Mercury,
March/April 1996 Table of Contents
(c)
1996 Astronomical Society of the Pacific
There
were a lot of standing-room-only crowds at this January's American
Astronomical Society meeting. Geoff Marcy, of course, packed them
in for his announcement of two planets around Sun-like stars. But
there were other full houses that didn't make it onto the front
pages, and in their own ways were just as significant.
The
job-hunting workshop for graduate students was one. At long last,
the profession has started to clear out the academo-sclerosis and
face up to the job market. By bringing in astronomers who work outside
academia, the AAS publicly recognized that teachers, planetarians,
journalists, and investment bankers can be as much a part of the
astronomical community as researchers.
In
this workshop and other discussions, some held late into the night,
astronomers hashed out the issues raised in reports last summer
by the National Academy of Sciences and the National Science Foundation.
Those reports spoke of reshaping Ph.D. programs to prepare students
better for non-academic careers: encouraging off-campus internships,
adding courses outside the specialty, getting students through grad
school faster.
Yet
the reports left critical issues dangling. As University of Arizona
dean Gene Levy said, "We need a much more substantial response
than fine-tuning our graduate programs."
Birth
control.
The job market imposes reality on
young scientists -- the only question is when. Why shouldn't it
happen during graduate admissions, before students commit to lengthy
Ph.D. programs? As atmospheric-science grad student John Knox remarked
to me, the alternative to birth control is late-term abortion.
Right
now, astronomy departments are on fertility drugs. Professors may
bring forth a dozen Ph.D.s during their careers, a tradition that
presumes an unlimited growth in job opportunities. Grad enrollments,
like the rest of science, must adjust to stable or declining public
support, and it won't be easy, since universities have come to depend
on grads as cheap labor in the classroom and lab. As former IBM
research director John Armstrong said, "In the past 50 years --
50 atypical years -- the scientific community has become addicted
to growth. It does not know how to operate in the absence of growth."
Degree
inflation.
Many young Ph.D.s are doing jobs
they could have done with bachelor's or master's degrees. Consider
what the analogous surplus of college graduates has done to bachelor's
and associate's degrees in the United States. Because employers
are able to demand college degrees when high-school diplomas would
(or should) do, high schools are under little pressure to hold their
graduates to high standards. Students who don't go to college are
neglected and undergraduate programs have been forced to provide
remedial instruction turning the college degree into a glorified,
and costly, high-school diploma.
Do
we want the same to happen to the Ph.D.? In some ways, it already
is happening. Teaching-oriented colleges that used to be satisfied
with a master's are insisting that new faculty have doctorates.
Ph.D. students already take years of coursework before embarking
on dissertations, and now the reshapers of grad education want to
make the Ph.D. even more like a bachelor's or master's degree, rather
than redirect students into master's programs and reserve the Ph.D.
for what it does best: train specialized researchers.
Immigration.
In the physical sciences, students
from outside the United States account for nearly all the growth
in grad enrollment over the past decade. Should universities cut
back? Either answer will leave hard feelings. But by sidestepping
this question, scientists have let the debate be dominated by Sen.
Alan Simpson -- sponsor of a bill, S. 1394, to tighten limits on
the immigration of professional workers -- and, opposing him, by
business leaders who have the gall to claim there is a shortage
of Ph.D. scientists.
The
big picture.
The bottom-line question is, Given $x billion, the likely level
of support for astronomy in, say, 2010, what is the best way to
study the universe and satisfy public expectations? From this we
can work out how many astronomers society would support, how they
should work, and how they could make the transition from the status
quo. Only then will the needed changes to grad education become
clear. As Jeff Rosendhal of NASA put it: "It's very hard to develop
a road map when you don't know where you're trying to go."
Young
underemployed scientists are the dead canaries in the coal mine.
Their plight is a dramatic signal that society has lost its capacity,
or willingness, to employ increasing numbers of scientists. Astronomers
and astronomy enthusiasts had better think through what that means.
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