I was just listening to the slate political gabfest and they were discussing Florida Governor Rick Scott's comment that he thinks that state funded colleges should shift funds away from degrees like psychology and anthropology and shift funding to subjects such as science and engineering, because there are more job opportunities in those fields. David Plotz was arguing that maybe we should shift funding for undergraduate education to science since we're talking about allocating taxpayer dollars and we want to have the greatest benefit for society. There is much to argue about the intrinsic value of a balanced liberal arts education and the depth and creativity that a variety of disciplines contribute to society. However, I would like to challenge the second half of this assumption. Are there REALLY more jobs available in science? Where are they? Are we really seeing that there are lots of great science jobs and not enough people to fill them? From where I'm sitting this certainly doesn't appear to be the case.
I would argue that if there is a diminishment of science in this country that it is not a pipeline problem, at least not in biology. There are 1,000s of scientists called postdoctoral researchers many with a decade or more of experience toiling away for very little pay just waiting for their potential to be tapped. Biologists who complete a Ph.D. face stiff competition for only a few academic jobs and the funding to support independent research through the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation has been shrinking or holding steady. This article from Science Insider states that the funding rate for grant proposals will likely fall below 20% in 2011. These low funding rates have an especially grim impact on young scientists; this is the money that science professors use to fund graduate students and postdocs to work in their lab. On top of that the few postdocs lucky enough to find a job in academia will have trouble getting their research programs off the ground. If the United States wants to promote science breakthroughs we need to commit to funding scientific research.
Maybe you would argue that funding academic research is not promoting the kind of science that we want. There are many arguments for the necessity of basic research; biotech and other companies participating in research that can contribute to human well-being rely on the discoveries made in the course of pursuing of scientific questions that may not initially seem directly applicable. Aside from this I know many postdoctoral researchers who enjoy benchwork and would be happy to leave academia for a steady paycheck, some choice in their location and to continue doing what they love. Is there a way the U.S. could invest in creating more jobs for people with Ph.D.s to work on the nation's scientific problems outside of the university system? I have to say, the way it is now, I would not necessarily suggest that a student pursue science as career unless they were really passionate about it. I am not arguing that science education is not important but what does it mean to encourage more undergraduates to study science if we as a society are not willing to invest in scientific research for the long term?
