Wait, We Need More Scientists?

After posting about why more PhDs aren’t professors, I came across this interesting article called The Real Science Gap by Beryl Lieff Benderly, a journalist who also authors the Taken for Granted column for Science Careers. Intriguingly, this article brings to light that there is actually a fear we are not training enough scientists, a notion that runs counter to what I and others have written about. While true that a majority of science PhDs leave academia, Beryl counters “It’s not insufficient schooling or a shortage of scientists. It’s a lack of job opportunities.”

Beryl provides a number of arguments to support this and I really appreciated her historical account of how we got into this predicament. Her story starts back with the intense push by the US government to support civilian research following World War II through the creation of the National Science Foundation and the expansion of the National Institutes of Health. Grants issued by these agencies fomented the growth of large research universities and, consequently, made lots of room for new faculty. At the time, this meant that most doctoral students could expect to run their own labs upon graduation. Eventually, though, the “pyramid paradigm” of “self-replicating” professors began to unravel to the point where we are today: more science PhDs produced than there are available faculty positions.

Knowing that there is an overabundance of highly-qualified science PhDs generated every year, it is befuddling that some believe we need to be training more scientists. In fact, this approach merely exacerbates the problem and likely discourages others from going down this path to begin with. Nonetheless, it happens because graduate students and postdocs are required to drive the research of their lab heads. As Beryl asserts, the solution is not to increase enrollment in graduate programs, but to instead provide more opportunities for science PhDs to remain in research long-term.

Implementing these kinds of changes would require a complete overhaul of the current system, which is a long time coming. Until then, it remains imperative to prepare science PhDs for careers beyond the ivory tower, where most end up anyway under the current model.