American Society of Microbiology: got a project? get grad students

Via friend of the blog Curt Fischer on Twitter, this interesting op-ed in the New York Times: 

...In 2016, the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicted we needed 12,000 new clinical laboratory professionals each year to meet rising demand. That includes clinical microbiologists, highly trained scientists with Ph.D.s or medical degrees. But just an estimated 5,000 laboratory professionals enter the work force annually. Clinical microbiology laboratories today have more than 10 percent vacancies, and the pandemic has only compounded the shortfall. (Luckily, we’re not in short supply of the kinds of microbiologists who look into the basic biology of the virus, develop drugs to kill it or are working on a vaccine.) 

To rapidly scale-up testing we propose a biomedical version of the National Guard, a rapid response force of microbiologists and other scientists who could help reinforce the health care system during pandemics. This would let hospital laboratories serve as the backbone for medical diagnoses in a pandemic. These laboratories are critical, because an estimated 70 percent of medical decisions are based on diagnostic tests....

Who does the leadership of the American Society for Microbiology think they should recruit?

...We have an overflow of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows currently training in microbiology and it would require us to recruit about 4 percent of them. That would mean roughly 300 scientists could deploy to hospitals or from remote support centers, with board-certified clinical microbiologists supervising them. Of course, we know clinical microbiologists do not appear out of thin air. They require long, expensive training. Yet many of these students and fellows would welcome the chance to join this part-time project for additional practical training and stipend support...

I find it rather appalling to take students (that there is "an overflow of") to recruit for a side project. The right thing to do is to tell these students to get the heck out of the field!

(Let's be honest, some kind of reserve for scientists makes sense, but it isn't clear to me that you need some kind of governmental program to make this happen?, i.e. it seems to be happening now anyway?) 

"We offer competitive salary based on qualifications."

Via friends on Twitter, this perplexing ad:

Organic Synthetic Chemist with PhD Degree
Sun Innovations Inc - Fremont, CA 94539  

$50,000 - $60,000 a year 

A Silicon Valley high-tech company has an opening for a Material Chemist with the following qualifications:

1. Advanced (e.g. Ph.D.) degree on Organic Chemistry or Material Chemistry, with good synthesis training and skills
2. Some R&D or product development experience on synthesizing organic and organometallic molecules or materials;
3. Familiar with the various organic synthesis methods and processes, experts in using and keeping/running chemistry lab and tools.
4. Knowledge of fluorescent materials and dyes, familiar with relationship of molecular structure and optic properties of molecules
5. Good communication skill, both verbal and writing;
6. Energetic, highly motivated and independent in conducting R&D
7. 2-3 relevant references

We are developing advanced optical materials and devices for the display technologies of the future. We offer a very pleasant and excited small working environment along with the opportunity to be exposed to cutting edge science and technologies. We also offer the potential of significant career growth as a leader in a high tech company, as well as great entrepreneur experience in developing and commercializing advanced technologies in Silicon Valley. 

We offers excellent benefits, including medical insurance, paid holidays and vacations, retirement saving with company matching. We offer competitive salary based on qualifications. 

Job Type: Full-time
Salary: $50,000.00 to $60,000.00 /year

That's... not very much money for the Bay Area.  

Weekend discussion: STEM shortage mythbusting at NPR

From the inbox, something we can all agree on from author Andrew Hacker on NPR:

NPR Ed: What about the need for more people with STEM skills? 

Well, we certainly need people who know how to do coding. When it comes to engineers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we're producing all the engineers we need. The skills shortage is a myth. The chief shortage is getting people who will work for low wages. That's why companies in California want to bring people in on H-1B visas who will live eight in a room and do coding for a small amount above minimum wage.

Couldn't have said it better myself. His book is called "The Math Myth: And Other STEM Delusions."; curious if readers agree that we should be teaching "numeracy, not mathematics":

NPR Ed: How do you define numeracy? 

Andrew Hacker: Being agile with numbers. Regarding numbers as a second language. Reading a corporate report or a federal budget. This is not rocket science—it's easy to do. Kids become numerate up through 5th or 6th grade. 

And what is the difference between numeracy and mathematics? 

There's a firm line between arithmetic and mathematics. When we talk of quantitative skills, 97 percent of that is arithmetic. Mathematics is what starts in middle school or high school, with geometry, algebra, trigonometry, precalculus and calculus.

I, for one, hope my children become proficient at both, but I recognize there's an argument for teaching broad things that most people (not just a few) can get. 

"How much did you make in your last position?"

I had been meaning to blog about this Wall Street Journal article*, but the ever-productive H1b skeptic Norm Matloff beat me to it. The article (by Lauren Weber) is quite a sad one: 

After more than 20 years as an electronics engineer, Pete Edwards reached the low six-figure pay level. Now, as he looks for a job following a layoff, he finds that salary success a burden. 

Although his experience includes the sought-after field of 3-D printing, the 53-year-old hasn’t been able to land a permanent full-time job. Time and again, he says, employers seem to lose interest after he answers a question that they ask early on: “What was your last salary?” 

That question comes up sooner than ever nowadays. Hiring managers used to broach salary history or requirements only in later stages, after applicants had a chance to make an impression and state their case. 

Today, pay increasingly is mentioned early in the process, either as a required field in online applications—which are used more often—or during initial interviews, say recruiters, compensation consultants and job seekers. 

The shift is vexing applicants, mostly those of a certain age and pay level, who are concerned that a salary they worked to attain now gets in the way of having a job at all. “I’m unemployable now as a result of getting to the top of the tree,” Mr. Edwards lamented....

Until people like this man are hired, you'll have a difficult time convincing me there's a STEM worker shortage.

(And like we've talked about many times before on this blog, the question "what was your last salary" is an invitation for a non-answer or a lie from HR. I wish they knew that.)

Having problems with the WSJ paywall? Search on Google for the title of the article ("High Salaries Haunt Some Job Hunters") and it will give you temporary access.

A couple of pieces on the "skills gap"

A good piece from the Los Angeles Times' Michael Hiltzik: 

Alice Tornquist, a Washington lobbyist for the high-tech firm Qualcomm, took the stage at a recent Qualcomm-underwritten conference to remind her audience that companies like hers face a dire shortage of university graduates in engineering. The urgent remedy she advocated was to raise the cap on visas for foreign-born engineers. 

"Although our industry and other high-tech industries have grown exponentially," Tornquist said, "our immigration system has failed to keep pace." The nation's outdated limits and "convoluted green-card process," she said, had left firms like hers "hampered in hiring the talent that they need."

What Tornquist didn't mention was that Qualcomm may then have had more engineers than it needed: Only a few weeks after her June 2 talk, the San Diego company announced that it would cut its workforce, of whom two-thirds are engineers, by 15%, or nearly 5,000 people. 

The mismatch between Qualcomm's plea to import more high-tech workers and its efforts to downsize its existing payroll hints at the phoniness of the high-tech sector's persistent claim of a "shortage" of U.S. graduates in the "STEM" disciplines — science, technology, engineering and mathematics....

Actions speak louder than words.

Also, an interesting piece from the Boston Globe's David Scharfenberg on the "skills gap":

But critics insist there is a superficiality to those surveys. Ask any chief executive if he has trouble finding workers, and he will say yes. 

MIT labor economist Paul Osterman and then-doctoral candidate Andrew Weaver conducted a more detailed survey of manufacturers in 2012 and 2013 and found most were seeking basic skills: reading a simple manual, adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing. And while a substantial minority, 38 percent, sought more advanced math skills for their core manufacturing jobs, most cited disciplines offered at a decent high school — algebra, geometry, trigonometry. 

Weaver noted that employers, for the most part, are simply not demanding the high-level talents that the skills gap rhetoric would suggest. And policy makers err, he said, when they argue workers are falling behind. “The standard story that you hear a lot is ‘American workers just aren’t prepared for the 21st century . . . [they] just haven’t gotten the memo that they need to get a bunch more education,’ ” he said. The reality, he added, is that workers are, by and large, developing the skills they need to fill the available jobs. 

And when Osterman and Weaver asked managers the proof-in-the-pudding question — do you have any long-term vacancies? — more than three-quarters said no. 

Back at his humming Oxford factory, Kenneth Mandile reported no long-term vacancies of his own when the Globe visited. And after a lengthy chat in a small conference room off the factory floor, it was clear his story did not quite match the skills gap narrative. His difficulty finding workers who can operate the firm’s Swiss screw machines is not the result of some broad, new mismatch between 21st-century jobs and the skills of the workforce. It is, instead, a niche problem that goes back decades. 

These days, Mandile says, his chief concern is not technical skills; he can teach those in-house. It’s finding workers with a good attitude and a good work ethic. The problem, he suggests, is not mechanical, it’s cultural. And that may be harder to fix. 

I hadn't heard of the Osterman/Weaver study; I'll have to look it up. Good stuff, more soon.  

There Are Not Too Many Astronauts

A few weeks ago, a Future of Research symposium was held in Boston - this is a gathering of graduate students and postdocs who are concerned about scientific workforce issues. They had Boston University's Greg Petsko as a speaker; a good choice, I think, because Professor Petsko has been very prominent talking about postdoc issues.

A good summary of his current position is that graduate school in the sciences is great job training for other fields, but that the number of postdocs should be sharply limited. Here's how he presented it at the recent conference:

There Are Not Too Many Graduate Students

• We are not training too many graduate students in STEM subjects. A Ph.D. in the sciences is superb training for dozens of different fields, including journalism, public policy, law, business and consulting, many (perhaps most) of which do not require postdoctoral research training. 

Suffice it to say that I found this statement rather surprising. @kmcld99 on Twitter pointed out:

Ridiculous. Astronauts have tons of transferable skills; doesn't mean we need to train more astronauts.

So, thanks to @kmcld99, I now present my version of Professor Petsko's slide. I plan to apply for astronaut selection myself - I hear it's a growth field.

The world has a skills gap, apparently

My weekly Google alert for "skills gap" 

Clearly we need to begin heavily recruiting skilled extraterrestrials from Mars to deal with our worldwide skills gap. 

Morning tidbit: 538 on why STEM is TE

Ben Casselman, an economics writer for 538, Nate Silver's data website, has written "an economic guide to picking a college major". Here's a rather lovely paragraph:

All STEM fields aren’t the same 

Politicians love to tout the importance of science, technology, engineering and math majors. But when it comes to earnings, the “S” majors don’t really belong with the “TEM” ones. Engineering majors are nearly all high-paying. So are most computer and math majors, and math-heavy sciences like astrophysics.³ But many sciences, particularly the life sciences, pay below the overall median for recent college graduates. Students who major in neuroscience, meteorology, biology and ecology all stand to make $35,000 or less — and that’s if they can get a full-time job, which many can’t. Zoology ranks as one of the lowest-paying majors of any category, with a median full-time wage of $26,000 a year. 

3. There are a few exceptions to this. A few technology-related majors, such as “communications technologies” and “computer networking and telecommunications” are relatively low-paying. But these are mostly lower-level, technically oriented majors. 

His data set comes from the New York Federal Reserve. Here's what they had to say about chemistry:

Interesting data, more later. Read the whole thing. 

Why STEM is TE: inflation-adjusted wages edition

Many of you have read Michael Teitelbaum's article about the lack of a STEM shortage. I've actually purchased and mostly read his book, "Falling Behind?" Naturally, I enjoyed it, but I found it a bit weak in spots. Here's a link to a YouTube video of an Economic Policy Institute colloquy between Dr. Teitelbaum and number of prominent scholars about the book and science/technology workforces issues in general, including a very interesting critique of the book by Jonathan Rothwell, a research associate at Brookings.

My impression of Dr. Rothwell is not particularly positive; I found him irritating in the debate between himself, Salzman, Atkinson and Hira that I've posted on before. But I enjoyed listening to his portion of the colloquy, especially once I turned off the ARRRRGH part of my brain and just considered his data. Most of his data comes from US government datasets. I don't agree with many of his conclusions, but it is important to engage with the best of your opponent's data. 

Anyway, I found this graph by Dr. Rothwell particularly demonstrative of the difference in real (i.e. inflation-adjusted) wages over the years between people working in certain sectors of the computer industry (in this case "computer software developers") and chemists and biological scientists. It's apparent (to me, anyway) that when people say that STEM workers make good salaries with strong wage growth, they just mean TE. 

Why STEM is TE: post-secondary education requirements edition

From the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, a fascinating microcosm of the STEM problem: 

Casale said during the recession, the education level expected by Minnesota employers rose and as the state bounced back, degree requirements fell. In June, the state had the 10th-lowest unemployment rate in the nation. 

Still, there are remaining factors that determine a higher degree’s level of success — especially its area of focus. In the fourth quarter of last year, 80 percent of responding computer and mathematical employers in Minnesota required post-secondary education and 92 percent required at least one year of previous experience, according to the Job Vacancy Survey.
That contrasts with life, physical and social sciences, where about 95 percent of employers required post-secondary education and just over 80 percent of them required previous experience. 

In the survey, the department asks employers twice a year for the lowest level of degree that would qualify someone to fill their positions. Casale said the job market for biological science graduates isn’t as strong as it is for those who go into engineering and chemistry. 

Dani Mae Janssen, a mechanical engineering doctoral candidate, said she hopes to leave the University [of Minnesota -- CJ's note] next spring and pursue work as an academic or do research, potentially around Minneapolis. 

She said she doesn’t think employers consider people with less than a master’s degree for open positions in her field. But she said she lacks the internships that other students have and that employers have come to expect. 

For now, the only way the University tracks its graduate students after they leave is through their chosen program, said Belinda Cheung, assistant vice provost of the University’s Graduate School, and definitive numbers for given departments and degrees aren’t easy to locate.

Longtime readers of this blog will note that computer science positions want less education and experience than life, physical and social sciences, which is either evidence that 1) they're willing to train their people more or 2) they have reasonable job growth in their field.

Also, I think it's fascinating that the University of Minnesota and its programs are basically willing to admit that it doesn't know really what happens to its graduates after they leave the university. It's almost as if LinkedIn (and Google and the telephone and perhaps the United States Postal Service) doesn't exist. Ah, well.