Bitter Ironies Confound Career Hopes Of Today's Young Researchers

Young scientific researchers are coming to a major crossroads, a "best of times, worst of times" of tremendous proportions. From one standpoint, being a part of the numerous revolutions occurring in nearly all scientific disciplines is as exciting for us as it is promising. There is much for us to anticipate as fresh thinking and new technological innovations bring once diverse disciplines together, creating avenues of exploration not even imagined a decade ago. Confidence and ambition, however, are ceding to worry and resignation. We see increasing numbers of our comrades getting stuck in perpetual postdoctoral appointments while they apply over and over for rare faculty jobs. Even if one attains a cherished tenure-track position, the chances of earning a competitive research grant have seldom been worse. The situation is clearly discouraging, since fewer and fewer biomedical faculty under age 37 are applying for life-blood National Institutes of Health research grants. And on the industrial side, layoffs and forced retirements by the likes of IBM and Dow Chemical parallel those in the defense industry and lead young scientists to wonder if there are any stable career choices left. Whether doctoral candidates or postdoctoral fellows, with designs on industry or academe, we--the fledgling researchers of the wealthiest country on Earth--are now struggling with grim prospects for gainful employment in the near future. We must look carefully at the issues that have created this bitterly ironic situation, and we must take a stand for bringing about change. The ostensible cause of the situation has been tightened federal purse strings mixed with a peer-review process that tends to favor established investigators over nov-ices. In my opinion, two oddly coexisting factors also impinge heavily on the future of young scientists in America: science illiteracy in American society and the unchecked flow of young researchers through the so-called academic pipe-line. Scientist/educator Carl Sagan noted in a Washington Post article early this year that, while we as a society "profoundly depend on science and technology," virtually no Americans really understand them ("Book World" section, Jan. 9, 1994, page 1). Developing countries view science as the path out of poverty, as demonstrated by the huge numbers of international science graduate students in United States institutions. Yet Americans--taught as children that "science is hard"--too often fall down the slope of superstition and ignorance. Statistics abound decrying the state of science and math education in the U.S. as an embarrassment compared to that in, for example, Japan and Germany. However, in underscoring this problem, Sagan directed a good portion of the blame at the bulk of scientists who, given all of their grant-writing and their general "ivory-tower" reclusiveness, do not have the time, the energy, or the desire to do something to correct it. Why should we, as young scientists, care whether nonscientists truly understand basic scientific concepts? Simply because our careers will depend on it. Without an appreciation of both math and basic scientific principles, people tend to become frightened, mistrustful, and less supportive of scientific progress. Given such recently publicized improprieties as the breast cancer research debacle at the University of Pittsburgh and government-sponsored radiation experiments, good scientists are finding this negative impression increasingly harder to debunk. Today's science policymakers warn that the future of our scientific enterprise may be jeopardized as public skepticism translates into voter retaliation and reduced research fundingsupport. Therefore, all scientists must come to see the importance of open, informative dialogue with a public capable of understanding even the most difficult concepts if they are presented clearly and conscientiously. Given the degree to which the American public, through its science illiteracy and mistrust, are alienated from science, there is a growing class of Americans who, owing to their dedication to this field, are in a professional quandry. I am speaking of the thousands of college students in the last decade who loved science enough (and were encouraged by erroneous predictions of imminent shortages in the scientific work force) to pursue the noble career path of academic research despite the limited income potential that the field offers. We students, having invested more than five years and much personal and federal money into our hard-earned Ph.D.'s, now find upon graduation a saturated scientific job market and little hope for future advancement. What seems most inconsistent--and unfair--is that the number of doctoral candidates in the sciences grows despite the lack of a well-defined need: Graduate training is encouraged under the assumption that jobs will eventually appear. One reason for this might simply be that very few studies have focused on supply and demand for employment in the sciences. In one that did--a 1989 study sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation--the authors suggested that, given reasonable projections of both the nation's economic growth and the attrition rate of existing faculty, there could well be a 100 percent surplus of professorial candidates in the biological and psychological sciences through 1997 (W.G. Bowden, J.A. Sosa, Pros-pects for Faculty in the Arts and Sciences: A Study of Factors Affecting Demand and Supply, Princeton University Press, 1989). Ph.D. students and postdoctoral fellows in the biomedical sciences today are seeing abundant evidence of the projected oversupply in their ranks. (Just ask even exceptionally talented postdocs about the number of academic job offers they've received for every 100 job letters sent.) This problem is not unique to bioscientists, either, as all indications are that basic chemistry and physics postdocs in the pipeline fare no better, and perhaps worse, in the job market. Given current trends, it is easy to imagine that some scary scenarios are just around the corner. In one, a disappearing job market, exacerbated by funding cutbacks from lawmakers with skeptical constituencies, creates a class of scientists that is simply forced to "adjust" in a free-market sense, with only the strong and lucky few able to survive. This phenomenon is certainly familiar; witness the fall of the superconducting supercollider and the resultant layoffs of physicists. Another, perhaps even more demoralizing, scenario: The bulk of young science Ph.D.'s within the glutted pipeline serve merely as "McScientists," struggling at pathetic hourly wages as the virtual hands and brains of their masters, the laboratory franchise owners. The growing number of postdocs unable to secure treasured faculty positions year after year has already led to rising underemployment rates in most academic science fields; yet year after year, the number of Ph.D. candidates steadily increases. A cynic might even propose that it is academia's thirst for cheap labor that keeps the pipeline flowing at all. It seems ridiculous that the two social crises of science illiteracy and scientist oversupply coexist. Both problems will continue to fester without a major overhaul of our national science and education policy. Fortunately, demands for science education reform are indeed spreading across the U.S., and with much support from the scientific societies and industry. As for the oversupply of Ph.D.'s, further studies are needed to fully define the problem--but the studies that have already been undertaken must, at some point, be taken seriously. Granted, the truly exceptional and ambitious among the ranks of young scientists must be encouraged to go as far as their aspirations will allow. This nation will always need superior researchers and so must foster excellence. However, with job prospects for Ph.D.'s in many cases worse than for B.S. or M.S. recipients, it seems irresponsible for doctoral programs to encourage more and more college graduates to matriculate as basic scientists. If new data argue that graduate research institutions must curb admissions in the short run to better serve the long-term interests of prospective students, granting agencies, and an unsure economy, then policymakers must act accordingly. A time of reckoning has come for the youth of science. No more can we afford to hide in academia and allow others to decide our fate. All young researchers in the pipeline must realize that unemployment and servitude will be real-life career possibilities unless we learn to adapt to today's spartan economic environment. But how can we adapt? One thing we must learn is to speak out--to our university administrators, scientific society leaders, and congressional representatives. A concerted, government-led effort could address shortcomings in U.S. science education at all levels and at the same time provide alternative careers, such as teaching, for young scientists who want to leave the academic pipeline from a different outlet. Fortunately, some people in power do care about the Ph.D.-oversupply issue. At last April's Science and Technology Policy Colloquium sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, for example, Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) intoned that academic mentors in science must "break away from the tendency of creating Ph.D. students in the image of the professor," and that the tenure track "should not be viewed as the only [career] path" but one of many, including education, industry, and government. Rockefeller went on to urge faculty to "foster [alternative career] areas, not look down on them." During the same meeting, NIH director Harold Varmus also commented on the need to "open up the pipeline" that seems so fixed on ushering forth professorial clones. Given that bureaucratic change is a particularly slow process, however, we cannot rely exclusively on policymakers for a remedy. We must also adapt by making ourselves more marketable. In a Darwinian sense, "more" often means "better" for survival purposes. Careers that mix science with business, law, and government policy are currently in a growth phase, so the more diversified one's resume, the less likely one is to get stuck in the pipeline with no place to go. Since the behind-the-scenes consensus in Washington is that the funding of scientific research--especially for independent investigators--isn't going to improve in the near future, perhaps young researchers should also reconsider carefully their true motives for entering the pipeline in the first place. Mark H. Paalman is a graduate student in the department of biological chemistry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore. E-mail: mhunter@welchlink.welch.jhu.edu.

Bitter Ironies Confound Career Hopes Of Today's Young Researchers

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Mark Paalman

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October 1994

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