Well, it's hardly irrelevent or misleading to people who are interested in pursuing terminal degrees in those disciplines.
Which, by the way, fuel the "T" in STEM; without basic research (the incremental or quirky sort) there is little scientific innovation to become technology.
I think that one component of this discussion not yet mentioned-- and perhaps largely invisible to most people, both in and out of the STEM occupations is that there has been a shift over the past 30 years in how research is funded.
Yes, government granting has always funded, and continues to fund, what it sees as "basic" (as opposed to 'applied') research. The understanding being that 'applied' research has generally got commercial applications which are obvious (at least to the people who are making decisions it should be) and will have commercial/financial incentives to drive them. So there was, up until the late 1990's, a gentleman's agreement of sorts that understood that there was this firewall between the academy and the military/govt. and private industry. Most people in science stayed (for their careers) on one side or the other-- and this is still mostly true, at least in those classic "lab" (ha ha... how quaint, by the way) disciplines.
The problem here is exactly the same one driving very high rates of unemployment in recent college grads. Companies have shifted costs away from themselves to such a degree that they are not INTERESTED in doing "science" research anymore. Only development of already-fairly mature science. They don't want "unskilled" workers, and they don't want "immature" scientific/technological ideas, either. Both cost too much in up-front spending and don't pay off immediately, or predictably in the short term.
Where does that science come from, though?
Oh, well, there is no longer much funding for THAT. Because in the academy, there is no longer so much funding for it, either. And it's not just in one discipline or field. This is speaking across molecular biology, pharm/tox, analytical instrumentation, materials development, and the like, with which my DH and I have personal, relevent experience. My DH and I have both seen this evolution happen, since we were in the right places (and disciplines) at the right times.
Pharmaceutical companies have got very little in the pipeline for antibiotic resistance or vaccine technology improvements. Frighteningly little, in fact. Why? Because it doesn't pay off right away. Why pay for that when someone else WILL? Oh-- well, surely there are ideas coming out in publications from the Academy that will allow for cherry-picking of new ideas, right? (Well, for a while, anyway... this was the idea behind the academic push toward "technology transfer" initiatives in the past ten years, too, by the way. It was about MONEY; more specifically what made the quickest bucks.)
Corporate ways of forcing profit leveraging into how science is conducted are at the bottom of at least some of this. It's a 'next quarter' or 'this biennium' outlook in an area that requires MUCH more long-range thinking.
We do need more people in science. But, um, we aren't going to actually have jobs for them, since it doesn't "pay" to do science. Even though we need it. Er-- or will when the well runs dry for Tech in about ten to twenty years.
JMO, of course-- but one shared by a fair number of other terminally-degreed scientists that I know. Are we just bitter? Oh, I don't think so. We're by and large a group of HG+ people. We're concerned as much for the future as we are for our own hides.
Last edited by HowlerKarma; 07/09/12 11:48 AM. Reason: clarification and typos
