The fact that people decide to work in industry / government isn’t an indicator that there’s a surplus of candidates wanting to do academic research. The fact that we’ve had to import more and more talent in STEM fields during the last few decades indicates that there aren’t enough US citizens wanting to do academic research.
The best and brightest are selling out.
Sure, but you seem to imply that the long process of grad school and post-doc with poor pay is because of a shortage of academic positions.
That’s not true.
Even those whose first priority is to go to industry/government research jobs still have to go through that long process. That “long process” does not result from a shortage of academic positions. That “long process” results from the training required to do high end research. Just like it still requires about 6 years of post-undergrad training to do high-end medical treatments.
The fact that a lot of people spend so much time working at low-paid post-doc positions is the indicator.
DB2
Agreed.
I’m just one data point, but…
I was in a PhD physics program. I was an “ABD” when I quit. The primary reason was that I got a close look at the “chase funding” and “publish or perish” side of things, and decided that wasn’t for me. So I wimped-out with the “ABD”, and took an industry job. It took a few years before I found my niche -failure analysis-, but after that I was trying to solve puzzles. I would have liked more to be pushing the frontiers of knowledge, but I realized that lead scientists do a lot more funding-chasing than science. I would have HATED that.
I knew guys in the grad dorm getting business degrees, and all they could talk about was how much they could make later. The money was attractive, but the “work” [cough] was entirely unappealing. As you said, shuffling money around without actually producing anything, or discovering anything. If there’s a hell, that would be included.
As true as it is in part, that is still a generalization.
This admin wants the private sector to fund R&D. That entails raising corporate taxes eventually.
The private sector dominates R&D spending – over 70% in the US – and that includes a third of basic science R&D.
DB2
Yep and we all know how poor the private sector truly is. Not cash poor. Drugs are tested on a shoe string.