Scientific and Technical Communication: Theory, Practice and Policy | Restructuring Demand for Scientific Expertise, Part 1

Introduction

What is America's stake in American science? How do we measure it? And how do we convince employers, the general public, and Congress itself that science is valuable, not just for the products it offers, but for the possibilities it engenders? Along with curiosity-driven research, applied problems, as Robert Sproull used to tell his Ph.D. students, "deserve our respect." Both types of research require a strong scientific infrastructure, sustained funding from a variety of sources, and a steady supply of new talent. If the vagaries of supply and demand are to be replaced with strong and certain career pathways for science trained professionals, we will have to explore new ways of restructuring demand. In this chapter we begin that exploration in a way that is more suggestive than comprehensive. We are optimistic because, contrary to much current opinion, we believe not only that scientific skills will be increasingly vital in the years ahead, but that there is a reservoir of good will for science that has yet to be tapped. Restructuring demand for scientific expertise will draw on that reservoir and all of our skills.

The Federal Role

The federal government is partly responsible for the supply of scientists. Why shouldn't it be partly responsible for the demand? Since Sputnik production of new scientists has been supported with federal R&D funding (a proxy for private sector demand). From 1959 to 1971, according to the Office of Technology Assessment, this support resulted in a boom in doctoral production. 1 In fact, until the Apollo program was scaled back in 1967, increasing federal support of academic R&D (by 20 percent annually in constant dollars) swelled the number of graduate students on federal fellowships and traineeships. Ph.D. awards declined only after fellowships were cut back in 1969, despite high undergraduate enrollments. The point to stress is this: a federally-induced market for researchers drove Ph.D. production, not private sector demand or changing demographics.

The boom subsided-as they all must-when the demand for more R&D and a supporting infrastructure (faculty expansion and university development) had been met. As OTA reported it,

[By the mid-1970s] social and political priorities shifted away from cold-war-inspired science .... by 1974, the proportion of graduate students relying on federal support had dropped from 40% (the 1969 peak) to 25%. Engineering and physical science were the most affected. Fellowships and traineeships dropped 90% from 13,600 in 1969 to 1,500 in 1975, and at NASA, DOD, and the Atomic Energy Commission [a forerunner of DOE] research funds dropped 45% ill real terms. 2

The demand spiral reversed itself again in the late 1970s and early 1980s when computer, semiconductor, and energy markets surged. Engineering was the main beneficiary in university enrollments, while overall the number of graduate students with federal support continued to decline. 3

This historical vignette suggests that the federal role has been to target research problems and protect scientists by insulating them from short-term market forces. Yet, despite these important contributions, the federal government is damned at every turn: if it rescues declining fields through graduate student support, it is accused of mindlessly investing in a supply which will overwhelm demand. If, on the other hand, it responds too vigorously to market signals in new fields, it can amplify the shortsightedness of employers and rob science of a well-distributed (by discipline) base of new graduates. And if it does nothing in fields in which the U.S. appears to be losing its lead, it is accused of undermining economic competitiveness.

We believe there are ways of revising government mechanisms to restructure demand. If federally-supported graduate research assistants and postdocs could be made more independent of their sponsors (as John Armstrong, Truman Schwartz, and others believe they should; see chapter 5), they could pursue productive lines of inquiry on their own and perhaps become immediately employable upon graduation. Fellowships are one way of shifting control of graduate studies to students; traineeships vest such control in institutions. Both types of support could be invigorated. as was recommended by several of the industrial recruiters we queried.

Typically, federal support for graduate students is filtered through an array of research programs, irrespective of how these programs enhance the employment prospects of those being trained- Whole areas of research continue to exist while new areas grow up around them. As a result, young scientists (as we have seen in their responses to the current job market) are unprepared for the fickleness of opportunity and the possibility that their training may be mismatched to future funding. Knowing future funding priorities would be, of course, the best way to predict demand. Harry Wasserman, an organic chemist at Yale University, thinks future demand will be stimulated not by ''finding new sources of money to support scientists," but "by finding new science for scientists to do," such as "green chemistry (preventative environmentalism), which applies chemicals at the catalytic instead of at the stoichiometric levels to reduce toxic waste, cascade reactions, and so on. 4

Another government mechanism for maintaining science and scientists has been the national labs. Historically, the "Big Five" were heavily involved in weapons-related research, but others made significant nonmilitary contributions to basic science by supporting large-scale instrumentation that universities could not afford. With the end of the cold war, the pressure is on to recalculate the value of all the labs in terms of the economy. Some of their supporters are eager to redefine their missions in terms of dual-use technologies, innovations purported to fulfill defense and civilian needs simultaneously. 5 But another approach is to view the labs as a reservoir (albeit an expensive one) of talent and experience. 6 Even if we are justified in asking the federal government to help sustain or restructure demand for scientists, can we link the national labs to the long-term health of science and technology? And do the labs represent the best use of captive talent at current budget levels? Absent pressing military priorities, the national labs could be considered a long-term labor support system. But who will decide whether this is worth doing and how many scientists are "enough?" At a time when the nation's twenty-seven national laboratories and federal research facilities are coming under review, the question is timely.

The Role of the Private Sector

What is the role of commerce and industry in matching scientific expertise to jobs? A slew of legislative and executive initiatives encourage corporate collaboration with public and private universities, national laboratories, and state government. But truth be told, incentives such as the Stevenson-Wydler Technology Innovation Act of 1980 (reauthorized more than once) to confer tax credits for private investment in R&D have never had much impact. Either the federal government is considered too unreliable a partner (tax credits may not remain in force from one session of Congress to another), or corporations don't want to risk their R&D portfolios by collaborating with outsiders. A third reason may be that the take advantage, as permitted by the Congress, is calculated only on increases in research expenditures not on the actual cost of maintaining research.

Many aspects of market demand for scientific personnel were touched on in the proceedings of a symposium held in Washington, D.C. in July, 1992. 7 Industry operates within a new set of constraints, participants were told. Set in a global marketplace that is stratified by sector, companies must increasingly rely on multidisciplinary solutions to science based problems. In addition, finite resources require technological organizations to stay within well-planned objectives over longer time frames. Within those constraints, however, the demand for technically-trained personnel who can do multiple tasks and learn others quickly is growing. When companies fail to locate the "complete package" in any one professional ("gold-collar workers," as Curt Mathews of Rohm and Haas calls them), they will rate new applicants on intellectual agility, versatility, and receptivity to new tasks. But how can such multiple skills be introduced into graduate education? Perhaps industry--university collaboration can be justified as much as a training incubator as way of producing knowledge.

Alternate Careers in the Private Sector

There was a flurry of excitement in 1993-94 when a small number of Ph.D. physicists found their way to Wall Street. Their ability to understand "derivatives" in the market (derivatives are highly leveraged instruments whose value is linked to the performance of other assets) made them a "hot item" and generated a Time magazine cover story), at least for a while. More relevant is the quieter story of physicists who went into the venture capital industry over the past two decades. Rather than on Wall Street, they were more likely to be found on the San Francisco peninsula or in Boston with companies like Advanced Technology Ventures. The derivatives story not withstanding, the possibility that scientists can be valued, indeed prized, for their unique competencies underscores their (and our) interest in increasing the demand for their expertise in other sectors of the economy.

But who will train these scientists for business? Since few companies are eager to retrain, 8 it is all the more important that today's young scientists figure out what industry wants. This means, says John Armstrong, they have to study the industry in general, the would-be employer in depth, and make a convincing case that their skills and background will fit in and enhance the company's efforts. 9 Scientists aren't used to selling themselves in this fashion and business isn't set up to employ science-trained professionals in other arenas. 10 So, there is much to be learned on both sides.

Another arena for more immediate hiring of science-trained professionals in the private sector is manufacturing technology. The stagnation of American industry, wrote Robert Reich in 1983, ten years before he became secretary of labor, was the result of "the management era," when business school graduates, trained in marketing, management, and finance but with no particular technical background, were running American business. 11 If science and engineering converge in the future, as Lewis M. Branscomb predicts, 12 then scientists exposed to the technical problems industries face might provide an attractive new engineering-management cadre.

It is tempting to jump on the "quality management" bandwagon and say, as Reich implies, that American business and industry would be better off with fewer lawyers, financial specialists, and traditional managers, and more science-trained professionals. Bandwagon or not, we agree. An untapped pool can bring new inspiration to business. But, the science community cannot simply wait for future employers to come knocking. To capitalize on demand, it needs to prepare both itself and the next generation of scientists for work in alternate careers. In addition to urging large corporations to support in-house laboratories, academic science should try to demonstrate to private enterprise how useful science graduates can be in business roles away from the bench. This is where restructured supply-a repackaging, if you will-meets restructured demand.

The Self-Employed Scientist

Some science-trained professionals are making it as entrepreneurs. But in response to our questions about alternative futures, few scientists-even those who are unemployed-listed self-employment as an option. In other professions a period of self-employment, as a lawyer in private practice or an educator in consulting, for example, can help a person survive down times or career disruptions. Two things militate against self-employment for scientists: the need for laboratory facilities and the stimulation of a peer group. These might be mitigated by startup loans and by access to computer networks and bulletin boards. But another barrier lies in attitudes and perceptions. Except for the senior scientist who builds an off-site business to develop some spill-over technology from research, part-time or self-generated employment tends not to be valued in science. According to recent surveys, more and more Americans are finding their way into self-employment. While many of these would-be entrepreneurs will not make it financially and will eagerly accept employee status when jobs become available, their periods outside of a salary paying organization will not necessarily be blots on their records. Until and unless the science community recognizes this kind of self-employment as legitimate and valuable, scientists in transition will have little option but to leave the field.

Academic Science: Placement and Matching Systems

If, as the American Physical Society reports, 800 U.S. or green-card holding Ph.D.'s in physics were graduated annually in the past few years, and if there were 800 positions for Ph.D. physicists available per year in those years, then the problem of unemployment in physics may not have been one of oversupply, but rather a problem of matching people (and their subspecialties) to jobs. In a nation as vast as ours, with only ad hoc systems (essentially no system) to locate jobs for people or people for jobs, it is not surprising that 200 or more applicants respond to any advertised academic position, and that 199 must be turned down.

In the "bad old days," as women and minorities are quick to remind us, placement of science professionals was too often done informally by students' mentors in conversations with friends and colleagues With the advent of equal opportunity hiring, however, there is now pressure to advertise job openings and the requirement that search committees at least appear to have diverse applicant pools. What has replaced the bad effects of the old system, if we are to believe anecdotal accounts from our respondents and conversations with search committees, is application-overkill thanks to word processing. The vast numbers of applicants per job (more in academe than in industry) are accounted for by the ease with which applicants can tailor and reproduce their resumes. Sometimes applicants do not even go to the trouble of finding out much about the jobs for which they are applying or whether they are even marginally qualified.

What would it take to establish a placement clearinghouse for scientists across disciplines and subfields? Each of the professional associations does this to some extent, and the American Chemical Society, with its dual labor market (academic and industrial), may be the most conscientious. But for the young scientist who cannot afford to travel to meetings (the ACS does waive fees for unemployed members), publications and computer networking may have ~o suffice. Why not, then, a national matching and placement system similar to that used to assign medical residencies? Medical schools and the hospitals to which they send their graduates as residents have worked out a complicated matching system in which each graduating senior lists five residencies in rank order of preference. Looking over the applicants, the hospital programs select five of the group in their preference order. Then, in a monstrous one-day number-crunching, matching is done. This is most likely too draconian a model for the science community (bear in mind the medical residency "match" is only for one or two years), but something like it might be explored for filling postdoctoral openings.

Certainly some shift in responsibility for placement to graduate faculties is called for. Otherwise, what incentive (apart from kindness) is there for faculty members to try to explore alternate careers for students and work to increase their versatility? Harley A. Thronson, Jr., chairing the Bahcall Committee of the Astronomy and Astrophysics Society, recently concluded that for fifteen years there had been an overproduction of astronomers of 2 to 3 percent annually. Thronson's remedy was that the ''fate of a department's past graduates, rather than the training of new ones, become a factor in evaluating grant proposals from any of its faculty members." 13 What's interesting about the idea is that astronomy departments (as well as individual mentors) would be motivated to pay attention to the placement of their graduates, for continued funding would depend on success. Thronson happened upon a truth noted by many of our respondents: graduate professors may be inclined only to place their best students in postdoctoral positions as a way of propagating their own work. There is no collective obligation for the mentor or the department as a whole to place its graduates in jobs.

Giving graduate faculties more responsibility for placement may require training. How much do professors know about the job market? About alternative occupations for the scientists they train? How much do students know about these subjects? What kind and how much training would it take to make a young scientist more skilled at defining problems independently, even across disciplines?

Teaching Postdocs

In addition to conventional postdoctoral appointments, teaching postdocs might profitably occupy (if only temporarily) pedagogically oriented scientists. With an oversupply of Ph.D. scientists and an oversupply of instructors at large state universities (particularly in lower-division physics and chemistry courses, one- to three-year teaching apprenticeships might be a worthy program for NSF or other federal agencies to support. Two models have been tried with some success. Since 1988 the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation has been supporting about ten doctoral scientists per year as teaching postdocs at undergraduate colleges. In each instance the postdoc is teamed with a scholar who directs, inspires, and supervises the new instructor. The fellow benefits from an opportunity to try both teaching and research in a college setting. The mentor benefits from the assistance of a research-oriented Ph.D. who would not normally be available at the college. The cost to the foundation is $50,000 for two years of work, and an additional research start-up grant at the end if the recipient decides to pursue a career in college teaching. 14

In a similar program, a science education consortia used part of its Pew Charitable Trust funding in the late 1980s to match up postdocs with participating institutions. Faculty of these institutions were relieved of one-half of their course loads in exchange for training and supervising a teaching postdoc. One Ph.D. who took advantage of this opportunity, geologist David Smith, is now running a teaching learning center at LaSalle University in Philadelphia-a fitting and unconventional career step he was emboldened to take because of his teaching postdoc at Colorado College. A teaching postdoc" need not be a formal arrangement. While chairman of physics at the University of Chicago, Hellmut Fritzsche reduced the department's use of first- and second-year graduate students as teaching assistants by using postdocs and older graduate students instead. The benefits were mutual: the grad students and research associates gained valuable teaching experience; students had more mature instructors in class. 15

There's always the risk, Smith and others say, that teaching postdocs may never find their way back to research. But the desperate need for dynamic science instructors. especially in state universities, is reason to consider expansion of the Dreyfus and Pew models with other sources of funding.

Survival During Voluntary and Involuntary Career Interruptions

We cannot conclude a survey of career prospects in science without making a plea for the scientist whose career is interrupted either by family responsibilities (voluntary) or by years' long inability to get a permanent job (involuntary). Geologist Cathy Manduca is a case in point. Manduca holds a Ph.D. in geology from Caltech. Her current "underemployment,' as she likes to call it, is the result of a combination of family responsibilities (two small children) and geographical limitations. Manduca is faced with three challenges: first, how to function as a scientist-that is, to continue to do research-during a period of underemployment; second, how eventually to reenter the job market with a viable curriculum vitae after even a temporary disruption. 'Finally," she writes, "it has been important to maintain my self-esteem. And this has been the hardest to do." 16

To maintain herself as a scientist, Manduca negotiated a position as a continuing research associate at a nearby college that allowed her to write proposals for funding, provided office space, and included access to a research library and some laboratory equipment. She also arranged to do research in laboratories out of state by being in residence for short stints, and at a local business. To stay in contact with the scientific community (and to hear about other research opportunities), she has continued to go to scientific meetings even though she is unable to give papers with her previous frequency.

What is making all this possible, why Manduca is surviving professionally where others in her situation would not, is that her spouse has helped pay for child care, Manduca's trips to meetings and laboratories, and office maintenance costs. To assist others, Manduca suggests establishment of a support program to make it easier for part-time scientists to maintain membership in the professional community for two-to five-year periods. At the very least, productive scientists wishing to return to research after a voluntary or involuntary interruption ought to be eligible for start-up support.

How much would it take to extend placement services to the part-time scientist? To inform local business and industry when someone with a particular kind of training moves into a region? To accommodate scientists in transition on site or during extended working visits at the national Labs? At university-industry consortia? It is tempting to dismiss proposals like these as just more entitlement programs at a time when scientists ought to be cutting back on supply, not maintaining it. But the cost of un- or underemployment in science is heavy, both to society which loses trained people and to individuals attempting to keep up in rapidly changing fields.

One attractive feature of programs to help sustain un- and underemployed scientists would be the availability of trained professionals for short assignments. Scientists in transition could be made available to industry, perhaps through a registry, as itinerant experts" who would bring specialized knowledge into new venues and bridge scientific disciplines. While such consultants are not uncommon at the most senior levels of academe and industry, they are relatively rare at the middle or lower levels where they may be more needed.

Career disruption is difficult professionally, financially, and psychologically, even when it is temporary. The possibility that a temporary disruption might result in a permanent derailment of a career makes the situation even more traumatic. When a scientist loses contact, momentum and confidence may vanish. A support plan would not only assist individuals to stay in science but would also permit the nation to salvage its investment in their training. To do less is to discourage not just the current generation from science, but future generations as well.

Restructuring Demand for Scientific Expertise
Part 1

Tobias, Chubin, and Aylesworth

Book Contents

Restructuring Demand for Scientific Expertise: Part 1

Restructuring Demand for Scientific Expertise Part 1

Tobias, Chubin, and Aylesworth

Book Contents

Restructuring Demand for Scientific Expertise: Part 1

Restructuring Demand for Scientific Expertise
Part 1