So one interesting piece of the puzzle about what can be done that no-one seems to talk much about is on the demand side. What can be done to grow the market for PhDs? For some fields, I think the answer is "not much". But in the life sciences there are a lot of big opportunities.

A few years ago I attended Startup School, a little boot camp on how to do a start-up. The school is followed by an interesting program to incubate potential startups. Startups are big in IT. Partly it's because it's so easy to start a company -- a few thousand bucks for a computer and a big pile of Top Ramen, and I'm good to go. But partly I think it's cultural. People have been doing it for a long time, the process is pretty well-established, there are lots of good role models / mentors, and it's perfectly acceptable to go out, try something, fail. I think a lot of these ingredients are missing in the life sciences, and it's in that respect that some well-thought-out initiatives could make a real difference.

Sure, you'll get some people whining about money tainting things, about how the purpose of science is to gaze eternally into one's own navel, etc, etc. But it just ain't so. The reason that NSF and NIH and all the rest fund science is to improve the economy and the well-being of the public. Basic research is a part of that, but it's not the whole thing. Don't believe me? Go read Science: The Endless Frontier.

Get more startups out there and (1) you provide a better exit strategy for your students than a terminal master's, (2) you create the potential for some new companies that can hire even more of your students, (3) you get some great technology transfer, much better than some office doing it as an afterthought.

We need to more this discussion to its own article.