AAS Public Policy Blog

Over at Science Progress, Beryl Lieff Benderly argues that it’s a lack of good paying jobs that is keeping young people away from scientific careers.

Across the United States, therefore, professors are bemoaning the choice by many of their brightest undergraduates to eschew science graduate study in favor of medical, law, or business school. These students don’t reject science because they’re bad at math, but because they’re good at it. Anyone bright enough to get a science PhD is bright enough to run the numbers showing that an average of seven years of graduate school, followed by five or more postdoc years, followed by long odds against getting the job one was ostensibly preparing for, add up to a lousy investment.

and

The tiny minority who do land research-based faculty jobs have spent so much time “training” that, in biomedical science, for example, they average 42 years of age when they finally launch their independent research careers by winning their first competitive federal grant.[8] At that age, scientists of previous generations—Albert Einstein, Marshall Nirenberg, Thomas Cech—were collecting Nobel Prizes for discoveries made in their 20s.

Her solution? The government should fund fewer postdocs and grad students and more permanent staff scientists positions that pay reasonably well and have benefits. The entire article is well worth a read.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said the the war supplemental funding bill will come up before the Senate next Wednesday. From the Politico:

“We know there is enough money to fund the troops for a considerable period after the Memorial Day recess,” Reid said. “We want to get [the bill] done. And we’ll do our best to get that done, but we’re not going to be pushed into doing something we don’t think is appropriate.”

Meanwhile, the White House has been threatening to veto bills that add additional domestic spending.

Meanwhile, White House budget director Jim Nussle weighed in Thursday with renewed veto threats against rival House and Senate Iraq funding bills, saying the add-ons for veterans and an extension of unemployment benefits were unacceptable. “To just pile them into the troop funding bill because the troop funding bill is necessary is a cynical process that the president has already been very clear about — the fact that he would veto,” Nussle told The Associated Press.

Additionally, certain “blue dog” Democrats are also opposing additional spending in the supplemental, if it’s not paid for with tax increases or other cuts.

In this environment, hoped-for science funding in the supplemental is not looking particularly likely. We’ll see what happens when the bills make it to the floor in the coming week.