap labor on research grants.
In recent years, especially since the advent of "QE" and the creation of huge amounts of money, jobs have been more plentiful. At least for new graduates. Plenty of tech companies can exist entirely on borrowed money at near zero interest without having to actually produce anything useful or turn a profit. On the - side this makes it harder to attract quality graduate students. At this time (2022) some graduates of rather poor undergrad programs are having no trouble getting into graduate school.
Going forward from 2022 it appears that the interest-free cash may dry up via "QT", in which case jobs may become sparse again. Particularly for PhD's. And there will be a migration back towards graduate school. Unless, of course, "QT" crashes too many things and ends. A return to QE may continue a boom in STEM jobs but when it leads to hyperinflation nobody will come out ahead.
So take the articles and attitudes here in context. They are from the 1990's. Things have changed, but they may swing back that way in the coming years. It's also unlikely the kind of discourse reflected here will be viable. In the 1990's the internet was oriented much more towards interaction and discussion. There were groups such as "Young Scientists Network" (YSN) which formed. Today the internet is primarily used to entertain, to market products (often snake oil), and to coach other people on how to sell their snake oil. Intelligent discourse on currently relevant topics is a lot harder to find now.
Articles
Worst Science Jobs - Postdoc (From Popular Science)
Article - "Is there a Hard Money Future After Graduate School?"
Article - "Publications, Peer Review, and the Young Scientist"
National Academy of Sciences Report
NAS Report on Reshaping Graduate Education
Comments on the NAS Report from the Young Scientists Network
Unabomber Comments, Manifesto
An excerpt of the Unabombers manifesto (from the YSN Digest)
The Full Text of the Unabombers manifesto (html)
Unabomber's writings raise uneasy ethical questions for Stanford scholar
Humor and Comics with an Element of Truth
Guide to Careers in Engineering and Computer Science
Supply and Demand
Indentured Servitude - Grad Students and PostDocs take note!
