Leave graduate school to people from India and China

冰棒汽水ECHOUID: 2289028

Leave graduate school to people from India and China
Don't Become a Scientist!
Jonathan I. Katz
Professor of Physics
Washington University, St. Louis, Mo.
[my last name]@wuphys.wustl.edu

Are you thinking of becoming a scientist? Do you want to uncover the mysteries of nature, perform experiments or carry out calculations to learn how the world works? Forget it!


Science is fun and exciting. The thrill of discovery is unique. If you are smart, ambitious and hard working you should major in science as an undergraduate. But that is as far as you should take it. After graduation, you will have to deal with the real world. That means that you should not even consider going to graduate school in science. Do something else instead: medical school, law school, computers or engineering, or something else which appeals to you.


Why am I (a tenured professor of physics) trying to discourage you from following a career path which was successful for me? Because times have changed (I received my Ph.D. in 1973, and tenure in 1976). American science no longer offers a reasonable career path. If you go to graduate school in science it is in the expectation of spending your working life doing scientific research, using your ingenuity and curiosity to solve important and interesting problems. You will almost certainly be disappointed, probably when it is too late to choose another career.


American universities train roughly twice as many Ph.D.s as there are jobs for them. When something, or someone, is a glut on the market, the price drops. In the case of Ph.D. scientists, the reduction in price takes the form of many years spent in ``holding pattern'' postdoctoral jobs. Permanent jobs don't pay much less than they used to, but instead of obtaining a real job two years after the Ph.D. (as was typical 25 years ago) most young scientists spend five, ten, or more years as postdocs. They have no prospect of permanent employment and often must obtain a new postdoctoral position and move every two years. For many more details consult the Young Scientists' Network or read the account in the May, 2001 issue of the Washington Monthly.


As examples, consider two of the leading candidates for a recent Assistant Professorship in my department. One was 37, ten years out of graduate school (he didn't get the job). The leading candidate, whom everyone thinks is brilliant, was 35, seven years out of graduate school. Only then was he offered his first permanent job (that's not tenure, just the possibility of it six years later, and a step off the treadmill of looking for a new job every two years). The latest example is a 39 year old candidate for another Assistant Professorship; he has published 35 papers. In contrast, a doctor typically enters private practice at 29, a lawyer at 25 and makes partner at 31, and a computer scientist with a Ph.D. has a very good job at 27 (computer science and engineering are the few fields in which industrial demand makes it sensible to get a Ph.D.). Anyone with the intelligence, ambition and willingness to work hard to succeed in science can also succeed in any of these other professions.


Typical postdoctoral salaries begin at $27,000 annually in the biological sciences and about $35,000 in the physical sciences (graduate student stipends are less than half these figures). Can you support a family on that income? It suffices for a young couple in a small apartment, though I know of one physicist whose wife left him because she was tired of repeatedly moving with little prospect of settling down. When you are in your thirties you will need more: a house in a good school district and all the other necessities of ordinary middle class life. Science is a profession, not a religious vocation, and does not justify an oath of poverty or celibacy.


Of course, you don't go into science to get rich. So you choose not to go to medical or law school, even though a doctor or lawyer typically earns two to three times as much as a scientist (one lucky enough to have a good senior-level job). I made that choice too. I became a scientist in order to have the freedom to work on problems which interest me. But you probably won't get that freedom. As a postdoc you will work on someone else's ideas, and may be treated as a technician rather than as an independent collaborator. Eventually, you will probably be squeezed out of science entirely. You can get a fine job as a computer programmer, but why not do this at 22, rather than putting up with a decade of misery in the scientific job market first? The longer you spend in science the harder you will find it to leave, and the less attractive you will be to prospective employers in other fields.


Perhaps you are so talented that you can beat the postdoc trap; some university (there are hardly any industrial jobs in the physical sciences) will be so impressed with you that you will be hired into a tenure track position two years out of graduate school. Maybe. But the general cheapening of scientific labor means that even the most talented stay on the postdoctoral treadmill for a very long time; consider the job candidates described above. And many who appear to be very talented, with grades and recommendations to match, later find that the competition of research is more difficult, or at least different, and that they must struggle with the rest.


Suppose you do eventually obtain a permanent job, perhaps a tenured professorship. The struggle for a job is now replaced by a struggle for grant support, and again there is a glut of scientists. Now you spend your time writing proposals rather than doing research. Worse, because your proposals are judged by your competitors you cannot follow your curiosity, but must spend your effort and talents on anticipating and deflecting criticism rather than on solving the important scientific problems. They're not the same thing: you cannot put your past successes in a proposal, because they are finished work, and your new ideas, however original and clever, are still unproven. It is proverbial that original ideas are the kiss of death for a proposal; because they have not yet been proved to work (after all, that is what you are proposing to do) they can be, and will be, rated poorly. Having achieved the promised land, you find that it is not what you wanted after all.


What can be done? The first thing for any young person (which means anyone who does not have a permanent job in science) to do is to pursue another career. This will spare you the misery of disappointed expectations. Young Americans have generally woken up to the bad prospects and absence of a reasonable middle class career path in science and are deserting it. If you haven't yet, then join them. Leave graduate school to people from India and China, for whom the prospects at home are even worse. I have known more people whose lives have been ruined by getting a Ph.D. in physics than by drugs.


If you are in a position of leadership in science then you should try to persuade the funding agencies to train fewer Ph.D.s. The glut of scientists is entirely the consequence of funding policies (almost all graduate education is paid for by federal grants). The funding agencies are bemoaning the scarcity of young people interested in science when they themselves caused this scarcity by destroying science as a career. They could reverse this situation by matching the number trained to the demand, but they refuse to do so, or even to discuss the problem seriously (for many years the NSF propagated a dishonest prediction of a coming shortage of scientists, and most funding agencies still act as if this were true). The result is that the best young people, who should go into science, sensibly refuse to do so, and the graduate schools are filled with weak American students and with foreigners lured by the American student visa.

狐狸大叔UID: 2342950

peng
这文章好几年了

DriverEntryUID: 143979

赞。头一次看到

darkathrunUID: 2813505

。。。我在高中时候很不想读理科，觉得物理化学数学什么的都是新八股，学了这辈子永远也用不上。。。

DriverEntryUID: 143979

是否用得上要看你具体干什么。：）

darkathrunUID: 2813505

是否用得上要看你具体干什么。：）
DriverEntry 发表于 2010-10-7 11:16

现在看未来的话，除非是以后教孩子或者什么的我是永远碰不上三角函数、拓扑函数、多退少补、傅里叶、牛莱、动量守恒、波粒二象性、周期表什么的了。。。前端时间发现自己日常生活用数学最多到心算买的东西价格，这个在小学练了下奥数就掌握的，后面几年都是徒劳空费。。

123runfordreamUID: 2697608

不练奥数卖菜的大妈算得都比你快

darkathrunUID: 2813505

不练奥数卖菜的大妈算得都比你快
123runfordream 发表于 2010-10-7 11:34

还真试过。。。不过学了毕竟有好处哈，对数字比较敏感，但也就比卖菜大妈快一点点。。。。沮丧。。。

DriverEntryUID: 143979

我觉得关键是理解那些规律吧。比如大自然是有很多规律的。。。。遵守它就会得到想要的结果，违反就不行。：）

darkathrunUID: 2813505

我觉得关键是理解那些规律吧。比如大自然是有很多规律的。。。。遵守它就会得到想要的结果，违反就不行。：）
DriverEntry 发表于 2010-10-7 11:45

我学法律学了这么久学到的就是：凡是规则都是有办法可以利用的。。。凡是禁止都是有办法可以绕过去的。。。凡是一味遵从都没什么好下场的。。。Orz

狐狸大叔UID: 2342950

高中生觉得没用很正常
学到一半比较尴尬。。。知道了概念，却不知道是用来做什么的

就好像给一个高中生讲个Hall effect，对方肯定觉得没啥用。。但如果知道Hall effect sensor就明白有用了

anyway，不能指望学那么多东西都是为了买菜用

狐狸大叔UID: 2342950

傅立叶的应用，最简单的办法大概就是用matlab什么的做个filter演示一下就行了。。。
数学基本上一般人学的本身都是有用的，只不过有些奇技淫巧的题目没啥用

当然，这些都是为了一些做高级脑力劳动的人准备的。。。。not for everyone

基本上每个人都100%需要的大概是阅读写作和逻辑思考能力

DriverEntryUID: 143979

我学法律学了这么久学到的就是：凡是规则都是有办法可以利用的。。。凡是禁止都是有办法可以绕过去的。。。凡是一味遵从都没什么好下场的。。。Orz
darkathrun 发表于 2010-10-7 11:47

法律是人制定的。所以有办法绕过。自然规律想绕过就难很多了。比如人的寿命都是有限的。有真正能绕过的么？：P

DriverEntryUID: 143979

傅立叶的应用，最简单的办法大概就是用matlab什么的做个filter演示一下就行了。。。
数学基本上一般人学的本身都是有用的，只不过有些奇技淫巧的题目没啥用

当然，这些都是为了一些做高级脑力劳动的人准备的。。 ...
狐狸大叔 发表于 2010-10-7 12:00

那个图片好像是直方图？很久没碰过了。

darkathrunUID: 2813505

法律是人制定的。所以有办法绕过。自然规律想绕过就难很多了。比如人的寿命都是有限的。有真正能绕过的么？：P
DriverEntry 发表于 2010-10-7 12:49

现在不就有些闲人把自己冻起来准备到了未来再解冻么。。。这个算是变相作弊吧。。。