Boston Blog

Science in the USA: Our sputter moment?

In his State of the Union speech Tuesday ,Obama said the U.S. is behind in science and technology. He proposes training 100,000 new science teachers. If we are behind, is it a shortage of bodies or a shortage of something else? Grads linger in their post docs for years, complaining about lack of job options. And, those who run labs struggle with the low success rates for NIH grants.

So, what will these teachers train students for? Questions about the reality of the so-called shortage of scientists are not new. Still, the conventional wisdom persists.

Last June, a story in the magazine Miller-McCune had this to say:

“There is no scientist shortage,” declares Harvard economics professor Richard Freeman, a pre-eminent authority on the scientific work force. Michael Teitelbaum of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, a leading demographer who is also a national authority on science training, cites the “profound irony” of crying shortage — as have many business leaders, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates — while scores of thousands of young Ph.D.s labor in the nation’s university labs as low-paid, temporary workers, ostensibly training for permanent faculty positions that will never exist.

For some earlier thoughts on the vitality of the scientific workforce, also see blog posts in:

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