Posted on 08/22/2004 12:02:47 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Is it? What if American graduate schools stopped over-producing PhDs, which they can do because more than half the engineering and math PhDs awarded in the US are given to foreign nationals? Then more Americans might go into graduate schools in science, math and engineering. Right now, a typical starting salary for a PhD in math in academia is in the 40s. That's pretty small money for that level of expertise. New business prof salaries are in the 60s or 70s. Salaries in math are that small only because there are too many PhDs on the market in that discipline.
Despite the feminist fantasies, it is mostly boys who pursue these science and engineering degrees.
For the last decade or so, close to 30% of the new PhDs in math in the US have been awarded to women. My own discipline in mathematics, wavelet analysis (an important new area in applied math), was revolutionized by a woman, Prof. Ingrid Daubechies of Princeton University.
Outsourcing. Why assume a crushing debt to get a degree in a field in which you will probably never get a job?
I'm not saying it's smart to give up, but I don't know what I'd tell a kid to major in these days. I'm glad I'm not facing that decision. It's the toughest call that it's ever been. It used to be a slam dunk that if you were any good at science and wanted to work in it that you should at least look into it. Now it's not at all clear.
In computer science - my field - a lot of graduate students are foreign, yes. I don't know a single one who plans to "go home" when he's done. Most of them aren't getting financial support, either. Their tuition helps pay for my assistantship.
So when we're done, I'll be competing with "foreigners", yes; but foreigners who have been in this country for years and are largely acclimated, who want to work for the same wage, not less. And apparently there's no lack of jobs for CS Ph.Ds - I understand the starting salary right now is around $90,000 - that's not an indicator of an overfed market.
It's a fallacy that you have to go into debt to get an advanced degree in the sciences. I don't know any American student in my department (at a graduate level) who's paying tuition. Most of us have assistantships that pay a stipend. I'm in CS, but I understand it's the same way for many of the science fields.
Of course, if you want a Ph.D in, say, English Literature, be prepared to pay through the nose. When they take away my stipend, then I'll think that maybe we don't have a demand for Ph.Ds any more.
I'm just relaying anecdotal evidence, and it's only for one field, but I'm sure it's true for CS because I just spent a year looking at various universities with graduate programs. Pretty much all of them are the same way.
Also - the recent downturn in the economy, particularly in the tech sector, is good for creating American Ph.Ds. When the economy's really hot and you can get a good job right out of college, why go to grad school? But when it's not great, you might as well get your MS or Ph.D. So there were probably more applicants two years ago than there will be next year, which means more advanced degrees are in the pipeline right now.
Don't tell me anecdotal evidence about individuals. It is a fact of Nature that the outliers on the intelligence bell curve are overwhelmingly male. Our outliers on the high end are being systematically suppressed. This has consequences, and will have more consequences as time goes on.
The whole purpose of the article, of course, is about stem cell research.
Cash-and-Kerry thinks he invented science. Bush caveman. Bush no fund science. Ug. Make people pay for own science. Ug.
offshoring of tech jobs is causing this. who wants to go to college for an engineering degree, to compete with $30K per year workers in India and China. You need to look no further then this, to find out why this is happening.
All of my engineer friends with children - are piling their kids into law school.
no way are there large numbers of CS PHd entry level jobs at $90K floating around out there. you are dreaming. its becoming a niche market in the US, the top graduates from the top schools like MIT may be getting those jobs - but few others are.
True -- one of the bright spots in science. But starting academic salaries in most bio and chem is similiar to math, in the 40s. Another hot area is bioinformatics, and more generally, statistics.
It is not a fact of nature that the outliers are overwhelmingly male. Without ego I may say that as a holder of a mathematics PhD I am an outlier on the bell curve -- and so are all the other recent PhDs in math, 29% of whom are female.
And I don't buy the claim that male outliers are being suppressed: the number of Americans getting PhDs in math has fluctuated in the 400 - 600 range per year for decades, 70-75% male throughout.
A: When you state that outliers are overwhelmingly male, she comes back with, "That's not true. I am one of almost 30% who are female."
Do you know how many Ph.Ds in computer science are granted each year? The last statistic I saw was, around 800. A good percentage of those go into teaching. The supply is lower than the demand.
Hence, the Space Shuttle and "Who gets to ride next? The Pakistani? The First Hispanic is space? The first Israeli?" going nowhere, doing nothing, costing trillions, lab experiments in low orbit that would embarrass a sophomore in a high school science fair.
The only good space science has happened "under the radar" at jpl, and has never rec'd the funding or attn it deserved, if space exploration was what we wanted. But we still got a lot of exploring and science for the little we spent there.
If the emphasis had been different in the late seventies...who knows? We might have made it to Mars (with human footprints) by now.
Didn't know this Pres has a science advisor. What was the context of his remark?
Is 70% overwhelming? It might be so in a political election, but among mathematicians or bass players it might not.
I think it's fair to suggest that until about 25 years ago, mathematics was considered to be a male game. Girls were often told they didn't need four years of math in high school (which of course shuts off most scientific research as a career option). Non-traditional (read: older) students of mine have told me this happened to them. By now, in the early 21st century, cultural and legal barriers to women in mathematics and related fields have dropped away. Whether the percentage of PhDs given to women in mathematics (or related fields) evens up to 50% over time is hard to tell. But it's already up to 29%; I wouldn't call 71% male "overwhelming". I am willing to grant you that men are more visual/spatial/logical than women, but I don't think the difference is that great. It might be that eventually 60% of PhDs in math happen to go to men, or maybe 65%. But there are plenty of women in this biz, and many of them are very good.
When I was in college (late 70s) there was a big poster on the wall in the math department: Great Men of Mathematics. (This was produced by IBM if memory serves.) It was detailed and fascinating. And it is true that nearly all the great mathematicians on this poster were male. One of the several females on the poster was Emmy Noether. (Noether was a primary architect of modern abstract algebra; the importance of her work cannot be overstated.) The poster described her as "fat, rough and loud", and her German colleagues referred to her as "Der Noether" (employing the masculine article). On the other hand, in an earlier post, I mentioned Ingrid Daubechies. I've met her, she's rather feminine in her personal presentation.
I can't help mentioning, but years ago, I saw a presentation by Sheila Tobias, author and popularizer of the notion of math anxiety, especially pertaining to girls. I was bemused by her consistent mispronunciation of the name Noether as "No-ther" (the correct pronunciation is more like "Ner-ter").
By the way, in case you're wondering about megatherium, this giant ground sloth is the proud owner of a Y chromosome.
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