Addressing Biomedical Science’s PhD Problem

Rhetoric has this same problem.  --David

Addressing Biomedical Science’s PhD Problem
From: https://tomprof.stanford.edu/

PhD degrees aren’t what they used to be. In 1973, more than half of doctoral degree graduates in biological sciences landed a tenure-track position within six years. Three decades later, that fraction had dropped to 15 percent. Demand has not kept pace with supply, says Bruce Alberts, a professor of biochemistry at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and cofounder of the nonprofit organization Rescuing Biomedical Research (RBR). “The real world for [biomedical PhD students]  is that maybe a fifth will ever get academic jobs,” he says. And it’s not just academia that’s overpopulated, he adds. “There aren’t even enough jobs currently in the private sector to make it possible for all of them to get research jobs.”

As a result, trainees spend more and more time in postdoctoral positions, and even then, their chances of landing a tenure-track position are in decline. Several years of survey data collected by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) show that, although the percentage of postdocs expecting to land a tenure-track faculty position stayed above 50 percent from 2010 to 2012, the percentage who actually do so fell from 37 percent to 21 percent. Unemployment following a postdoc position, meanwhile, rose from 2 percent to 10 percent over the same time period.

Yet despite these sobering statistics, PhD programs continue to grow—in the U.S., the life sciences saw an increase from around 8,000 doctoral recipients in 2004 to more than 12,500 a decade later—and show no signs of leveling off. “Graduate students are fundamental to the vitality of the research enterprise,” notes Alberts, who served for more than a decade as president of the National Academy of Sciences, adding that many university departments see little reason to stem the inflow of this young (and cheap) workforce.

The resulting situation for today’s PhDs—a hypercompetitive climate during graduate school and limited research-focused career prospects afterward—represents what many see as a systemic flaw in biomedical education that is impractical and unethical to maintain. It’s a problem that a growing number of students, researchers, universities, and companies are now attempting to address, some through initiatives to inform and better prepare current students for nonacademic and potentially nonresearch career paths, others through longer-term efforts to modernize PhD admissions and education. Given the current job climate, Alberts says, “we have an obligation to tailor our graduate programs differently.”