Running science as a Ponzi scheme
Are we recruiting too many students to graduate programs in science? Despite the lack of academic positions for independent scientists, there is a case for training more students – and training them better
Ponzi schemes are typically scams that involve the recruitment of investors, who initially receive high returns for their investments and recruit other investors – until this pyramid collapses, and those at the bottom end up losing all their money. Meanwhile, those at the top of the pyramid disappear with the "earnings". Does this bear any similarity to the pyramidal systems that exist in the sciences at academic institutes and universities?
At universities across the globe, there are principal investigators or professors who run research labs. To carry out their ideas, they need to recruit students who are able to carry out the experiments and test the validity of their hypotheses. But will these students, at the lower rungs of the totem pole, eventually turn into professors? Or will their investments be wasted treadmilling in a career leading nowhere?
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The problem, as I see it, is the misrepresentation of students' career options to them. Or more accurately, the general failure to inform students (as well as post-doctoral fellows) of their career options and train them for a wide variety of scientific careers, including the many opportunities that exist outside academia. It is also necessary to unequivocally explain the possibilities (statistically or specifically) that a student has to obtain an independent academic research position.
I am well aware that economic considerations play a major role in career decisions. Medical students in the US bank on income from future practice to cover their heavy student loans. The notion of viewing education and career training as a literal – rather than metaphoric – investment has become so well entrenched in American culture that parents aspire to send their children to expensive private universities not necessarily because they will receive a better education or training, but because tables show that they will earn more when they land their first job.
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