America’s Broken Brain Trust

Just ask Jon Stewart of TheDailyShow. The reason I’m such a fan of the The Daily Show is that Jon Stewart has a knack for getting at the issues using his innate sense of timing and humor to soften the blow.  Let’s face it:  We are  a total and complete mess as a nation.  We can either laugh or cry - so laughter is my preferred poison. Since we’ve entered an era of each against all where everyone is protecting their own self-interest it is not surprising that those in STEM fields have abandoned R&D for Wall Street.

We don’t make things any more. We have abandoned innovation and R&D in favor of market manipulation.   Why make money through innovation when manipulating markets and creating bubbles is so much more profitable?  The creation of the so-called “ownership society” forced many a mathematician, scientist or engineer (yours truly included) to leave our innovative  havens of discovery.  When a Ph.D. in my field is looking at a 70 hour work week that pays less than $40k a year - staying in place is no longer an option.  the fate of many STEM careers has been similar.  Offshoring, outsourcing, insourcing - call it what you will….but the bottom line is this: scientists and engineers have been forced out of their fields because “market forces” have created a situation where a livelihood can not be sustained. So most of us ventured forth  into the  world of business and we have plied our intellectual capacity in the market place.

The lesson here is NEVER underestimate an intellectual…..the best and brightest are a flexible bunch and  have a knack for being able to apply themselves to whatever task is at hand. Even if underhanded - we excel at being the best.   When we apply ourselves to making gobs of money with no regard to the consequences and with no underlying concerns about the trivial (such as whether what we are doing is right, underhanded or just plain wrong) we tend to kick ass.   Never was this seen so blatantly as is in the housing meltdown.  Many a brain with an mathematical bent wound up plying their craft at hedge funds instead of developing innovative algorithms or finding new sources of renewable energy.  Instead of contributing to solving our problems, they’ve been instrumental in creating more problems than we could ever imagine.   But hey! It’s a living…..So what if the world economy nearly collapsed!  Now here is the result of such intellectual might. Instead of “These brilliant guys” Jon Stewart is calling them “These F@#king Guys”

Enjoy the clip -its from April of this year - and realize that Goldman Sachs could not have done this without help from the mathematically gifted…

© RMGHicks - http://www.americasbrokenbraintrust.com

A few days ago, I had the opportunity to to read a small publication that I had been carrying around with me for weeks - perhaps even months. It was a small paper published by Harvard Business Review, by Paul Krugman with the compelling title “A Country Is Not a Company.” the paper points to the major differences running a large company as a CEO and the stewardship required to guide a national economy. Krugman was pointing out why CEO’s think that they are uniquely qualified to shape public policy during an economic crisis, and why the correlation between country and company is not as linear as they assume.

In the subsequent pages Krugman goes on to describe a national economy as a “closed system” while individual companies are more “open systems.” By analogy he described the garbage collection system in his township. The town had decided that it didn’t want its own land fill. Although it collected the garbage, the ultimate disposal was outside the town. Thus, garbage dumps and land fills are “open systems” with respect to the township. But garbage disposal in the United States as a whole - is a closed system. The trash has to go somewhere and moving it from place to place doesn’t change the total volume of landfill that we use as a country on iota.

I see a similar analogy in how the training of scientists was managed in our country over the past 20 years or so. I came up in the era where everyone was anticipating the great scientist and Ph.D. shortage. Articles appeared willy-nilly in the journals Science and Nature. The Scientist wrote of dire predictions if the problem wasn’t addressed. Qualified students were encouraged to enter the sciences and seek higher degrees because surely as surely as the sun rises, there would be a crying need for new investigators and there would be plenty of work in industry if Academe didn’t suit us.

The early 1990s saw a bolstering of the NIH and NSF budgets - particularly once Clinton was elected. This allowed established investigators to expand their labs and add more graduate students and post-docs to their budgets. This in turn led to a greater demand for student’s and an increased number of visas being granted to those who wished to study in the US. Investigators and universities saw no problem in this. After all each investigator’s laboratory represented and “open system” into which graduate students and postdocs flowed in and out. The same held for each university. If there wasn’t room in one lab for a student once they graduated, there was a whole country full of labs, both industrial and academic, that would surely employ the student or post-doc. In the meantime no one was factoring in the impact of all this foreign labor on the so-called scientist “shortage.”

Most investigators continued to see science as a field of infinite possibilities and projects. The trouble is that there are just so many labs and so many companies - the number of student’s and post-docs that can be absorbed into the entire system as fully employed scientists is quite finite. The Krugman analogy here would be the parking lot at the train station. Most train stations in the Tristate area have parking issues. Prof. Krugman found that he could get a space when he arrived early enough. But he secured his spot at the expense of others who would arrive later and find no spot. The system was “closed” and getting what you needed meant someone else had to go without.

For scientists and engineers this means that finite funds prevent infinite avenues of investigation from expanding indefinitely. At some point - saturation is reached and the spill-over (no matter how marvelously qualified) is left in the lurch. At best they are left in a perpetual no-mans land of indentured servitude as post-docs for years and years.

Now we see the darker side. As foreign-born scientists supplanted Americans, remuneration became more and more problematic. This created a vicious circle in which Americans fled science. But the glut continued unabated. Now it has come to the point where even foreign nationals are disgusted with the long hours and poor pay. They are looking towards “home” for a better life. So eventually we will truly have a shortage - a shortage that was fueled by a monster glut and rampant exploitation.

So the question remains….in the present state of affairs - how will America ever be able to compete again? It takes years to train a scientist or engineer. It’s nothing like the 2-year M.B.A. or a 3-year J.D. We ought to congratulate Academe though….they managed to create a future shortage out of a glut all while providing a top-notch education for our competition in the global market. Good going guys.

© 2010 - Ruthmarie G. Hicks - http://Americasbrokenbraintrust.com - All rights reserved.

I haven’t done much teaching lately. Budget cuts have pretty much killed off adjunct positions and I have not sought a full-time position. So my exposure to undergraduates over the last two years has been limited. When I held such positions, students would often ask my advice about the realities of a career in science.

When I had such encounters I answered honestly that being a successful scientist was about as practical as trying to become a movie star or professional athlete. Further, there was no striking it rich for the few that “made it.” Income prospects for even the most successful in the field were moderate at best. At worst, they were consigning themselves to a life of poverty.

Last night I went to a “State of the Union” party where supporters of Obama got together to discuss the issues of the day and watch Obama’s address to the nation together. Although most of us were 40+ with a smattering of 30-somethings, there was one student from Stamford who happened to be a biology major.

We watched the State of the Union and amid the encouragement that Obama offered would be scientists and engineers - I had to advise caution to this student. Not surprisingly, he agreed with me. He felt that mid the grim statistics, the post-doctoral logjam, and literally piss-poor pay for the “successful” that you would have to be crazy to pursue a career in science.

Unfortunately for Obama and for the country as a whole, all the grant money in the world for education is pointless unless there are well paying jobs at the end of the educational pipeline.

But more important, what this type of encounter show us is that there truly are young people interested in pursuing science and engineering as career paths. The difficulty is that these careers are just not viable from a practical standpoint. So they turn to other fields such as law, finance, banking and sales. One has to wonder just how many people can be sustained in these fields.

It is this narrowing of viable income producing fields that has our country on the ropes. There are precious few places for people to go in order to earn a viable living. Everyone is flooding into the few niches that will actually produce the “green.” This is exacerbated by the fact that there are no more safety nets. The widening income gap has created a society of rich vs. poor. The poor are truly becoming POOR. The best and the brightest of our youth have a choice: they can choose to pursue their dreams and end up poor - or set them aside and end up rich. More and more, they are choosing money over dreams. From a practical standpoint - this is the right choice for the individual - but the wrong one for society. However, will society treat these people any better for doing the right thing? No, it won’t.

A few years ago a headline appeared in the journal The Scientist:  On the cover there was a picture of a 30-something “homeless” man holding up a handwritten sign on corrugated cardboard which read something along these lines:

• I have a Ph.D.
• 10 publications
• 6 review articles
• 7 years post-doctoral training
• Will work for food!

The fact that such a photo actually appeared on the cover of such a well-read journal should be evidence enough that the system of training and compensating scientists is in serious trouble.  The cover coincided roughly with the time that I had decided to throw in my lab coat for a career in sales.  Having taken a critical look around me about twelve months earlier I saw nothing but a future of indentured servitude and poverty.  It was time to move on.  The cover article was a grim confirmation that I had done the right thing.

If anyone had lingering doubts about the seriousness of the situation - opening the cover and actually reading the article should have caused most of the optimists arguments to R.I.P.  Inside the journal there were a few scientists who made light of the situation and sighted single-minded “dedication” as a sure path to success.  They even likened the dedication required to a career in the arts…think acting, music, dance, and the fine arts.

I have some notion of the daunting hurdles that those in the arts face.  My late mother was a professional singer and radio interviewer.  I also studied music seriously in college and as a result, have several friends from college who tried to break into careers in acting and music.  The odds against success are simply staggering in any of the arts.  If the criteria for success is a full-time job, success in the arts is far more elusive than success in the sciences and engineering.  But if the goal is to make a livable salary that actually pays the bills, puts the kids through school and provides for retirement, the similarities become obvious.  In fact, I would submit that it is the full-time work requirement for the scientist that creates far greater financial risk to the scientist than to the artist.

How can that be true?  I admit the statement is counterintuitive.  But artists have one strong advantage.  They have the ability to develop complementary “day jobs.”  A couple of musicians that I know actually created ancillary careers for themselves.  They were able to build something to fall back on if things weren’t working out for them in the arts.  The fact that a career in the arts is generally defined as part-time until there is significant success makes these back-up careers possible.  But for the scientist that is not the case.  There is no part-time option for the aspiring scientist and no way for the fledgling scientist to supplement the pathetic income they are given for 60-80 hours of grinding labor that is expected of them weekly.

The financial risk for the scientist arises from the following factors:

• The length of training required.
• The amount of compensation offered.
• The number of working hours required.

In biological and biomedical fields, you are looking easily at a 6-9 year period of pre-doctoral training.  Few make it out in less than seven years.  The average is about eight years.  This is full time training with no ancillary employment for supplemental income allowed.  Since you are looking a 60-80 hour week the potential- so unless you are robbing banks, the time constraint alone places a heavy constraint on creating additional income.

Throughout the nineties and until about 2002, many new graduates were counting on leapfrogging into a nice industry job.  Most have been living in grinding poverty for about eight years so they are pretty hungry for a good paycheck.  Since that time, we’ve had a major glut of doctorates coming out of the pipeline in the midst of a contracting economy for biotech.  The dreaded “Post-Doc” has become the new holding pen for those caught in the Ph.D. logjam.  Initially, the post-doc was meant to be a short extension of the Ph.D. training period and was not intended to extend beyond 2-3 years.  This “extension” now seems to meander on indefinitely.  Most graduates do at least two post-docs, many do three before they can find a “real job.” Each position lasts a minimum of two years and some can stretch on for six years.  The pay is generally under $40k with the hours are similar to that of the Ph.D. candidate.   Most graduates are looking at 6-10 years in the holding pen.

For who lost track - you are looking at a 12-19 year “training” period where supplemental compensation is largely impossible.   Small wonder that I have dubbed this prolonged training period  -  “the endless indenture.” Most graduates  are realistically looking at 15 years in the pipeline.  This means that most  Ph.D.’s are sliding into their first “real job”  when they are approaching or in middle age.  38-42 years of age is a good benchmark.

Common sense dictates that the jobs had damn well better be there or these highly trained, very educated people are off a financial cliff.  They have undergone a grueling process of specialized training all of which is full-full time such that lateral movement to another field is well nigh impossible.  In the process they have also lost 15 years of valuable time in building a nest egg for a home, a college education for their children and a retirement fund.  The training process eliminates the flexibility that is badly needed in an economy where the sands shift rapidly under everyone’s feet.  The price tag for extending education into mid-life is too high for most individuals to bear.

Bottom line - its all well and good to say the world is “flat” and that this is a necessary “adjustment.”  But don’t sit and complain (like Thomas Friedman does) about the lack of interest in the sciences on the part of Americans.  We have enough critical mass of interest and ability to produce the next generation of scientist.  Our graduate institutions are world renowned - so I would submit that education is not the issue.  The issue is one of risk and compensation.  The risk has to be mitigated and the compensation increased to a level commensurate with that of other professionals.   The training period also needs to be reduced.  If we don’t do these things,  the best and brightest will continue to flock to the 2-year MBA or the 3-year J.D. and shun the Ph.D.

In general I have a great deal of respect for Thomas Friedman. But on the issues of globalization and the fate of technology in this country, he always, always, always misses the mark by a good mile or more. In today’s op-ed in the New York Times, Advice From Grandma, I held out some hope that he might get it right - but nope, he did it again.

In truth, most of the article was about how American government had become paralized by poor governance. And how the lack of vibrant government was stifling imagination and creativity  - our single best asset.  Nurting said creativity leads to innovation and innovation can bring us back to life. CHECK!  I agree completely.

Friedman goes on to say  “What I increasingly fear today is that America is only able to produce “suboptimal” responses to its biggest problems — education, debt, financial regulation, health care, energy and environment.” CHECK!

He sights money in politics, gerrymandering, cable TV, the internet (both of which foster extreme views) and a business community which forms a powerful lobby that works only for its own ends.  CHECK AGAIN!

Friedman was on a roll. But what he doesn’t address is what NEEDS to happen. Although he is correct in saying that Americans need to be willing to “sacrifice” that’s a tough sell for a middle class that has been pummelled by a free market cowboy mentality that has stripped them of health care,  job security, income, and any real source of firm footing with respect to their finances for the forseeable future.

What Friedman needed to do was “connect the dots.”  What is needed from government now is REAL opportunities for the creative.  You see Friedman was wrong to suggest that  creativity and innovation can not be  commoditized.  They have been - by corporate powers, and the higher ups in accademia that insisted we needed MORE foreign nationals working as engineers and scientists in this country.  To those entities that insisted globalization of such high-earning fields in science and engineering could be off-shored with no ill effects.   The cheapening of the higher education in these critical areas has commoditized the innovaters to nothingness.  Congratulations America! By listening to those vested interests  - you have created a race to the bottom for our most talented thinkers.  Today, biomedical labs are nothing more than high-tech sweat-shops where the best and brightest toil 70 hours a week for less than minimu wage.

My life started down one path and ended up willy-nilly someplace else.  I saw the writing on the wall during the last two years of my doctoral training.  The opportunities that were available when I entered the Ph.D. pipeline in 1998 were no longer available.  We had a glut of scienteists, most of them  not American born,  coming out of the pipeline as newly minted Ph.D.’s just as I was about to get my own sheepskin.   I knew I couldn’t survive on 10 years of post-docing at under $40k a year - so I was in quite a jam. That was all I was trained for - and that training had extended 7. 5 long years.  Getting a job in another venue wasn’t going to be easy.

The result…apart from teaching as an adjunct, I haven’t held a pipet or run a PCR in nearly five years. I haven’t “thought” science in a long, long time.  Ideas for projects and experiments have run fallow. My innovative mind has turned its talents to marketing plans that will increase the flow of clients in my real estate practice.  This is a far cry from what I intended.  I have made it work for me but few would argue that I would be making a better contribution to our society as a scientist.  There was on tiny problem with that though.   I never considered taking a Ph.D. to be a vow of poverty.  I wasn’t looking for vast wealth - but a decent living after all those years of train is a “must.” This is particularly true in what we have become - an “ownership” society.

Programs that encourage the growth of Americans in science, engineering and technology need to recognize some basic facts. The training is long and arduous.  It delays the potential of a decent salary until the candidate is well into their thirties or even their forties.  Therefore - the jobs and the money had better be there or these newly minted scientists and engineers are up the creek without a paddle.   If these things do not happen,  it becomes a no-can-do scenario for all but the independently wealthy and the foreign nationals that haven’t returned home (a reverse brain drain.)