Texas Bill Nukes Tenure

[aprof]

I came across this article https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4309283/ a couple of weeks ago. A trio of engineers looks at PhD production in engineering, but also cites work for many other subjects.

Their method is to estimate R₀, the reproduction rate of PhD's, taken form biology. [We do spread like the plague!:-)].
The results for engineering, including Computer Science are astounding! R₀ is 7.2 or 7.4. That is to say in a high growth area like Computer Science each professor is producing 7.4 additional PhD computer scientists each year.

This article is very superficial and uses a model that a few undergraduates could cook up in a week.  I don't know anything about this journal or authors but I am not impressed.

Also, as pointed out above, your numbers are off by about a factor of 30.  That's 7.4 additional PhDs per career, not per year, which frankly is not very much considering the expanding need for skilled workers in many technologically advanced industries over a 30 year career.  And of course, that is the analysis that this article completely ignores - the number of PhDs going into academia is completely irrelevant if one doesn't also consider the number hired into industry.  The authors of the cited article fail to make any case that PhDs in engineering are overproduced.  The only effort they make toward this case cites articles discussing the oversupply of PhDs in the biological sciences (where there does seem to be based on observations of the long postdocs and low job placements of many graduates).

I get the sense, dismalist, that you come from a field where there is little alternative to the academic track.  In my field, that this situation is completely inverted.  I have sat on ~30 PhD committees and the number of students within that group that were primarily seeking permanent academic positions after graduation could be counted one hand. It's anecdotal, sure, and there is also some bias due to the subset of students who come to our program, but a 10-20% placement rate for graduating PhDs into academia as suggested by the cited article seems right on target.  At least in the current job market, competition in industry is fierce. Fresh MS grads make more than starting assistant professors. Companies join our academic consortia or fund small research projects more for access to the student pipeline as for the research itself.

Finally, it's obvious from the charts in this recent NSF report that the US doesn't produce nearly enough domestic STEM workers for its own needs and desperately gap-fills with immigrants, especially for those with advanced degrees: https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb20221/u-s-and-global-stem-education-and-labor-force#the-stem-labor-market-and-the-economy

It's a bit off topic so I'll stop here, but if the pipeline of doctoral students coming to the US for educational and work opportunities were to ever dry up for political or economic reasons, US industry, universities and laboratories would have a very serious problem. 

[jimbogumbo]

It's a bit off topic so I'll stop here, but if the pipeline of doctoral students coming to the US for educational and work opportunities were to ever dry up for political or economic reasons, US industry, universities and laboratories would have a very serious problem.

I'd argue that the above has already occurred to some extent. Or have the Trump era restrictions and COVID decrease already been recovered?

I'd also argue that it is on topic. If the STEM doctoral pipeline decreases it will make it even harder for UT and A&M (as well as U of FL and FSU) to hire the candidates they need to maintain their research levels.

[dismalist]

I came across this article https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4309283/ a couple of weeks ago. A trio of engineers looks at PhD production in engineering, but also cites work for many other subjects.

Their method is to estimate R₀, the reproduction rate of PhD's, taken form biology. [We do spread like the plague!:-)].
The results for engineering, including Computer Science are astounding! R₀ is 7.2 or 7.4. That is to say in a high growth area like Computer Science each professor is producing 7.4 additional PhD computer scientists each year.

This article is very superficial and uses a model that a few undergraduates could cook up in a week.  I don't know anything about this journal or authors but I am not impressed.

Also, as pointed out above, your numbers are off by about a factor of 30.  That's 7.4 additional PhDs per career, not per year, which frankly is not very much considering the expanding need for skilled workers in many technologically advanced industries over a 30 year career.  And of course, that is the analysis that this article completely ignores - the number of PhDs going into academia is completely irrelevant if one doesn't also consider the number hired into industry.  The authors of the cited article fail to make any case that PhDs in engineering are overproduced.  The only effort they make toward this case cites articles discussing the oversupply of PhDs in the biological sciences (where there does seem to be based on observations of the long postdocs and low job placements of many graduates).

I get the sense, dismalist, that you come from a field where there is little alternative to the academic track.  In my field, that this situation is completely inverted.  I have sat on ~30 PhD committees and the number of students within that group that were primarily seeking permanent academic positions after graduation could be counted one hand. It's anecdotal, sure, and there is also some bias due to the subset of students who come to our program, but a 10-20% placement rate for graduating PhDs into academia as suggested by the cited article seems right on target.  At least in the current job market, competition in industry is fierce. Fresh MS grads make more than starting assistant professors. Companies join our academic consortia or fund small research projects more for access to the student pipeline as for the research itself.

Finally, it's obvious from the charts in this recent NSF report that the US doesn't produce nearly enough domestic STEM workers for its own needs and desperately gap-fills with immigrants, especially for those with advanced degrees: https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb20221/u-s-and-global-stem-education-and-labor-force#the-stem-labor-market-and-the-economy

It's a bit off topic so I'll stop here, but if the pipeline of doctoral students coming to the US for educational and work opportunities were to ever dry up for political or economic reasons, US industry, universities and laboratories would have a very serious problem.

Oh, aprof, give these guys a break. They are mere engineers!

What they've done is find a vast supply of people qualified for academic positions greater than the demand for tenured faculty. They have not looked at the determinants of overall demand for PhD's at all. For the wider point, there is no need to. Supply of people exceeds demand for qualified people at current remuneration. Some of that excess would like the academic life-style and will be fine researchers in non-tenured posts.

This would not be true if current tenure and TT choices were perfect. Given the multi-dimensional character of choice for academics, they cannot possibly be. It would also not be true if good people put so much weight on tenure that only non-good people are left over. Given the numbers, neither can possibly be true.

I have to frequently repeat myself, but

"...only by varied iteration can alien conceptions be forced on reluctant minds."
--Herbert Spencer, The Data of Ethics, 1879

[quasihumanist]

The question is: in the fields where there is so much industry research going on that industry actually hires lots of PhDs - is there actually any need for academic research?

Does Texas actually benefit all that much from having good researchers at their universities?  Just give enough tax incentives for R&D oriented companies to stay in (or move to) Austin.  Let the top researchers in the universities leave for industry, and let the doctoral programs go down in quality.  Does that actually hurt the state?

Skilled workers are pretty mobile anyway.  Why pay to train them?  Just let someone else subsidize their training and poach them when they're trained.

And quality doesn't matter that much anyway; as long as they look qualified from a smell test a crappy engineer is just as good as a good one - technology and engineering companies succeed or fail based on the marketing, not the engineering.

Remember - we're the rare ones who actually care about knowledge and such.  In the real world, everyone is trying to be Elizabeth Holmes, except a little less blatantly so that they'll be dead before getting caught.  And if you're Elizabeth Holmes, you don't want the best engineers because they're more likely to rat you out.

[onthefringe]

The question is: in the fields where there is so much industry research going on that industry actually hires lots of PhDs - is there actually any need for academic research?

Yes! The reason we know so much about the cellular pathways that are dysregulated in cancer is because of academic research on fruitfly development. The reason we have Crispr is because of academic research on weird genomic repeats in bacteria. Academic research into black holes gave us WiFi. Academic research gave us PCR diagnostics and mRNA vaccines.

Industry by its nature is uninterested in doing the foundational research that might pay off 20 or 30 years down the line.

[Wahoo Redux]

The question is: in the fields where there is so much industry research going on that industry actually hires lots of PhDs - is there actually any need for academic research?

Yes! The reason we know so much about the cellular pathways that are dysregulated in cancer is because of academic research on fruitfly development. The reason we have Crispr is because of academic research on weird genomic repeats in bacteria. Academic research into black holes gave us WiFi. Academic research gave us PCR diagnostics and mRNA vaccines.

Industry by its nature is uninterested in doing the foundational research that might pay off 20 or 30 years down the line.

My father, God bless him, eventually succumbed to cancer, but he was given initially another ten years because of a procedure developed by the U of Wisconsin-Madison.  Never been on the campus, but it is one of my favorite colleges now.  When the cancer metastasized in his brain, the tumors were obliterated by cancer research----I don't think these were developed by that bastard Big Pharma.   

[quasihumanist]

The question is: in the fields where there is so much industry research going on that industry actually hires lots of PhDs - is there actually any need for academic research?

Yes! The reason we know so much about the cellular pathways that are dysregulated in cancer is because of academic research on fruitfly development. The reason we have Crispr is because of academic research on weird genomic repeats in bacteria. Academic research into black holes gave us WiFi. Academic research gave us PCR diagnostics and mRNA vaccines.

Industry by its nature is uninterested in doing the foundational research that might pay off 20 or 30 years down the line.

Let me clarify the question.

Does Texas benefit from having universities doing the academic research?

Its residents get the benefit of the cancer research whether it pays for it or not.

[dismalist]

Childrens, childrens, university research and commercial research have a different comparative advantage. Onthefringe is correct.

Think polio:

Commercial research got us an iron lung, which paid off the research. University research got us vaccinations, which paid off the research a gazillion times.

The question at issue is whether some researchers able in commercial research would also be able in university research, and willing to trade money for lifestyle. There are so many, that I must say yes.

The original question is whether Texas publics can weather the non-tenure storm. I've claimed yes all along.

Quasihumanist asks a much more fundamental question, and his answer is largely right. The research cost was shared by Texas through federal taxation, but even if not, the Salk vaccine, when invented, was available to anybody in the world at marginal cost.

So, if it's not about Texas publics, and not about Texas, it's all taken care of already.

No worries.

[quasihumanist]

No worries.

Well, not in the short run.

In the longer run, everyone become a free rider and a fraudster, willingly or forced to by competition.  Then everything falls apart, everyone blames everyone else, and the nukes go flying.

There's a reason we haven't heard from any other civilizations in the universe.

[dismalist]

No worries.

Well, not in the short run.

In the longer run, everyone become a free rider and a fraudster, willingly or forced to by competition.  Then everything falls apart, everyone blames everyone else, and the nukes go flying.

There's a reason we haven't heard from any other civilizations in the universe.

To your deep point, we do have federal funding, and other rich nations all do their own funding of university research.

So long as some countries support university research, they will continue. I pay some, I get some. Only poor countries are free riders, but they could hardly contribute anyway.

Nothing to worry about.

[mleok]

Having been to one of the Crystal Ball workshops for one of the branches of the military a few months ago, the Federal government is very worried about our ability to continue producing STEM PhDs over the next few decades in sufficient numbers to compete.

Sure, Texas can attempt to piggyback on the top-notch research happening in other states willing to invest in research, but if so, why bother having "research" universities or universities for that matter, just poach graduates educated elsewhere instead.

[onthefringe]

The question is: in the fields where there is so much industry research going on that industry actually hires lots of PhDs - is there actually any need for academic research?

Yes! The reason we know so much about the cellular pathways that are dysregulated in cancer is because of academic research on fruitfly development. The reason we have Crispr is because of academic research on weird genomic repeats in bacteria. Academic research into black holes gave us WiFi. Academic research gave us PCR diagnostics and mRNA vaccines.

Industry by its nature is uninterested in doing the foundational research that might pay off 20 or 30 years down the line.

Let me clarify the question.

Does Texas benefit from having universities doing the academic research?

Its residents get the benefit of the cancer research whether it pays for it or not.

Except that the academic health centers in Texas will start to suck and the top line cancer treatments will only be available to those with the ability to travel out of state for their treatment.

And on a broader societal level, the more places there are with excellent people doing foundational/basic research, the higher the chance that something somewhere will pay off. If individual states start gaming the system by coasting on the fact that right this minute they can staff their universities without tenure, it has downstream negative effects on everyone a couple decades down the line.

[ciao_yall]

Having been to one of the Crystal Ball workshops for one of the branches of the military a few months ago, the Federal government is very worried about our ability to continue producing STEM PhDs over the next few decades in sufficient numbers to compete.

Sure, Texas can attempt to piggyback on the top-notch research happening in other states willing to invest in research, but if so, why bother having "research" universities or universities for that matter, just poach graduates educated elsewhere instead.

Sounds like the US industrial strategy. Stop investing taxpayer dollars in colleges and universities! Just offer H1-B visas out the wazoo to India and China.

[mleok]

Having been to one of the Crystal Ball workshops for one of the branches of the military a few months ago, the Federal government is very worried about our ability to continue producing STEM PhDs over the next few decades in sufficient numbers to compete.

Sure, Texas can attempt to piggyback on the top-notch research happening in other states willing to invest in research, but if so, why bother having "research" universities or universities for that matter, just poach graduates educated elsewhere instead.

Sounds like the US industrial strategy. Stop investing taxpayer dollars in colleges and universities! Just offer H1-B visas out the wazoo to India and China.

Yes, except that the China pipeline is drying up, many more Chinese graduate students are going back to China.

[mleok]

The question is: in the fields where there is so much industry research going on that industry actually hires lots of PhDs - is there actually any need for academic research?

Yes! The reason we know so much about the cellular pathways that are dysregulated in cancer is because of academic research on fruitfly development. The reason we have Crispr is because of academic research on weird genomic repeats in bacteria. Academic research into black holes gave us WiFi. Academic research gave us PCR diagnostics and mRNA vaccines.

Industry by its nature is uninterested in doing the foundational research that might pay off 20 or 30 years down the line.

Let me clarify the question.

Does Texas benefit from having universities doing the academic research?

Its residents get the benefit of the cancer research whether it pays for it or not.

Except that the academic health centers in Texas will start to suck and the top line cancer treatments will only be available to those with the ability to travel out of state for their treatment.

And on a broader societal level, the more places there are with excellent people doing foundational/basic research, the higher the chance that something somewhere will pay off. If individual states start gaming the system by coasting on the fact that right this minute they can staff their universities without tenure, it has downstream negative effects on everyone a couple decades down the line.

Investment in research universities pays off in droves in terms of quality of life, as an important driver of economic growth locally, and as a mechanism for attracting talent into the state. But, let's honest, even if Texas was not leveling these attacks on tenure, it has already become a far less attractive place to be for knowledge workers because of the social policies that Texas has adopted in recent years. This might well be the nail in the coffin, but Texas is throwing away any hope it ever had of usurping California's crown as the driver of innovation in the United States.