Postdocalypse

The rarely-discussed but nevertheless wanton destruction of America's scientific potential (of which I count myself Postdoc Exhibit "A") is discussed here:

According to Brandeis University biochemist Gregory Petsko, who recently chaired a National Academy of Sciences committee on the postdoctoral experience in the United States, less than 20 percent of aspiring postdocs today get highly coveted jobs in academia. That's less than 1 in 5.

...Ethan Perlstein was one of these postdocs—before he decided he'd had enough. ...

But it wasn't just the competition for jobs that deterred Perlstein. Once you land a tenure-track job, you often have to get a big government grant in order to actually get tenure. And those grants are becoming ever more competitive, meaning that young faculty members usually need to apply multiple times before securing one. That is, if they actually do get one before the university that employs them loses patience.

"I guess I just thought, 'Well, I don't want to keep waiting any more,'" recalls Perlstein. "At the time I was 33, and thought, 'Well, I'm also seeing the statistic that says that the average age at which an independent biomedical research gets their first big grant from the NIH is 43 or 42.' And I just thought, 'Another 10 years of just waiting around for my turn in line?'"

You've probably heard the claim that the United States needs to produce more scientists, like Perlstein, to remain competitive with up-and-coming science powerhouses like India and China. ... But what you rarely hear in this argument is the fact that we don't have nearly enough jobs to put to work the scientists we currently have. "U.S. higher education produces far more science and engineering graduates annually than there are S&E job openings," writes Harvard researcher Michael Teitelbaum, "the only disagreement is whether it is 100 percent or 200 percent more."