The Banholzer Award

If you didn't know it already, I actually like it when senior people in industry and academia say things that are true, even if uncomfortable and unpopular and annoying. Beryl Lieff Benderly gets some great quotes from Dow executive vice president and Ph.D. chemical engineer William Banholzer (who, incidentally,  is on the Shakhashiri Commission):

...But you'll notice that a history of postdocing is not among the characteristics that appear in Banholzer's description. "I don't think I need to hire postdocs," he told PCAST. A Ph.D. earned under an excellent professor is sufficient education, he says, because Dow provides newly hired scientists its own training for the work that they will be doing. "They sort of get their postdoc on the job," he notes. 

[snip] 

A final element of Banholzer's formula for starting an industrial career is studying at an institution that ranks high in your field. "If you want to get a job, you'd better go to the best schools because that's where the best faculty are, that's where the best research is done. It doesn't mean there might not be a world-class, creative, capable person at a lesser school, but I've got to work so much harder to find them." Dow recruits at the roughly two dozen schools at the top of their fields; the particular institutions vary with the disciplines. An outstanding candidate from a lower-ranked school can still apply but faces much longer odds of getting noticed and hired... 

[snip] "The reason I'm in industry is that I want to solve society's problems," Banholzer says. For aspiring scientists desiring to join him in this endeavor, his advice is straightforward. "You've got to figure out how to distinguish yourself from others. That means you'd better go to a prestigious university, you'd better work on some disruptive thesis, you'd better be outstanding at communication."

I respect Dr. Banholzer for being willing to lay out the bare minimum for being hired at Dow to be an entry-level Ph.D. scientist, and not hiding behind code words for the same thing ("unique skills", "critical thinking"). I could probably do a really good job at quibbling with this reliance on glamour and sexxxxxy science true, considered meritocracy, but in general, I believe it is true* that better, longer CVs from respected institutions are correlated with getting hired and having better salaries. If you read more in the article (very much worth it), he also argues for there being a relative surplus of Ph.D. chemists in relation to the industrial jobs to absorb them.

Dr. Banholzer hasn't talked about the other, industrial-sized elephants in the room: that Dow probably doesn't need to hire all that many R&D scientists because they're probably hiring them overseas. And I'll also note that he's in direct conflict (hhhheeeyyy) with his boss Andrew Liveris, who can't stop plumping for more scientists.

[I mean, yeah, we could dog him for all of this, but is he going to change Dow's hiring habits? No. Better to know the reality, talk about it and not hide from it.]

But for describing the unpopular reality that you can't get hired by large corporations without a great-looking CV from a prestigious institution, I announce the Banholzer Award for Truth-Telling about Chemical Employment. I look forward to future nominations.

*Anecdotally true, not statistically proven, I might note.

A letter to the editor that could have written by me

From this week's C&EN:

As an American Chemical Society member for about 30 years, I have been mystified by the continual assertion that the U.S. faces a general shortage of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) professionals. What objective data, such as from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, actually support this assertion? 

Nevertheless, there seems to be limited official response from ACS regarding the present employment situation and how much worse it may become in the near future. For instance, on Feb. 7, the New York Times published “America’s Genius Glut,” a story by Ross Eisenbrey of the Economic Policy Institute. The article indicates that the U.S. has about 9 million people with STEM degrees, but only about 3 million have a job in a STEM field. To better illustrate the real truth about the jobs situation, perhaps C&EN needs to show photographs of newly minted scientists with signs reading, “Unemployed STEM professional—will work for food.” Imagine how much worse things are likely to get for American workers if President Barack Obama gets his stated wish and every foreign STEM graduate gets a green card (Wall Street Journal, Review & Outlook section, Jan. 30). 

If ACS really exists to serve its membership—rather than large institutions such as major universities and multinational companies that principally want a bottomless pit of cheap labor—it is time to consult with other scientific societies and learn their views on the current employment outlook. If these organizations also report poor prospects for their members, then it is time to present a common front to the White House and Congress, clearly stating that there is no general shortage of STEM professionals. 

This really should have been done long ago. Dismal job prospects for physical scientists are not new. On April 14, 1993, the Wall Street Journal published an article entitled “Black Hole Opens in Scientist Job Rolls” by G. Pascal Zachary. At roughly the same time, the New York Times published a story by Malcolm W. Browne entitled “Amid ‘Shortage,’ Young Physicists See Few Jobs.” 

The truth needs to be spoken to our masters in Washington, D.C., quickly, before they sell the rank and file of this society down the river so as to further benefit ultra-high-net-worth types in places like Silicon Valley. 

Wm. Charles L. JamisonWarrenton, Va.

I do not believe there is a broad shortage of scientists and engineers -- there are specific areas, certainly, that have very high demand. But our digital masters will not be put off, so we're going to see expansion in the H-1b system and the STEM green card bill will go through. Yay.

I don't believe this factlet from USA Today

In the midst of a perfectly cromulent article by Dan Vergano of USA Today on the troubles of NIH-funded life scientists and their trainees (h/t SeeArrOh), something that doesn't quite make sense:

Unemployment among people with doctorates is very low, about 3.5%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and even lower among scientific disciplines. Many of those highly educated individuals trained to do lab research find that career blocked, [Boston College biology professor David] Burgess says, even though they are conducting research that would have received funding in past decades.

The bolded (by me) statement above does not make sense. BLS-measured unemployment for Ph.D.s of all disciplines in 2012 was 2.5%. I don't believe there are numbers for 2013 yet. If Mr. Vergano's numbers are for 2013, then Ph.D. unemployment has actually increased. (It's possible that he asked BLS for the latest numbers.)

In addition, I don't believe that any governmental or private organization has accurate measurements of unemployment among scientists (especially ones that can be compared to BLS numbers.) Sure, you can use the NSF Survey of Earned Doctorates, but that only tells you about young scientists (i.e. ones that have just graduated.) NSF's data from the Survey of Doctoral Recipients might be used for these numbers, but I don't think you can compare them to BLS numbers and the latest data is from 2010.

A mystery -- I'll look into it. 

Hey, that's a very interesting increase in the number of BS/BA chemistry graduates!

Credit: C&EN

Also from this week's C&EN, an interesting look at the comeback of chemistry in the UK from Alex Scott:

In the decade leading up to 2005, about 30 of the U.K.’s 70 chemistry departments closed in the face of waning undergraduate enrollment in chemistry and a lack of funding to teach the subject. The situation has since turned around dramatically, with about 10 chemistry departments reopening in recent years. As well as recruiting more students, many U.K. university chemistry departments are also now recruiting staff.

I would really like to hear about this interesting little section about chemistry students in the UK and their job outlook:

An additional, and rather surprising, factor has encouraged more undergraduates to study chemistry in the U.K.: the economic recession that began in 2008. British students have been seeking out chemistry degrees in recent years because the subject provides relatively good job prospects, say a number of leading academics. This is in contrast to the situation in the U.S. where job prospects for chemistry graduates have been tougher of late. 

U.K. chemistry graduates commonly are taking up jobs in the pharmaceutical, fine chemicals, and banking sectors as well as in teaching, according to a 2008 study by the Institute for Employment Research and the Higher Education Careers Services Unit. For 2010 chemistry graduates, six months after graduation about 41% were employed with a further 44% in full-time graduate study or a combination of graduate study and work. According to Lancaster University, which reopened its department in October 2012 after closure in 1999, “students recognize the career value of a chemistry degree.”

I'll be honest, I am less than impressed by the IER numbers, especially compared to the US data for 2010 graduates (ACS 2010 ACS Starting Salary Survey (see first table): 33% full-time, 6% part-time, 46% graduate studies). They're a little better, but not by much.

Finally, I found this section on the increase in B.S./B.A. chemistry graduates to be very interesting (if not a little nervous-making):

As a result of outreach programs, HEFCE’s funding, and students going back to school during the recession, the number of chemistry departments across the U.K. has risen by about 10 since 2005 to 52 in 2013. Between the academic years 2004–05 and 2011–12, the total number of U.K. undergraduates studying chemistry rose 41%. For the academic year 2011–12, there were 15,660 full-time students studying chemistry in all years at the undergraduate level, according to the latest statistics available from the U.K. Higher Education Statistics Agency. The number of student undergraduates for other science subjects, including chemical engineering and physics, has also increased since 2005. 

A similar pattern occurred in Germany, where student numbers fell beginning in 2004, were then flat for 2007–08, and subsequently picked up again from 2009. 

The U.S., too, has seen a recovery in the number of students graduating with bachelor’s degrees in chemistry. According to the latest data published by the American Chemical Society, the number of chemistry graduates from ACS-approved schools has risen since 2002. That number increased 44% from 2005 to 2011, when there were 15,712 new graduates. The total number of chemical engineering students to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in the U.S. also increased but to a lesser extent than chemistry. The number of ACS-approved chemistry graduate programs at U.S. schools remains somewhere between 600 and 700.

I wonder what is driving this increase? It's certainly not wages.

UPDATE: LabMonkey looks at the UK numbers, which show a rise in the total number of UK undergrads as well. 

I guess we're getting somewhere

From ScienceCareers forum:

Huh; that's a little unexpected. 

Paula Stephan in Chemistry World

Paula Stephan, who is an expert on the labor economics of science, is in Chemistry World (emphases mine): 

...Chemists have often had an edge over those trained in the biomedical sciences because of the large number of research positions for chemists in industry. But in recent years, industry hires have lagged – in part because of mergers and acquisitions in pharma and in part because of a fragile economy...

What can be done to solve the imbalance? First, graduate programs should be required to tell students the truth about job placements. Second, the incentive to staff labs with graduate students and postdocs must be altered. Raise the ‘wage’ (that will get the attention of PIs); require faculty to develop alternative training tracks for students. In other words, make faculty understand that there is a serious cost to using graduate students and make them pay for part of it out of their research budgets and their time. Third, put more funds into supporting graduate students on fellowships and training grants and fewer funds into supporting students as graduate research assistants. Fourth, create incentives for faculty to staff their labs with permanent help rather than relying on temporary labour. Finally, if need be, lessen the coupling between research and training. While effective training requires a research environment, effective research can be done outside a training environment. If universities don’t have what it takes to exercise self-control, then turn some of the research funds over to institutes that are not in the training business. Abstinence is, after all, the most effective form of birth control.

Paula Stephan is professor of economics at Georgia State University, US, and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She is the author of the book How Economics Shapes Science.

I think it's the fourth and fifth problems that are problematic for the long-term. How to (de?)institutionalize research (creating permanent staff, moving to research institutes outside of academia) without destroying incentives and creativity? I don't know if I have an answer to that, and I don't know if it's the right question.

Podcast: Matt Hartings, See Arr Oh and Chemjobber talk grad school

Last week, ACS President Bassam Shakhashiri and his President Commission on Graduate Education in the Chemical Sciences held a press conference and released a long report on the state of graduate school in chemistry. Matt, See Arr Oh and I did a Google Hangout, and we talked over some of the issues raised in the report. (Tomorrow, we're releasing a 2nd podcast where we talk about ACS executive salaries.)



See Arr Oh has helpfully provided some time points for you all; I've added some editorial comments.

0:03 - Intro
0:54 - Who we are, in a nutshell (diversity of opinions)
3:58 - Should grad students be TAs?
7:05 - Time To Degree - "Cap things at 5 years"
11:10 - CJ goes on a rant about the sunk costs of graduate school, and that they're sunk
16:14 - Adjuncts, or The Wheel of Pain
23:15 - Funding: Grads vs. Adjuncts
28:41 - Recruitment of international graduate students: top vs. mid-tier institutions
34:19 - Research Associates - the answer? Maybe not.

UPDATE: Part 2 (on ACS executive salaries, and concluding thoughts) is up here. 

4 remarkable assertions in the ACS Presidential Commission Report

I could talk about the 2012 ACS Presidential Commission Report on Graduate Education in the Chemical Sciences a lot, but instead, I think I'll just quote a few statements of fact that were made:

On #chemjobs:

"Given what seems to be a permanently restructured employment market for PhDs, the Commission perceives a risk that the number of career opportunities in the chemical science professions may be insufficient to accommodate those qualified for and desiring entry." 

"In the last decade, 300,000 jobs have been lost in the pharmaceutical industry worldwide. This total is larger than the entire US pharmaceutical employment base. Large US research facilities have been closed and sizable systematic reductions in domestic research capabilities have been implemented or announced, apparently driven in significant part by consolidation in the industry. Some of the reduced functions have been outsourced to other technologically strong nations."

On too many chemists:

"A large undergraduate teaching need is not a sufficient justification for a large graduate program."

"In discussing the employment scene earlier in this chapter, the Commission was frank in its assessment that the current rate of PhD production is too large. While some portion of the excess reflects the current stage of the business cycle, there is evidence, in the growth of postdoctoral employment and in stagnant salaries over a long term, that the nation is producing a systematic excess of PhDs."

On teaching undergraduates:

"While graduate students are certainly exposed to teaching through teaching assistantships, their experiences generally are not drawn from carefully crafted programs designed to teach students how to teach."

On postdocs:

"Some statistics about postdoctoral associates are enlightening. In 2009, the most recent year for which the NSF has published detailed data, there were approximately 4200 postdocs in chemistry, 2350 in biochemistry, and 1100 in chemical engineering. The percentages of temporary visa holders in these groups were 64.7%, 60.7%, and 62.4%, respectively."

"A significant problem in the current employment pipeline for chemists is a bulge at the postdoctoral level. Particularly in more biological areas of chemistry, many current postdocs have previously been postdocs for one or even two appointments. For these individuals, the second, or later, postdoctoral appointment serves largely as a buffer zone in the ebb and flow of the job market; it is not a position that significantly improves one’s job chances." (emphasis mine)

Quite an indictment of the current state of affairs.

ACS presidential commission on graduate education: "rate of producing PhDs is... too high."

Credit: Anon121020121039a

From the ACS Presidential Commission Report on Graduate Education in the Chemical Sciences (emphasis CJ's):

There is little doubt that the rate of producing new chemical sciences PhDs in the US is too high for the current employment market, but the current imbalance could not have been avoided without years of forethought. Because the average time-to-degree is about six years in our fields and because many PhDs temporarily occupy postdoctoral appointments, the time constant for adjustments in new employment candidates at the doctoral level must be something like 7-9 years. It is simply not possible for the system to adjust to changes in demand taking place on shorter timescales, and certainly not to those with the suddenness and degree of the 2008 contraction. 

The question of greatest relevance to the work of this Commission is whether the employment markets have undergone or will be proceeding through systematic changes that should lead PhD producers to alter the scale or the balance of their programs. By the word “balance,” we mean the mix among distinct areas or capabilities fostered in the program. Among departments of chemistry, balance would relate to the number of new PhDs produced in traditional subfields, or the numbers produced, for example, with synthetic, computational, or measurement skills.

Just in case anyone (including myself) did not believe in a PhD glut, senior chemistry professors believe it now.

My goodness, we are in a big, big hole.

Missed the "Doctoral Glut" ACS webinar? Watch it here

I don't often suggest that you spend 60 minutes watching a video, but if you're interested in hearing what economists think about the existence of a doctoral glut in the sciences, you could do worse than Professor Richard Freeman and Professor Paula Stephan, both experts in the labor economics of science. Check it out. 

Podcast: "The Doctoral Glut", See Arr Oh and Chemjobber

Last Thursday, there was the ACS Webinar titled "Doctoral Glut Dilemma", with Professors Richard Freeman and Paula Stephan, discussing the issues surrounding Ph.D. chemists. This weekend, See Arr Oh and I talked about the webinar, and recorded it for a podcast, which is below:



[I should really thank See Arr Oh for really encouraging me to get this posted as soon as possible, and actually serving to make my weekend reasonably productive.]

Contents:
0:00-10:45: Intro, discussion of the "demand-side" problem with chemistry
10:45: Are young chemists just screwed?
13:00: Oh, how we hate the term "transferrable skills."
15:00: CJ's analogy of the job market as a gigantic DMV
17:45: Professor Freeman's "personalized medicine" terminology for distinguishing yourself in the job market, discussion of the "purple squirrel" problem
22:00: The importance of industrial internships in getting hired
23:45: When will the job market in chemistry get better? Try 3-4 years, says Prof. Freeman.
24:15: Prof. Stephan's strong suggestion that university departments report the job outcomes of graduates. (Link to my comments on the Tilghman report.)
31:00: Will lower-tier Ph.D. programs go away? Answer: No.
32:30: Taking alumni employment statistics with a pound of salt.
35:00: What about alternative careers?
38:35: Chemical entrepreneurship is the future!
41:00: Concluding thoughts

ACS Webinar on the doctoral glut: be glad you're not a biomedical scientist

credit: ACS Webinar

There was a lot that I could say about yesterday's ACS Webinar with Professors Richard Freeman and Paula Stephan, and hopefully I'll be saying more of it next week. But what I found fascinating about their presentation was this graph above. Stephan suggested that the issues with chemistry Ph.D.s is demand-related -- basically, as the manufacturing sector has slowed, the industrial demand for chemistry Ph.D.s has slowed as well, even as graduation of Ph.D.s has remained relatively flat. [Professor Freeman made the interesting point that he thinks that many, many more people should be doing masters degrees instead.]

[Is anyone else terribly amused by the comment in the ACS Webinar blog post where someone says that their hiring managers cannot find chemistry Ph.D.s to hire?]

As I said a long time ago, I had been warned away from the biomedical sciences, and that turquoise line up there is one of the reasons why. 

Washington Post: "U.S. pushes for more scientists, but the jobs aren’t there."

Brian Vastag has written a really fantastic article in the Washington Post about the troubles of scientists finding jobs. It's a really great article, and a wonderful opportunity to tell the wider world about #chemjobs issues. Mr. Vastag also talks about the relative glut of new PhDs, the postdoc trap and the troubles with Big Pharma. 

A few choice quotes:

“It’s been a bloodbath, it’s been awful,” said Kim Haas, who spent 20 years designing pharmaceuticals for drug giants Wyeth and Sanofi-Aventis and is in her early 50s. Haas lost her six-figure job at Sanofi-Aventis in New Jersey last year. She now works one or two days a week on contract at a Philadelphia university. She dips into savings to make ends meet. 

Until recently, PhD organic chemist Mark Darey fit that description. In 2009, he was laid off from Albany Molecular Research, a contractor for pharmaceutical companies, after 20 years in the business. As he applied for 400 chemistry jobs, he worked as a low-wage office temp — and so was not included in the unemployment figures. “It was quite scary,” said Darey, who this year finally landed another chemist position, at DuPont in Belle, W. Va. “I was watching my bank balance dwindle away, wondering when I’d have to sell the house.” 

...Like many scientists, [postdoc] Amaral grew disillusioned with the system that left her with an expensive degree but few job options. She left her lab in December after federal funding for her post-doc position ran out. She now works as an administrator at the University of Alabama-Birmingham and is in a “holding pattern,” unsure whether — or how — to advance a science career she spent more than a decade working toward. “I’ve listened to this stuff on the news about how we need more scientists and engineers,” she said. “I’m thinking, ‘What are you talking about?’ We’re here. We need something to do besides manual labor for another academic person.” 

Haas, the former drug company chemist, has even harsher words. She plans to “get out of Jersey and get out of science” when her daughter graduates from high school in two years. “She’s very good at everything, very smart,” Haas said of her daughter. “She loves chemistry, loves math. I tell her, ‘Don’t go into science.’ I’ve made that very clear to her.”

Some questions and thoughts:

Reality check: Does anyone dispute the facts that Mr. Vastag has laid out? Would anyone like to take the contrarian case that America Needs More Scientists Now? Or is that (as Unstable Isotope has put it), the trope for the laziest of pundits? 

Must budgets keep going up? Vastag writes the following:

The number of new PhDs in the medical and life sciences boomed, nearly doubling from 2003 to 2007, according to the NSF. But that boom is about to go bust, because an equal number of permanent jobs failed to follow. One big factor: Since 2004, federal research spending across all agencies has stagnated relative to inflation, according to an analysis by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Although the injection of $10 billion in federal stimulus funds to the NIH from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 “created or retained” 50,000 science jobs, according to the NIH, that money is running dry, putting those positions at risk. 

The lack of permanent jobs leaves many PhD scientists doing routine laboratory work in low-wage positions known as “post-docs,” or postdoctoral fellowships. Post-docs used to last a year or two, but now it’s not unusual to find scientists toiling away for six, seven, even 10 years.

Is Vastag's summary/formulation correct? Isn't it true, then, that the NIH/biomedical science complex must have ever-increasing budgets (or at least budgets that keep pace with inflation?). (CPI inflation is what -- 2-3% a year?) (Hey, if you've been a postdoc for more than 5 years, isn't that a sign that it's time to get out?) Outside of the Defense Department (a topic for another conversation), is there any part of the US discretionary budget that keeps pace with inflation? 

If you're in debt, R U DOIN IT RONG?: Vastag makes a couple of references to degrees being costly ("After earning her expensive doctorate...", "buried in debt)? Is this factually correct? I am under the perhaps-wrong impression that PhDs in the sciences are paid for (tuition + stipend) and student debt undertaken in graduate school is lifestyle, not education-oriented. Am I wrong?

Pyramid scheme?: Brian Vastag correctly consults Paula Stephan for comments on the economics of science:

Stephan, the Georgia State economist, calls the post-doc system a “pyramid scheme” that enriches — in prestige, scientific publications and federal grant dollars — a few senior scientists at the expense of a large pool of young, cheap ones.

Is it fair to term the postdoc system a pyramid scheme? Pyramid schemes are characterized by the flowing of money from the bottom to the top (and the requirement of exponentially more suckers at the bottom of the pyramid.) Is it more accurate to term the postdoc system a labor tournament, where the gains are split amongst a very small pool of winners (i.e. tenure-track positions, etc.) 

Kroll's uh-oh comment: From the article: 

Although the overall unemployment rate of chemists and other scientists is much lower than the national average, those figures mask an open secret: Many scientists work outside their chosen field.  

“They’ll be employed in something,” said Michael S. Teitelbaum, a senior adviser to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation who studies the scientific workforce. “But they go and do other things because they can’t find the position they spent their 20s preparing for.”

First of all, if true, is that the best use of their 20s? But better yet, David Kroll has a very, very good comment:

One thing missing from the article was a discussion of the so-called alternative career paths where one uses PhD training but not in an academic or industrial setting. Even a typical non-lab career of science writing is becoming extremely competitive, both for salaried positions and freelancers. 

I hesitate to say this without complete data but we may indeed be reaching a point where more PhDs are being produced than can be absorbed by both academia/industry and non-laboratory positions.

I think David's thoughts are mostly correct. The job market for college graduates is relatively fine; that said, I don't think science PhDs necessarily end up at the front of the line for entry-level positions in other fields. I'll also troll a little bit and say that David, a former academic, is probably way out in front of other academics, who might still hold fast to thoughts that their graduates and postdocs could get a non-science-related job anytime they wanted.

All in all, this is a great article, and I hope that its most prominent impact will be felt upon policymakers in the Washington area.

What are your thoughts on the questions that I have raised? What are your thoughts? (P.S. Over at the Washington Post article itself, there are a stonkering 3621 comments and it has degenerated into a mass elephant-v-donkey shouting match. I know that won't happen here.) 

Derek Lowe addresses Whitesides on #chemjobs

Over at In the Pipeline, Derek has taken up The Whitesides Question:

Prof. Whitesides is exaggerating to make a point. It's not like there's no organic synthesis being done in the U.S. A lot of the stuff that's moved to China (and India) is routine chemistry that's being outsourced because it's cheap (or has been cheap, anyway). As that changes, the costs go up, and we head towards a new equilibrium. It seems beyond doubt that there are fewer people doing industrial organic chemistry than there used to be in this country, but it's not like it's only found in China (or will be)... 

[snip] ...thinking about the larger economic and scientific context - is hard. The time it takes to get a degree means that the situation could well have changed by the time a person gets out of grad school, compared with the way things looked when they made the decision to go. But this has always been the case; that's life as we know it. People have to keep their eyes open and be intelligent and flexible, because there are potential dead ends everywhere. (emphases CJ's) As hard as that advice is to follow, though, I still think it's better than any sort of scheme to allocate/ration people among different fields of study. My bias against central planning isn't just philosophical; I don't see how it can possibly work, and it is very, very likely to make the situation even worse.

Regarding the China issue, I tend to agree that what is being done in Chinese or Indian companies tends towards the routine and inexpensive. I think I am echoing many US chemists' concerns when I note that the Chinese are smart and will use routine work to innovate, etc.

I'm also sympathetic to Derek's philosophical bias against central planning. However, isn't that the nature of NSF funding? Someone has to figure out who gets more money, whether it's the physical chemists, the analytical chemists or the organic chemists. NSF money equals PIs, grad students and postdocs, right? Reducing funding to organic chemistry seems to be one of only a few tools to prevent over-production. (I don't understand the issues (i.e. the allocation of funds within NSF's Division of Chemistry) well enough to comment intelligently on the repercussions, so this isn't an endorsement of the idea.)

As I said a long, long, long time ago, as an organic chemist, all I want to do is "carefully learn a trade and continue a tradition." It's difficult to keep that balanced in my head with being aware and intelligent and flexible, but I'll do what I can.

That NSF report: Who's hiring? Who's dodging?

More from that NSF workshop summary "Challenges in Chemistry Graduate Education." There were a number of companies represented on the panels, including ExxonMobil, Chevron Phillips, Merck, BMS and Corning. Who's hiring?:

Bill Beaulieu, manager of polyolefin catalyst and product development at Chevron Phillips Chemical Company, briefly described the company, which was formed from the chemical assets of Chevron and Phillips but exists independently. A lack of government funding for polyolefin production and catalysis has led to a dearth of students in that area. However, the production of shale gas will likely drive petrochemical development in the next one to two decades, which could rejuvenate the U.S. petrochemical business. 

In the last five years, Beaulieu has hired ten PhD chemists. “For me, that’s a lot.” Most new hires come through advertisements on the ACS website, which drew 140 applicants for a recent position. The company typically hires U.S. citizens or those with green cards.

So who's dodging questions about hiring?:

David Kronenthal, vice president of chemical development at Bristol-Myers Squibb, echoed many of the previous panelists in listing desirable characteristics for new hires... 

[snip] During the discussion period, Robert Bergman from the University of California, Berkeley, asked about the advantages and disadvantages of a tight job market. “I know it’s good for [industry] to have 100 people applying for one job,” he said. “It’s not so good for us.” In response, Kronenthal said that a broader set of skills helps give students the resources they need to be creative when fewer positions are available. (emphasis CJ's)

Perhaps I'm cynical (me, cynical?), but I see that as a classic dodge. When Professor Bergman asks about a tight job market, the BMS VP points the finger back at the professor, basically telling him that academia needs to give broader skills to their students. Niiiiiice!


(Who are #chemjobs heroes in academia? Ron Breslow, Mike Doyle, George Whitesides and now Bob Bergman for having #chemjobs issues come from the overwelling of their hearts. (OK, so that's a bit thick.)) 

David Plotz can do better

I like David Plotz a lot. I was a reader of Slate early on, and Plotz's series on the "Nobel Prize sperm bank" was really fascinating history.

But Slate's approach to changing American science education is really wrong-headed. Here's the most terrible line, as far as I'm concerned:

America needs Thomas Edisons and Craig Venters, but it really needs a lot more good scientists, more competent scientists, even more mediocre scientists.

As Derek might say, Gott in Himmel! Speaking of which, Dr. Lowe has written a very clear response; I can't really add anything to what he has to say. I also wanted to highlight See Arr Oh's parody. It really has the right tone:

America needs Thomas Kinkades and Andy Warhols, but it really needs a lot more good artists, more expressive artists, more mediocre artists, and more starving artists.

Exactly. Go over there and read, and enjoy.  

Gluts happen to other fields, too

From an astute reader, a terribly interesting article/story from public radio's Marketplace on a little bit of a looming issue for pharmacists:

Within the labor market, there's a lag effect as well. Industries and occupations that have job openings today might not have those same openings in a couple of years. 

Exhibit A for our purposes today is the professional pharmacist. Just five years ago, a pharmacy degree was a near guarantee of permanent and well-paid employment. So much so that a lot of universities started their own schools of pharmacy. In Tennessee, they went from one pharmacy school to half a dozen.  

Phil Johnston is the pharmacy dean at Belmont [University, in Nashville, TN]. He admits the agencies that oversee course work worried there might not be enough local drug stores and hospitals to support so many schools. Pharmacists have also been concerned that a glut of graduates may undercut their pay. [snip] 

...The pharmacy industry realizes it's hard for students like Deason to find jobs. The American Society of Health System Pharmacists recently authored a report. It's titled -- "Expansion of Pharmacy Education: Time for Reconsideration." Douglas Scheckelhoff is a vice president of the pharmacist group. [He said: When you almost double the number of graduates over the course of 8-10 years, over time that doubling of the graduates is going to have an impact."

Hey! That sounds pretty familiar!

[The comments are awesome, too; a person who seems to be a long-time health services person writes in to tell young graduates "hey, older pharmacists have had hard times, too" and "you don't have to work at a pharmacy if you have a pharmacy degree..." Hey, we've heard a version of that, too...]

Needed: a futures market for PhDs?

Taken at the Chicago Board of Trade.

One of the core #chemjobs problems is the difficulty in predicting economic conditions 4-5 years into the future; as I have said in the past, when I entered graduate school, being an organic chemist in the pharmaceutical industry seemed like a reasonable goal. When I graduated, I found a different market (or I was less good at ignoring the signals.)

There's another group of people who have a difficult time deciding whether or not they should undertake a lengthy endeavor: farmers. How do they hedge the risk of planting in April and not knowing the price of corn when they'll be delivering in October? Well, there's always the futures market.

How it works, thanks to a helpful explanation from the Kansas City Board of Trade:

A futures contract is just what it's called - a contract. It is not equity in a stock or commodity. It is a contract - a contract to make or take delivery of a product in the future, at a price set in the present. If you agree in April with your Aunt Sue that you will buy two pounds of tomatoes from her garden for $5, to be delivered to you when they're ripe in July, you and Sue just entered into a futures contract. [snip]

Professionals such as grain merchants, energy firms and portfolio managers use futures and options to reduce the risk to their business associated with volatile prices. For example, a flour miller might use a futures contract to set a price now for wheat that he knows he will need to purchase in the future, rather than face the chance that prices could be even higher when he buys the wheat. Similarly, a natural gas producer might use a futures contract to set a price now for gas he will sell in the future, locking in a profit rather than being exposed to the possibility of lower prices. These types of futures and options users are known as hedgers, and are in the market specifically to reduce risk.

One could imagine a futures contract made with employers after a graduate student's candidacy exam, i.e. 2-3 years ahead of graduation: the student agrees to take a position at a specific wage in the future, locking in a somewhat lower wage in exchange for some stability. The employer agrees to "take delivery" of the Ph.D. student, with a knowledge that they won't be subject to spikes in labor costs. If this were to happen on an exchange (anonymized, in some fashion), people could see what the going rate for future chemists were, and whether or not they should attempt to "plant" more chemists.

I doubt that employers would be interested in participating in this sort of system; I assume there will always be plenty of chemists for them to choose from. I'm sure there are other awful flaws in my thinking, and there's no guarantee that there won't be a warehouse full of shrink-wrapped pallets of postdocs down by the docks who are all owned by Goldman Sachs. But there's something to be said for getting some price discovery on a future in chemistry.

The Chamot Statement, or why this man should have won the ACS presidency

From this week's C&EN, an essay from Dr. Dennis Chamot, the former candidate for ACS president full of rather remarkable comments:

Nevertheless, a global manufacturing enterprise with increasing international competition is here to stay. Unfortunately for chemical professionals, it’s not just shop-floor manufacturing and assembly jobs that have moved from the U.S. to Asia and other areas; in recent years the movement has included upper-level, sophisticated work such as chemical research, drug discovery, process design and development, and various levels of management. In addition, domestic capabilities have increased enormously in developing countries such as China, India, and Brazil, as has their output of homegrown scientists and engineers. 

What does all of this say about employment opportunities for U.S. chemists? Well, we are probably producing too many chemists for the traditional academic and industrial research labor market, at least for the foreseeable future. To come to any other conclusion would be indulging in empty rhetoric. Note that I did not say we are producing too many graduates with chemistry degrees—more on that later—but we need to be realistic... 

[snip] Growth in the U.S. will not be fast enough to make up for all of the lost positions in the pharmaceutical and chemical industries over the past few years, in part because many of these losses have not been solely determined by economic decline. Rather, there have been strategic shifts to place work in other countries, and there is no reason to expect those decisions to be reversed. 

The keys for many chemical professionals will have to be imagination and flexibility. I am a firm believer in the need for all citizens in modern technological societies to have a strong grounding in science and math, so I would never discourage anyone from pursuing a chemistry degree. What one thinks about doing with that background, though, should include much more than just scientific research. Chemists develop lots of skills, and those skills can be applied in medicine, high school teaching, forensics, science writing, legislative work, policy analysis, quality assurance, regulatory support, and more—much more than just R&D in universities or industry.

This is a groundbreaking comment for a member of the Board of Directors of the American Chemical Society to make; Dr. Chamot is to be praised and thanked for being willing to state such unpopular and unpleasant facts. I don't really have anything to add to it (other than a sense of skepticism at the alternative careers pathway).

While we can argue about the speed at which ACS and C&EN have approached the #chemjobs issue, it is becoming increasingly clear to me that many people are coming around to the same set of facts and all that remains (all!) is to discuss what is to be done about it. That's a start.

I don't think that's quite right, Comrade Physioprof

In response to a discussion at DrugMonkey on the Ph.D. glut problem, Comrade Physioprof has a less-than-convincing response:

“Overproduction of PhDs” is a demonstrably false claim: 

http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm 

The unemployment rate for PhDs in 2011 was 2.5%, and the median weekly earnings were $1551 (> $80,000 per year). This is much greater than any other level of educational attainment other than professional degrees (law, medicine, etc). There is only “overproduction of PhDs” if you assume that PhDs are only being produced to become faculty members who go on to train additional PhDs. 

If there was “overproduction of PhDs”, then PhDs wouldn’t be making so much more money than almost anyone else. And considering that in the natural sciences, you get your PhD for free–and even get paid while doing so–it is an excellent deal. [snip] 

...The fact that many institutions are cutting back their production of PhDs for fiscal reasons is far from salutary, and in the long run is going to severely harm the competitiveness of the US economy as compared to other advanced and developing economies whose politics aren’t grossly distorted by deranged racist misogynist white jeezus-freak lunatics.

MikeTheMadBiologist rightly responds that medical scientist (entry-level degree: Ph.D.) supply is growing, but their median earnings are not (from 2000-2011.)

In my other wanderings on the internet, it seems that Comrade Physioprof's response is a fairly common response from those who are academically connected: the college wage premium continues to justify going to college. But as the financial industry likes to remind me when I'm signing checks over for my Roth IRA, past performance is not indicative of future results. CPP is pointing to all employed Ph.D.s and attempting to use those numbers to argue about the most recent cohorts.

Overproduction is best indicated by salary trends and not by single data points; I am unmoved by Comrade Physioprof's reasoning.

(In case people are wondering -- what are the salary trends for chemists? From Bethany Halford's invaluable article in 2011 C&EN, "Doctoral Dilemma":

To get a sense of demand, Swift suggests looking at chemists’ wages over a decade or so to see whether they’ve kept pace with inflation. Such an examination, however, gives mixed results. From 1998 to 2009, the inflation-adjusted salaries for industry- and government-employed Ph.D. chemists went up 12% and 19%, respectively. On the other hand, salaries of academic chemists dipped about 1% over the same period. Doing the same exercise for starting salaries of Ph.D. chemists “may be more sensitive to changes in demand for chemists as well as supply,” Swift notes. Those data indicate that inflation-adjusted starting salaries for Ph.D.s are down by about 1%, data that Swift says “are suggestive of oversupply in some sectors.”

Well, that's certainly not good news.)