Academia, serious business
- Thread starter Locutus
- Start date
It is getting really bad. Most research is funded by public grants, a buddy of mine with more alphabet soup behind his name than he has letters in his name explained the situation in the US. If you are working in the healthcare related sciences, it's basically National Institutes of Health that you're applying to. There are others, but none as big. It used to be, that about 1 out of every 20 grant applications would be funded. Since the cut backs, that number has dropped precipitously.
Now you might think that what happens then is that really only the best grant proposals get funded. The reality is something far different. What happens now, is you get scientists leading large lab groups, who basically do nothing anymore but write grant proposals. With the funding dropping, the amount of proposals coming out of groups has gone up. The quality goes down, grad students don't get the same face time with their advisors, and the only way to feed your program is to get more grad students (often international students who pay more for tuition). And the scientists end up doing less research due to their need to keep their lab and program running.
Then in the end, the job market is flooded with trained scientists with nowhere to go. They end up leaving for other countries, or they leave their job market. It's really unsustainable right now.
Makes me glad I found a job in private industry when I did, and didn't go to grad school first. Now I can get my employer to pay for it too
Now you might think that what happens then is that really only the best grant proposals get funded. The reality is something far different. What happens now, is you get scientists leading large lab groups, who basically do nothing anymore but write grant proposals. With the funding dropping, the amount of proposals coming out of groups has gone up. The quality goes down, grad students don't get the same face time with their advisors, and the only way to feed your program is to get more grad students (often international students who pay more for tuition). And the scientists end up doing less research due to their need to keep their lab and program running.
Then in the end, the job market is flooded with trained scientists with nowhere to go. They end up leaving for other countries, or they leave their job market. It's really unsustainable right now.
Makes me glad I found a job in private industry when I did, and didn't go to grad school first. Now I can get my employer to pay for it too
Bummer.
There's something to be said about learning trades. If I hadn't gotten ticket in heavy-duty mechs, I'd likely have gone for marine engineering.
There's something to be said about learning trades. If I hadn't gotten ticket in heavy-duty mechs, I'd likely have gone for marine engineering.