Discouraged Job-Seekers Cite Crisis In Science Career Advice

As available academic researchjobs decline, many are questioning the wisdom of traditional maxims like 'the cream rises to the top'

Rapid and accelerating changes in the structure of United States science have left many scientists bitterly disenchanted and feeling that they have been left high and dry, trapped in dead-end careers, the victims of misleading or downright bad career advice.

DOUBTER: Kevin Aylesworth says that graduate advisors have a vested interest in keeping students in research.

California Institute of Technology vice provost David Goodstein, a highly successful physicist, describes the current situation this way: "The great corporations no longer believe they need central research labs, and they've been undone. The Cold War has ended. The national labs have lost their missions and haven't found new ones. The world has changed completely."

Many feel that the implications of these changes are being communicated poorly, if at all, to those contemplating...