I first came across this months ago but I never blogged it, and I stumbled on it again recently. MIT's Philip Greenspun is a keen observer of issues related to scientific careers. Just after Larry Summers left Harvard, Greenspun offered up a better reason for women's under-representation in science than the ones Summers proposed: they found better jobs.
"Adjusted for IQ, quantitative skills, and
working hours, jobs in science are the lowest paid in the United
States," Greenspun writes. He continues:
This is how things are likely to go for the smartest kid you sat next to in college. He got into Stanford for graduate school. He got a postdoc at MIT. His experiment worked out and he was therefore fortunate to land a job at University of California, Irvine. But at the end of the day, his research wasn't quite interesting or topical enough that the university wanted to commit to paying him a salary for the rest of his life. He is now 44 years old, with a family to feed, and looking for job with a "second rate has-been" label on his forehead.
Why then, does anyone think that science is a sufficiently good career that people should debate who is privileged enough to work at it? Sample bias.
And while you're at it, don't miss his Career Guide for Engineers and Computer Scientists:
I am fascinated by the 30-year decline in the relative salaries and prestige of engineers and scientists that has been accompanied by 30 years of statements by politicians and university administrators that there is a shortage of engineers and scientists.
Be sure to scroll down to the "Achievement Gallery," which contains "portraits of people who are putting their advanced training to good use." "Dr. Albert Meyerstein," for example--formerly of the abandoned superconducting supercollider project--reflects, "I miss working with Dr. Gerald Abelson on more efficient sources of pulsed spallation neutrons but I'm glad that we can continue our collaboration on the polymeric properties of automotive pigment in a detergent-rich environment."
After reading this, science trainees should probably steer clear of gas appliances, firearms, and other potential instruments of self-immolation.
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