3 ms·

This is the right question to ask - not what NSF or NIH can do. I'm afraid I don't have a very satisfying answer, I'm still trying to figure it out myself. The

This is the right question to ask - not what NSF or NIH can do. I'm afraid I don't have a very satisfying answer, I'm still trying to figure it out myself. The first thing I tell my postdocs is that they can't put their life on hold and wait for adulthood to start after they finish this training (or more training). We need to be discussing career paths now, not 18 months from now. The second thing I tell them is that in my field (medicine) it's likely they can make a greater contribution on the industry side than in academia, because as important as fundamental (basic) research can be, industry is where most new treatments come from. For some I encourage entrepreneurship - harder in bio than CS but do-able for the right person. And some /can/ stay in academia as staff scientists - not responsible for running their own labs or generating their own funding, but acting mostly autonomously.

NPMaxwell 9y ago
Very satisfying, I think. By all means, keep working at it! And this is great already.
alpineidyll3 9y ago
It's great to think about what you can do personally, but actually the NSF/congress did create this problem by choosing the financial structure for science in the US in the 40s-50s. That was done centrally and was not an organic extension of how science was previously funded. Many possible alternatives such as direct student funding like they do in Canada (advisors who are advisors not feudal lords), are imaginable. The best fit depends a lot on field. For example I'd say medical research is some of the most-marketable, and most medicine faculty choose academia for the right reasons. Unfortunately in my benighted corner of science things are going the wrong way. The NSF actually just created a master's program for managing a sort of scientific software development for which there is no market. It did this because saying scientists care about education and commercialization "sounds good" on a grant proposal. This will do nothing but waste 50million, and 40 highly skilled human years of time. It's laughable to anyone in the field, but such are the incentives at NSF.

NPMaxwell 9y ago

Very satisfying, I think. By all means, keep working at it! And this is great already.

alpineidyll3 9y ago

It's great to think about what you can do personally, but actually the NSF/congress did create this problem by choosing the financial structure for science in the US in the 40s-50s. That was done centrally and was not an organic extension of how science was previously funded. Many possible alternatives such as direct student funding like they do in Canada (advisors who are advisors not feudal lords), are imaginable. The best fit depends a lot on field. For example I'd say medical research is some of the most-marketable, and most medicine faculty choose academia for the right reasons. Unfortunately in my benighted corner of science things are going the wrong way. The NSF actually just created a master's program for managing a sort of scientific software development for which there is no market. It did this because saying scientists care about education and commercialization "sounds good" on a grant proposal. This will do nothing but waste 50million, and 40 highly skilled human years of time. It's laughable to anyone in the field, but such are the incentives at NSF.