[markber]

Yet another interesting comment:

By Rex Williams:

Nothing will change until the supply/demand inequality and incentive structures are changed. Admission to programs needs to be severely constrained. Grad students and Postdocs need to be excused when they fail to meet strict milestones, which cuts the cost to the research budgets and helps smart and talented young people develop meaningful careers at the same time. Tenure needs to be eliminated so that existing faculty are made to have to compete with up-and-coming scientists, preventing them from getting complacent. Additionally, I would advocate for actual penalties to be placed on PIs that consistently fail to turn out good people that contribute meaningfully to science and technology; whether that is in academia, government, or industry is not important. Perhaps when a PI is made to realize that the consequences for being a poor advisor and using people up are an inability to continue to win funding, they will be much more selective and cautious of the people that they invite into their lab and how they develop them.

While other professionals have the potential to create jobs, scientists and engineers have the potential to create entire industries, an economic impact that absolutely justifies the spending of government money on research. A PhD is supposed to be the pinnacle of scholarly achievement and should be near unattainable by anyone but the very brightest and most talented, thereby the most likely to deliver a substantial public benefit. The current system provides little chance to fulfill either and American taxpayers are paying dearly for this. I doubt it will be able to continue much longer.