So apparently there is a teacher crisis in Houston, so that HISD has launched an 'alternative teacher program'. This program is a short one year school for non-teachers to start becoming teachers. THe catch? It costs $3500, but apparently you will get paid a teacher's salery while in school. Essentially it's a stipend. However, from what I can tell, you start at a very low level. The starting teacher salery is around 13k. And, if you teach in college, too bad, it doesn't count.

Alternatively, you can do Teach for America, which is a 5 week summer course designed for college grads, after which you have to teach for a minimum of 2 years in a disadvantaged school. They mention that the starting saleries are generally pretty good, from 28k. And you get a student loan deferal while doing the job.

What promted this was the question of what can I get for a PhD? Apparently I can't teach high school or below, not easily, and not at a decent salary. In contrast, I can in theory get a faculty position at a institution of higher learning; a university or community college. Which is odd to me but I understand teaching second graders is different from teaching college students. However, there is no (to my limited knowledge) pediology of college teaching, whereas for high school and below, there are major requirements as far as testing and certifications go. So anyway, I found that very interesting.

I've talked about this before. Glenn Reynolds wrote a mostly correct piece about the whole thing here.He worries, rightly so, about a society that pays its lawyers much better than its scientists and engineers. I worry too, but we have too many people in this country with biomedical science PhDs. And hardly any of them are American. I think *that* is the most worrying aspect; that we don't have any American scientists; we import a large majority of our scientists, particularly in useful fields like biomed. Oh well, so far there isn't much we can do about it, but the fact of the matter is pumping out more PhDs isn't going to do squat about our problems. Those of us with doctorates can barely land a decent job.

This article deals with 'romantic affairs' between students and mentors or senior faculty. A major theme however is something I can relate to; the absolute lack of objective criticism for the thesis/dissertation. I found both my MS and PhD advisors could not care less about my thesis or my career. I was simply cannon fodder to do experiments. No surprise that I'd rather not have anything to do with them (but I still need them for letters of recommendation). It's probably a pretty common occurance. Unless you are a superstar, you can forget about any academic support from your advisor; they just don't care. If you are going to make it in the world, you have to do it yourself, and usually against their wishes, since their wishes often involve things that are detrimental to your career (such as 'you should leave the institution to pursue your PhD' 'you should not continue the project and try to get a paper out of it' etc).

Anyway. I'm trying hard to get my paper published so i can move on to other things.

So says the AAAS (the american association of the advancement of science, the big science organization in the US). The outlays of grants directly to institutions actually decreases money available for grants for people not at those institutions. Scientists survive on grants from the NIH and NSF; when that funding is cut, scientists leave the field. The problem with pork (one problem) is that's not peer-reviewed, that the grants are given directly to institutions for unclear purposes. Whereas peer-review grants ensuer that good ideas get funded.

This is something I was thinking about (emphasis past tense). The nation currently has a science education crisis; namely our students are dumber than dirt and getting worse, particularly in science. However, the U.S. has alot of PhD holders in critical areas, including biology.

But the route to teaching is difficult; you can get a job as a adjuct teaching community college and hope to gain enough experience, but you won't make enough to live on.

You can hope to get a 'real job' professorship at a university, but the number of applicants is vastly more than the number of positions.

You could go teach at public schools, but that requires a teaching degree and certification; the last thing a PhD holder wants to do is go back to school at the bachelors level.

Then there's the money; w/ a PhD you can expect to start earning 40k per year. That's nice, but postdoc stipend for first year, according to NIH guidelines, is about 35k. Not much difference, and don't forget the extra training required to be a public school teacher.

The article mentions that 0.8% of PhD holders are public school teachers, but the amount interested in teaching is much higher. So there is an issue; the certification barriers and the salary are probably the biggest challenges.

My thinking is that I personally could aspire to more than a public school teacher. I earned my degree and feel public school teaching to be a possible letdown.

He says things like this (at a guest post at the Porkbusters site):

So why has my party, the party of small government, lately adopted the practices of our opponents who believe the bigger the government the better? I'm afraid it's because at times we value our incumbency more than our principles. We came to office to reduce the size of government. Lately, we have increased the size of government in order to stay in office. The editors of National Review have argued -- and I agree with them -- that unless Republicans curb government spending by reforming the budget process, we may lose our majorities in the House and Senate. I will go one step further and say that if Republicans do not reform our budget process, we will deserve to lose our majorities.

He's doing alot of positioning lately, trying to distance himself from the republicans while reaching out to 'core constituants'. Here he is reaching out to the fiscal conservatives (are there any left?), and others who are just sick of the gluttony in congress. For people like me, the crisis is urgent. If congress does not choose to increase medical research funding, I will have to find another job, it's pretty simple. When only the top 5-10% of scientists in the world (since the world's best scientists are here in the U.S., and many or most are not citizens) are getting funding, I have just about a zero chance. America and politicians talk a good game about science education, and scientific research, but unless they actually support these with money, there is no way things will get better.

Brannon Denning has some good advice for first year law students. In that vein, i'll summerize and extend for grad school. I just finished a 8 year program getting my MS and PhD.

First, why does it take so long. Well, alot of people end up switching labs after a few years, and get nothing to show for it. I got lucky and got my MS out of it, otherwise I would have been really stuck. Further, alot of people end up with projects that don't go anywhere. This may be due to bad fit of the student and the project, or badly thought of projects by the PI.

Statistics by the National Research Council (I think!) show that time to graduation in most hard sciences is about 7 or 8 years. In 'soft' fields like philosophy, history, english, it's even longer, because those programs are (grossly generalizing) unstructured. At least our school is structured: First two years, coursework and tutorials. Second two years, start project and do candidacy exam. 4+ years, finish PhD project.

So, for incoming students, prepare thyself for the long journey. You won't be out in 3-4 years like law/med students (unless you are really good or come in with a MS). On the other hand, you won't incure a ton of debt (they pay you a small living stipend).

Part of this preparation is what Brannon mentioned; exercise I found to be critical. Outside interests also important, but incredibly frowned upon in science. (what, you are not breathing science 100% of the time?). Some people just can't understand this notion, and they have miserable lives b/c all they do is science. Of course there is a work/life balance. Alot of students and researchers treat it like a job, a low paying hard job. They come in at 9am, and leave at 5pm, five days a week. That won't work in science. You have to be able to put in the hours required; I often come in at night to do time courses (and hate it) due to the necessity of the system. But if you do that, you need to set aside more downtime, ie really take off Sat and Sun, not just part days in the lab. If you are cruising during the week and only putting in 6 hours a day or less, you should probably come in on sat or sun to get stuff done. I feel like I've done my job if I put in at least 40 hours/week here, and that's experiment time, time when experiments are incubating.

So I guess time management is important, but also important is experiment management, asking the right questions, using the right controls, etc. This takes a long long time to develop, but the sooner you start the better you'll be. I've wasted years on bad research tracks that never led to anything useful; that happens alot and you need to be prepared for it. But you should be asking important questions, such as: has this question been addressed in the literature? How will answering this question help extend the field of knowledge? Which gap in knowledge will it fill? What do I need in the experiment to know that it works? Is it possible for the experiment to yield a meaningful, interpretable answer? If so, what would be the next step (or is the expt a dead end?). These are all critical questions, and the sooner you can define your PhD project, and formulate ways to fill a certain, small gap in the field, the sooner you can graduate.

Anyway that's my advice for entering students. How to think like a scientist is the thing you get out of grad school. Yes, you'll know techniques but that's not relavent. Finding good questions to ask, and being able to answer them, is the essence of getting a PhD.

If you are not interested in this, then either get a masters (which basically will make you a well-paid technician), or don't bother to waste 6-8 years of your life, do something you'll enjoy instead. If you don't enjoy science, there is no way you will be able to survive.

The Houston chronicle Science Blog quotes me very briefly. Not sure how i missed this link, but anyway.

Is this a career path you would choose? I know it's one Rob Dejournett has, and as his chronicles attest, its a difficult one. My real concern is that the smart kids will realize early on that the best chance of succeeding professionally and financially these days lies not in medical research, but law or business.

It's something I've discussed before (see post chain), but Orac has a great post on it. People who are lucky enough to have R01s have their funding cut cut cut. People who don't have them have a very very slim chance of getting them. People who are trying to get them for the first time have even less chance. At least the renewal rates are fairly high; so there is a chance to continue your current research. However, for people like me, it is very clear there is no future dependant on the NIH.

The final sentence (subscription reqd) in a economic analysis of American science funding is pivotal:

Also, failure to provide adequate funds for biomedical research discourages the brightest young people from choosing scientific pursuits.

Actually that is not true, the best of the best, if they want to continue doing science, will get funded. 3% of them will this year (3% of first time applicants will get funded). But there are another 97% of us, with PhDs, with many years postdoctoral education. What do we do? Find a new job, that's what, or get used to being broke and not being able to do research. Money is one of the most critical components of successful research, the others being ingenuity, know-how, and resources not commericially available (ie things you make yourself).