First up, I think it is useful to describe their definition of academic success: getting the respect of your colleagues.
Well, in my opinion the ultimate form of respect is to get hired. Usually the university committee is made up of your peers, who in essence by hiring you are saying, yes we respect your work and we want you on our team. So while this advice is useful if I ever get a job, it doesn't help me determine what I need to do to get that job. (Although really, I do know. PUBLISH IN HIGH IMPACT JOURNALS, AND PUBLISH A LOT)
The other thing that is clear to me and to many people in that room is that the landscape has changed. In a report by The Survey of Earned Doctorates, the number of doctorates granted by U.S. universities, has on average, increased by approximately 3.5% per year since the early 60s. In 2005-2006 that number was 5.1%. The biological and biomedical sciences saw the largest growth in the number of doctorates earned.
(Interesting fact, in 2006 45% of all doctorates were earned by women, in the life sciences that figure jumps to 52%.)
As biologists, we know that continuous growth is unsustainable (Case in point: the global economy). All the textbooks teach us that when a resource is limiting, competition becomes severe. And in our case, the resource is that academic job. This essay cites a 1995 report from the Standford Institute for Higher Education that stated,
"The Production and Utilization of Science and Engineering Doctorates in the United States," (William F. Massey, ed.) states that the "natural production rate" of science doctorates exceeds the demand from all sources by 22 percent.
Both BigCheese and GuruOfSmallThings acknowledged that the academic landscape had changed. So what advice did the BigCheese give his Ponzi adorees?
1. Stick to your goal. (Presumably for the audience he had in mind that was tenure. Though you could *insert goal* here. I think of things like get a publication record that would get me a job.)
2. Practice saying No. (No! No, I can't really. Authorship, you say? Okay.)
3. Tempo, tempo, tempo. (I can't remember the point of this.)
4. Get used to disappointing people. (I'm already an expert at this just ask my PhD supervisor.)
5. Hire the best people you can and get out of the way. (Luckily, I'm good at this too.)
6. Put your pants on - one leg at a time. (Hmm.. what if you wear skirts to school?)
7. Collaborate. (How? They don't teach this in grad school.)
8. If it feels good, do it. If it feels real good, do it alot. (This, I think is the most useful piece of advice.)
9. Stay in student mode. (In terms of learning - not, of course, the power dynamic).
10. Remember Tinkerbell. (Yeah, cause some tiny little fairy in a stupid blue tutu is going to bring me my ideal job.)
9 comments:
That's interesting - and frightening. I suppose the value of a Ph.D. diminishes when you increase the number of people that have them. How disheartening.
And by the way, you're way off the mark with #4, but otherwise I totally agree with your assessments of the advice.
I have been wondering what the stats are on the number of Ph.Ds earned vs. the number of jobs available. Of course the market is always fluctuating, but it would be interesting to see if there is a more recent study than the 1995 one you mention.
I am also wondering about the stat of 45% of all doctorates are being earned by women. Does that mean doctorates in all fields, or just the physical sciences?
And, sadly, although women are gaining significant ground in the Ph.D. category, we still only make up approximately 10% of tenured professors in the sciences (give or take a few percentage points depending on the field).
For JHill:
I don't think of it as disheartening, just realistic. Really, it is a lot like the fine arts - a lot of people want to do it so it just means that you have to be fully committed (in more ways than one) and stick to it, especially if it is something you love. If it feels really good, do it all the time!
For feminist chemist:
I couldn't find a more recent study. Ideally, it would be good to find out what was the academic job growth rate. I guess one way to do that is to look at the advertisements that come out on listservs. I suspect that the organizers of those listservs have these advertisements archived somewhere.
It is 45% of all PhDs but if you look at just the life sciences then women make up 52%.
I'd like to know what the numbers are at the post-doc level. Change is slow and now with the contraction of the economy, I suspect change will be even slower.
What a strange bunch of advice.
I can certainly help on the collaboration bit. It's easy enough for me to do a post on that.
re: the academic job growth rate, somebody needs to do a better study on this. Advertisements can be misleading because, as this year exemplifies, funding for an advertised position can always fall through before the position is filled.
And yeah, the market is crowded, there are too many PhDs without the right qualifications. I was just talking to an industry friend who said the headhunters all want people with industry-specific experience (like GMP certification or something), but the market is flooded with academic types who need jobs.
Really what we need, and it has been suggested numerous times before but never implemented, are programs that have separate tracks. Probably in the industrial track would be a lot bigger than the academic track. But it would probably benefit everyone, especially if industrial-track grad students still had to TA. Then everybody would be happy, methinks.
Just a lurker from Ms. PhD's site who once had aspirations of going to grad school but then decided it wasn't the place for me for a whole number of reasons...
But one of the big ones? This myth of "collaboration". Doing undergrad labs you had to work together on stuff for mere lack of equipment for all but then working in a lab (really at any stage it seemed) it seemed like there was no real collaboration. You might learn techniques from others, but rarely did you actually work together on a project. I still remember PI saying "hey, all of you took a reading of x, let's write a paper on it" without any of us actually having talked about our respective projects with each other. And of course reporting back to PI on projects was always weird because they weren't ever in the lab with you. Wouldn't people actually working in the lab together be better at real collaboration? Aren't two heads who happen to sit in neighboring benches be better than one and the out of touch ramblings of PI?
Ugh. Rant over.
I think, in principal, having two separate tracks is a good idea. But then I would worry about differential treatment by the supervisor. Also if there are limitations in the way students are trained then there is no room for people to change tracks. As it is, if you go from industry to academia it is very hard to come back. But you're right the universities need to acknowledge that not everyone trained in a PhD will get a job as an academic.
Wow, I really agree with this advice (although I'm not sure what to make of the tempo, the pants, and Tinkerbell). The way I do science has changed quite a bit from my days in grad school, with a lot more #2, 5, and 7 than ever before. I think this advice is true regardless of generation.
Anon
You are right about undergrad. The weird thing is that you go from forced collaborations in undergrad to working alone in grad school. Incredibly stupid.
candid engineer:
"although I'm not sure what to make of the tempo, the pants, and Tinkerbell" Neither were we.
I can understand why older academics feel they need to help the younger generation get jobs in academia, but what about the 80% of PhD students who won't end up with tenured positions? They're led on with the false idea that there are faculty jobs out there for them and then suddenly they're shoved out into the real work space with few readily applicable skills and no idea what they want to be. The problem stems from the perception that leaving academia is 'failing', and nobody wants to teach students how to 'fail'.
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