Education and Careers
The piece I posted a few days ago about the effect of recent cuts in Astronomy funding by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) has generated quite a lot of comment so I thought I’d try to open up the debate by adding a few comments of my own. I’ve made some of them before and I know many of my colleagues disagree entirely with them, but I think they might prove useful in stimulating some further dialogue.
Of course the backdrop to this discussion is the decision by STFC to impose heavy cuts on the funding it sets aside for the “exploitation” of astronomical facilities. This funding, primarily in the form of research grants awarded to University groups, is used among other things to support early career researchers as postdoctoral research assistants on short-term contracts. Although its own advisory panels were unanimous in placing such funding the highest priority in the recent consultation exercise, STFC Executive nevertheless decided to impose additional cuts this year. This decision, made very late in the cycle of grant awards, has led to many groups having their budgets slashed from 1st April 2010. Many young researchers facing a very uncertain future, with many of them facing redundancy in a few months.
The fallout from STFC’s financial collapse has brought to a head a crisis that has been brewing for several years, but in my view it is symptomatic of wider problems within UK science as a whole. There are many problems, but I think the biggest problem with astronomy in particular is that we drastically overproduce PhDs. Even in times of plenty there were too many people competing for too few postdoctoral positions. Now that STFC has decided it wants to cut the number of working astronomers by more than 25% this looming problem has become a full-scale disaster. Many of the most talented scientists in the UK are certain to leave for greener pastures and few will ever return.
The argument I’ve heard over and over again is that training so many people to the level of a PhD in astronomy is good because the skills acquired will benefit the wider economy as those that fail to find a job as a postdoctoral researcher move into other areas, such as finance or industry.
I am not convinced by this argument. I think what we’re doing is producing large number of highly intelligent yet extremely disgruntled scientists who feel – quite rightly – that they’ve been duped into taking on a PhD when they are unlikely to be able to make use of it in their future careers unless they go abroad.
What we’re also doing is deluding ourselves about the quality of a PhD. The UK system produces too many PhDs who are not sufficiently experienced or skilled to take the next step onto a postdoctoral position. Of course there are exceptions, but generally speaking we produce too many PhDs too few of whom have any realistic chance of making a career in science research. The reason for this is that despite the introduction of 4-year degrees in subjects like physics, the UK undergraduate degree is not fit for the purpose of training a scientific researcher.
You may find that harsh, and maybe it is, but I think it’s true.
What I think the UK economy does require is more science graduates (including more physicists) rather than more science post-graduates. I believe we need a radical overhaul in the entire system of science education from undergraduate through to postdoctoral level.
I have said it before and I’ll no doubt say again that I think we need something similar to what the Bologna process is designed to achieve. This essentially means a 3-year Bachelors degree, followed (for some) by a two-year Masters, then for a subset of them a 3 year PhD.
I think the structure of funding for university courses needs to change in order that we produce more graduates with BSc degrees. Passage from that qualification to a MSc should be highly selective, so fewer such degrees would be awarded. The final selection to a PhD should be more selective still. I’m sure the influx of MSc graduates this system would generate into the wider economy would produce a greater benefit to society as large than the current system, and at a lesser cost.
I’d suggest that in the particular case of astronomy we should be producing about half the PhDs nationally that we do at present.
What about the next step, the postdoctoral research assistantship or fellowship? I hope that STFC can be persuaded to reverse its recent savage cuts in the budget that supports such positions but the government and STFC Executive are showing no inclination to change their position. The current situation for PDRAs is grim. The number of positions available is small and funding for these is insecure.
My first suggestion will probably lead in time to a reduction in the number of people competing for postdoctoral positions but will not in itself make a career in science seem more attractive.
I think the government also needs to guarantee the stability of research grant funding over a longer timescale than the current 3-year cycle. Rolling grants used to do this, to some extent anyway, but these have for all practical purposes been abandoned by STFC. I think we need ring-fenced protection for grant funding to be installed at a high level of the Research Council structure to prevent individual research councils playing God with the careers of junior scientists.
I don’t in fact have a problem with the principle that scientists should serve apprenticeships in the form of fixed-term contracts as postdoctoral researchers. What is wrong is that the instability of current funding makes survival in the current system a lottery.
And finally, though it doesn’t really fit with my other comments, I have some advice for young scientists. Your best chance of securing a permanent job in the long run is by being good, not by being shy. Put yourself about. Get involved in teaching – you’ll almost certainly need to do it in a future career, so embrace it. Do outreach work. Work hard at your research. Believe in yourself.
If you don’t, nobody else will.
In the Dark 
March 16, 2010 at 8:29 pm
I think you’re wrong in one particular aspect here. When you say
“I think what we’re doing is producing large number of highly intelligent yet extremely disgruntled scientists who feel – quite rightly – that they’ve been duped into taking on a PhD when they are unlikely to be able to make use of it in their future careers unless they go abroad.”
I think you’re underestimating the intelligence of these highly intelligent scientists. I remember a RAS careers session at a NAM when a parade of serious elder statesmen begged us to realise that a career in astronomy wasn’t forever, only to be met with polite silence from most who knew very well what they were in for. I’d be very surprised if any of the students I’ve been interviewing in the last couple of days didn’t know the odds, but many are happy to sign up for three or four years of doing science knowing that they’re not hurting their future chances of employment and happy to have a go in the meantime.
March 16, 2010 at 8:47 pm
Yes, absolutely. I agree with a lot that Peter has written, and agree strongly with quite a bit.
There tends to be a lot of discussion in academia and politics about the need to train more people in science, technology, engineering and mathematics to serve the needs of the economy, which is mostly very true. Somehow this is then reinterpreted to mean that the economy needs people with PhDs in these fields, and then is extrapolated to mean that training lots of people to PhD standard in astronomy helps the economy. This truism is then used to justify requests for governments to fund astronomy, and partly explains why the STFC provides such an enormous number of PhD studentships in astronomy compared to the number of long-term jobs avaiable in the subject.
The reality is that employers outside basic research and academia are not that interested in people with PhDs in astronomy. Working for a PhD in astronomy does develop outstanding general skills of analysis, concentration, hard work, self education, flexibility, self organisation, organising one’s own time, written and oral communication, scientific analysis, computing, numeracy and many others. But the truth is that many employers outside of basic research understand little of this, and wrongly assume that people with PhDs can only succeed in the field of their studies. Employers widely believe that people with PhDs expect high salaries or may choose to leave jobs to move on to some much better paying job elsewhere. So finding a job after completing a PhD is not always straightforward. Employers want people with good BSc degrees, not PhDs, unless the PhD is of direct relevance to the business of the employer (meaning that the doctorate is in technology or engineering, in most cases). Peter is absolutely right in this.
The very small number of long-term positions in astronomy (meaning in almost all cases permanent lectureships) means that only a small number of postdoctoral researchers will continue in the long term in astronomy. A large majority will have to find other careers. But what? Do they all have the skills, including crowd control, for school teaching? Are software companies interested in hiring former astrophysicists at the age of 30, 35 or 40, when they can take on people fresh from undergraduate courses? Can former researchers start their own companies to analyse data on extrasolar planets or the cosmic microwave background commercially? Should they all retrain as plumbers?
The whole system has developed because policy makers have failed to plan adequately. They have instead taken convenient and easy options, believing truisms about PhDs in basic science being of value to the economy, and about there being excellent careers for former basic scientists in industry. The economic opportunities are for people with BSc degrees in science, including physics, including physics with a substantial element of astronomy. They are not for people with postdoctoral experience in basic science. It is lamentable that research councils, senior civil servants, politicians, and even some senior academics have believed this.
What a mess.
March 16, 2010 at 9:02 pm
Having taught in both the UK and Swedish higher education sectors, its clear that UK undergraduate degrees have become somewhat diluted over the years. On the other hand, Swedish undergraduate studies tend to go on for a bit longer, even with Bologna squeezing European higher education uncomfortably into a one-size-fits-all package.
The surplus of PhD students has been a feature of academic life for as long as I can remember and I’ve never regarded it as a problem. Students know that the chances of an academic career are slim and most of them plan accordingly. We send them out with very useful skills unlike many other academic disciplines. I suspect the majority of PhD students that I’ve known never wanted an academic career, especially when finance opportunities were so lucrative.
March 16, 2010 at 9:03 pm
And as for advice for young scientists, I think that what people need are opportunities to advance careers. These are the opportunities to do things, to go to places (particularly to give talks at conferences) and to apply for things (observing time, grants as co-investigators, and particularly fellowships). The truth is that university departments tend to be very hierarchical and research councils organise things to exclude participation from people who are not on permanent contracts.
The trouble is that getting opportunities in these hierarchical circumstances requires support from academics on permanent contracts: younger researchers need active patronage. Therefore try to work as a postgrad for a supervisor with a record of giving PhD students opportunities to do things. Ask around for who supervised lots of successful researchers. Find out who supervised people who then went on to establish successful careers, and avoid the people who didn’t. Choose to apply preferentially for postdoctoral positions working for people who have records of advancing junior researchers’ careers. Apply preferentially to work with people who have a successful record of winning research grants: they may be able to get funding for an existing postdoc to continue in post, giving continuity to their research work beyond three years. Avoid applying for general support jobs if possible, such as ones involving writing lots of software or developing pipelines for processing data, to avoid doing work that does not produce research papers with the postdoc’s name on them. Apply preferentially for jobs on projects that are likely to produce immediate research papers. Try to work for people who have a record of supporting fellowship applications from their postdocs, and to work in departments which do support fellowship applications from their own postdocs. If you are genuinely good yourself, try to work for somebody with a record of giving freedom to their postdocs; you do not want to work on some uncompetitive project when you could initiate better ones yourself. Try to flatter the person you are working for, however wonderfully competent or tragically useless they may be, as that is more likely to get you support.
Above all, if you have any choice (and some grant holders do not give postdocs much choice), publish as much as you can. The quality of the papers is less important than the quantity. It is the number of papers that is most likely to get you shortlisted for interviews for jobs, and only then do issues of quality come in.
However, I disagree with Peter’s advice to get involved in teaching. Postdocs and postgrads should try to avoid doing teaching if they can, to allow them to concentrate on their research. Teaching is a distraction. I did lots of teaching as a postdoc, probably because I was good at it and it could be offloaded on to me. Indeed in one department I found I was doing two-thirds of the teaching done by astrophysics postdocs. I feel that in one lecturing position I virtually saved a renowned MSc course in a group that was suffering a crisis due to staff leaving. It all did me absolutely no good at all. If anything, some people may have assumed that I excelled at teaching rather than at research because they could see my teaching success in front of their noses, but could not be bothered to look at my research papers. Lecturing staff are chosen for their research skills, not for teaching: teaching is a secondary or tertiary consideration. And avoid outreach work too, as that is also a distraction.
March 16, 2010 at 9:55 pm
> If you don’t, nobody else will.
Even if you don’t believe in yourself, pretend that you do – and tell everyone that you are the next thing since sliced bread.
March 16, 2010 at 11:28 pm
“Working for a PhD in astronomy does develop outstanding general skills of analysis, concentration, hard work, self education, flexibility, self organisation, organising one’s own time, written and oral communication, scientific analysis, computing, numeracy and many others. But the truth is that many employers outside of basic research understand little of this, and wrongly assume that people with PhDs can only succeed in the field of their studies. Employers widely believe that people with PhDs expect high salaries or may choose to leave jobs to move on to some much better paying job elsewhere. So finding a job after completing a PhD is not always straightforward.”
I don’t agree with all of this. Perhaps employers do believe PhDs can only work in academia due to lack of general skills, but as any careers service will tell you the solution is to spell out what skills you have and provide examples in your cover letter and cv. Then this belief should not be an issue.
Also certainly in my field (particle physics) I have never heard of any PhD graduate unable to find a good job outside academia (is this really not the case also in astronomy?) Also most of my peers had no interest in staying in academia anyway so they were not disappointed, so I don’t think there is an oversupply problem at PhD level. Where there is a an oversupply problem is at the postdoc level. The expectation still seems to be eventually everyone should become a lecturer, but in reality many just survive on 3 year contracts ad infinitum because clearly we have many more postdocs by a huge factor compared to number of lecturer jobs that are available. So it would be good if these people could have more secure careers IMO. I even know people who do not want to be a lecturer and would rather stay on the lower salary scales doing research only, but they do want more job security.
March 16, 2010 at 11:56 pm
Bryn,
Postdoctoral contracts allow for a limited amount of teaching, usually up to 6 hours a week including preparation. I’d encourage all postdocs to do that. You call it a distraction from research; I call it career development. However, I do agree that you shouldn’t do so much teaching that it detracts from your research. It was wrong of your line manager to make the amount of teaching you describe and you probably should not have agreed to do it anyway.
Teaching is important. An enthusiasm for teaching is an essential quality for new lecturer appointments in any well-run department. I’m of course very sorry that you had such disappointing experiences yourself, but I’m nevertheless sticking to my guns on the importance of gaining teaching experience (within allowed limits).
Peter
March 17, 2010 at 8:44 am
Chris – it may have been the same or a different RAS Careers session where we asked for a show of hands of the people who thought they were in the 1 in 6 of PhD students who would get a permanent job. 90% of people put up their hands. They may be intelligent, but the brute statistics have yet to settle in.
More broadly I agree with most of what Peter says. I would, however, say that one of the problems with going back to a 3 year first degree for most people is that the standard at A-level, even for the people with 3As or A*s predicted, as is the case for UCAS candidates I’ve been interviewing, is very mixed. It used to be that such qualifications indicated really top minds, but grade inflation is now so rife that 3As and A*s covers a huge range of ability. 4 years are often needed to produce decent knowledge and expertise after what’s been done to A-level physics.
I would definitely support a MSc between UG degree and PhD. I did an analysis of this for the RAS careers report some years ago which showed that this would produce more ‘trained researchers’ for industry and would not impact much on the volume of research. The rest of the committee weren’t happy with this, but the analysis was included as an appendix to the report. Of course career prospects are now significantly worse for PhDs in astrophysics than they were at the time the report was written.
March 17, 2010 at 8:58 am
Dave,
I did precisely the same thing at one of the annual (then) PPARC schools for new research students. I’d say that about 95% were confident they would go on to a career in academic research; the arithmetic paints a very different picture.
I also agree that the problem begins earlier than the University system and it is about to get worse. The new A-level physics syllabus is even weaker than previous versions. I’ve argued in fact that we shouldn’t require A-level Physics for students wanting to do Physics at University . It’s become completely irrelevant as a preparation. Better to do Further Maths, but that also suffers from grade inflation.
The answer could be scrapping the exam boards entirely and letting universities write the syllabuses….
Peter
March 17, 2010 at 11:05 am
Here is a quote from a Scientific American article discussed a Professor Astronomy which says basically the same thing I was saying in the context of the US market:
March 17, 2010 at 11:11 am
Phillip: Just find an inappropriate thread; Peter has said that he enjoys the meanderings of the discussions on his blog. I’m glad you enjoyed the concert.
The PhD question is coming close to dominating this discussion, but a deeper issue, which Peter hinted at, is what are universities for? Do they exist to churn out failed academics (since 99% of everybody in a lecture theatre will be outside academe in 10 years) or to do something for the nation? The nation’s taxes are certainly paying for infrastructure maintenance and academic salaries.
Anton
March 17, 2010 at 1:27 pm
“The PhD question is coming close to dominating this discussion, but a deeper issue, which Peter hinted at, is what are universities for? Do they exist to churn out failed academics (since 99% of everybody in a lecture theatre will be outside academe in 10 years) or to do something for the nation? The nation’s taxes are certainly paying for infrastructure maintenance and academic salaries.”
@Anton: As a minor aside, I’m going to take issue with your notion of “failed academics”. I think this widely-held perception that if you don’t end up in a tenured faculty position, you’re a “failed academic” is really counter-productive. There are plenty of careers where PhD in astronomy-type skills are required or at least valuable – think about meteorology, climate studies, engineering or industrial-based research, medical imaging, software development, teaching or science outreach.
It would already help to create more awareness of these options to PhD students without making them seem like failures. And fostering links between these kinds of employers and the astronomy community is an area where our own societies like RAS, AAS and IoP can make a real difference. They could maybe host job fairs, provide info sessions on how to get into these alternative careers etc.
A lot of people don’t go into a PhD with a tenured faculty job (firmly?) in mind, but end up in the academic career track as this is presented to them as the only citerion of “success”. A more balanced approach would IMO be much healthier given the steepness of the jobs pyramid.
March 17, 2010 at 1:50 pm
Sarah,
That most students (and I meant undergrads) end up as “failed academics” isn’t what I believe – I was trying to suggest that this view is unhealthy, in fact. So perhaps we agree, and I’m sorry for any misunderstanding. The trouble is that this is the view held implicitly by many academics, who perhaps suppose that everybody is like them in wanting an academic career if only they had what it took. And it is academics who have influence over the minds of students.
But really I’m trying to stimulate debate about the proper role of universities. Even there I am talking about the sciences, not Arts.
Anton
March 17, 2010 at 2:04 pm
Anton & Sarah,
I refer you to the comments above by Dave and myself. It’s admittedly anecdotal but I think the vast majority of people who take on a PhD in astronomy want to become academic researchers. This may be different in other scientific disciplines, of course.
I think universities play many roles, and its not at all unreasonable to expect those roles to change with time. We’re not the keepers of some sort of sacred flame.
But the universities seem to be increasingly regarded as a way of correcting for mistakes at earlier stages of the education system and I don’t think that’s what we should be doing. We’re not very good at remedial teaching anyway.
I also believe that any university worthy of the name should also be engaged in research and that this should not be restricted to the sort that pays immediate financial dividends. I believe that there’s no such thing as useless knowledge. How much to spend and on what areas is the difficult question.
Peter
March 17, 2010 at 2:11 pm
Peter,
Please note what I replied to Sarah: I’m talking principally about undergrads. I recognise that you are talking mainly about PhD students and there I agree with what you say: most do wish for an academic career. I’m simply trying to widen the discussion.
Actually I think that the majority of physics papers published today are useless knowledge. What I don’t know is how to have an academic system that produces great papers without also having a long tail of dross.
Anton
March 17, 2010 at 4:47 pm
Anton: ‘how to have an academic system that produces great papers without also having a long tail of dross’ – in the same sense that you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince, I think the ‘dross’ is needed for the great papers. And one person’s great is another’s dross too!
As to the ‘failed academic’ issue, I’m pretty sure that UGs don’t, by an large, come to university expecting to become academics. Both the students I was a UG with and the students I now teach had/have a very wide range of career plans. The career issue is at the PhD level, where, by the time you’ve done 3 years research and written a thesis, it’s very difficult to think of anything else to do. Someone close to me fell off the end of a series of postdocs and it took her several years to get her feet back on the ground. This was at least partly the result of largely absent career advice available at the host institution for postdocs.
Ideally one’s departure from an academic career should be a *positive choice* not a result of running out of money. We’ve managed that here reasonably well – having a hedge fund dedicated to poaching our best postdocs helps – but I don’t think this is generally the case. The AAS does indeed run careers fairs at its meetings, and I and others have moved the RAS in this direction, but it’s a huge uphill struggle, and the people responsible for setting up this iniquitous situation – STFC – appear to feel no responsibility in sorting it out. They feel it’s the job of university careers departments, who are not well equipped to deal with postdocs.
At the end of all this I am coming to the unwelcome conclusion that I should put myself forward for the STFC education and training board. Maybe if Peter does that too we can bring about the glorious revolution (though, given our comments on this blog, we may have just made ourselves unwelcome on that panel).
March 17, 2010 at 7:26 pm
Dave,
Granted that not every paper published can be a great one – but was the ratio of great papers to dross better when Phys Rev was a few hundred pages each year rather than tens of thousands; and if so what can be inferred?
“one person’s great is another’s dross” A great paper is a great paper, and while it might be in a part of physics other than one’s own it is never accurate to call it dross – please don’t go postmodern on me! Or have you in mind the dry comment that von Neumann never solved problems he found difficult, only problems that other people found difficult?
Anton
March 18, 2010 at 2:19 pm
Peter,
I generally tend to agree with the arguments you present on your blog, but not this time. As Chris Lintott said at the start, I don’t think many people come into a PhD with an expectation of an academic career – and I don’t think they ever did. I started a PhD because I didn’t fancy the jobs on offer for physicists in industry, and because a few years learning about astronomy seemed interesting in its own right. I had no expectation that an academic career might be possible (just as well, as academic jobs were even rarer then); none of my fellow students talked seriously about academic careers at the outset.
I think it’s fine in principle to train lots of PhDs and fill up society with people who have been exposed to fantastic ideas at a high level. As has been pointed out, we are happy to offer this opportunity at the undergraduate level where the % of eventual non-academics is close to 100%, and I don’t see why this has to drop to near 0% at the postgrad level. This exposure of people to ideas at the highest level they can cope with is an absolute good – both for society and for the economy.
My concern is a slightly different one, which is whether the current system serves well the minority who *are* going to make it in academia. The UK PhD was always light on training, and turned you out on the streets as a Doctor at a ludicrously young age (24 in my generation). The compensation was that you had that much extra youthful creativity. This model worked fine as long as people could get a foothold on the career ladder, and this is the worry. I think the standard of students throughout Europe has increased, and as a result all our recent PDRA recruitments have been filled by non-Brits. Conversely, some of our students who are as good as the best we ever produce are struggling to get postdocs. I see two things we should do as a response: short-term, we should reinstate the STFC PDFs, since they make an essential finishing school for our best students. You can have fewer than before, and only for 2 years, but I’d rather see the number of AFs shrink by 30% or so to keep this programme going.
Longer-term, the PhD length has to grow in length (again, only needed for the best students). Possibly what we should do is admit that the MPhys has been a failure, and have a real 1-year Masters as the first step on the research road. Most of the people who currently do a low-grade PhD and leave academia could stop at that point, and a smaller set could continue to a more substantial PhD with a sensible chance of making it in academia. But this will take a long time to reconfigure: the best immediate thing will be to bring back the PDFs.
March 18, 2010 at 2:45 pm
Anton: I would suspect that the fraction of ‘dross’ is pretty much constant, no matter how many Phys Rev Lett papers are published each year. I had occasion to be looking through some of William Herschel’s back catalog of papers the other day and, amid the undoubted great papers there, there were a lot of ‘ho mum’ ones that you might call dross.
To expand on what I meant by ‘one man’s dross is another’s great’ I’d use the eamplem of astronomical instrumentation papers. Those who build instruments can think some papers great, but those who use them don’t necessarily worry about the ins and outs of an instrument as long as it performs. Dross might be too strong a word, but an instrumentation paper I might think is great, a theorist might not be very interested in.
March 18, 2010 at 2:46 pm
PS Anton: (hit submit too soon)
Sturgeon’s law that states that ‘90% of everything is crap’ applies here.
March 18, 2010 at 2:56 pm
I’d also suggest that in order to have a few great musicians you probably also have to have a lot of mediocre ones…
When I was writing my textbook with Francesco Lucchin a long time ago I looked up quite a few classic old papers in the ApJ. On the occasions that I got my hands on an entire issue I usually had a look through all the papers either side of the one I was looking for. I was quite relieved to see how many of them were flaky.
And even the great papers often had flaky bits.
March 18, 2010 at 2:49 pm
John,
Where the disagreement between us lies is probably in an assessment of the relative merit of a system that produces lots of PhDs who go into other fields and another that produces less PhDs but more Masters-trained people who go into other fields. It’s not a right-or-wrong issue, but the latter makes more sense in my judgement than the former.
But in your comments you also hit on another point which I should have made in my original post if I’d thought longer. We tend to award large numbers of PhDs in this country, but then look elsewhere when it comes to PDRA appointments. How many such positions in astronomy are filled by, e.g., Italians? Isn’t this a tacit acceptance that an Italian PhD is better than a British one?
Peter
March 18, 2010 at 4:40 pm
Philip Helbig comments:
“While there might have been absolutely fewer permanent academic jobs back in John’s day, I reckon that there were more compared to the number of folks applying for them.”
Perhaps I’m exhibiting the inverse of the “Good Old Days” syndrome, but the 1980s really were exceptionally crap for academic jobs. You might see one lectureship in astronomy every 2 years. Numbers of PhD studentships have gone up (but by less than a factor 2), whereas the number of recent academic appointments in astronomy would have seemed impossibly generous to my generation. I suspect this was an RAE-driven unsustainable spike, and we will now return to universities hiring at best at the rate of retirements. Since most groups have a pretty small cohort in the 55-65 bin (cf. the 1980s lack of recruitment), this means it’s not a good time to be in the market for a junior lectureship: we may return to 1980s-level job opportunities, but with a much larger pool of AFs/URFs.
March 18, 2010 at 5:03 pm
Dave: I agree that upward of 90% is always going to be crap, but was it 10% good when Phys Rev (not Phys Rev Lett) began its explosive expansion, and 5% good today? My suspicion is Yes, but I’m unsure enough to phrase it as a question. When making such judgements, exercising hindsight on a paper is not fair; a poll of what contemporary scientists said is appropriate.
NB The amount of scientific papers published has grown much more rapidly than the population. What does this mean?
Phillip: Another good concert?
Anton
March 18, 2010 at 11:24 pm
The comments above have covered a number of diverse issues, which may be best considered separately.
There is first the claim that people with PhDs in astronomy are of great value to the economy. Yes, they do eventually find jobs, and some find jobs that pay well, but I see no great enthusiasm for them by employers. It is people with PhDs in applied science, technology and engineering that industry needs, more than in astronomy. And astronomy attracts many people with masters degrees in physics to study for PhDs who might otherwise be happy to pursue postgraduate research in applied physics: we may be harming the economy by luring them away from applied subjects.
Then there is the issue of the number of PhD studentships compared with the number of long-term posts in astronomy, the main item in Peter’s original article. It is absolutely right that there should be many more people trained to PhD standard in astronomy than there are long-term research/academic jobs. Only the best researchers should be able to progress to a long-term career in astronomy. I would be perfectly happy if there were long-term research/academic positions for only 1 in 2 or 1 in 3, and those who stay in astronomy would do so by proving their outstanding abilities. The problem is that the situation we have in Britain (and some other countries) is that the imbalance is extreme. Many years ago a survey by the RAS estimated that there were long-term position for 1 in 6, a figure I thought at the time to be somewhat optimistic. Since then, PPARC and the STFC have expanded the numbers of PhD studentships, closed the RGO and moved the ROE on to medium-term funding (rolling grants). Peter discussed this issue about a year ago: see here and here (with discussions).
Of course, the true reason we have so many PhD students is that they are cheap labour for academics, and they can be made to work in academics’ preferred fields. And people can be lured into applying for PhD studentships in astronomy by talk of “opportunities” and no mention of the careers crisis.
Postdoctoral careers are another issue. Once people take up postdoctoral positions, they still have very poor chances of a long-term career in research/academia because the numbers are heavily against them. But the position of a researcher after a couple of postdoctoral positions is wholly different to somebody who has just completed a PhD. There are very few career options for people aged 30, 35 or 40 who have to abandon academic research. What are they supposed to do? And remember that the STFC operates the funding system so that people run out of postdoctoral positions as they age, usually because the grants are insufficent to cover the increased salaries. The system is designed to eject people from academic research. Dave did refer to the experience in his department where a financial company attempts to offer careers to postdocs; but that is a very rare exception and it does not happen in most universities, certainly not in any of the universities where I have worked. Most postdocs who have to leave academia have no alternative options, get no useful careers advice from their universities (because university careers services cannot cope with the particular problems of highly-specialised postdocs), and get no career advice from the STFC which created this mess in the first place. They are thrown on to the streets and have no obvious career options.
What we have at present is very large numbers of PhD students, moderate numbers of short-term postdocs, limited numbers of medium-term research positions on rolling grants, a limited number of fellowships, and very few long-term academic positions. Large numbers of people are pushed out from each rung in the career ladder, some when they are still seen to be flexible enough to be taken on by employers in industry, others when they are too old to be of interest to industry.
The Bologna system would involve a 3-year BSc, followed for those students who wish to continue by a 2-year MSc involving both taught courses and a detailed research project.
The careers crisis is profoundly corrupting to the academic community. That crisis, and the hierarchy in university departments, is why the postgraduate and postdoctoral communities are sullen and lacking in confidence.
March 19, 2010 at 12:39 pm
I’m not sure that as many people burn out as is sometimes stated. Early on one is likely to be interested in physics or maths almost to the exclusion of all else, but later on people realise that there is more to life (families etc).
March 19, 2010 at 1:45 pm
Anton,
Another issue is that if you do manage to get a tenured job you have to juggle lots of other things as well as doing research: teaching, admin, grant applications, refereeing, being on comittees, etc etc.
If you really want to carry on as a full-time researcher it’s important to be useless at all these other things, or at least be good at conveying this impression.
Peter
March 19, 2010 at 12:51 pm
Going back to what has been said about the ineffective lobbying of the RAS with its behind the scenes softly-softly approach. It’s been said that they could do with more expertise in lobbying the government, politicians and the media.
What about getting on the committee a heavy journalistic hitter with a liking for or background in astronomy. Someone who knows the media and the politics. After all, are not the RAS committee members amateurs when it comes to lobbying? And I don’t count being interviewed on the TV as being in any way a proper media qualification?
March 19, 2010 at 1:41 pm
Sally,
If you can think of an appropriate person who is also a Fellow of the RAS then I’m sure they would be popular candidates for election to Council…
Peter
March 19, 2010 at 2:51 pm
Einstein said that if you were certain you were right then you should get a job as a lighthousekeeper rather than in a university.
March 19, 2010 at 3:22 pm
Phillip: Have they traced that daughter yet? When last I followed the story her fate was unknown – Anton
March 19, 2010 at 3:37 pm
Just to expand on my previous comments. I greatly enjoy teaching and wouldn’t want a job that didn’t involve it. There’s a question of how much, however. The normal load here at Cardiff is about 50 lectures a year, as well as tutorials and project supervisions, which is manageable. In most university physics departments I’ve been involved in, the vast bulk of the lecturing is done by permanent staff, although postdocs do help with labs and with exercise classes.
Over the last few years, the amount of red tape required in British universities has grown at an alarming rate so while I am very happy combining teaching and research, I am less happy at the huge amount of time I have to spend doing admin. The administrative workload placed on academics has not gone down as the number of central administration staff has increased. It seems to me that administrators merely create administrative tasks for others rather than doing anything useful themselves.
However, in the UK system, postdocs generally do not take part in departmental or university committees or any other form of administration, nor do they usually participate in, e.g., STFC committees. Although they are allowed to apply for fellowships, they are not permitted to apply for major research grants.
March 19, 2010 at 4:06 pm
One example of a media savvy person who could help the RAS is David Whitehouse who I hear on the radio and TV quite a bit. He’s an FRAS I believe. Years ago I was at a lecture about the media and astronomy by Peter Evans of BBC Science Now fame and he said Whitehouse was a “trojan horse”. I like his books too.
March 19, 2010 at 9:47 pm
SallyF is right that having people on the R.A.S. Council who have media skills would help the society. However, on the issue of careers specifically, what is needed is more people on the R.A.S. Council who are motivated to argue for change in the career structure. That means that postdoctoral researchers and postgraduate students who are R.A.S. members should read the information sent to them with the ballot paper, identify any candidates for election to the Council who give priority to reforming the career structure, and vote for them. One candidate gave prominence to change in his short election statement last year, but unfortunately was not elected. Postdocs and postgrads need to vote.
Phillip is absolutely right that it is difficult to tell who is really good at research early in a person’s career. Many people succeed strongly in their PhDs because of support from excellent supervisors, whereas other people of equal natural talent struggle on with little support or work on poor projects. Some junior researchers may publish many significant papers on projects set up for them by established academics, but would be incapable of research leadership themselves. The best way to tell who is really up to an academic career is to put junior researchers in a position where they can show, and need to show, leadership. The trouble is that very few get this opportunity: they are held back by departmental and STFC hierarchies.
Peter explained how he enjoys teaching. I too enjoyed some teaching, and some of it very much. But the teaching that does give satisfaction is the teaching that the individual can control. The type of teaching often given to postdoctoral staff, such as exercise classes, is less satisfying because the structure is usually determined by some other member of staff. Lecturing is very different, because the lecturer can shape how the broad syllabus is interpreted in detail and explained to the student. Supervising project work can be good if the individual is able to choose the project work (rather than a postdoc having to look after the professor’s project students). The challenges in lecturing or project supervision are greater and the satisfaction from succeeding are much greater.
June 14, 2013 at 3:08 pm
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