"Looming Crisis" at NIH

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Eric on Fri, Mar 30, 05:03PM

The people at "http://www.bestworkforce.org/" are a bunch of liars.

There is no "gathering storm" or "looming crisis" or "shortage" of any kind in the production of science and engineering PhD's. That was a lie in the early 90's, and its a lie now. In fact, there has been a pretty consistent overproduction of PhD's of about 20-30% yearly. Combined with massive importation of cheap labor on temporary visas, the job market is and has been saturated for years.

But don't just take my word for it. Take a good look at the job market. Think about how low salaries of scientists and engineers are compared to those of virtually any other professionals like physicians, lawyers, etc. That is only aggravated by the long training period of scientists (4 yrs college, 4-6 yrs graduate school, 1 or 2 postdoc's at 3-5 yrs each) before getting a real job. If there were a desperate shortage of scientists, then the job market would be hot for new PhD's, and salaries would be high. That is clearly not the case.

So, if anybody wants to start blowing wind and beating drums over a supposed shortage, let them back up their claims with actual fact. Junior scientists struggling to find a decent job would really appreciate some honesty once in a while.

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