gypsy faculty
ric...@my-deja.com
elementary school teachers at
http://insidedenver.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_108711,00.html
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Arthur Sowers
On 13 Mar 2001 ric...@my-deja.com wrote:
> Another article on about the 50% of college faculty who make less than
> elementary school teachers at
> http://insidedenver.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_108711,00.html
rick303, Thanks for bringing this URL to our attention. Its not really
very new news, but its another report which is consistent with what I've
been seeing and hearing about regarding the bleak future for those
thinking about faculty careers.
I read the whole article, and yes, half or more are part timers,
most (but not all) making very poor wages. I also noticed a sentence or
two about computer teaching being paid at only a little higher than the
non-science faculty where you would expect lower pay anyway.
And, didn't you love that part about the 10 foot by 40 foot closet used by
a whole bunch of the adjuncts as office space!
How come Josh Halpern, with his reference to the NSF survey showing
$70-80K/year average salary is so quiet when it comes to "data" like you
pointed out.
Arthur E. Sowers, PhD
-----------------------------------------
| Science career information website: |
| http://www.magpage.com/~arthures |
-----------------------------------------
Derek Oliver
Arthur Sowers wrote:
> I actually downloaded the .pdf file that Derek posted here a few days ago
> on physics PhDs
narrow field - high energy physics. The full citation is
European Journal of Physics vol 22 (2001) pp139-148
> They used the term "student" in both sentences, but I thought they meant,
> throughout the article, that they were talking about all of their people
> as those with PhDs and where they ended up.
The article clearly distinguishes betwem those who were PhD
students and those who weren't (see section 2 p 142 under
figure 4) and points out later (p143) that for people 6
years post-CERN the "unknowns" (which included but are not
necessarily restricted to unemployed) were 5.2% over all,
and 2.9% of all PhD students (total of theses was 339, see
p142 as well).
The bit you colossaly misquoted in your post:
>"...not a single student is without a job."
is from p143, and in context reads:
"The only noticeable difference between the data collected
in 1996 and the update of 2000 is
that the market for high-energy physics students seems to
have exploded. In 1996 we had 4.8%
of the students without a job (see table 3). These were
concentrated in a time window of 18
months from the date of the survey. The remarkable
observation for the survey of the beginning
of 2000 is that not a single student is without a job."
In summary, 1996 subset of data: 4.8% unemployed; 2000
subset: 0% unemployed
> I saw zero information regarding the career outcomes,
The survey actually points out that this is a difficult
quantity to measure - that apart from the first career
destination, it is very hard to maintain comprehensive data.
Let's face it, CERN is a particle physics collaboration, not
a recruitment/placement agency. They place is (hopefully)
funded to push back the barriers of knowledge, not piss
around counting beans.
As to the remainder of the list (snipped) no, the study
didn't look at all those things, it didn't set out to
becuase I don't think they had the resources or the
historical data. They took what they had, presented it, and
thank goodness they didn't waste everyone's time pretending
to discuss things their data couldn't do. I'd suggest that's
bordering on responsible writing.
> In all of the ten pages, I did not see even a single reference to another
> article, paper, or other source of cited or citeable information regarding
> career outcomes or career subjects.
That would have been because the article restricted itself
to the matter it wished to discuss, the career paths of the
550 or so students involved at CERN since 1982. Furthermore,
the analysis presented was quite minimal - i.e. the data
were left pretty raw, and thus no further references were
necessary for the commentary made. One of the pluses of this
article is that it sticks to the limits of the data - for
example, the frank acknowlegment on
> There was no list at the end other than participating institutions.
whose alumni are the data points used in the survey.
Let's also start comparing apples with apples - all apart
from the last part of the article that was posted by
ric...@my-deja.com was tlaking about humanities - where
salaries are routinely abysmal. Just quoting the one bit of
science stuff from that article:
{begin quote}
[Colorado School of] Mines still uses adjuncts, however, but
the pay is significantly higher than at other state
institutions.
For Matt Young, being an adjunct is a dream job for a
"frustrated college professor." A trained physicist, Young
retired from the National Institute of Standards and
Technology in Boulder in 1999. He's now teaching a design
course. He gets retirement and health benefits. And he makes
the equivalent of two-thirds of a full-time professor's
salary, which is $89,306 per year.
"In return for my getting paid less, I don't have to do
anything but teach," Young said. "I can come in three days a
week. I can spend the rest of my time writing books or
whatever I choose to do."
{endquote}
Let's get something straight here - the physics adjunct is
earning about US$60k and has benefits. That's not the worst
data point I've heard about - and in fact goes to the heart
of something we need to understand very, very clearly. That
despite the insecurity of these positions, they pay damn
better than many in the humanities, and there tends to be
more of them.
Next time, you might choose to read the article....
Derek
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dr. Derek R. Oliver - SPM Group
Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering,
University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada
jhalpern
ric...@my-deja.com wrote:
Another article on about the 50% of college faculty who make less than
elementary school teachers at
http://insidedenver.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_108711,00.html
Much less. OTOH, this is not a single issue.
The percentage of adjuncts at community colleges is huge, most of the
faculty. This accounts for many of the adjuncts. IMHO community
colleges
function as a bridge between college and high school, but given the
teaching load and the often remedial function they serve, instructors
should be treated as secondary school teachers. Let me note in
passing that private high schools often exploit their teachers more.
There are adjuncts who are retired, or actually working in industry
and
government and teach as a service. We probably want to retain
that
portion.
Some adjunct positions are courtesy appointments when you have a
graduate student working in a government or industrial lab.
Many universities (especially urban ones) run large night colleges.
These
tend to have heavy adjunt representation.
I think before I went off the deep end I would like to know what
the breakdown of adjunct types was.
josh halpern
jhalpern
> On 13 Mar 2001 ric...@my-deja.com wrote:
>
> > Another article on about the 50% of college faculty who make less than
> > elementary school teachers at
> > http://insidedenver.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_108711,00.html
>
> rick303, Thanks for bringing this URL to our attention. Its not really
> very new news, but its another report which is consistent with what I've
> been seeing and hearing about regarding the bleak future for those
> thinking about faculty careers.
>
> I read the whole article, and yes, half or more are part timers,
> most (but not all) making very poor wages. I also noticed a sentence or
> two about computer teaching being paid at only a little higher than the
> non-science faculty where you would expect lower pay anyway.
>
> And, didn't you love that part about the 10 foot by 40 foot closet used by
> a whole bunch of the adjuncts as office space!
Gee Art, you never wandered over to the English Department. This is
and has always been an endemic problem.
> How come Josh Halpern, with his reference to the NSF survey showing
> $70-80K/year average salary is so quiet when it comes to "data" like you
> pointed out.
Let's see. This was posted at 7 AM. You replied at 5PM. You then
criticize me for not posting earlier. Some of us have day jobs. However,
as long as we are at it, the salary data also came from the Bureau of
the Census and the US Statistical Atlas, and is pretty well accepted by
EricWeinstein whose article you cite admiringly today.
"These salary data show that real PhD-level pay began to rise after 1982,
moving from $52,000 to $64,000 in 1987 (measured in 1984 dollars). "
You appear not to also have noted that most of the adjuncts are not in
science and engineering although many are in mathematics.
josh halpern
ric...@my-deja.com
>How come Josh Halpern, with his reference to the NSF survey showing
>$70-80K/year average salary is so quiet when it comes to "data" like you
>pointed out.
That could very well be true if the study only included
full-time tenure-track jobs.
Many universities have these jobs filled with older people who would
be at the high end of the salary scale.
Even so, that is a low salary compared to the equivlent experience
in industry, unless those are mostly 9-month jobs.
ric...@my-deja.com
>How come Josh Halpern, with his reference to the NSF survey showing
>$70-80K/year average salary is so quiet when it comes to "data" like you
>pointed out.
That could very well be true if the study only included
full-time tenure-track jobs.
Many universities have these jobs filled with older people who would
be at the high end of the salary scale.
Even so, that is a low salary compared to the equivlent experience
in industry, unless those are mostly 9-month jobs.
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Arthur Sowers
On Tue, 13 Mar 2001, Derek Oliver wrote:
>
>
> Arthur Sowers wrote:
> > I actually downloaded the .pdf file that Derek posted here a few days ago
> > on physics PhDs
> narrow field - high energy physics. The full citation is
> European Journal of Physics vol 22 (2001) pp139-148
>
> > They used the term "student" in both sentences, but I thought they meant,
> > throughout the article, that they were talking about all of their people
> > as those with PhDs and where they ended up.
> The article clearly distinguishes betwem those who were PhD
> students and those who weren't (see section 2 p 142 under
> figure 4) and points out later (p143) that for people 6
> years post-CERN the "unknowns" (which included but are not
> necessarily restricted to unemployed) were 5.2% over all,
> and 2.9% of all PhD students (total of theses was 339, see
> p142 as well).
>
> The bit you colossaly misquoted in your post:
Well, what I wrote on the line below (eight words preceded by
proper elipses) sure seems to be exactly the same
words as in the last sentence you typed out below your line referencing
page 143.
> >"...not a single student is without a job."
>
> is from p143, and in context reads:
>
> "The only noticeable difference between the data collected
> in 1996 and the update of 2000 is
> that the market for high-energy physics students seems to
> have exploded. In 1996 we had 4.8%
> of the students without a job (see table 3). These were
> concentrated in a time window of 18
> months from the date of the survey. The remarkable
> observation for the survey of the beginning
> of 2000 is that not a single student is without a job."
>
> In summary, 1996 subset of data: 4.8% unemployed; 2000
> subset: 0% unemployed
>
> > I saw zero information regarding the career outcomes,
> The survey actually points out that this is a difficult
> quantity to measure - that apart from the first career
> destination, it is very hard to maintain comprehensive data.
> Let's face it, CERN is a particle physics collaboration, not
> a recruitment/placement agency. They place is (hopefully)
> funded to push back the barriers of knowledge, not piss
> around counting beans.
The astronomy article we argued to death a year ago didn't have any
problem tracking career outcomes. And, it was authored by several people
at much less prestigeous, less resource-rich places.
> As to the remainder of the list (snipped) no, the study
> didn't look at all those things, it didn't set out to
> becuase I don't think they had the resources or the
> historical data. They took what they had, presented it, and
> thank goodness they didn't waste everyone's time pretending
> to discuss things their data couldn't do. I'd suggest that's
> bordering on responsible writing.
Without showing any references to other serious career studies (to show
that they looked at prior works) I'd suggest that the approach to
responsible writing is from the irresponsible side of the threshold.
> > In all of the ten pages, I did not see even a single reference to another
> > article, paper, or other source of cited or citeable information regarding
> > career outcomes or career subjects.
> That would have been because the article restricted itself
> to the matter it wished to discuss, the career paths of the
> 550 or so students involved at CERN since 1982.
Thats almost two decades, not all that much shorter than the astronomy
paper.
Furthermore,
> the analysis presented was quite minimal - i.e. the data
> were left pretty raw, and thus no further references were
> necessary for the commentary made. One of the pluses of this
> article is that it sticks to the limits of the data - for
> example, the frank acknowlegment on
what?
> > There was no list at the end other than participating institutions.
> whose alumni are the data points used in the survey.
>
> Let's also start comparing apples with apples - all apart
> from the last part of the article that was posted by
> ric...@my-deja.com was tlaking about humanities - where
> salaries are routinely abysmal. Just quoting the one bit of
> science stuff from that article:
> {begin quote}
> [Colorado School of] Mines still uses adjuncts, however, but
> the pay is significantly higher than at other state
> institutions.
Its my understanding that CSM is unique.
> For Matt Young, being an adjunct is a dream job for a
> "frustrated college professor." A trained physicist, Young
> retired from the National Institute of Standards and
> Technology in Boulder in 1999. He's now teaching a design
> course. He gets retirement and health benefits. And he makes
> the equivalent of two-thirds of a full-time professor's
> salary, which is $89,306 per year.
You sellectively took out the one glowing situation out of many examples
of crap situations, at crap pay, and crap job security, and crap respect.
> "In return for my getting paid less, I don't have to do
> anything but teach," Young said. "I can come in three days a
> week. I can spend the rest of my time writing books or
> whatever I choose to do."
> {endquote}
>
> Let's get something straight here - the physics adjunct is
> earning about US$60k and has benefits.
Yeah, where does that come from?
That's not the worst
> data point I've heard about - and in fact goes to the heart
> of something we need to understand very, very clearly. That
> despite the insecurity of these positions, they pay damn
> better than many in the humanities, and there tends to be
> more of them.
They talked about computer jobs and, they we'rent all that much beter
paid. They did acknowledge that they have to look harder for guys to teach
computer stuff.
> Next time, you might choose to read the article....
I actualy did, and its clear you didn't comment on the vast majority of
the content. But, only glossed over the one highpoint.
Arthur E. Sowers, PhD
-----------------------------------------
| Science career information website: |
| http://www.magpage.com/~arthures |
-----------------------------------------
> Derek
Derek Oliver
Arthur Sowers wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Mar 2001, Derek Oliver wrote:
> > Arthur Sowers wrote:
> > > I saw zero information regarding the career outcomes,
> > The survey actually points out that this is a difficult
> > quantity to measure - that apart from the first career
> > destination, it is very hard to maintain comprehensive data.
> > Let's face it, CERN is a particle physics collaboration, not
> > a recruitment/placement agency. They place is (hopefully)
> > funded to push back the barriers of knowledge, not piss
> > around counting beans.
> The astronomy article we argued to death a year ago didn't have any
> problem tracking career outcomes. And, it was authored by several people
> at much less prestigeous, less resource-rich places.
Actually that article didn't mention how hard/easy it was
tracking career outcomes - in fact if I remember correctly
they had a higher number of "unkowns" for earlier people
because they didn't have rigourous tracking.
> > As to the remainder of the list (snipped) no, the study
> > didn't look at all those things, it didn't set out to
> > becuase I don't think they had the resources or the
> > historical data. They took what they had, presented it, and
> > thank goodness they didn't waste everyone's time pretending
> > to discuss things their data couldn't do. I'd suggest that's
> > bordering on responsible writing.
> Without showing any references to other serious career studies (to show
> that they looked at prior works) I'd suggest that the approach to
> responsible writing is from the irresponsible side of the threshold.
Remind me Art, which peer-reviewed article on career
outcomes for high-energy physicists are they not quoting? I
can think of a number of articles that relate to physics
generally, some peer-reviewed, some not. But none for that
discipline, and few of these articles are based on the
European scene. But the comparisons weren't made or
pretended to, so such referencing would (IMO) have been
distracting to the data.
> Its my understanding that CSM is unique.
Don't know (or care much). It may be. If so, I think that's
why the newspaper article used the example (clasic tabloid
journalism). But it's still a data point and all data should
be counted equally.
> > For Matt Young, being an adjunct is a dream job for a
> > "frustrated college professor." A trained physicist, Young
> > retired from the National Institute of Standards and
> > Technology in Boulder in 1999. He's now teaching a design
> > course. He gets retirement and health benefits. And he makes
> > the equivalent of two-thirds of a full-time professor's
> > salary, which is $89,306 per year.
>
> You sellectively took out the one glowing situation out of many examples
> of crap situations, at crap pay, and crap job security, and crap respect.
>
> > "In return for my getting paid less, I don't have to do
> > anything but teach," Young said. "I can come in three days a
> > week. I can spend the rest of my time writing books or
> > whatever I choose to do."
> > {endquote}
> >
> > Let's get something straight here - the physics adjunct is
> > earning about US$60k and has benefits.
> Yeah, where does that come from?
The preceding sentence (which I quoted): "And he makes the
equivalent of two-thirds of a full-time professor's salary,
which is $89,306 per year".
Two-thirds of $89306 is $59537. i.e. ~$60k. That's 2x many
postdoc salaries, but that's a big distribution to haggle
over. More specifically, this is ~40% higher than the
maximum starting salary for an academic physics position
(tenure track) that I've seen in the UK, ~30% above what
I've seen for Physics starting salaries (tenure track) in
Canada and a whopping 2.4x the starting salary for a tenure
track physics academic in Australia in advertisements over
the last 4 years.
Now, this is one data point only, and the above numbers show
that this person has benefits, and doing MUCH better than
many full-time academics (tenured and untenured). The
article showed that that person was doing far better than
the humanities people as well. As I said, 1 data point only.
Is CSM unique? Maybe. Can't judge on one data point. Wasn't
trying to.
No glossing either.
Jeffrey J. Potoff
Arthur Sowers wrote:
>
> On Tue, 13 Mar 2001, Derek Oliver wrote:
>
> > For Matt Young, being an adjunct is a dream job for a
> > "frustrated college professor." A trained physicist, Young
> > retired from the National Institute of Standards and
> > Technology in Boulder in 1999. He's now teaching a design
> > course. He gets retirement and health benefits. And he makes
> > the equivalent of two-thirds of a full-time professor's
> > salary, which is $89,306 per year.
>
> You sellectively took out the one glowing situation out of many examples
> of crap situations, at crap pay, and crap job security, and crap respect.
You are continuously using examples from humanities, social sciences and
language departments to make the situation appear much worse than it is
for those in science and engineering departments. You can't mix all the
data up together and then say "look, science and engineering departments
are all filling up with adjuncts." You'll never get an engineer to work
for crap pay in an adjunct position because they can make much more in
industry. You might get someone who already has a fulltime industrial
job to come in an teach an elective course (in an area where they are an
expert), but that's about it.
>
> > Next time, you might choose to read the article....
>
> I actualy did, and its clear you didn't comment on the vast majority of
> the content. But, only glossed over the one highpoint.
>
Maybe because it wasn't relavent to science or engineering faculty.
Jeff
Rich Lemert
> Arthur Sowers wrote:
> > On Tue, 13 Mar 2001, Derek Oliver wrote:
> > > Arthur Sowers wrote:
>
> > Its my understanding that CSM is unique.
> Don't know (or care much). It may be. If so, I think that's
> why the newspaper article used the example (clasic tabloid
> journalism). But it's still a data point and all data should
> be counted equally.
>
As a graduate of the Colorado School of Mines, I would say that it is not
your run-of-the-mill college, but it's not 'unique'. They have a clear focus
on their mission, which is the education of engineers for the mineral
extraction
industries. You can get degrees in chemistry, physics, and math, but even
these
are 'engineering' oriented. (Everyone in these programs is required to take
the
same core basic engineering courses as all of the engineering students.) It's
also got a very practical bent - you absolutely must be able to "plug numbers
into those equations and get an answer."
I have never once regretted my decision to attend Mines, and I've run into
very few fellow alumni who do.
Rich Lemert
Arthur Sowers
On Wed, 14 Mar 2001, Derek Oliver wrote:
>
>
> Arthur Sowers wrote:
> > On Tue, 13 Mar 2001, Derek Oliver wrote:
> > > Arthur Sowers wrote:
>
> > > > I saw zero information regarding the career outcomes,
> > > The survey actually points out that this is a difficult
> > > quantity to measure - that apart from the first career
> > > destination, it is very hard to maintain comprehensive data.
> > > Let's face it, CERN is a particle physics collaboration, not
> > > a recruitment/placement agency. They place is (hopefully)
> > > funded to push back the barriers of knowledge, not piss
> > > around counting beans.
> > The astronomy article we argued to death a year ago didn't have any
> > problem tracking career outcomes. And, it was authored by several people
> > at much less prestigeous, less resource-rich places.
> Actually that article didn't mention how hard/easy it was
> tracking career outcomes - in fact if I remember correctly
> they had a higher number of "unkowns" for earlier people
> because they didn't have rigourous tracking.
My recollection is that it was, in fact, easy to track career outcomes
because the source data (on NASA files of astronomy papers) was so
accessible and so were the PhDs in astronomy. In fact, my own microstudy
of what I called "author attrition" in the biosciences and on my website
was similar to the astronomy paper and was based on taking a sample
population of authors at a point X years earlier and then trying to find
those names again in a recent database of journal papers (Current
Contents with 1200 biomed journals). In very general terms, I also, could
not find half of the names even once in a year of journals for about half
of the names after about 7-10 years. I also recall that Becky, a number of
years ago, chased down author attrition for chemistry and found a roughly
similar conclusion. I did not save the post. I've seen author attrition
curves many years ago when, unlike today, most PhDs ended up in academia
and they showed a similar trend: after 20 years or so, about half are no
longer publishing. Eugene Garfield (hope you know who he is) told me that
its worse in the humanities. He said someone checked this out and a full
25% of all PhDs never publish anything past writing their dissertations.
> > > As to the remainder of the list (snipped) no, the study
> > > didn't look at all those things, it didn't set out to
> > > becuase I don't think they had the resources or the
> > > historical data. They took what they had, presented it, and
> > > thank goodness they didn't waste everyone's time pretending
> > > to discuss things their data couldn't do. I'd suggest that's
> > > bordering on responsible writing.
> > Without showing any references to other serious career studies (to show
> > that they looked at prior works) I'd suggest that the approach to
> > responsible writing is from the irresponsible side of the threshold.
> Remind me Art, which peer-reviewed article
Was the pdf file a peer-reviewed article? Pretty lightly peer reviewed if
it was.
on career
> outcomes for high-energy physicists are they not quoting?
Well, just to start, how about looking at Karen Kreeger's book or
Robbins-Roth's book, for comparison. KK's book has a much larger list of
major documents, including NSF and NRC productions. Both books are
reviewed on my website and do a far better job of discussion career
outcomes.
I am not familiar with high-energy physics careers, but from that pdf
paper, I'd hate to think that you think that was a good paper.
I
> can think of a number of articles that relate to physics
> generally, some peer-reviewed, some not. But none for that
> discipline, and few of these articles are based on the
> European scene. But the comparisons weren't made or
> pretended to, so such referencing would (IMO) have been
> distracting to the data.
I'm going to thank you for bringing that paper here for those who might
have been interested in looking at it. I didn't see anyone else announce
that they downloaded it and read it. You've also brought other documents
here for discussion, but on the pdf file it would have helped more people
if you also gave some synopsis of what it said.
> > Its my understanding that CSM is unique.
> Don't know (or care much). It may be. If so, I think that's
> why the newspaper article used the example (clasic tabloid
> journalism). But it's still a data point and all data should
> be counted equally.
Well, lets look at MIT. I think it would be a scandal if MIT had "first
class" (=regular) asst professors making $60-70K and "second class" (=piss
ant adjuncts) making $20K per year for the same effort. Some places really
do have better senses of fairness and integrity (you can read that in Karl
Lanks book, also reviewed on my website).
> > > For Matt Young, being an adjunct is a dream job for a
> > > "frustrated college professor." A trained physicist, Young
> > > retired from the National Institute of Standards and
> > > Technology in Boulder in 1999. He's now teaching a design
> > > course. He gets retirement and health benefits. And he makes
> > > the equivalent of two-thirds of a full-time professor's
> > > salary, which is $89,306 per year.
> >
> > You sellectively took out the one glowing situation out of many examples
> > of crap situations, at crap pay, and crap job security, and crap respect.
> >
> > > "In return for my getting paid less, I don't have to do
> > > anything but teach," Young said. "I can come in three days a
> > > week. I can spend the rest of my time writing books or
> > > whatever I choose to do."
> > > {endquote}
> > >
> > > Let's get something straight here - the physics adjunct is
> > > earning about US$60k and has benefits.
> > Yeah, where does that come from?
> The preceding sentence (which I quoted): "And he makes the
> equivalent of two-thirds of a full-time professor's salary,
> which is $89,306 per year".
You're quoting ONE (repeat "one") specific guy's salary information. How
can you convert that to the general statement (see your sentence
above) that says "...the physics adjunct is earning about US$60k and has
benefits."? As far as I know, adjuncts _can_ be teaching _as little as_
only one course per year, or as much as full time equivalent. The benies
are going to range from close to max on down to zip.
> Two-thirds of $89306 is $59537. i.e. ~$60k. That's 2x many
> postdoc salaries, but that's a big distribution to haggle
> over. More specifically, this is ~40% higher than the
> maximum starting salary for an academic physics position
> (tenure track) that I've seen in the UK, ~30% above what
> I've seen for Physics starting salaries (tenure track) in
> Canada and a whopping 2.4x the starting salary for a tenure
> track physics academic in Australia in advertisements over
> the last 4 years.
>
> Now, this is one data point only, and the above numbers show
> that this person has benefits, and doing MUCH better than
> many full-time academics (tenured and untenured). The
> article showed that that person was doing far better than
> the humanities people as well. As I said, 1 data point only.
> Is CSM unique? Maybe. Can't judge on one data point. Wasn't
> trying to.
Well, it sure sounded like it. But, I am not surprized that there are some
high end deals. But, what is more common? The common situation is just
crappy. Years ago I looked at an adjunct job, teaching one lab course at
night and for a one shot summer session, at a piss ant college nearby
and while I can't remember the specifics, I do remember multiplying out
what the compensation would look like if I had a full teaching load and
for the whole year not just the summer and it came out to about $25K! And,
that is teaching an advanced for credit course in biology (with a lab),
not basket weaving! So, when I read about all these other crap deals, it
fits in with the "one" data point in my own experience. I didn't get the
job, but then, I wasn't too unhappy either.
And, just for another comparison, when I got an interview at the
Bioengineering dept at Univ. Utah back in '95, they were talking about
$60K for me as assoc prof for 9 months (and putting me up for tenure
decision in 3 instead of 6 years), which seemed a little low for an
"advanced" guy with a lifelong biomed background. While there I snooped at
the seminar notices and saw who my competition was and it blew me away
(young hotshot molecular biologists from top ten places doing very hot
field stuff) and, of course, there I was, over 50, and didn't get the
offer. I had the feeling, however, that the person who pushed my CV up for
an interview was one of the sellection committee who was also an older
person. But, that is a tidbit.
> No glossing either.
At least not this time (pardon me if I didn't give you the benefit of the
doubt on that, but I couldn't help it).
Art
Arthur Sowers
On Wed, 14 Mar 2001, Jeffrey J. Potoff wrote:
>
>
> Arthur Sowers wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, 13 Mar 2001, Derek Oliver wrote:
>
> >
> > > For Matt Young, being an adjunct is a dream job for a
> > > "frustrated college professor." A trained physicist, Young
> > > retired from the National Institute of Standards and
> > > Technology in Boulder in 1999. He's now teaching a design
> > > course. He gets retirement and health benefits. And he makes
> > > the equivalent of two-thirds of a full-time professor's
> > > salary, which is $89,306 per year.
> >
> > You sellectively took out the one glowing situation out of many examples
> > of crap situations, at crap pay, and crap job security, and crap respect.
>
> You are continuously using examples from humanities, social sciences and
> language departments to make the situation appear much worse than it is
> for those in science and engineering departments.
In another post, I gave, as I did several times in the past on this
newsgroup, the information on an adjunct job I looked at and that was
teaching biology (a non humanities, not social science, non language
subject) and the salary was crap, the rest of it was crap.
You can't mix all the
> data up together and then say "look, science and engineering departments
> are all filling up with adjuncts."
I can tell you exactly why you are wrong. They run their profit arithmetic
on a spreadsheet. The cost of the adjunct has to be less money than the
product of N students times tuition per credit hour. If they can't find a
cheap adjunct, they cancel the course offering.
Also, when I did a search for adjuncts on the search engine, I came up
with a lot of "Adjunct Associations and they included members from sci and
engineering departments.
You can't say your above sentence which says there are no adjuncts in S&E
departments or that S&E adjuncts MUST be doing better than crap just like
that. We've got a technical college nearby and they teach a lot of techie
night classes. Sure, I think some probably get paid better than others,
but I also see gaps in subjects. They don't teach them maybe because they
can't get them to work for as low wage as they want to pay. Remember the
welding teaching job I talked about a year ago?
You'll never get an engineer to work
> for crap pay in an adjunct position because they can make much more in
> industry. You might get someone who already has a fulltime industrial
> job to come in an teach an elective course (in an area where they are an
> expert), but that's about it.
See comments above. You might get a old engineer who can't find a regular
job because of age discrimination to work for cheap.
Arthur E. Sowers, PhD
-----------------------------------------
| Science career information website: |
| http://www.magpage.com/~arthures |
-----------------------------------------
=== no change to below, included for reference and context ====
Josh Halpern
> Jay wrote:
> > Rich Lemert wrote:
> > > Just a brief comment before I leave for a short family vacation -
> > > Art - You're sure fond of telling those of us who are actually IN the
> > > engineering profession (and who either are or have been in an engineering
> > > faculty position) what life is like in our world, and how we are wrong
> > > about what's really going on even though we have more relevent first hand
> > > experience. Is this how you conducted your own research - stuff the results
> > > in to fit the theory whether they did so or not? I have always been ready
> > > to acknowledge your expertise in your world - why can you not
> > > recognize that others have a greater expertise in theirs?
> > Heh, the "Joe Isuzu" troll of SRC wants us to just trust him.
> > "Just trust me I know what I am talking about",
> > Sure I'll trust you to...PLOINK.
> Lemert a troll? Hardly. In general, I find what he posts to be quite
> true for those in engineering departments.
And chemistry, materials and to an increasing extent physics,
although not high energy theory:(.
josh halpern
>
> Jeff
Josh Halpern
> On Thu, 15 Mar 2001, Jeffrey J. Potoff wrote:
> > Arthur Sowers wrote:
> > > On Wed, 14 Mar 2001, Jeffrey J. Potoff wrote:
> > > > Arthur Sowers wrote:
> > > > > On Tue, 13 Mar 2001, Derek Oliver wrote:
> SNIP....
> > > I can tell you exactly why you are wrong. They run their profit arithmetic
> > > on a spreadsheet. The cost of the adjunct has to be less money than the
> > > product of N students times tuition per credit hour. If they can't find a
> > > cheap adjunct, they cancel the course offering.
> > This logic is exactly why you are wrong. An adjunct brings little or no
> > research money into the university, while a tenured or tenure track
> > professor brings in substantial amounts of research money, from which
> > the university gets to sap overhead.
>
> Jeff, you are not thinking or reading. There are only a few research
> universities compared to the number of small colleges where NO research is
> done.
And, on the other hand, such institutions have small numbers
of faculty in the sciences and engineering. One place such
as Ohio State, with 50,000 students or more, makes up for
a lot of 500-1000 total enrollment places, and the smaller
places tend to have very small proportions of science
majors. As a rule, they also do not have ANY engineering.
It would be hard to meet ABET requirements in a very small
place. (There are a few exceptions such as Harvey Mudd).
> They make most of their money off tuition. I explained in the
> paragraph above yours exactly what I saw at Wesley College in Dover,
> Delaware, where the Assoc dean (who hires the adjuncts) showed me his
> computer. course offered, students signeing up (N), at $/credit hour,
> times C credit hours per course minus fee to adjunct teaching the
> course. You can do the arithemtic on the back of an envelope.
Sure. One school. QED.
> The gross
> profits can be 10-30%, maybe more, depending on enrollment and whether a
> teacher is available. If the income minus costs is negative, then they
> cancel the course and offer it again next cycle. From all that I read,
> this formula can make money for most institutions that don't have
> endowment income or grant income.
this is, of course, the University of Phoenix model. OTOH one of
the problems with this model for science and engineering is that
you have to have labs, and labs are VERY expensive. You can't
simply shove another butt into another seat, and you can't get
accredited with S&E courses that don't have labs.
josh halpern
Josh Halpern
Arthur Sowers wrote:
> On Thu, 15 Mar 2001, Rich Lemert wrote:
> > Just a brief comment before I leave for a short family vacation -
> > Art - You're sure fond of telling those of us who are actually IN the
> > engineering profession (and who either are or have been in an engineering
> > faculty position) what life is like in our world, and how we are wrong
> > about what's really going on even though we have more relevent first hand
> > experience.
>
> You are sure fond of ignoring that I am talking about not the engineering
> profession but the biomed areas and that I've spent all of my career in
> these areas.
No, actually we all know that, except you apparently, or you
think that the biomed area is the only area of science. If
you are specifically describing something that is true of
biomedical science SAY biomedical science, not science.
> The thread began with Derek's posting of a pdf file, and apparently I'm
> the only one who read it and commented on it, which was about physics, not
> engineering.
>
> Is this how you conducted your own research - stuff the results
> > in to fit the theory whether they did so or not? I have always been ready
> > to acknowledge your expertise in your world
>
> Where? I've not seen any readiness on your part to acknowledge my
> expertise.
Actually, Rich, and just about everyone says that you have it
pretty much right (as far as we know) wrt the biomedical area.
The only caveat I would put on it, is as Jeff pointed out physicists,
chemists and engineers who concentrate on bio issues are really
in demand. This may be a comment on the relative competance
of your average physicist, chemist or engineer compared to
your average biology/biomedical science grad (note use of
average).
josh halpern
>
>
> Arthur E. Sowers, PhD
> -----------------------------------------
> | Science career information website: |
> | http://www.magpage.com/~arthures |
> -----------------------------------------
> === no change to below, included for reference and context ====
> - why can you not
> > recognize that others have a greater expertise in theirs?
> >
> > Rich Lemert
Josh Halpern
Arthur Sowers wrote:
> On Wed, 14 Mar 2001, Josh Halpern wrote:
>
> > Arthur Sowers wrote:
> >
> > > On Tue, 13 Mar 2001, jhalpern wrote:
> > > > ric...@my-deja.com wrote:
> > > > > Another article on about the 50% of college faculty who make less than
> > > > > elementary school teachers at
> > > > > http://insidedenver.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_108711,00.html
> > > > Much less. OTOH, this is not a single issue.
> > > > The percentage of adjuncts at community colleges is huge, most of the
> > > > faculty. This accounts for many of the adjuncts. IMHO community colleges
> > > > function as a bridge between college and high school, but given the
> > > > teaching load and the often remedial function they serve, instructors
> > > > should be treated as secondary school teachers. Let me note in
> > > > passing that private high schools often exploit their teachers more.
> > > >
> > > > There are adjuncts who are retired, or actually working in industry and
> > > > government and teach as a service. We probably want to retain that
> > > > portion.
> > > >
> > > > Some adjunct positions are courtesy appointments when you have a
> > > > graduate student working in a government or industrial lab.
> > > >
> > > > Many universities (especially urban ones) run large night colleges. These
> > > > tend to have heavy adjunt representation.
> > > >
> > > > I think before I went off the deep end I would like to know what
> > > > the breakdown of adjunct types was.
> > >
> > > There is nothing wrong with anything that you said above, buuuuut that
> > > these are "career endpoints" for a lot of PhDs who can't find better jobs.
> > > You devalue their work in a way the helps understand why they are not
> > > better paid, but that IS the point.
> >
> > Really? And precisely how did I devalue their work?
>
> You said (scroll up to find it) that you said given the remedial servcie
> they provide, they should be treated as HS teachers.
Actually, I said SECONDARY school teachers, There is a
subtle difference. In any case how does this devalue anyone.
> That means paid like HS teachers
with tenure like HS teachers.
> (HS teacher pay ranges are a low lower than $70K, therefore,
> you are devaluing the work they provide. i.e., a PhD in a adjunct job
> "deserves" less than a PhD should get.
Your spandex is ripping. First of all a median salary
means that 50% get less (and 50% more). It is not a
value judgement. The average salary for a secondary
school teacher in 1999 was $40K. Secondary school
teachers with Ph.D.s get more, because of their
education, although the details depend on the contract.
> Also, guys that get into adjunct jobs and stay there for long tend to
> "blocks" or limits their career prospects.
yep.
josh halpern
>
> Art
>
> > josh halpern
> >
> >
> >
Josh Halpern
> On Wed, 14 Mar 2001, Josh Halpern wrote:
> > ric...@my-deja.com wrote:
> > > >How come Josh Halpern, with his reference to the NSF survey showing
> > > >$70-80K/year average salary is so quiet when it comes to "data" like you
> > > >pointed out.
> > > That could very well be true if the study only included
> > > full-time tenure-track jobs.
> > Watch the bouncing ball Rick. The $70K average is ALL S&E Ph.D.s.
> > (It may have been a median actually, but who remembers, and I'm
> > not at home to look it up). It was not faculty members, faculty members
> > at community colleges or industrial chemists.
> And, who knows, some of those colleges may not even be reporting salary
> data on their adjuncts.
Really, which orifice did you pull this maybe out of.
> But, I saw the budget for some departments at my old UMAB and for PhD
> faculty, we're talking about $70-80K, by eyeball. But, the kicker is that
> UMAB is a medical school where even for PhDs, I'd expect the salary data
> to be a good 20-30 K higher than for faculty at all the many colleges and
> lower tier institutions. And, that only means the data has to find _a
> lot_ of PhDs making somewhere in the $100-120K plus range.
Try industry. You also should realize that your data is almost a
decade old now.
> > If you want data on faculty broken out by status, you need the
> > Chronicle of Higher Education statistics, although they tend
> > not to be broken down by field.
> >
> > Please also note, before replying that half the S&E Ph.D.s will
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > make LESS than a $70K median (in some cases much less).
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> Ah, so now we get some acknowledgement that "$70K median" does not imply
> something like "70K +/-, say, $10K".
Acknowledgment. The sun rises. I acknowledge that.
Everyone here has talked about $25K postdocs. Climb
down off your high horse.
> So, you (Josh) admit that "much less" might even be down there where you
> can easily find jobs that require just a HS diploma but still get paid
> decently.
I have a lot of relatives and acquaintances who have reasonable
paying jobs with HS diplomas. But you know what, they had a
hell of a hard time finding those jobs, and they can loose them
fairly easily. I also know many who have not been able to find
such a position, but continue scuffling. It is really distressing
how you make light of their struggles to find decent employment
by pretending that it is trivial to find good positions with a
high school degree.
> Yeah, PhDs in crap adjunct jobs, crapy postdocs, temp RentaPhDs, making
> like maybe 30K for full time work? Its a pisser.
Yeah, working a union job, where the job disappears every
year or two and you have to start over in another place
until you voluntarily retire. It's a pisser but at least you
get health insurance.
josh halpern
Josh Halpern
> On Wed, 14 Mar 2001, Josh Halpern wrote:
> > Arthur Sowers wrote:
> > > On Wed, 14 Mar 2001, Derek Oliver wrote:
> > > > Arthur Sowers wrote:
SNIP....
> I agree that it is hard to track industrial scientists who do not publish
> papers. However, when I looked in journals that carried applied science
> topics like biotechnology and pharma, and then concentrated on authors
> only from firms, and not campuses, I still got high attrition results.
>
> It may be that there are jobs where the function is non publication, but
> are high stability, high security jobs.
Analytical labs.
> I've wanted to search the patent literature in the same manner to see if
> inventors keep inventing, but some may not for good reason.
>
> The only othe access to industrial career half life is to find
> associations or societies and locate names and track them for ten years or
> so.
When we quote the ACS surveys to you, you say you don't
believe them. Why bother.
josh halpern
Arthur Sowers
This is a tangent to my discussion.
> > They make most of their money off tuition. I explained in the
> > paragraph above yours exactly what I saw at Wesley College in Dover,
> > Delaware, where the Assoc dean (who hires the adjuncts) showed me his
> > computer. course offered, students signeing up (N), at $/credit hour,
> > times C credit hours per course minus fee to adjunct teaching the
> > course. You can do the arithemtic on the back of an envelope.
>
> Sure. One school. QED.
The model is identical to that going on all over the country at many
hundreds of campuses where research grant/contract inflow is very small or
non-existent.
> > The gross
> > profits can be 10-30%, maybe more, depending on enrollment and whether a
> > teacher is available. If the income minus costs is negative, then they
> > cancel the course and offer it again next cycle. From all that I read,
> > this formula can make money for most institutions that don't have
> > endowment income or grant income.
>
> this is, of course, the University of Phoenix model. OTOH one of
> the problems with this model for science and engineering is that
> you have to have labs, and labs are VERY expensive.
At all of the schools I went to, all of the p, c, and b departments had
MORE courses WITHOUT labs than courses WITH labs.
Not all labs are VERY expensive. Depends on what is being done.
You can't
> simply shove another butt into another seat,
You certainly can if you
1. open up night classes,
2. open up weekend classes (see, eg., Nova University) for people they
want to enroll but let them keep their daytime jobs.
3. open up non-credit courses (see below).
and you can't get
> accredited with S&E courses that don't have labs.
1. Funny, I just was search engining on the web about adjuncts and there
was a website where they were thinking that the use of adjuncts and the
"atmosphere" that presented should be grounds for de-acreditation.
2. You don't need accreditation for non-credit courses and I see a lot of
catalogs coming into my mailbox for lots of non-credit class offerings
from all of the local community colleges.
Art
> josh halpern
>
>
Arthur Sowers
On Sat, 17 Mar 2001, Josh Halpern wrote:
>
>
> Arthur Sowers wrote:
>
> > On Thu, 15 Mar 2001, Rich Lemert wrote:
> > > Just a brief comment before I leave for a short family vacation -
> > > Art - You're sure fond of telling those of us who are actually IN the
> > > engineering profession (and who either are or have been in an engineering
> > > faculty position) what life is like in our world, and how we are wrong
> > > about what's really going on even though we have more relevent first hand
> > > experience.
> >
> > You are sure fond of ignoring that I am talking about not the engineering
> > profession but the biomed areas and that I've spent all of my career in
> > these areas.
>
> No, actually we all
^^^^^^
the only way this phrase can be true is if Rich Lemert is NOT part of "we
all"
> know that, except you apparently, or you
> think that the biomed area is the only area of science.
Its not the only area where there is a PhD glut and you know that too. I
don't know about p & c, but in the non-sciences the glut is real and been
there a long time.
If
> you are specifically describing something that is true of
> biomedical science SAY biomedical science, not science.
I try to do this, but we have also had some posts by people on this NG who
are not in the biomeds and they are having trouble finding a job, too.
>
> > The thread began with Derek's posting of a pdf file, and apparently I'm
> > the only one who read it and commented on it, which was about physics, not
> > engineering.
> >
> > Is this how you conducted your own research - stuff the results
> > > in to fit the theory whether they did so or not? I have always been ready
> > > to acknowledge your expertise in your world
> >
> > Where? I've not seen any readiness on your part to acknowledge my
> > expertise.
>
> Actually, Rich, and just about everyone says that you have it
> pretty much right (as far as we know) wrt the biomedical area.
But Rich makes other mistakes (see above).
> The only caveat I would put on it, is as Jeff pointed out physicists,
> chemists and engineers who concentrate on bio issues are really
> in demand.
Maybe bioinformatics is hot. I still remember when I talked to the grad
students in bioengineering at UU a few years back; they all told me they
weren't any jobs out there for them when they graduate. Otherwise, I think
its still a matter of whether you're in a hot area or not. I'll defer
otherwise to those who are "in" that field.
This may be a comment on the relative competance
> of your average physicist, chemist or engineer compared to
> your average biology/biomedical science grad (note use of
> average).
Connecting demand (as in net job availability) to relative competance is
forgetting the fact that there is a glut in biomed PhDs.
If there is a demand for p or c people aiming at bio issues, then its in
commercial environments more than academic environments.
Art Sowers
Arthur Sowers
OK, you did. But most people are going to think HS when you say
secondary. And, if the difference is subtle, then is it that important?
How it devalues? First, HS (or secondary) get paid nowhere near the $60-70
k that a PhD is supposed to get (assuming a PhD heads to HS or s jobs) and
I know that that route is followed by some PhDs.
> > That means paid like HS teachers
>
> with tenure like HS teachers.
Some HS teachers, in some districts, can get tenure. Yes.
> > (HS teacher pay ranges are a low lower than $70K, therefore,
> > you are devaluing the work they provide. i.e., a PhD in a adjunct job
> > "deserves" less than a PhD should get.
>
> Your spandex is ripping. First of all a median salary
> means that 50% get less (and 50% more). It is not a
> value judgement. The average salary for a secondary
> school teacher in 1999 was $40K.
Yeah, about right with me.
Secondary school
> teachers with Ph.D.s get more, because of their
> education, although the details depend on the contract.
More? like how much more? I hear it aint that much.
> > Also, guys that get into adjunct jobs and stay there for long tend to
> > "blocks" or limits their career prospects.
>
> yep.
Yep.
Art
=== no change to below, included for reference and context ====
> josh halpern
>
>
>
>
> >
> > Art
> >
> > > josh halpern
> > >
> > >
> > >
>
>
Arthur Sowers
On Sat, 17 Mar 2001, Josh Halpern wrote:
> Arthur Sowers wrote:
>
> > On Wed, 14 Mar 2001, Josh Halpern wrote:
> > > ric...@my-deja.com wrote:
> > > > >How come Josh Halpern, with his reference to the NSF survey showing
> > > > >$70-80K/year average salary is so quiet when it comes to "data" like you
> > > > >pointed out.
> > > > That could very well be true if the study only included
> > > > full-time tenure-track jobs.
> > > Watch the bouncing ball Rick. The $70K average is ALL S&E Ph.D.s.
> > > (It may have been a median actually, but who remembers, and I'm
> > > not at home to look it up). It was not faculty members, faculty members
> > > at community colleges or industrial chemists.
> > And, who knows, some of those colleges may not even be reporting salary
> > data on their adjuncts.
>
> Really, which orifice did you pull this maybe out of.
Oh? Do you mean that when colleges report data that they always include
data for ALL their faculty? Including the temps? Do you really think that?
What makes you think what they report is complete?
> > But, I saw the budget for some departments at my old UMAB and for PhD
> > faculty, we're talking about $70-80K, by eyeball. But, the kicker is that
> > UMAB is a medical school where even for PhDs, I'd expect the salary data
> > to be a good 20-30 K higher than for faculty at all the many colleges and
> > lower tier institutions. And, that only means the data has to find _a
> > lot_ of PhDs making somewhere in the $100-120K plus range.
>
> Try industry.
I've got the R&D magazine industry salary data (however valid it is) and
if you want me to dig out some, there were, as I recall NO PhDs making way
up there except in administration and/or management.
You also should realize that your data is almost a
> decade old now.
My data was from 1995, or about where a lot of published data is
from. That is a lot less than a decade. And I knew people at UMAB that got
salary decreases and I knew people at my other former employer that told
me 2 years ago that NO ONE there had gotten a salary increase in the last
three years.
> > > If you want data on faculty broken out by status, you need the
> > > Chronicle of Higher Education statistics, although they tend
> > > not to be broken down by field.
> > >
> > > Please also note, before replying that half the S&E Ph.D.s will
> > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > > make LESS than a $70K median (in some cases much less).
> > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > Ah, so now we get some acknowledgement that "$70K median" does not imply
> > something like "70K +/-, say, $10K".
>
> Acknowledgment. The sun rises. I acknowledge that.
> Everyone here has talked about $25K postdocs. Climb
> down off your high horse.
Yeah..... you climb down off yours (the horse named NSF), too.
> > So, you (Josh) admit that "much less" might even be down there where you
> > can easily find jobs that require just a HS diploma but still get paid
> > decently.
>
> I have a lot of relatives and acquaintances who have reasonable
> paying jobs with HS diplomas. But you know what, they had a
> hell of a hard time finding those jobs, and they can loose them
> fairly easily.
You mean as easily as I lost my career? Or, that I spent over a decade of
time in the pipeline just so I could lose my career.
I also know many who have not been able to find
> such a position, but continue scuffling. It is really distressing
> how you make light of their struggles to find decent employment
> by pretending that it is trivial to find good positions with a
> high school degree.
I have made many posts in the last two years covering a number of
occupations that were not that hard to get into. I don't know what you are
talking about, but people who go looking to become employees are going to
have it a little more difficult than people who carefully look to form
their own small business and form it in an area where there is demand,
a widespread customer base, and a service which does not require a large
initial investment. I'm not talking about the $7-10 work that is easy to
find, but the work that pays more like in the $20s per hour. Or, would you
like me to re-write all the summaries I posted over the last two years?
Or, maybe you can tell me what your definition is of "good
position." There is a interesting phrase out in the low job security world
which defines job security as whatever it is that makes it possible to get
another job quickly if yoyu lose your first job. Kindofa joke, but
practical. There aint many Becky jobs, and tenure track jobs are a smaller
proportion of all faculty jobs as each year goes by. So, where else do you
go?
> > Yeah, PhDs in crap adjunct jobs, crapy postdocs, temp RentaPhDs, making
> > like maybe 30K for full time work? Its a pisser.
>
> Yeah, working a union job, where the job disappears every
> year or two and you have to start over in another place
> until you voluntarily retire. It's a pisser but at least you
> get health insurance.
Well, you've got your choice. The union job can have its hazards if a
company does union busting, or the company goes out of business. I know a
union technician at Channel 7 in DC and he's got it good even though Joe
Albriton puts the thumbs down AND has been hiring non union temps in
increasing numbers over all the years since some time back. I heard a lot
of stories. My guy says he's going to stay because anything else means a
very big pay cut. His seniority is high and if a big cut comes, lots under
him will go first.
My other guy who was out at LLNL and just retired was a permanent. The
temps there get crap, too. He was among a smaller fraction and fortunately
there were no big layoffs.
Who knows about the future? But, in the past we had the Titanic. You and I
know how that played out; people mistakenly believed the hype. I think its
good that they investigate plane crashes to try to prevent future
crashes. I just wish there were more efforts on PhD career trajectories.
Art
> josh halpern
>
>
>
Arthur Sowers
On Sat, 17 Mar 2001, Josh Halpern wrote:
> Arthur Sowers wrote:
>
> > On Wed, 14 Mar 2001, Josh Halpern wrote:
> > > Arthur Sowers wrote:
> > > > On Wed, 14 Mar 2001, Derek Oliver wrote:
> > > > > Arthur Sowers wrote:
>
> SNIP....
>
> > I agree that it is hard to track industrial scientists who do not publish
> > papers. However, when I looked in journals that carried applied science
> > topics like biotechnology and pharma, and then concentrated on authors
> > only from firms, and not campuses, I still got high attrition results.
> >
> > It may be that there are jobs where the function is non publication, but
> > are high stability, high security jobs.
>
> Analytical labs.
I can think of a few, too.
> > I've wanted to search the patent literature in the same manner to see if
> > inventors keep inventing, but some may not for good reason.
> >
> > The only othe access to industrial career half life is to find
> > associations or societies and locate names and track them for ten years or
> > so.
>
> When we quote the ACS surveys to you, you say you don't
> believe them. Why bother.
Care to try me again? Did the ACS surveys give career halflife
information?
Art
> josh halpern
>
>
>
Josh Halpern
> On Wed, 14 Mar 2001, Derek Oliver wrote:
> > Arthur Sowers wrote:
> > > On Tue, 13 Mar 2001, Derek Oliver wrote:
> > > > Arthur Sowers wrote:
> My recollection is that it was, in fact, easy to track career outcomes
> because the source data (on NASA files of astronomy papers) was so
> accessible and so were the PhDs in astronomy. In fact, my own microstudy
> of what I called "author attrition" in the biosciences and on my website
> was similar to the astronomy paper and was based on taking a sample
> population of authors at a point X years earlier and then trying to find
> those names again in a recent database of journal papers (Current
> Contents with 1200 biomed journals). In very general terms, I also, could
> not find half of the names even once in a year of journals for about half
> of the names after about 7-10 years. I also recall that Becky, a number of
> years ago, chased down author attrition for chemistry and found a roughly
> similar conclusion. I did not save the post. I've seen author attrition
> curves many years ago when, unlike today, most PhDs ended up in academia
> and they showed a similar trend: after 20 years or so, about half are no
> longer publishing. Eugene Garfield (hope you know who he is) told me that
> its worse in the humanities. He said someone checked this out and a full
> 25% of all PhDs never publish anything past writing their dissertations.
Well, hate to tell you but most industrial chemists don't publish (sometimes they
do perish, but that is another story), so that is pretty much an interesting, but
not very important result.
josh halpern
Jeffrey J. Potoff
This logic is exactly why you are wrong. An adjunct brings little or no
research money into the university, while a tenured or tenure track
professor brings in substantial amounts of research money, from which
the university gets to sap overhead. If the full time professor brings
in enough money, they will actually be making the university money, as
the overhead from their grants will cover their 9 month salary.
Adjuncts don't bring a university any "prestige," while regular
professors do through their research programs. Note that I am talking
only about 4 year, PhD granting institutions. I'm not talking about
what goes on at "teaching" colleges.
In terms of offering a course, the universities I've been in contact
with (in Chemical Engineering) have a fixed course schedule, meaning the
same courses are offered the same semester every year. Most, and I say
most because I'm sure there will be exceptions, Chemical Engineering
departments do not have anyone besides full time faculty teaching
required courses. For elective courses you will see the use of
adjuncts. Especially if these electives are in highly specialized areas
where none of the faculty have expertise.
On a sidenote, while a graduate student I once proposed to the faculty
that maybe I could teach one of the lower level Chemical Engineering
courses. I like teaching a lot, I knew what I was doing and I thought
it was a good idea. I was told in no uncertain terms that would never
happen, as the department prided itself on having full time faculty
teach all of the courses. It appears that the almighty dollar isn't the
only thing these departments consider when deciding who to hire and who
teaches what.
>
> Also, when I did a search for adjuncts on the search engine, I came up
> with a lot of "Adjunct Associations and they included members from sci and
> engineering departments.
>
I just did a search on "Adjunct Associations" and found that anyone in
an engineering department who was an adjunct was either, very old or
wasn't at a PhD granting institution.
> You can't say your above sentence which says there are no adjuncts in S&E
> departments or that S&E adjuncts MUST be doing better than crap just like
> that. We've got a technical college nearby and they teach a lot of techie
> night classes.
But that isn't a regular 4 year university, is it? Do they have any PhD
programs (meaning do the professors do any research)? Your local
technical college most likely doesn't grant BS degrees in any
engineering subject, either.
> Sure, I think some probably get paid better than others,
> but I also see gaps in subjects.
I've never seen this in chemical engineering. The same required courses
are offered at the same time every year, and are taught by full time
faculty.
> They don't teach them maybe because they
> can't get them to work for as low wage as they want to pay. Remember the
> welding teaching job I talked about a year ago?
Let's make a distinction here. Are you talking about community
colleges, 4 year universities that don't have PhD programs, universities
with PhD programs, or all post-high school institutions lumped together?
>
> You'll never get an engineer to work
> > for crap pay in an adjunct position because they can make much more in
> > industry. You might get someone who already has a fulltime industrial
> > job to come in an teach an elective course (in an area where they are an
> > expert), but that's about it.
>
> See comments above. You might get a old engineer who can't find a regular
> job because of age discrimination to work for cheap.
You might also find oil in your backyard, but the probability is quite
low.
Jeff
Josh Halpern
> On Tue, 13 Mar 2001, jhalpern wrote:
> > ric...@my-deja.com wrote:
> > > Another article on about the 50% of college faculty who make less than
> > > elementary school teachers at
> > > http://insidedenver.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_108711,00.html
> > Much less. OTOH, this is not a single issue.
> > The percentage of adjuncts at community colleges is huge, most of the
> > faculty. This accounts for many of the adjuncts. IMHO community colleges
> > function as a bridge between college and high school, but given the
> > teaching load and the often remedial function they serve, instructors
> > should be treated as secondary school teachers. Let me note in
> > passing that private high schools often exploit their teachers more.
> >
> > There are adjuncts who are retired, or actually working in industry and
> > government and teach as a service. We probably want to retain that
> > portion.
> >
> > Some adjunct positions are courtesy appointments when you have a
> > graduate student working in a government or industrial lab.
> >
> > Many universities (especially urban ones) run large night colleges. These
> > tend to have heavy adjunt representation.
> >
> > I think before I went off the deep end I would like to know what
> > the breakdown of adjunct types was.
>
> There is nothing wrong with anything that you said above, buuuuut that
> these are "career endpoints" for a lot of PhDs who can't find better jobs.
> You devalue their work in a way the helps understand why they are not
> better paid, but that IS the point.
Really? And precisely how did I devalue their work?
josh halpern
Josh Halpern
> >How come Josh Halpern, with his reference to the NSF survey showing
> >$70-80K/year average salary is so quiet when it comes to "data" like you
> >pointed out.
>
> That could very well be true if the study only included
> full-time tenure-track jobs.
Watch the bouncing ball Rick. The $70K average is ALL S&E Ph.D.s.
(It may have been a median actually, but who remembers, and I'm
not at home to look it up). It was not faculty members, faculty members
at community colleges or industrial chemists.
If you want data on faculty broken out by status, you need the
Chronicle of Higher Education statistics, although they tend
not to be broken down by field.
Please also note, before replying that half the S&E Ph.D.s will
make LESS than a $70K median (in some cases much less).
josh halpern
Jay
>
> Just a brief comment before I leave for a short family vacation -
>
> Art - You're sure fond of telling those of us who are actually IN the
> engineering profession (and who either are or have been in an engineering
> faculty position) what life is like in our world, and how we are wrong
> about what's really going on even though we have more relevent first hand
> in to fit the theory whether they did so or not? I have always been ready
> recognize that others have a greater expertise in theirs?
Heh, the "Joe Isuzu" troll of SRC wants us to just trust him.
"Just trust me I know what I am talking about",
Sure I'll trust you to...PLOINK.
>
> Rich Lemert
>
> Arthur Sowers wrote:
>
--
Killfiled Trolls/Idiots: Jacobson, Winter.
Derek Oliver
Arthur Sowers wrote:
> On Wed, 14 Mar 2001, Derek Oliver wrote:
> > Arthur Sowers wrote:
> > > On Tue, 13 Mar 2001, Derek Oliver wrote:
> > > > Arthur Sowers wrote:
> > > > > I saw zero information regarding the career outcomes,
> > > > The survey actually points out that this is a difficult
> > > > quantity to measure ....
> > > The astronomy article we argued to death a year ago didn't have any
> > > problem tracking career outcomes.
> > ... if I remember correctly
> > they had a higher number of "unkowns" for earlier people
> > because they didn't have rigourous tracking.
> My recollection is that it was, in fact, easy to track career outcomes
> because the source data (on NASA files of astronomy papers) was so
> accessible and so were the PhDs in astronomy.
This is my point, their "tracking" was substantially
different - defining activity by publication rates. This is
difficult because it can take 6 - 18months to get a paper in
print (and this matches the characteristic time for
contractual employment. The Eur. J. Phys. article (yes it is
a peer-reviewed article) goes for data that is verifiable in
terms of employment, at the expense of the less verifiable
link (never explicitly shown) between authorship and
employment. This is something I am sure that you and Becky
saw in your respective studies, and a factor that (from my
outside perspective) is one filled with sufficient
interpretive grey areas that I'm loath to get keen on too
many categorical conclusions from it.
> but on the pdf file it would have helped more people
> if you also gave some synopsis of what it said.
I've done that before when I've had time - the paper is
pretty self explanatory because of the lack of
interpretation written into the data. I repeat, whatever
value you ascribe to it, it is based on the fact that it
contains raw data, sorted by country, and training
background which are the first two things to look at, and
the most verifiable.
> You're quoting ONE (repeat "one") specific guy's salary information. How
> can you convert that to the general statement (see your sentence
> above) that says "...the physics adjunct is earning about US$60k and has
> benefits."?
Because I said "the physics adjunct" as you correctly quote
me - i.e. the one quoted in the article. Yes, I know enough
about my mother tongue to know how to use "the".
The only "generalization" was to compare that particular
person's situation to the general cases in physics worldwide
which (for my own purposes) I know something about
(reiterating for reference):
> > Two-thirds of $89306 is $59537. i.e. ~$60k. That's 2x many
> > postdoc salaries, but that's a big distribution to haggle
> > over. More specifically, this is ~40% higher than the
> > maximum starting salary for an academic physics position
> > (tenure track) that I've seen in the UK, ~30% above what
> > I've seen for Physics starting salaries (tenure track) in
> > Canada and a whopping 2.4x the starting salary for a tenure
> > track physics academic in Australia in advertisements over
> > the last 4 years.
> >
> > Now, this is one data point only, and the above numbers show
> > that this person has benefits, and doing MUCH better than
> > many full-time academics (tenured and untenured). The
> > article showed that that person was doing far better than
> > the humanities people as well. As I said, 1 data point only.
> > Is CSM unique? Maybe. Can't judge on one data point. Wasn't
> > trying to.
>
> Well, it sure sounded like it.
To you maybe. I was just putting that specific case in a
realistic context which is considerably more than the
newspaper did.
Rich Lemert
Art - You're sure fond of telling those of us who are actually IN the
engineering profession (and who either are or have been in an engineering
faculty position) what life is like in our world, and how we are wrong
about what's really going on even though we have more relevent first hand
experience. Is this how you conducted your own research - stuff the results
in to fit the theory whether they did so or not? I have always been ready
to acknowledge your expertise in your world - why can you not
recognize that others have a greater expertise in theirs?
Rich Lemert
Arthur Sowers
I agree that it is hard to track industrial scientists who do not publish
papers. However, when I looked in journals that carried applied science
topics like biotechnology and pharma, and then concentrated on authors
only from firms, and not campuses, I still got high attrition results.
It may be that there are jobs where the function is non publication, but
are high stability, high security jobs.
I've wanted to search the patent literature in the same manner to see if
inventors keep inventing, but some may not for good reason.
The only othe access to industrial career half life is to find
associations or societies and locate names and track them for ten years or
so.
Arthur Sowers
On Wed, 14 Mar 2001, Josh Halpern wrote:
You said (scroll up to find it) that you said given the remedial servcie
they provide, they should be treated as HS teachers. That means paid like
HS teachers (HS teacher pay ranges are a low lower than $70K, therefore,
you are devaluing the work they provide. i.e., a PhD in a adjunct job
"deserves" less than a PhD should get.
Also, guys that get into adjunct jobs and stay there for long tend to
"blocks" or limits their career prospects.
Art
> josh halpern
>
>
>
Arthur Sowers
On Wed, 14 Mar 2001, Josh Halpern wrote:
> ric...@my-deja.com wrote:
>
> > >How come Josh Halpern, with his reference to the NSF survey showing
> > >$70-80K/year average salary is so quiet when it comes to "data" like you
> > >pointed out.
> >
> > That could very well be true if the study only included
> > full-time tenure-track jobs.
>
> Watch the bouncing ball Rick. The $70K average is ALL S&E Ph.D.s.
> (It may have been a median actually, but who remembers, and I'm
> not at home to look it up). It was not faculty members, faculty members
> at community colleges or industrial chemists.
And, who knows, some of those colleges may not even be reporting salary
data on their adjuncts.
But, I saw the budget for some departments at my old UMAB and for PhD
faculty, we're talking about $70-80K, by eyeball. But, the kicker is that
UMAB is a medical school where even for PhDs, I'd expect the salary data
to be a good 20-30 K higher than for faculty at all the many colleges and
lower tier institutions. And, that only means the data has to find _a
lot_ of PhDs making somewhere in the $100-120K plus range.
> If you want data on faculty broken out by status, you need the
> Chronicle of Higher Education statistics, although they tend
> not to be broken down by field.
>
> Please also note, before replying that half the S&E Ph.D.s will
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> make LESS than a $70K median (in some cases much less).
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Ah, so now we get some acknowledgement that "$70K median" does not imply
something like "70K +/-, say, $10K".
So, you (Josh) admit that "much less" might even be down there where you
can easily find jobs that require just a HS diploma but still get paid
decently.
Yeah, PhDs in crap adjunct jobs, crapy postdocs, temp RentaPhDs, making
like maybe 30K for full time work? Its a pisser.
Arthur E. Sowers, PhD
-----------------------------------------
| Science career information website: |
| http://www.magpage.com/~arthures |
-----------------------------------------
> josh halpern
>
>
Arthur Sowers
Jeff, you are not thinking or reading. There are only a few research
universities compared to the number of small colleges where NO research is
done. They make most of their money off tuition. I explained in the
paragraph above yours exactly what I saw at Wesley College in Dover,
Delaware, where the Assoc dean (who hires the adjuncts) showed me his
computer. course offered, students signeing up (N), at $/credit hour,
times C credit hours per course minus fee to adjunct teaching the
course. You can do the arithemtic on the back of an envelope. The gross
profits can be 10-30%, maybe more, depending on enrollment and whether a
teacher is available. If the income minus costs is negative, then they
cancel the course and offer it again next cycle. From all that I read,
this formula can make money for most institutions that don't have
endowment income or grant income.
If the full time professor brings
> in enough money, they will actually be making the university money, as
> the overhead from their grants will cover their 9 month salary.
> Adjuncts don't bring a university any "prestige," while regular
> professors do through their research programs. Note that I am talking
> only about 4 year, PhD granting institutions.
At a high end research university, the whole picture is different. Grants
and service (eg. at my old UMAB) brought in 40% and 40% of the total
budget, respectively, and they probably did'nt have more than 1-2% of all
faculty as adjuncts.
I'm not talking about
> what goes on at "teaching" colleges.
You should understand and accept that what goes on at teaching colleges is
relevant to the adjunct job market. We've been over this many many times
in the past.
> In terms of offering a course, the universities I've been in contact
> with (in Chemical Engineering) have a fixed course schedule, meaning the
> same courses are offered the same semester every year. Most, and I say
> most because I'm sure there will be exceptions, Chemical Engineering
> departments do not have anyone besides full time faculty teaching
> required courses. For elective courses you will see the use of
> adjuncts. Especially if these electives are in highly specialized areas
> where none of the faculty have expertise.
>
> On a sidenote, while a graduate student I once proposed to the faculty
> that maybe I could teach one of the lower level Chemical Engineering
> courses. I like teaching a lot, I knew what I was doing and I thought
> it was a good idea. I was told in no uncertain terms that would never
> happen, as the department prided itself on having full time faculty
> teach all of the courses. It appears that the almighty dollar isn't the
> only thing these departments consider when deciding who to hire and who
> teaches what.
Go up to Harvard University where I read that a lot of the undergrad
courses are taught by Harvard graduate students.
Arthur E. Sowers, PhD
-----------------------------------------
| Science career information website: |
| http://www.magpage.com/~arthures |
-----------------------------------------
=== no change to below, included for reference and context ====
> >
Jeffrey J. Potoff
Jay wrote:
>
> Rich Lemert wrote:
> >
> > Just a brief comment before I leave for a short family vacation -
> >
> > Art - You're sure fond of telling those of us who are actually IN the
> > engineering profession (and who either are or have been in an engineering
> > faculty position) what life is like in our world, and how we are wrong
> > about what's really going on even though we have more relevent first hand
> > experience. Is this how you conducted your own research - stuff the results
> > in to fit the theory whether they did so or not? I have always been ready
> > to acknowledge your expertise in your world - why can you not
> > recognize that others have a greater expertise in theirs?
>
> Heh, the "Joe Isuzu" troll of SRC wants us to just trust him.
> "Just trust me I know what I am talking about",
> Sure I'll trust you to...PLOINK.
Lemert a troll? Hardly. In general, I find what he posts to be quite
true for those in engineering departments.
Jeff
Arthur Sowers
On Thu, 15 Mar 2001, Rich Lemert wrote:
> Just a brief comment before I leave for a short family vacation -
>
> Art - You're sure fond of telling those of us who are actually IN the
> engineering profession (and who either are or have been in an engineering
> faculty position) what life is like in our world, and how we are wrong
> about what's really going on even though we have more relevent first hand
> experience.
You are sure fond of ignoring that I am talking about not the engineering
profession but the biomed areas and that I've spent all of my career in
these areas.
The thread began with Derek's posting of a pdf file, and apparently I'm
the only one who read it and commented on it, which was about physics, not
engineering.
Is this how you conducted your own research - stuff the results
> in to fit the theory whether they did so or not? I have always been ready
> to acknowledge your expertise in your world
Where? I've not seen any readiness on your part to acknowledge my
expertise.
Arthur Sowers
That newspaper reported the situation in a manner similar to many
newspaper articles I've read, similar to what several adjuncts told me
about the market, and my personal experience with the details of one
adjunct jobs I looked at back 4-5 years ago. They ain't good jobs but if
the guys can't get anything better, then they take them.
Art
Josh Halpern
Arthur Sowers wrote:
> On Sat, 17 Mar 2001, Josh Halpern wrote:
> > Arthur Sowers wrote:
> > > On Wed, 14 Mar 2001, Josh Halpern wrote:
> > > And, who knows, some of those colleges may not even be reporting salary
> > > data on their adjuncts.
> > Really, which orifice did you pull this maybe out of?
> Oh? Do you mean that when colleges report data that they always include
> data for ALL their faculty? Including the temps? Do you really think that?
> What makes you think what they report is complete?
And what makes you think what they report is seriously incomplete? (other
than native arrogance).
> > > But, I saw the budget for some departments at my old UMAB and for PhD
> > > faculty, we're talking about $70-80K, by eyeball. But, the kicker is that
> > > UMAB is a medical school where even for PhDs, I'd expect the salary data
> > > to be a good 20-30 K higher than for faculty at all the many colleges and
> > > lower tier institutions.
And what makes you think what you report is complete, or even true?
Clearly you are a biased and bitter source. We can ignore you.
> And, that only means the data has to find _a
> > > lot_ of PhDs making somewhere in the $100-120K plus range.
> > Try industry.
> I've got the R&D magazine industry salary data (however valid it is) and
> if you want me to dig out some, there were, as I recall NO PhDs making way
> up there except in administration and/or management.
Gee, go ask Jeff what the normal career progression for an engineer is.
At some point you get into management, even if the group size is small.
> >You also should realize that your data is almost a decade old now.
> My data was from 1995, or about where a lot of published data is
> from.
From UMAB? they threw you out earlier than that, didn't they?
> > > > Please also note, before replying that half the S&E Ph.D.s will
> > > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > > > make LESS than a $70K median (in some cases much less).
> > > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > > Ah, so now we get some acknowledgement that "$70K median" does not imply
> > > something like "70K +/-, say, $10K".
> > Acknowledgment. The sun rises. I acknowledge that.
> > Everyone here has talked about $25K postdocs. Climb
> > down off your high horse.
> Yeah..... you climb down off yours (the horse named NSF), too.
Why? they include data on the postdocs also. The fact that you
don't realize that a median includes 50% of people earning less
than the median says something about you, not the data.
> > > So, you (Josh) admit that "much less" might even be down there where you
> > > can easily find jobs that require just a HS diploma but still get paid
> > > decently.
> > I have a lot of relatives and acquaintances who have reasonable
> > paying jobs with HS diplomas. But you know what, they had a
> > hell of a hard time finding those jobs, and they can loose them
> > fairly easily.
> You mean as easily as I lost my career? Or, that I spent over a decade of
> time in the pipeline just so I could lose my career.
Easier. In almost all jobs you can be fired at the will of the employer.
Faculty at least have the benefit of the rules in the University handbook.
> > I also know many who have not been able to find
> > such a position, but continue scuffling. It is really distressing
> > how you make light of their struggles to find decent employment
> > by pretending that it is trivial to find good positions with a
> > high school degree.
> I have made many posts in the last two years covering a number of
> occupations that were not that hard to get into. I don't know what you are
> talking about, but people who go looking to become employees are going to
> have it a little more difficult than people who carefully look to form
> their own small business and form it in an area where there is demand,
> a widespread customer base, and a service which does not require a large
> initial investment. I'm not talking about the $7-10 work that is easy to
> find, but the work that pays more like in the $20s per hour. Or, would you
> like me to re-write all the summaries I posted over the last two years?
It was, to anyone who has any experience of the world outside of
an academic cartoon, a bunch of crap. You left out, among other
things the bankrupcy rates of people who go out on their own.
Collecting receivables is no bed of roses, and lots of your suppliers
demand payment on delivery. There is a disjunction there. Those are
just one a few of a large number of things you left out. Look at the stuff
that is filtering over here from the computer consultants. Bad times
hit small proprietorships first and hardest. It is also not so easy in
good times.
Your recent perambutation on how easy it was to become a fireman
was a classic in this area, at least to anyone who knows firemen,
who often train as volunteers and wait long and long for full time
paid positions to open up in neighboring departments. (They tend
to be as obsessed to be firemen as physicists are obessed to be
physicists). In short you are a few buckets short of a clue in this
area also. Why am I not surprised.
> Or, maybe you can tell me what your definition is of "good
> position." There is a interesting phrase out in the low job security world
> which defines job security as whatever it is that makes it possible to get
> another job quickly if yoyu lose your first job. Kindofa joke, but
> practical. There aint many Becky jobs, and tenure track jobs are a smaller
> proportion of all faculty jobs as each year goes by. So, where else do you
> go?
In your case, I am not particularly concerned.
> > > Yeah, PhDs in crap adjunct jobs, crapy postdocs, temp RentaPhDs, making
> > > like maybe 30K for full time work? Its a pisser.
> >
> > Yeah, working a union job, where the job disappears every
> > year or two and you have to start over in another place
> > until you voluntarily retire. It's a pisser but at least you
> > get health insurance.
>
> Well, you've got your choice. The union job can have its hazards if a
> company does union busting, or the company goes out of business. I know a
> union technician at Channel 7 in DC and he's got it good even though Joe
> Albriton puts the thumbs down AND has been hiring non union temps in
> increasing numbers over all the years since some time back. I heard a lot
> of stories. My guy says he's going to stay because anything else means a
> very big pay cut. His seniority is high and if a big cut comes, lots under
> him will go first.
Right. He eventually found a good job. And he wants to keep it. And
even there he is threatened. Recall what I said.
*************************************
>I have a lot of relatives and acquaintances who have reasonable
> paying jobs with HS diplomas. But you know what, they had a
> hell of a hard time finding those jobs, and they can loose them
> fairly easily.
*************************************
You didn't like it when I said it, but you loved it when you said it.
Why am I not surprised?
josh halpern
Arthur Sowers
On Sat, 17 Mar 2001, Josh Halpern wrote:
>
>
> Arthur Sowers wrote:
>
> > On Sat, 17 Mar 2001, Josh Halpern wrote:
> > > Arthur Sowers wrote:
> > > > On Wed, 14 Mar 2001, Josh Halpern wrote:
> > > > And, who knows, some of those colleges may not even be reporting salary
> > > > data on their adjuncts.
> > > Really, which orifice did you pull this maybe out of?
> > Oh? Do you mean that when colleges report data that they always include
> > data for ALL their faculty? Including the temps? Do you really think that?
> > What makes you think what they report is complete?
>
> And what makes you think what they report is seriously incomplete? (other
> than native arrogance).
Recently I have started to compile a list of recent newspaper articles
and other sources that report on lies presented as truth for a number of
sources, including colleges. There are even a number of reports of high
schools faking student enrollment and embellishing student test scores. I
will post this list soon. There are even government issued statements that
were later exposed/revealed as lies.
> > > > But, I saw the budget for some departments at my old UMAB and for PhD
> > > > faculty, we're talking about $70-80K, by eyeball. But, the kicker is that
> > > > UMAB is a medical school where even for PhDs, I'd expect the salary data
> > > > to be a good 20-30 K higher than for faculty at all the many colleges and
> > > > lower tier institutions.
>
> And what makes you think what you report is complete, or even true?
I said, above, I saw the budget for the whole institution but made xerox
copies of the department. In many states, the budget of state government
offices is a matter of public record. It gave names and actual annual
salary. Its law. The dean and associate dean said these were supposed to
be confidential, but the president of the faculty senate told me that is
not true and told me who to see, where to go, and what to ask for. I did
this and the person just said "Its over on the shelf in that closet" and
it was, and I asked "can I take this over to the xerox machine?" and she
said yes. I also asked if many other people have come to ask for this, and
she said yes, again.
> Clearly you are a biased and bitter source. We can ignore you.
This is irrelevant to the prior sentence you wrote.
> We can ignore you.
"We" again, is also inappropriate.
> > And, that only means the data has to find _a
> > > > lot_ of PhDs making somewhere in the $100-120K plus range.
> > > Try industry.
> > I've got the R&D magazine industry salary data (however valid it is) and
> > if you want me to dig out some, there were, as I recall NO PhDs making way
> > up there except in administration and/or management.
>
> Gee, go ask Jeff what the normal career progression for an engineer is.
> At some point you get into management, even if the group size is small.
In all organizations I am aware of, the number of managers (chiefs) is
almost always less than the ones (indians) under any given manager. If the
manager retires, quits, or dies, only one of the many persons under
him/her can be promoted to manager. "At some point you get into
management" implies that all "indians" become "cheifs" at some point
and this does not compute. Not all professors become chairs; actually
quite few.
> > >You also should realize that your data is almost a decade old now.
> > My data was from 1995, or about where a lot of published data is
> > from.
>
> From UMAB? they threw you out earlier than that, didn't they?
My last day was June 30, 1996. Actually, I resigned.
> > > > > Please also note, before replying that half the S&E Ph.D.s will
> > > > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > > > > make LESS than a $70K median (in some cases much less).
> > > > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > > > Ah, so now we get some acknowledgement that "$70K median" does not imply
> > > > something like "70K +/-, say, $10K".
> > > Acknowledgment. The sun rises. I acknowledge that.
> > > Everyone here has talked about $25K postdocs. Climb
> > > down off your high horse.
> > Yeah..... you climb down off yours (the horse named NSF), too.
>
> Why? they include data on the postdocs also. The fact that you
> don't realize that a median includes 50% of people earning less
> than the median says something about you, not the data.
Median, as far as I understand the term, says nothing about _where_ or
_how_ far down the lower limit (or upper limit) is, or whether the range
is tight or broad. When you carelessly write incomplete sentences or
sentences which have elements of incorrect meaning, it reflects on you.
Maybe you are in a bad mood just now, or in your excitement and anger
can't think straight (your moods are like the weather; sometimes OK, at
other times you have a feather up your ass).
> > > > So, you (Josh) admit that "much less" might even be down there where you
> > > > can easily find jobs that require just a HS diploma but still get paid
> > > > decently.
> > > I have a lot of relatives and acquaintances who have reasonable
> > > paying jobs with HS diplomas. But you know what, they had a
> > > hell of a hard time finding those jobs, and they can loose them
> > > fairly easily.
> > You mean as easily as I lost my career? Or, that I spent over a decade of
> > time in the pipeline just so I could lose my career.
>
> Easier. In almost all jobs you can be fired at the will of the employer.
Mostly true at private institutions (such as WalMart). Government
"regular" (i.e. old permanent) jobs have procedures once a probationary
period is passed. I have a personal friend at the USDA who got fired
through a subversion of a federal procedure for termination but got a
lawyer and not only got his job back, but his back pay, and his lawyer
fees as well. He went into great detail about this with me.
> Faculty at least have the benefit of the rules in the University handbook.
I know of a number of cases where the handbook did no good and some of
them are cited (some in Science, some in CHE, etc) in the politics essay
on my website. I have a copy of a document signed by many people where
this happened to a faculty member in DC and I also had a chance to talk to
a lawyer about the case and the reason he talked to me about it is that
his name was on that document when I showed it to him and the document was
found in a public place. Eventually, the faculty got a settlement. Some
years later the chair that fired the faculty without due process also got
fired.
> > > I also know many who have not been able to find
> > > such a position, but continue scuffling. It is really distressing
> > > how you make light of their struggles to find decent employment
> > > by pretending that it is trivial to find good positions with a
> > > high school degree.
> > I have made many posts in the last two years covering a number of
> > occupations that were not that hard to get into. I don't know what you are
> > talking about, but people who go looking to become employees are going to
> > have it a little more difficult than people who carefully look to form
> > their own small business and form it in an area where there is demand,
> > a widespread customer base, and a service which does not require a large
> > initial investment. I'm not talking about the $7-10 work that is easy to
> > find, but the work that pays more like in the $20s per hour. Or, would you
> > like me to re-write all the summaries I posted over the last two years?
>
> It was, to anyone who has any experience of the world outside of
> an academic cartoon, a bunch of crap. You left out, among other
> things the bankrupcy rates of people who go out on their own.
I have also posted many times this as well as that 50% of all first
marriages also go on the rocks, as well as the astronomy paper where only
1/3 get permanent jobs.
> Collecting receivables is no bed of roses, and lots of your suppliers
> demand payment on delivery.
I have been in the billing agent business now for 5 years and have
substantial experience with insurance company payment practices and
patterns on submitted claims and I'll have to say that while it is not a
bed of roses, its a lot better than departmental politics and grant
success rates. Much less stress, too.
"your suppliers demand payment on delivery"...I walked into Sam's Club 5
years ago with my business license and got a $10,000 line of credit in ten
minutes. I got a $5,000 line of credit with American Express by signing a
form and paying a $50 fee for a one year membership. I closed that account
after one year. I got a business ATT Mastercard a year later with another
$10,000 line of credit, no annual fee, and I always pay off the whole
balance before it is due. I've had a number of clients in the last 5
years, including two incorporated small businesses, a trust, one laywers
office, one partnership, and one sole proprietorship. They all paid
shortly after being billed.
There is a disjunction there. Those are
> just one a few of a large number of things you left out.
Name anythings else and I'll put them in.
Look at the stuff
> that is filtering over here from the computer consultants. Bad times
> hit small proprietorships first and hardest. It is also not so easy in
> good times.
I read yesterday in the WSJ that non performing mortgages went up from
like 3% to 3.5% in the 4Q of 2K, or something like that, and they do watch
stuff like that. Where our old house is, in a golf course community, over
the last 14 years, three houses were auctioned off for non payments.
> Your recent perambutation on how easy it was to become a fireman
> was a classic in this area, at least to anyone who knows firemen,
> who often train as volunteers and wait long and long for full time
> paid positions to open up in neighboring departments. (They tend
> to be as obsessed to be firemen as physicists are obessed to be
> physicists). In short you are a few buckets short of a clue in this
> area also. Why am I not surprised.
I did not say how easy it was to become a fireman and never said
that. What I did say was that a newspaper article for a FD in a particular
city said that permanent paid employees of the FD who were in their jobs
for something like 30 years were making something like $50K, which is not
too bad for just an HS education. It is for readers to be inspired that if
their nice sci career bombs, there are a decent number of other jobs out
there and pay decent and not the $7-10/hour convenience store junk but
they have to go dig out for themselves and decide to pursue these better
jobs.
> > Or, maybe you can tell me what your definition is of "good
> > position." There is a interesting phrase out in the low job security world
> > which defines job security as whatever it is that makes it possible to get
> > another job quickly if yoyu lose your first job. Kindofa joke, but
> > practical. There aint many Becky jobs, and tenure track jobs are a smaller
> > proportion of all faculty jobs as each year goes by. So, where else do you
> > go?
>
> In your case, I am not particularly concerned.
I'm not either.
> > > > Yeah, PhDs in crap adjunct jobs, crapy postdocs, temp RentaPhDs, making
> > > > like maybe 30K for full time work? Its a pisser.
> > >
> > > Yeah, working a union job, where the job disappears every
> > > year or two and you have to start over in another place
> > > until you voluntarily retire. It's a pisser but at least you
> > > get health insurance.
> >
> > Well, you've got your choice. The union job can have its hazards if a
> > company does union busting, or the company goes out of business. I know a
> > union technician at Channel 7 in DC and he's got it good even though Joe
> > Albriton puts the thumbs down AND has been hiring non union temps in
> > increasing numbers over all the years since some time back. I heard a lot
> > of stories. My guy says he's going to stay because anything else means a
> > very big pay cut. His seniority is high and if a big cut comes, lots under
> > him will go first.
>
> Right. He eventually found a good job. And he wants to keep it. And
> even there he is threatened. Recall what I said.
The only people who don't have to worry very much are the very rich.
From there on down, things deteriorate to the lower limit, which is
homelessness.
> *************************************
> >I have a lot of relatives and acquaintances who have reasonable
> > paying jobs with HS diplomas. But you know what, they had a
> > hell of a hard time finding those jobs, and they can loose them
> > fairly easily.
> *************************************
> You didn't like it when I said it, but you loved it when you said it.
This is a strange thing to say considering that there are a lot of PhDs
(at least in biomeds) who have a hard time finding jobs relevant to their
preparations. Also, "...you loved it...." does not fit the situation. My
description of the alternatives would not say "...had a hell of a hard
time...." but that researching options, making a carefull decision/choice,
just make the leap of faith, and use common sense I think will go a long
way. After all, I had extensive conversations over the last three years
with a lot of "ordinary" people with I'm sure just HS educations and they
all told me the same stories. Been in their thing all their lives, rarely
unemployed (my father, a simple painter, was almost never unemployed in
his life), and _not_ looking for anything different or better. The one
exception was the electrician who had to get a license and do an
apprenticeship for 4 years, now he gets $55/hour. He doesn't make a lot of
money because he takes a lot of vacations, goes hunting and fishing a lot,
and has a $13,000 swamp buggy of some kind that goes anywhere.
> Why am I not surprised?
Because not only are your eyes and ears closed, but your brain is turned
off.
Otherwise, I wish everyone luck in their pursuits (but try to find out
early if that fishing pond has any fish in it).
Rich Lemert
> On Thu, 15 Mar 2001, Rich Lemert wrote:
>
> > Just a brief comment before I leave for a short family vacation -
> >
> > Art - You're sure fond of telling those of us who are actually IN the
> > engineering profession (and who either are or have been in an engineering
> > faculty position) what life is like in our world, and how we are wrong
> > about what's really going on even though we have more relevent first hand
> > experience.
>
> You are sure fond of ignoring that I am talking about not the engineering
> profession but the biomed areas and that I've spent all of my career in
> these areas.
Shall we go back and quote your many posts in which NO distinction suchdistinction
is made. One _could_ see where you restrict your discussions to
science, but beyond that you offer no finer distinction. In fact, you insist on
extending your comments to chemistry, physics, sometimes a little math, ....
Very rarely do you indicate that your results apply to biomedical fields, and
that any extrapolation from them must be taken with a grain of salt.
Rich Lemert
Arthur Sowers
On Sun, 18 Mar 2001, Rich Lemert wrote:
> Arthur Sowers wrote:
>
> > On Thu, 15 Mar 2001, Rich Lemert wrote:
> >
> > > Just a brief comment before I leave for a short family vacation -
> > >
> > > Art - You're sure fond of telling those of us who are actually IN the
> > > engineering profession (and who either are or have been in an engineering
> > > faculty position) what life is like in our world, and how we are wrong
> > > about what's really going on even though we have more relevent first hand
> > > experience.
> >
> > You are sure fond of ignoring that I am talking about not the engineering
> > profession but the biomed areas and that I've spent all of my career in
> > these areas.
>
> Shall we go back and quote your many posts in which NO distinction suchdistinction
> is made.
Shall I refer you to URLs on my website where there is considerable
sentiment that in all areas, PhDs are overproduced?
One _could_ see where you restrict your discussions to
> science, but beyond that you offer no finer distinction.
I have given finer distinction many times.
In fact, you insist on
> extending your comments to chemistry, physics, sometimes a little math, ....
> Very rarely do you indicate that your results apply to biomedical fields, and
> that any extrapolation from them must be taken with a grain of salt.
See above....and others who think overall Phd production is too high.
Arthur E. Sowers, PhD
-----------------------------------------
| Science career information website: |
| http://www.magpage.com/~arthures |
-----------------------------------------
> Rich Lemert
>
>
>
Josh Halpern
Arthur Sowers wrote:
> On Sat, 17 Mar 2001, Josh Halpern wrote:
> > Arthur Sowers wrote:
> > > On Sat, 17 Mar 2001, Josh Halpern wrote:
> > > > Arthur Sowers wrote:
> > > > > On Wed, 14 Mar 2001, Josh Halpern wrote:
> > > > > And, who knows, some of those colleges may not even be reporting salary
> > > > > data on their adjuncts.
> > > > Really, which orifice did you pull this maybe out of?
> > > Oh? Do you mean that when colleges report data that they always include
> > > data for ALL their faculty? Including the temps? Do you really think that?
> > > What makes you think what they report is complete?
> > And what makes you think what they report is seriously incomplete? (other
> > than native arrogance).
> Recently I have started to compile a list of recent newspaper articles
> and other sources that report on lies presented as truth for a number of
> sources, including colleges.
This is such a basic fallacy that it is almost not worth commenting on.
Because one thing is a lie, everything is a lie. It also condemns you
to check everything in every detail.....OK, I take your point. Everything
is a lie, including everything you say. Especially. SNIP
> > > > > But, I saw the budget for some departments at my old UMAB and for PhD
> > > > > faculty, we're talking about $70-80K, by eyeball. But, the kicker is that
> > > > > UMAB is a medical school where even for PhDs, I'd expect the salary data
> > > > > to be a good 20-30 K higher than for faculty at all the many colleges and
> > > > > lower tier institutions.
> > And what makes you think what you report is complete, or even true?
> I said, above, I saw the budget for the whole institution but made xerox
> copies of the department. In many states, the budget of state government
> offices is a matter of public record. It gave names and actual annual
> salary. Its law. The dean and associate dean said these were supposed to
> be confidential, but the president of the faculty senate told me that is
> not true and told me who to see, where to go, and what to ask for. I did
> this and the person just said "Its over on the shelf in that closet" and
> it was, and I asked "can I take this over to the xerox machine?" and she
> said yes. I also asked if many other people have come to ask for this, and
> she said yes, again.
> > Clearly you are a biased and bitter source. We can ignore you.
> This is irrelevant to the prior sentence you wrote.
Oh no, everything is a lie including everything you say. I know
that I am telling the truth.
> > We can ignore you.
> "We" again, is also inappropriate.
Why, WE know you are telling nothing by lies. WE will
ignore you. SNIP...
> > Gee, go ask Jeff what the normal career progression for an engineer is.
> > At some point you get into management, even if the group size is small.
>
> In all organizations I am aware of, the number of managers (chiefs) is
> almost always less than the ones (indians) under any given manager.
Organizations grow, population grows. Organization get bigger and
there are more organizations today than thirty years ago. Therefore
there are more manager position. SNIP....
> > > > > > Please also note, before replying that half the S&E Ph.D.s will
> > > > > > make LESS than a $70K median (in some cases much less).
> > > > > Ah, so now we get some acknowledgement that "$70K median" does not imply
> > > > > something like "70K +/-, say, $10K".
> > > > Acknowledgment. The sun rises. I acknowledge that.
> > > > Everyone here has talked about $25K postdocs. Climb
> > > > down off your high horse.
> > > Yeah..... you climb down off yours (the horse named NSF), too.
> > Why? they include data on the postdocs also. The fact that you
> > don't realize that a median includes 50% of people earning less
> > than the median says something about you, not the data.
>
> Median, as far as I understand the term, says nothing about _where_ or
> _how_ far down the lower limit (or upper limit) is, or whether the range
> is tight or broad. When you carelessly write incomplete sentences or
> sentences which have elements of incorrect meaning, it reflects on you.
Incomplete sentences. What is incomplete about stating what the
median salary is for S&E Ph.D.s Yeah, there is more data, but
stating one statistic is just that, stating a statistic. Stop talking
to yourself. You want to know other statistics, go look them
up (HINT: You need to uses the NSF SESAT data base for
that level of detail)
> > > > > So, you (Josh) admit that "much less" might even be down there where you
> > > > > can easily find jobs that require just a HS diploma but still get paid
> > > > > decently.
> > > > I have a lot of relatives and acquaintances who have reasonable
> > > > paying jobs with HS diplomas. But you know what, they had a
> > > > hell of a hard time finding those jobs, and they can loose them
> > > > fairly easily.
> > > You mean as easily as I lost my career? Or, that I spent over a decade of
> > > time in the pipeline just so I could lose my career.
> > Easier. In almost all jobs you can be fired at the will of the employer.
> Mostly true at private institutions (such as WalMart). Government
> "regular" (i.e. old permanent) jobs have procedures once a probationary
> period is passed.
Dreamer. In most cases, unless there is a union contract you
serve at will.
> I have a personal friend at the USDA who got fired
> through a subversion of a federal procedure for termination but got a
> lawyer and not only got his job back, but his back pay, and his lawyer
> fees as well. He went into great detail about this with me.
Right, there was a handbook that functioned as a contract.
> > Faculty at least have the benefit of the rules in the University handbook.
>
> I know of a number of cases where the handbook did no good and some of
> them are cited (some in Science, some in CHE, etc) in the politics essay
> on my website. I have a copy of a document signed by many people where
> this happened to a faculty member in DC and I also had a chance to talk to
> a lawyer about the case and the reason he talked to me about it is that
> his name was on that document when I showed it to him and the document was
> found in a public place. Eventually, the faculty got a settlement. Some
> years later the chair that fired the faculty without due process also got
> fired.
Right again, notice there was recourse. Most people don't have
that.
Well Art, I never said you were realistic. That easy to get line of
credit in good times is easy to yank in bad. Even faster than
a department chair can ditch you, as many small businesses have
discovered to their regret. If I were you I would also read the fine
print on what they can grab if you don't pay, especially now with
the new bankrupcy bill. Fast payers in good times become slow
payers in bad as the dot.coms have.
> > Your recent perambutation on how easy it was to become a fireman
> > was a classic in this area, at least to anyone who knows firemen,
> > who often train as volunteers and wait long and long for full time
> > paid positions to open up in neighboring departments. (They tend
> > to be as obsessed to be firemen as physicists are obessed to be
> > physicists). In short you are a few buckets short of a clue in this
> > area also. Why am I not surprised.
>
> I did not say how easy it was to become a fireman and never said
> that.
Right, you never said it after several people pointed out to
you that it was rough getting professional firefighter jobs.
> What I did say was that a newspaper article for a FD in a particular
> city said that permanent paid employees of the FD who were in their jobs
> for something like 30 years were making something like $50K, which is not
> too bad for just an HS education. It is for readers to be inspired that if
> their nice sci career bombs, there are a decent number of other jobs out
> there and pay decent and not the $7-10/hour convenience store junk but
> they have to go dig out for themselves and decide to pursue these better
> jobs.
Right, sure, no way. The deja archive still exists.
josh halpern
Arthur Sowers
On Mon, 19 Mar 2001, Josh Halpern wrote:
>
>
> Arthur Sowers wrote:
>
> > On Sat, 17 Mar 2001, Josh Halpern wrote:
> > > Arthur Sowers wrote:
> > > > On Sat, 17 Mar 2001, Josh Halpern wrote:
> > > > > Arthur Sowers wrote:
> > > > > > On Wed, 14 Mar 2001, Josh Halpern wrote:
> > > > > > And, who knows, some of those colleges may not even be reporting salary
> > > > > > data on their adjuncts.
> > > > > Really, which orifice did you pull this maybe out of?
> > > > Oh? Do you mean that when colleges report data that they always include
> > > > data for ALL their faculty? Including the temps? Do you really think that?
> > > > What makes you think what they report is complete?
> > > And what makes you think what they report is seriously incomplete? (other
> > > than native arrogance).
> > Recently I have started to compile a list of recent newspaper articles
> > and other sources that report on lies presented as truth for a number of
> > sources, including colleges.
>
> This is such a basic fallacy that it is almost not worth commenting on.
> Because one thing is a lie, everything is a lie. It also condemns you
> to check everything in every detail.....OK, I take your point. Everything
> is a lie, including everything you say. Especially. SNIP
Nah, pi=3.1416... as far as academics take it, but I'm happy with it to,
for work cutting wood in my garage, two decimal places.
Everything _can't_ be a lie, or the statement itself would be a lie, and
that sets up a paradox. The universe doesn't care, but Arabs vs. Israelies
each have their own version of truth. At least, I should listen to both
sides (mix thesis and antithesis [very sophomoric, isn't it? <not to be
confused with your sophistry>] to make a synthesis), eh?
Propaganda....ahhhhh....that is something else. Include some "spin",
tweaks, polish, embellish... and you get something that is not entirely
true but maybe is not entirely a lie.
When Francis Gary Powers flew what was an innocent weather research plane
accidentally into Soviet Air space many years ago and got shot down by the
big bad Russkies, we all frowned didn't we? I think it was just two days
later and guess what? Those Russkies had the pilot, he was alive, and they
had the plane almost intact, and showed pictures of the spy camera on the
plane. So when the good guys (that's the US govt) said all those
things at first .... they were, to me and lots of other people, lies.
What do I know? Only what is in the newspapers, the journals, etc. Its
useful to be skeptical. Sometime in the '60s the journal Science had some
articles on polywater (remember that?) and dermo-optical
perception. Scientists supervised the second and there was debate. However
(and I'm not sure I have the memory correct on this) but they showed the
fraud by having a guy who knows how tricks are done sneak in and discover
the tricks. So, sometimes scientists don't know how to determine truth,
but get someone who is skeptical to begin with and maybe uncover
chicanery.
> > > > > > But, I saw the budget for some departments at my old UMAB and for PhD
> > > > > > faculty, we're talking about $70-80K, by eyeball. But, the kicker is that
> > > > > > UMAB is a medical school where even for PhDs, I'd expect the salary data
> > > > > > to be a good 20-30 K higher than for faculty at all the many colleges and
> > > > > > lower tier institutions.
> > > And what makes you think what you report is complete, or even true?
> > I said, above, I saw the budget for the whole institution but made xerox
> > copies of the department. In many states, the budget of state government
> > offices is a matter of public record. It gave names and actual annual
> > salary. Its law. The dean and associate dean said these were supposed to
> > be confidential, but the president of the faculty senate told me that is
> > not true and told me who to see, where to go, and what to ask for. I did
> > this and the person just said "Its over on the shelf in that closet" and
> > it was, and I asked "can I take this over to the xerox machine?" and she
> > said yes. I also asked if many other people have come to ask for this, and
> > she said yes, again.
> > > Clearly you are a biased and bitter source. We can ignore you.
> > This is irrelevant to the prior sentence you wrote.
>
> Oh no, everything is a lie including everything you say.
Bzzzt (paradox alarm again)
I know
> that I am telling the truth.
Ah, but I don't. Maybe you sometimes lie. Maybe you don't even know
it. Maybe your "know" is defective and it tells your mouth OK, but
otherwise GIGO.
Sorry, I don't think you are a supreme being (but I can't rule it out,
either).
> > > We can ignore you.
> > "We" again, is also inappropriate.
>
> Why, WE know you are telling nothing by lies. WE will
> ignore you. SNIP...
1. When?
2. Are you, by any chance, on that wine bottle again?
3. Or on something out of your chem lab?
> > > Gee, go ask Jeff what the normal career progression for an engineer is.
> > > At some point you get into management, even if the group size is small.
> >
> > In all organizations I am aware of, the number of managers (chiefs) is
> > almost always less than the ones (indians) under any given manager.
>
> Organizations grow, population grows. Organization get bigger and
> there are more organizations today than thirty years ago. Therefore
> there are more manager position. SNIP....
And there are more underlings under the managers, too.
> > > > > > > Please also note, before replying that half the S&E Ph.D.s will
> > > > > > > make LESS than a $70K median (in some cases much less).
> > > > > > Ah, so now we get some acknowledgement that "$70K median" does not imply
> > > > > > something like "70K +/-, say, $10K".
> > > > > Acknowledgment. The sun rises. I acknowledge that.
> > > > > Everyone here has talked about $25K postdocs. Climb
> > > > > down off your high horse.
> > > > Yeah..... you climb down off yours (the horse named NSF), too.
> > > Why? they include data on the postdocs also. The fact that you
> > > don't realize that a median includes 50% of people earning less
> > > than the median says something about you, not the data.
> >
> > Median, as far as I understand the term, says nothing about _where_ or
> > _how_ far down the lower limit (or upper limit) is, or whether the range
> > is tight or broad. When you carelessly write incomplete sentences or
> > sentences which have elements of incorrect meaning, it reflects on you.
>
> Incomplete sentences.
Excuse me, not the best term. Incomplete expression.
What is incomplete about stating what the
> median salary is for S&E Ph.D.s Yeah, there is more data, but
> stating one statistic is just that, stating a statistic. Stop talking
> to yourself. You want to know other statistics, go look them
> up (HINT: You need to uses the NSF SESAT data base for
> that level of detail)
So does median $70 k mean range $ 65 - 75 k, or $20 K to 120K? In the
second case, lots of sad people at the lower end.
> > > > > > So, you (Josh) admit that "much less" might even be down there where you
> > > > > > can easily find jobs that require just a HS diploma but still get paid
> > > > > > decently.
> > > > > I have a lot of relatives and acquaintances who have reasonable
> > > > > paying jobs with HS diplomas. But you know what, they had a
> > > > > hell of a hard time finding those jobs, and they can loose them
> > > > > fairly easily.
> > > > You mean as easily as I lost my career? Or, that I spent over a decade of
> > > > time in the pipeline just so I could lose my career.
> > > Easier. In almost all jobs you can be fired at the will of the employer.
> > Mostly true at private institutions (such as WalMart). Government
> > "regular" (i.e. old permanent) jobs have procedures once a probationary
> > period is passed.
>
> Dreamer. In most cases, unless there is a union contract you
> serve at will.
In my own case, no union, no contract, and since I am the boss, I will
never get involuntarily fired, and myself won't get fired myself. TS on
the others. Actually, I've met a number of people in the last 5 years who
have similar arrangements.
> > I have a personal friend at the USDA who got fired
> > through a subversion of a federal procedure for termination but got a
> > lawyer and not only got his job back, but his back pay, and his lawyer
> > fees as well. He went into great detail about this with me.
>
> Right, there was a handbook that functioned as a contract.
And, it was backed up by federal law!
> > > Faculty at least have the benefit of the rules in the University handbook.
> >
> > I know of a number of cases where the handbook did no good and some of
> > them are cited (some in Science, some in CHE, etc) in the politics essay
> > on my website. I have a copy of a document signed by many people where
> > this happened to a faculty member in DC and I also had a chance to talk to
> > a lawyer about the case and the reason he talked to me about it is that
> > his name was on that document when I showed it to him and the document was
> > found in a public place. Eventually, the faculty got a settlement. Some
> > years later the chair that fired the faculty without due process also got
> > fired.
>
> Right again, notice there was recourse. Most people don't have
> that.
The recourse in the DC prof's case was benefitted by an infrastructure
that I did not have in my case. The lawyer went heavy on the litigation
and exploited the chair's denial of handbook guaranteed due process. I
didn't have that because the ARC handbook had phrases written by lawyers
for a private-industrial entity compared to a handbook with origins in
academic procedure (including greivance and governance). Also, case law
about ten years earlier had favored wrongful termination more than it did
at the time of my case; the civil courts' pendulum's swing back and forth
on some issues. Otherwise, I had a good case for showing the organization
retroactively changed its performance standards for me, then changed them
back again. Quite the Sheriff of Nottingham, but I really don't care if
you would believe me or not. I also have a file on similar cases. Some
parts of the country are better on wrongful discharge (eg. Boston, and
California in general).
No, they just don't lend to new people. Existing lines are still there
unless you default.
Even faster than
> a department chair can ditch you, as many small businesses have
> discovered to their regret.
Lots of NEW small businesses that go into the red for 1/2 - 1 mil on a
risky idea (eg. dot-coms) can really tank. In my old neighborhood I've
seen about three dozen restaurants go belly up in the 14 years we've been
there. That's three dozen out of three dozen and one that started. One new
one came in, did a bang up job, and is still doing well after 6-7 years,
now.
If I were you I would also read the fine
> print on what they can grab if you don't pay, especially now with
> the new bankrupcy bill. Fast payers in good times become slow
> payers in bad as the dot.coms have.
I have zero debt (and I said this before, too). I always pay off by the
due date.
> > > Your recent perambutation on how easy it was to become a fireman
> > > was a classic in this area, at least to anyone who knows firemen,
> > > who often train as volunteers and wait long and long for full time
> > > paid positions to open up in neighboring departments. (They tend
> > > to be as obsessed to be firemen as physicists are obessed to be
> > > physicists). In short you are a few buckets short of a clue in this
> > > area also. Why am I not surprised.
> >
> > I did not say how easy it was to become a fireman and never said
> > that.
>
> Right, you never said it after several people pointed out to
> you that it was rough getting professional firefighter jobs.
See the four lines below for what I said.
> > What I did say was that a newspaper article for a FD in a particular
> > city said that permanent paid employees of the FD who were in their jobs
> > for something like 30 years were making something like $50K, which is not
> > too bad for just an HS education. It is for readers to be inspired that if
> > their nice sci career bombs, there are a decent number of other jobs out
> > there and pay decent and not the $7-10/hour convenience store junk but
> > they have to go dig out for themselves and decide to pursue these better
> > jobs.
>
> Right, sure, no way. The deja archive still exists.
Like I said, there are a lot of poor paying jobs and there are a fair
number of decent paying jobs. They are harder to find. In my case, I'm
actually making my own job and expanding into new directions. I have much
better expectations than if I think about academic landscapes, techie
stuff, or anything else where I have to fill out an application and see it
get placed on an existing stack of other applications.
Art Sowers.
> josh halpern
>
>
Josh Halpern
Arthur Sowers wrote:
On Mon, 19 Mar 2001, Josh Halpern wrote:
> Arthur Sowers wrote:
Headers snipped just a few comments. SNI[p...
> > > Gee, go ask Jeff what the normal career progression for an engineer is.
> > > At some point you get into management, even if the group size is small.
> > In all organizations I am aware of, the number of managers (chiefs) is
> > almost always less than the ones (indians) under any given manager.
> Organizations grow, population grows. Organization get bigger and
> there are more organizations today than thirty years ago. Therefore
> there are more manager position. SNIP....
And there are more underlings under the managers, too.
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. One thing that I left out is that
engineers often start as managers of technical and production
personnel. SNIP....
So does median $70 k mean range $ 65 - 75 k, or $20 K to 120K? In the
second case, lots of sad people at the lower end.
www.census.gov is not responding right now, but the 1994 data
for money income of households shows the following distribution
for households where the head of household has a doctoral degree:
# of households 1,227,000
Income < $10K 2.9%
Btw 10-15K 2.4%
Btw 15-25K 5.3%
Btw 25-35K 4.6%
Btw 35-50K 9.9%
Btw 50-75K 21.5%
> 75K 53.5%
Note that this includes all doctorates, science,
engineering, humanities, social science etc.
This also includes those working out of field.
If you thirst for more details, go look
yourself. SNIP...
> Well Art, I never said you were realistic. That easy to get line of
> credit in good times is easy to yank in bad.
No, they just don't lend to new people. Existing lines are still there
unless you default.
You ARE clueless. Lines of credit are at the will of the one
extending the credit and can be withdrawn at any point AND
immediate repayment demanded. Talk to Amazon about this,
they are into pay on delivery or you don't get anything.
josh halpern
Arthur Sowers
2.9 + 2.4 + 5.3 adds up to more than one in ten households with doctoral
making poverty or just over poverty income.
> Btw 25-35K 4.6%
add this 4.6 and now we're up to about one in seven, and 25-35K for
household income with only a HS diploma can be found in lots of jobs I've
talked about.
> Btw 35-50K 9.9%
This is also easily in striking range for people with only a HS diploma,
and includes even high end truck drivers.
> Btw 50-75K 21.5%
> > 75K 53.5%
Average physician income is commonly reported to be between 100K and 200K
depending on source.
> Note that this includes all doctorates, science,
> engineering, humanities, social science etc.
> This also includes those working out of field.
>
> If you thirst for more details, go look
> yourself. SNIP...
I have the general picture, plus lots of my unanswered questions, too.
> > > Well Art, I never said you were realistic. That easy to get line of
> > > credit in good times is easy to yank in bad.
> > No, they just don't lend to new people. Existing lines are still there
> > unless you default.
>
> You ARE clueless.
You not only can't read and remember, you can't even think....
Lines of credit are at the will of the one
> extending the credit and can be withdrawn at any point AND
> immediate repayment demanded.
"payment" not repayment. Lenders, creditors, and banks have fine print for
the procedure. Since I have no debt (I've mentioned this many times now),
they can't demand any payment (at least from me). The _way it works_ is
that you get 30 days to pay any new balance due or else the next balance
due carries an interest charge and a minimum payment. You make it sound
like "...credit withdrawn at any point...." happens at random and with no
cause. It would make no sense for this to happen and in all my life I have
never heard of credit being spontaneously withdrawn without cause or
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
explanation (my underlining). And, I sometimes get "invitations" for a so
^^^^^^^^^^^
called "payment holiday". Maybe what you are talking about are cases where
people are running up debt and not paying minimum amounts. All these
outfits otherwise love it for you to carry debt that earns them high rates
of interest.
Talk to Amazon about this,
> they are into pay on delivery or you don't get anything.
What's the big deal?
My wife bought a book from A over the internet. She used a credit
card. She got the book. She paid the amount on the credit card before the
due date, so, no extra charges. A gets its money "instantly" and my wife
gets 30 days to pay the amount without fees. What are you ranting about?
I use a credit card sometimes for the protections (Fair Trade and Credit
Act) in case product or services are defective; you get rights (ever read
that small, fine print, on the back, that is in faint gray, not black,
ink?). I've actually used those rights twice in the past and got my money
back.
COD, yeah. The driver that delivered my 150 tons of driveway gravel asked
for a check. He also said its OK to mail it to the quary, too. Our kitchen
cabinets, bought through Lowe's, had to be 100% pre-paid with a check. So,
other options more trouble, we paid. Final bill on the house we just
bought.... I argued (good arguments) with the main contractor and said
there were several lines in dispute adding up to several hundred bucks. He
backed down without much protest.
Brian Moore
Arthur Sowers <arth...@magpage.com> wrote:
...
>
>Jeff, you are not thinking or reading. There are only a few research
>universities compared to the number of small colleges where NO research is
>done. They make most of their money off tuition. I explained in the
>paragraph above yours exactly what I saw at Wesley College in Dover,
>Delaware, where the Assoc dean (who hires the adjuncts) showed me his
>computer. course offered, students signeing up (N), at $/credit hour,
>times C credit hours per course minus fee to adjunct teaching the
>course. You can do the arithemtic on the back of an envelope. The gross
>profits can be 10-30%, maybe more, depending on enrollment and whether a
>teacher is available. If the income minus costs is negative, then they
>cancel the course and offer it again next cycle. From all that I read,
>this formula can make money for most institutions that don't have
>endowment income or grant income.
>
Doing calculations like this, they can be quite an eye-opener. I don't
see this happening yet but when you do the calcuation of what would
happen if you could get an adjunct to teach a big freshman section
(say 200, 300 or more), the profit margin is quite an eye-opener
(and a lot more than 10-30%!). Like I said, I don't see it happening very
often (yet) but the temptation has got to be there.
I've always thought why not skip the middle-man and just have the students
bring the portion of their tuition which goes toward paying my salary
to every class, in little envelopes? It would certainly be a very
strong motivator to make each lecture as good as you could :)
--
Brian G. Moore, School of Science, Penn State Erie--The Behrend College
bg...@psu.edu , (814)-898-6334
Josh Halpern
Josh Halpern wrote:
Arthur Sowers wrote:
On Mon, 19 Mar 2001, Josh Halpern wrote:
> Arthur Sowers wrote:SNIP...
So does median $70 k mean range $ 65 - 75 k, or $20 K to 120K? In thesecond case, lots of sad people at the lower end.www.census.gov is not responding right now, but the 1994 data
for money income of households shows the following distribution
for households where the head of household has a doctoral degree:
It responds tonight
1994 2000
# of households 1,227,000 1,372,000Median 78,150 84,100
Income < $10K 2.9% 2.2%
Btw 10-15K 2.4% 1.3%
Btw 15-25K 5.3% 3.3%
Btw 25-35K 4.6% 5.6%
Btw 35-50K 9.9% 9.4%
Btw 50-75K 21.5% 20.7%
> 75K 53.5% 57.5%
josh halpern
Josh Halpern
Arthur Sowers wrote:
On Tue, 20 Mar 2001, Josh Halpern wrote:
> Arthur Sowers wrote:
Headers snipped SNIPpp
> www.census.gov is not responding right now, but the 1994 data
> for money income of households shows the following distribution
> for households where the head of household has a doctoral degree:
Lets bring the table up to date, add columns for HS grads,
BS, P(rofessional degrees) and Ph.D. just to see what
kind of moonshine Art is sellin. 2000 figures
http://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/statab/sec14.pdf
view table with an equispaced font:
Ph.D Pro Col
HS
# households 1,227 1,623 16,781 30,613
in 1000s
Income < $10K 2.2% 2.6
3.1 10.7
Btw 10-15K 1.3% 3.1
2.5 8.5
Btw 15-25K 3.3% 3.9
7.5 15.8
Btw 25-35K 5.6% 5.0
9.6 15.8
Btw 35-50K 9.4% 8.1
14.7 18.1
Btw 50-75K 20.7% 17.4
24.3 18.7
>75K 57.5%
59.8 38.4 12.4
Median 84,100 95,039 62,188
34,373
% below 25K 6.8 9.6
13.1 35.0
% below 35K 12.4 14.6
22.7 50.8
OK, which group has the FEWEST people with
household earnings below 25K$, Which group
has the FEWEST people with household earnings
below 35K$?
Average physician income is commonly reported to be between 100K and 200K
depending on source.> Note that this includes all doctorates, science,
> engineering, humanities, social science etc.
> This also includes those working out of field.
> If you thirst for more details, go look
> yourself. SNIP...I have the general picture, plus lots of my unanswered questions, too.
AND you are too lazy or too fearful that you might be wrong to
go look at the data.
Actually you are also forgetful. I've posted data from earlier
versions of this table earlier. So folks, the degree that gives
you the LOWEST probability of living in poverty IS. ...
Taa taa... the Doctorate!! (Note the word probability,
this is not a guarantee, your milage in each area varies
with luck and skill)
josh halpern
Arthur Sowers
On 20 Mar 2001, Brian Moore wrote:
> In article <98s63o$jhm$0...@216.155.0.50>,
> Arthur Sowers <arth...@magpage.com> wrote:
> ...
> >
> >Jeff, you are not thinking or reading. There are only a few research
> >universities compared to the number of small colleges where NO research is
> >done. They make most of their money off tuition. I explained in the
> >paragraph above yours exactly what I saw at Wesley College in Dover,
> >Delaware, where the Assoc dean (who hires the adjuncts) showed me his
> >computer. course offered, students signeing up (N), at $/credit hour,
> >times C credit hours per course minus fee to adjunct teaching the
> >course. You can do the arithemtic on the back of an envelope. The gross
> >profits can be 10-30%, maybe more, depending on enrollment and whether a
> >teacher is available. If the income minus costs is negative, then they
> >cancel the course and offer it again next cycle. From all that I read,
> >this formula can make money for most institutions that don't have
> >endowment income or grant income.
> >
>
>
> Doing calculations like this, they can be quite an eye-opener. I don't
> see this happening yet but when you do the calcuation of what would
> happen if you could get an adjunct to teach a big freshman section
> (say 200, 300 or more), the profit margin is quite an eye-opener
> (and a lot more than 10-30%!). Like I said, I don't see it happening very
> often (yet) but the temptation has got to be there.
Well, I was in an office of an underling dean at a very small college who
was in charge of the nightschool. All he was doing was lining up the
courses offered, seeing what teachers were available, then seeing how many
kids signed up, and I'm sure if there were not a minimum number of
students, then the course did not "make".
>
> I've always thought why not skip the middle-man and just have the students
> bring the portion of their tuition which goes toward paying my salary
> to every class, in little envelopes? It would certainly be a very
> strong motivator to make each lecture as good as you could :)
>
Sounds fine to me. But, they will say "But, we already paid our tuition to
the school"
Art
Arthur Sowers
On Wed, 21 Mar 2001, Josh Halpern wrote:
>
>
> Arthur Sowers wrote:
>
> > On Tue, 20 Mar 2001, Josh Halpern wrote:
> > > Arthur Sowers wrote:
> >
> > Headers snipped SNIPpp
> >
> > > www.census.gov is not responding right now, but the 1994 data
> > > for money income of households shows the following distribution
> > > for households where the head of household has a doctoral degree:
>
> Lets bring the table up to date, add columns for HS grads,
> BS, P(rofessional degrees) and Ph.D. just to see what
> kind of moonshine Art is sellin. 2000 figures
No moonshine. Just unanswered questions. Head of household has a doctoral
degree? What about two doctorals? How many other jobs are in those
households? How big are those households? Gross income not adjusted for
paying off loan debts? Lifetime income minus years spent in postdocs and
grad school with little income? How many PhDs are doing work relevant to
their degrees?
Sorry, bub, sounds like you're selling an "elixir".
"Josh's Magic Medicine: Get a PhD"
> http://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/statab/sec14.pdf
> view table with an equispaced font:
>
> Ph.D Pro Col HS
> # households 1,227 1,623 16,781 30,613
> in 1000s
> Income < $10K 2.2% 2.6 3.1 10.7
> Btw 10-15K 1.3% 3.1 2.5 8.5
> Btw 15-25K 3.3% 3.9 7.5 15.8
> Btw 25-35K 5.6% 5.0 9.6 15.8
> Btw 35-50K 9.4% 8.1 14.7 18.1
> Btw 50-75K 20.7% 17.4 24.3 18.7
> >75K 57.5% 59.8 38.4 12.4
> Median 84,100 95,039 62,188 34,373
> % below 25K 6.8 9.6 13.1 35.0
> % below 35K 12.4 14.6 22.7 50.8
>
> OK, which group has the FEWEST people with
> household earnings below 25K$, Which group
> has the FEWEST people with household earnings
> below 35K$?
12.4% below $35K? That's pretty bad, really. You can find jobs that need
only a HS that pay that or more.
Gee, I thought your median income was the important factor....
So, I see that while you were lost (and didn't know it) in the past, now
you are lost someplace else (and still don't know it).
> > Average physician income is commonly reported to be between 100K and 200K
> > depending on source.
> >
> > > Note that this includes all doctorates, science,
> > > engineering, humanities, social science etc.
> > > This also includes those working out of field.
> > > If you thirst for more details, go look
> > > yourself. SNIP...
> >
> > I have the general picture, plus lots of my unanswered questions, too.
>
> AND you are too lazy or too fearful that you might be wrong to
> go look at the data.
Again, how accurate is this data? I have reasons to think its not. And,
the data doesn't tell the whole story.
> Actually you are also forgetful. I've posted data from earlier
> versions of this table earlier. So folks, the degree that gives
> you the LOWEST probability of living in poverty IS. ...
> Taa taa...
How theatrical!
> the Doctorate!!
Doctorate of what? With 50% of all PhDs in ajunct slots? Get real!
If money is important (and that's the tune you've been blowing all along),
I'll still take the Pro degree.
(Note the word probability,
> this is not a guarantee, your milage in each area varies
> with luck and skill)
And a lot of other things not mentioned. Sounds like a cheap car
advert. .... and whatdya know... it IS a cheap car ad.
Art
> josh halpern
>
Derek Oliver
Arthur Sowers wrote:
> On Wed, 21 Mar 2001, Josh Halpern wrote:
> > Lets bring the table up to date, add columns for HS grads,
> > BS, P(rofessional degrees) and Ph.D. just to see what
> > kind of moonshine Art is sellin. 2000 figures
>
> No moonshine. Just unanswered questions. Head of household has a doctoral
> degree? What about two doctorals? How many other jobs are in those
> households? How big are those households? Gross income not adjusted for
> paying off loan debts? Lifetime income minus years spent in postdocs and
> grad school with little income? How many PhDs are doing work relevant to
> their degrees?
I'd agree that the above list of questions should be asked,
but, with 50% of "households" with incomes >84k, the
implication of the data is that relative to most of the
population these are secondary issues because the financial
constraints are more likely to be less.
> > http://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/statab/sec14.pdf
> > view table with an equispaced font:
> >
> > Ph.D Pro Col HS
> > # households 1,227 1,623 16,781 30,613
> > in 1000s
> > Income < $10K 2.2% 2.6 3.1 10.7
> > Btw 10-15K 1.3% 3.1 2.5 8.5
> > Btw 15-25K 3.3% 3.9 7.5 15.8
> > Btw 25-35K 5.6% 5.0 9.6 15.8
> > Btw 35-50K 9.4% 8.1 14.7 18.1
> > Btw 50-75K 20.7% 17.4 24.3 18.7
> > >75K 57.5% 59.8 38.4 12.4
> > Median 84,100 95,039 62,188 34,373
> > % below 25K 6.8 9.6 13.1 35.0
> > % below 35K 12.4 14.6 22.7 50.8
> >
> > OK, which group has the FEWEST people with
> > household earnings below 25K$, Which group
> > has the FEWEST people with household earnings
> > below 35K$?
>
> 12.4% below $35K? That's pretty bad, really. You can find jobs that need
> only a HS that pay that or more.
But look at the column to the right (HS degree) - ~51% of
households earn $34,373 or less, using the numbers, yes,
about half of high school housholds do better than ~$35k,
but by the same token 7/8 (87.6%) of "doctoral" households
do too.
Let's talk in tabloid media terms.
1/8 households with high school graduation only see >75k.
7/8 households with a doctorate see >75k.
In that reference frame, career security ain't on the radar.
> Gee, I thought your median income was the important factor....
It is, because it reflects the low income tail in both the
first two columns - whereas the high-flying salaries from a
very small few would drive a mean way over the $100k mark,
distorting the picture, and thus giving a false impression
of the distribution.
> Again, how accurate is this data? I have reasons to think its not. And,
> the data doesn't tell the whole story.
Data are never perfectly accurate. But, the government
census is meant to be the most accurate record of data. It's
the raw data governments plan with for taxation, defense,
schools, roads etc etc. It's responsibility to the
government and country is to provide the most accurate data
possible. It can never be without faults, but to assert that
it is responsible for a conspiracy of such magnitude that
you can disregard the ultimate primary source about a
prosperous nation such as the US is the product of a
paranoid mind, utter ignorance or plain old trolling.
I'm not saying that the US census is the best thing since
sliced bread, but given it's mission and budget, I'd like to
see any of us do demonstrably better. Remember, from the
summary above, 1 in 31 households have a doctorate, that
means to focus on doctoral career outcomes requires tweaking
census questionnaires towards 3.2% of the repsondants. I
can't see the other 96.8% of the taxpaying population
getting too keen on extra % being spent on those who (by the
table above) enjoy a considerable financial advantage.
Anyway, the purpose of a census is not to fart around with
career outcomes.
Arthur Sowers
On Wed, 21 Mar 2001, Derek Oliver wrote:
>
>
> Arthur Sowers wrote:
> > On Wed, 21 Mar 2001, Josh Halpern wrote:
> > > Lets bring the table up to date, add columns for HS grads,
> > > BS, P(rofessional degrees) and Ph.D. just to see what
> > > kind of moonshine Art is sellin. 2000 figures
> >
> > No moonshine. Just unanswered questions. Head of household has a doctoral
> > degree? What about two doctorals? How many other jobs are in those
> > households? How big are those households? Gross income not adjusted for
> > paying off loan debts? Lifetime income minus years spent in postdocs and
> > grad school with little income? How many PhDs are doing work relevant to
> > their degrees?
>
> I'd agree that the above list of questions should be asked,
> but, with 50% of "households" with incomes >84k, the
> implication of the data is that relative to most of the
> population these are secondary issues because the financial
> constraints are more likely to be less.
Well, if I understand you, then, sure, anyone (or any household) making
$60-80K doesn't need any sympathy. I run accross a large fraction of
colleagues where the spouse has a job, sometimes even an advanced degree
and even DINKs. But, what about those 1 out of 3 astronomers who go out of
their careers? Those 1/5 of biologists out of careers by 10 years, another
1/5 still in postdocs after 10 years? They are out there...surely in the
part of the glass that is half empty rather than half full....
Then there are
For guys who did not spend 4-5 years in undergrad, and another 5 +/- in
grad school, and who knows about postdocs (all those years making lots
less on stipends), that's not bad.
But, since you asked ME, let me ask YOU to look at another place on the
same column, the 12% that make more than $75K, and the next lowest 18%
that make between 50-75K. 12 + 18 means about one in three HS guys are
making 50K plus. Factor in no decade (pluse) of lower income and the
picture doesn't look so bad.
> Let's talk in tabloid media terms.
> 1/8 households with high school graduation only see >75k.
1/3 if you start at $50K
> 7/8 households with a doctorate see >75k.
>
> In that reference frame, career security ain't on the radar.
Fine. You pick your favorite viewpoint. I'll keep mine. Still, there is
data out there that a lot of PhDs lose or leave their careers. Its more
much more risk than the MD route.
> > Gee, I thought your median income was the important factor....
> It is, because it reflects the low income tail in both the
> first two columns - whereas the high-flying salaries from a
> very small few would drive a mean way over the $100k mark,
> distorting the picture, and thus giving a false impression
> of the distribution.
And, I have lots of questions about the high end incomes, too. I don't
know if Josh left it out, or that's the way the census data is
compiled. I'd bet that they drop, say, the top couple of percent because
of weird stuff like stock options, unusual business deals, or CEO
salary, etc., that are not "ordinary" income.
> > Again, how accurate is this data? I have reasons to think its not. And,
> > the data doesn't tell the whole story.
> Data are never perfectly accurate. But, the government
> census is meant to be the most accurate record of data.
"Mean to be" leaves a lot of uncertainty. All the answers beyond the
person filling out the census form are voluntary and not
verified. Frankly, I'd rather trust our IRS data. Even recently there were
big rumbles about our census finding at least 50% more illegal aliens here
and some estimates were that there are really 100% or more illegals than
previously thought or estimated.
It's
> the raw data governments plan with for taxation, defense,
> schools, roads etc etc. It's responsibility to the
> government and country is to provide the most accurate data
> possible. It can never be without faults, but to assert that
> it is responsible for a conspiracy of such magnitude that
> you can disregard the ultimate primary source about a
> prosperous nation such as the US is the product of a
> paranoid mind, utter ignorance or plain old trolling.
No conspiracy. I've said many times that our IRS thinks many people
under-report their incomes and they have some real data (audits, and if
you can't document your numbers, you get penalties, interest, and
sometimes jail time). In the census, all answers are taken voluntarily and
I know of no verifications. I'd expect a number of people might
"embellish" their numbers. Not a conspiracy, just the same human
psychology that makes some people say, at parties, "Hey, I bought Xtron
stock at $10 two years ago and sold it yesterday at $235" but they won't
tell you about their losses. This stuff is in the newspapers.
> I'm not saying that the US census is the best thing since
> sliced bread, but given it's mission and budget, I'd like to
> see any of us do demonstrably better. Remember, from the
> summary above, 1 in 31 households have a doctorate, that
> means to focus on doctoral career outcomes requires tweaking
> census questionnaires towards 3.2% of the repsondants. I
> can't see the other 96.8% of the taxpaying population
> getting too keen on extra % being spent on those who (by the
> table above) enjoy a considerable financial advantage.
I've seen a few salary surveys and I still have to ask the
questions. Rarely do they tell you how they get their sample population,
but I'd expect they just send blank forms out to memberships and certainly
I'd expect that guys who were not too happy with things to either not
answer or maybe embellish their report. The guys who are happy might
embellish further. This factor _has_ to be understood.
The only other numbers I ever saw that I had some faith in were exact
salaries of faculty at UMAB (in my department that I happened to look
up) in the state budget and that stuff was supposed to be mandated by
law. And, the number for my own salary was exactly right, too, as I looked
for that too. I happened to see budget data at another institution shown
to me by a supervisor of his own staff and he said "this is what I pay
these guys" and I had a look long enough to match up names with my
recollection of their histories and they made sense. Still one other
source was salary information on grant proposals I obtained using the
Freedom of Information Act and they were supposed to blot that stuff out
but they didn't for some reason and I got a eyefull of what I could
believe were actual salaries.
But Josh doesn't want to look at these reasonable issues.
> Anyway, the purpose of a census is not to fart around with
> career outcomes.
Tell that to Josh. I don't think I've ever brought up salary issues on my
own; I've been more concerned with career stability and growth
issues. And, besides both the voluntary and involuntary attrition issue,
I'd also be interested in some career satisfaction information, both from
those who "made it" and those who either "didn't make it" or "chose
something else voluntarily". There was quite a bit of this discussed
qualitatively in the two books I reviewed on my website by Kreeger and
Robbins-Roth. They covered about 100 people who ended up doing things
other than reasearch/academia and some were high paying and some were low
paying. It would be interestting to contact them 10-15 years from now and
ask them how they felt about it all.
Arthur E. Sowers, PhD
-----------------------------------------
| Science career information website: |
| http://www.magpage.com/~arthures |
-----------------------------------------
Derek Oliver
Arthur Sowers wrote:
> On Wed, 21 Mar 2001, Derek Oliver wrote:
> > Arthur Sowers wrote:
> > > Just unanswered questions. Head of household has a doctoral
> > > degree? What about two doctorals? How many other jobs are in those
> > > households? How big are those households? Gross income not adjusted for
> > > paying off loan debts? Lifetime income minus years spent in postdocs and
> > > grad school with little income? How many PhDs are doing work relevant to
> > > their degrees?
> >
> > I'd agree that the above list of questions should be asked,
> > but, with 50% of "households" with incomes >84k, the
> > implication of the data is that relative to most of the
> > population these are secondary issues because the financial
> > constraints are more likely to be less.
>
> Well, if I understand you, then, sure, anyone (or any household) making
> $60-80K doesn't need any sympathy.
No you don't understand. I'm simply saying that the wider
community won't be interested in the plight of people who
don't get to do the thing they thought they were training to
do, where it can be easily shown (as the data does) that
most of these people are highly successful in material terms
WHATEVER they end up doing - and we agree that many aren't
in academia. This is not about needing or deserving
sympathy, this is about getting some realistic handle on why
joe blow couldn't care less about the plight (or otherwise)
of PhDs, and, as a corollary, why this issue doesn't get
close to the political radar.
> But, what about those 1 out of 3 astronomers who go out of
> their careers? Those 1/5 of biologists out of careers by 10 years, another
> 1/5 still in postdocs after 10 years? They are out there...surely in the
> part of the glass that is half empty rather than half full....
According to these data, they are part of the 1/8 households
with doctorates that are earning less than $75k. 6/10 chance
of earning $75k+, and a 1/3 - 1/10 chance within that of
being an academic. If you want to talk security of income,
security of retirement - then this stacks up. If you
restrict yourself to "academic career path" - then you can
say it doesn't. The wider community looks not at the second
part (academia) - apart from 1/7 of them, they look at 75k+,
and say, "Wow, that's better than us!".
leaving the census data in for reference (sorry for culling
headers Josh).
> > > > http://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/statab/sec14.pdf
It's only 1/7 of them. If that's not a success rate to get
excited about post-PhD, it certainly isn't post-High School.
> But, since you asked ME, let me ask YOU to look at another place on the
> same column, the 12% that make more than $75K, and the next lowest 18%
> that make between 50-75K. 12 + 18 means about one in three HS guys are
> making 50K plus. Factor in no decade (pluse) of lower income and the
> picture doesn't look so bad.
According to your analysis of the astronomy paper 1/3
astronomy PhDs seemed to survive to tenure of sorts.
So, the distinction is the 5/10 years of earnings - i.e. one
can retire 5-10 years early. The trade is (as I see it)
early retirement from what you don't necessarily get
passionate about, to "normal" retirement from something that
you are passionate about. There are enough academics
retiring "early" (without pressure) - i.e. 55-60 that I know
of to indicate that the "loss" of ten years or so in
material terms is not too bad in the final analysis.
> > Let's talk in tabloid media terms.
> > 1/8 households with high school graduation only see >75k.
> 1/3 if you start at $50K
So the mark is $50k - compare the doctoral column for >50k:
78.2% i.e. >3/4
> > 6/10 households with a doctorate see >75k.
Summary - in tabloid terms, for >$50K
high school: 31.1%
doctorate: 78.2%
> > > Gee, I thought your median income was the important factor....
> > It is, because it reflects the low income tail in both the
> > first two columns - whereas the high-flying salaries from a
> > very small few would drive a mean way over the $100k mark,
> > distorting the picture, and thus giving a false impression
> > of the distribution.
> And, I have lots of questions about the high end incomes, too. I don't
> know if Josh left it out, or that's the way the census data is
> compiled. I'd bet that they drop, say, the top couple of percent because
> of weird stuff like stock options, unusual business deals, or CEO
> salary, etc., that are not "ordinary" income.
(i) the census almost certainly leaves it out because it's a
small fraction of the total (<15%)
(ii) it would be vastly inaccurate to look at in more detail
becasue these people can afford to legally
"hide"/"understate" their true income
(iii) for the ~88% of the population <$75k, envy is not a
subject that motivates detailed study. You've got it or you
haven't, and if you haven't you'd proobably rather not hear
a lot more about it.
Derek Oliver
Dear sameolddahd (& others)
Tneck Sweater wrote:
> I'd like to see those salary figures for PhDs in biosci alone.
I'd concur. There is an evident distinction to be made
between disciplines. My perception is that it has hit
hardest in the non-medical biosciences, with variable
effects across chemistry, physics and maths (and
engineering) RESEARCH - i.e. post PhD, not post-masters.
I'd strongly assert that because of the
instrumentation-building aspects of experimental work and/or
the computational demands of non-experimental work in
(roughly) physics, chemistry (& to an extent mathematics),
people with PhDs in these areas find more room to move
careerwise if they do not find an academic pathway. This is
not meant to be a derogatory statement about biologists but
it comes closest to defining the "expectations" and
"perceptions" of the skillbase difference. I have a poorer
feel for whether or not the "overproduction" in biosciences
is more pronounced.
Suffice to say at the institutions I've known about, yes the
ratio of graduate students &/or Postdocs to
supervisor/group/lab is higher in some biosciences
(especially non-clinical biomed), but then it's never been
substantially larger than (in my experiences) synthetic
chemistry (inorganic and/or organic). Equally,
botany/zoology and clinical biomed ratios are (in my
experiences) comparable to physics and physical chemistry.
Now I don't mean to get into a pissing match over group
sizes at NIH/NIST/ other US government labs - and the
fraction of the totals at these institutions are also
soemthing I'm not considering. The above assertions don't
merit the hot air. Suffice to say in all the reading I've
done on the www (all over the world) in my own job searches
and looking at stuff for family/friends in the biosciences
hasn't given me much cause to add more qualifiers to the
above observations, and there's no quantitative component
there that we could usefully use as a benchmark.
> Sadly I have no hard data to back up my assertions. But I am not blind.
> I see people on the postdoc trail to doom; I see people with very low salaries;
> Even those I know who have solid positions seldom make above the Median cited
> in those census figures.
I've seen them/know them too - and haven't forgotten them.
Which is why I'd also reiterate a point I made earlier in
this discussion, census surveys can't/won't be broken down
by discipline, but this does not invalidate their data. In
my opinion we're left with the census data as our "best
worst" benchmark for whatever other data we have. For many
reasons (illustrated by Art & I wrangling over the
usefullness of the CERN paper, the astronomy paper or even
that post from the Denver newspaper), we cannot frequently
make a direct comparison between different surveys in
different disciplines. This is where the census data, for
all it's faults, has a role. It is a reasonable "control".
Rich Lemert
I know this is one of your favorite themes (PhD's should, by rights,
beentitled to as long a career in their chosen field as they desire), but I'm
afraid
I would need more information before I can feel too sympathetic about a lot
of these people. After all, why should they have any more 'right' to a
particular
career than anyone else? You make it sound like they either are able to enter a
research position (which you usually indicate is defined as being an academic
position), or they are out on the street doing nothing. If these people are
smart
enough to get a PhD, they should be smart enough to find an alternative career.
(Of course, from what I've seen just because they know
biology/chemistry/physics/
what-have-you doesn't mean they have a clue about how to find a job.)
Rich Lemert
Josh Halpern
Derek Oliver wrote:
> Arthur Sowers wrote:
> > On Wed, 21 Mar 2001, Derek Oliver wrote:
> > > Arthur Sowers wrote:
> > > > Just unanswered questions. Head of household has a doctoral
> > > > degree? What about two doctorals? How many other jobs are in those
> > > > households? How big are those households? Gross income not adjusted for
> > > > paying off loan debts? Lifetime income minus years spent in postdocs and
> > > > grad school with little income? How many PhDs are doing work relevant to
> > > > their degrees?
Gee, niggle, niggle, niggle. Art presents a textbook example
of a bullshit baffles brains attack. For example, it is well
known that the size of household varies INVERSELY
with education, so that little, how big are those households
is one of many. At one point I did a calculation using income
data in constant dollars to show that over a lifetime persons
with doctorates make substantially MORE than people with
Bachelors degrees and a LOT more than people with
High School Diplomas. Raise the strawmen high Art.
SNIP......
> > But, what about those 1 out of 3 astronomers who go out of
> > their careers? Those 1/5 of biologists out of careers by 10 years, another
> > 1/5 still in postdocs after 10 years? They are out there...surely in the
> > part of the glass that is half empty rather than half full....
> According to these data, they are part of the 1/8 households
> with doctorates that are earning less than $75k. 6/10 chance
> of earning $75k+, and a 1/3 - 1/10 chance within that of
> being an academic. If you want to talk security of income,
> security of retirement - then this stacks up. If you
> restrict yourself to "academic career path" - then you can
> say it doesn't. The wider community looks not at the second
> part (academia) - apart from 1/7 of them, they look at 75k+,
> and say, "Wow, that's better than us!"
The number of full time faculty in higher education is about
600,000. Almost all of those today would have Ph.D.s Let's
estimate that if we account for the number of Masters teaching
in College and two faculty households, we have 500,000
households with Ph.D. faculty members. This is about
40%, not 1 in 3 (33%) or 1 in 7 (14%). (Source same data
set.
> leaving the census data in for reference (sorry for culling
> headers Josh).
> > > > > http://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/statab/sec14.pdf
> > > > > Ph.D Pro Col HS
> > > > > # households 1,227 1,623 16,781 30,613
> > > > > in 1000s
> > > > > Income < $10K 2.2% 2.6 3.1 10.7
> > > > > Btw 10-15K 1.3% 3.1 2.5 8.5
> > > > > Btw 15-25K 3.3% 3.9 7.5 15.8
> > > > > Btw 25-35K 5.6% 5.0 9.6 15.8
> > > > > Btw 35-50K 9.4% 8.1 14.7 18.1
> > > > > Btw 50-75K 20.7% 17.4 24.3 18.7
> > > > > >75K 57.5% 59.8 38.4 12.4
> > > > > Median 84,100 95,039 62,188 34,373
> > > > > % below 25K 6.8 9.6 13.1 35.0
> > > > > % below 35K 12.4 14.6 22.7 50.8
> > > > >
> > > > > OK, which group has the FEWEST people with
> > > > > household earnings below 25K$, Which group
> > > > > has the FEWEST people with household earnings
> > > > > below 35K$?
> > > >
> > > > 12.4% below $35K? That's pretty bad, really. You can find jobs that need
> > > > only a HS that pay that or more.SNIP....
> > And, I have lots of questions about the high end incomes, too. I don't
> > know if Josh left it out, or that's the way the census data is
Anyone who looked at the URL would know that your statement
is at best a red herring and at worst.......No Art, no straw to grasp
there
> > compiled. I'd bet that they drop, say, the top couple of percent because
> > of weird stuff like stock options, unusual business deals, or CEO
> > salary, etc., that are not "ordinary" income.
>
> (i) the census almost certainly leaves it out because it's a
> small fraction of the total (<15%)
The table is MONEY INCOME OF HOUSEHOLDS. This
means that when things like stock options, etc, are cashed
they become money income (As many are finding out,
options can have zero value, when the price at which
the option is made is higher than the actual price.) Salaries
are money income. Capital gains are not money income
for the table, but neither are food stamps, health benefits,
subsidized housing on the other side.
Capital gains are not likely to affect the table, because
people who have substantial capital gains are almost
certain to have money income above 75K$ anyhow.
Food stamps, and other such non cash benefits
will affect the table, because people receiving them
will be most likely in the lower income area, and the
actual value of the non-cash benefit means that the
table understates their actual income.
Finally, the table includes retired people. Those
living under bridges will most likely have income
below $10K:(
All of this is set out in gory detail in the first four pages
of the pdf file referenced as the source of data.
In USENET lingo, READ THE GD FAQ!
josh halpern
Josh Halpern
> In article <98s63o$jhm$0...@216.155.0.50>,
> Arthur Sowers <arth...@magpage.com> wrote:
> ...
> Doing calculations like this, they can be quite an eye-opener. I don't
> see this happening yet but when you do the calcuation of what would
> happen if you could get an adjunct to teach a big freshman section
> (say 200, 300 or more), the profit margin is quite an eye-opener
> (and a lot more than 10-30%!). Like I said, I don't see it happening very
> often (yet) but the temptation has got to be there.
>
> I've always thought why not skip the middle-man and just have the students
> bring the portion of their tuition which goes toward paying my salary
> to every class, in little envelopes? It would certainly be a very
> strong motivator to make each lecture as good as you could :)
You've been going to church again Brian?
josh halpern
Arthur Sowers
On Wed, 21 Mar 2001, Derek Oliver wrote:
>
>
> Arthur Sowers wrote:
> > On Wed, 21 Mar 2001, Derek Oliver wrote:
> > > Arthur Sowers wrote:
> > > > Just unanswered questions. Head of household has a doctoral
> > > > degree? What about two doctorals? How many other jobs are in those
> > > > households? How big are those households? Gross income not adjusted for
> > > > paying off loan debts? Lifetime income minus years spent in postdocs and
> > > > grad school with little income? How many PhDs are doing work relevant to
> > > > their degrees?
> > >
> > > I'd agree that the above list of questions should be asked,
> > > but, with 50% of "households" with incomes >84k, the
> > > implication of the data is that relative to most of the
> > > population these are secondary issues because the financial
> > > constraints are more likely to be less.
> >
> > Well, if I understand you, then, sure, anyone (or any household) making
> > $60-80K doesn't need any sympathy.
> No you don't understand. I'm simply saying that the wider
> community won't be interested in the plight of people who
> don't get to do the thing they thought they were training to
> do, where it can be easily shown (as the data does) that
> most of these people are highly successful in material terms
> WHATEVER they end up doing - and we agree that many aren't
> in academia.
You're right, I didn't understand what you were driving at.
But, the wider community is never interested very much in the plight of
anything unless it affects the wider community.
This is not about needing or deserving
> sympathy, this is about getting some realistic handle on why
> joe blow couldn't care less about the plight (or otherwise)
> of PhDs, and, as a corollary, why this issue doesn't get
> close to the political radar.
Joe blow is only interested in joe blow. But PhDs are often, too often,
not at all interested in themselves except in terms of getting a relevant
job. After that, nothing (cf. our many discussions, and cf. lawyers &
doctors who _do_ show interests in their profession)
The issue is not coming accross to you. Let me try to explain. The 1/7 may
not be a high number, but if you aim for what those one out of seven are
doing, then you're going to be: i) makeing about as much money, and
ii) don't need the 10-15 extra years, at iii) lower wage/salary than those
1/7 are getting. In other words, per "Art's Strategy" #1: look for ponds
with more fish than less fish, and, _now_, "Art's Strategy" #2: look for
ponds with not only more fish, but bigger fish.
I'm certainly not suggesting "competing" with the PhD path by following a
random path after HS.
> > But, since you asked ME, let me ask YOU to look at another place on the
> > same column, the 12% that make more than $75K, and the next lowest 18%
> > that make between 50-75K. 12 + 18 means about one in three HS guys are
> > making 50K plus. Factor in no decade (pluse) of lower income and the
> > picture doesn't look so bad.
> According to your analysis of the astronomy paper 1/3
> astronomy PhDs seemed to survive to tenure of sorts.
>
> So, the distinction is the 5/10 years of earnings - i.e. one
> can retire 5-10 years early. The trade is (as I see it)
> early retirement from what you don't necessarily get
> passionate about, to "normal" retirement from something that
> you are passionate about. There are enough academics
> retiring "early" (without pressure) - i.e. 55-60 that I know
> of to indicate that the "loss" of ten years or so in
> material terms is not too bad in the final analysis.
What you wrote here seems to be a specialized case of situation that
I'm just not interested in.
What I was discussing and taking an issue with (to get back to where all
this started from) was Josh's constant making a big deal out of PhDs
making $60-70K average, and then, PhDs as heads of households making $84K
and that converts to two notions: i) "ain't that great" and ii) any young
PhDs see that and say "yeah, yeah, that's me if not soon, then
eventually" and I think that is bad thinking because lots of situations
are overlooked. This includes what happens to PhD salary when they
lose/abandon their original careers.
I have been examining the alternatives, particularly for an older person
who will have more barriers than a younger person, and have given many
examples over the years of specific businesses where one can get into
quite good cash flow and easily within a couple of years (i.e. no more
formal training, etc.). Retirement is an issue, but most of the articles I
read suggest that rather large fractions of the population will not have
enough money for retirement.
> > > Let's talk in tabloid media terms.
> > > 1/8 households with high school graduation only see >75k.
> > 1/3 if you start at $50K
>
> So the mark is $50k - compare the doctoral column for >50k:
> 78.2% i.e. >3/4
> > > 6/10 households with a doctorate see >75k.
You're still missing the point: That is, you target those jobs/occupations
that pay better. There is a decent fraction of them. We're not trying to
send those who bomb out at random, so they hit, at random, all those
crappy $10-20K year jobs.
> Summary - in tabloid terms, for >$50K
> high school: 31.1%
> doctorate: 78.2%
see, doctorate is about 2x greater, but the attrition is about 2x greater,
too, and the HS guys get into that bracket without the 10-15 extra years
of extra schooling at much less income.
> > > > Gee, I thought your median income was the important factor....
> > > It is, because it reflects the low income tail in both the
> > > first two columns - whereas the high-flying salaries from a
> > > very small few would drive a mean way over the $100k mark,
> > > distorting the picture, and thus giving a false impression
> > > of the distribution.
> > And, I have lots of questions about the high end incomes, too. I don't
> > know if Josh left it out, or that's the way the census data is
> > compiled. I'd bet that they drop, say, the top couple of percent because
> > of weird stuff like stock options, unusual business deals, or CEO
> > salary, etc., that are not "ordinary" income.
>
> (i) the census almost certainly leaves it out because it's a
> small fraction of the total (<15%)
> (ii) it would be vastly inaccurate to look at in more detail
> becasue these people can afford to legally
> "hide"/"understate" their true income
> (iii) for the ~88% of the population <$75k, envy is not a
> subject that motivates detailed study. You've got it or you
> haven't, and if you haven't you'd proobably rather not hear
> a lot more about it.
Well, none of this interests me, either. It gets back to what the value of
statistics is and I have to ask how it applies, specifically, to me. The
probabilities are, after-the-fact, observations. Its like going to the
doctor and he says "Better lower your cholesterol" and I say "why" and he
says "Well, in populations, you get more heart attacks with more
cholesterol" and the next question is "Can you tell me with my cholesterol
how much longer I've got to live" and he can't do that because the
"science" is only good with populations (not individuals).
The other item I will maintain is that telling people that ave PhDs make
$60-70 is misleading because it implies a tight range and that range is
not so tight AND lots of PhDs end up doing non-PhD work sooner or
later. How much "lots" is ranges from AT LEAST 1/3 in the astronomers to
20-40% for the biologists. I think even the NSF studies are beginning to
tally the so called "involuntary out of field" category which means a guy
can't find a job in what he started out for. Then we've got all that other
stuff with guys on crappy adjunct jobs, tenure tracks that get denied
tenure, guys with crappy tenure that get bombed because their grants don't
get renewed, guys like me who were almost always on soft money.
Art
Arthur Sowers
I think dahd's skepticism is well put. I've seen a lot of attrition
myself. And, I think its getting worse (the shift from tenure track to
non-tenure, particularly in the health science center campuses) only means
your career will last as long as funding keeps up.
Arthur E. Sowers, PhD
-----------------------------------------
| Science career information website: |
| http://www.magpage.com/~arthures |
-----------------------------------------
=== no change to below, included for reference and context ====
On Wed, 21 Mar 2001, Tneck Sweater wrote:
> X-No-Archive: Yes
>
> Derek Oliver wrote:
>
> > Arthur Sowers wrote:
>
> REST DELETED-as it is repeated ad nauseum elsewhere.
>
> I'd like to see those salary figures for PhDs in biosci alone.
> Cut out the clinical psychologists who are in private practice clinics; remove
> the engineers; delete the folks with business degrees, those with double majors in
>
> economics and finance etc.
>
> Most of the arguement around here has centered on the fate of people who
> make their living in science RESEARCH careers. Traditionally that means
> people who received degrees from Colleges of Science/sometimes Agriculture or
> Medicine.
> It means degrees in Mathematics, Chemistry, Physics, Biology.
>
> I'd like to see the household income figures for the PhD Households where the
> degree was in BIOSCI. That subject area, including all the medical science and
> agrigulture science variants, account for a huge proportion of the total number of
>
> PhD degrees earned each year. I'd venture that these degree holders are for the
> most
> part not earning near the median figure given for all PhDs in the Census data.
>
> Sadly I have no hard data to back up my assertions. But I am not blind.
> I see people on the postdoc trail to doom; I see people with very low salaries;
> Even those I know who have solid positions seldom make above the Median cited
> in those census figures. And, some of those PhD households have other
> professionals
> earning within that household; e.g. the biosci guy who's spouse has a high
> management
> position; the biosci gal who's husband is a physician.
>
> Maybe my perception of low salaries and poor career track has something to do
> with where I live, in a conservative "Southern" State?
>
> I don't know. I do know that Derek's analysis however well intentioned is off the
>
> mark with respect to what I know of in the biosci arena.
>
> sameolddahd
>
>
Arthur Sowers
On Wed, 21 Mar 2001, Derek Oliver wrote:
This is a direct result of the increase in NIH funding, the vast majority
of which goes to med schools and their research programs. So, what do they
do? Admit more graduate students and accept postdocs to do the benchwork
and expand the fiefdoms.
I'm sorry, I demure. I'd pick the NSF study over the census data if I had
a choice, but it has shortcomings too (viz. my questions).
Art
Arthur Sowers
On Thu, 22 Mar 2001, Josh Halpern wrote:
> A few comments and some information:
>
> Derek Oliver wrote:
>
> > Arthur Sowers wrote:
> > > On Wed, 21 Mar 2001, Derek Oliver wrote:
> > > > Arthur Sowers wrote:
> > > > > Just unanswered questions. Head of household has a doctoral
> > > > > degree? What about two doctorals? How many other jobs are in those
> > > > > households? How big are those households? Gross income not adjusted for
> > > > > paying off loan debts? Lifetime income minus years spent in postdocs and
> > > > > grad school with little income? How many PhDs are doing work relevant to
> > > > > their degrees?
>
> Gee, niggle, niggle, niggle. Art presents a textbook example
> of a bullshit baffles brains attack. For example, it is well
> known that the size of household varies INVERSELY
> with education, so that little, how big are those households
> is one of many. At one point I did
^^^^^
Yes, Your Highness And Infinite Wisdom And Complete Knowledge And
Failproof Herr Professor Dr. Halpern!
a calculation using income
> data in constant dollars to show that over a lifetime persons
> with doctorates make substantially MORE than people with
> Bachelors degrees and a LOT more than people with
> High School Diplomas. Raise the strawmen high Art.
> SNIP......
Actually, I think Derek, despite his youth and youthful enthusiasm, really
tries harder, is substantially more polite, and accomplishes more in his
interactions with the members of this newsgroup.
> > > But, what about those 1 out of 3 astronomers who go out of
> > > their careers? Those 1/5 of biologists out of careers by 10 years, another
> > > 1/5 still in postdocs after 10 years? They are out there...surely in the
> > > part of the glass that is half empty rather than half full....
> > According to these data, they are part of the 1/8 households
> > with doctorates that are earning less than $75k. 6/10 chance
> > of earning $75k+, and a 1/3 - 1/10 chance within that of
> > being an academic. If you want to talk security of income,
> > security of retirement - then this stacks up. If you
> > restrict yourself to "academic career path" - then you can
> > say it doesn't. The wider community looks not at the second
> > part (academia) - apart from 1/7 of them, they look at 75k+,
> > and say, "Wow, that's better than us!"
>
> The number of full time faculty in higher education is about
> 600,000.
And, they say that, now, half of all faculty are part-timers (adjuncts),
so there is another 600,000 out there, making squat.
Almost all of those today would have Ph.D.s Let's
> estimate that if we account for the number of Masters teaching
> in College and two faculty households, we have 500,000
> households with Ph.D. faculty members. This is about
> 40%, not 1 in 3 (33%) or 1 in 7 (14%). (Source same data
> set.
What are you driving at?
Oh, so you mean that you sellected out stuff without the caveats? That is
scientific misconduct.
> > > compiled. I'd bet that they drop, say, the top couple of percent because
> > > of weird stuff like stock options, unusual business deals, or CEO
> > > salary, etc., that are not "ordinary" income.
> >
> > (i) the census almost certainly leaves it out because it's a
> > small fraction of the total (<15%)
>
> The table is MONEY INCOME OF HOUSEHOLDS. This
> means that when things like stock options, etc, are cashed
> they become money income (As many are finding out,
> options can have zero value, when the price at which
> the option is made is higher than the actual price.) Salaries
> are money income. Capital gains are not money income
> for the table, but neither are food stamps, health benefits,
> subsidized housing on the other side.
How would you know? I saw the census form. It did not break things down
like the IRS 1040.
> Capital gains are not likely to affect the table, because
> people who have substantial capital gains are almost
> certain to have money income above 75K$ anyhow.
How would you know?
> Food stamps, and other such non cash benefits
> will affect the table, because people receiving them
> will be most likely in the lower income area, and the
> actual value of the non-cash benefit means that the
> table understates their actual income.
Getting farther from the real issue, eh Josh?
> Finally, the table includes retired people. Those
> living under bridges will most likely have income
> below $10K:(
>
> All of this is set out in gory detail in the first four pages
> of the pdf file referenced as the source of data.
Still did not answer any of the reasonable questions I asked.
> In USENET lingo, READ THE GD FAQ!
This sounds like:
josh Pass-the-Buck halpern
Art Sowers
> josh halpern
>
>
Josh Halpern
Tneck Sweater wrote:
X-No-Archive: Yes
Derek Oliver wrote:
> Arthur Sowers wrote:
REST DELETED-as it is repeated ad nauseum elsewhere.
I'd like to see those salary figures for PhDs in biosci alone.
Cut out the clinical psychologists who are in private practice clinics; remove
the engineers; delete the folks with business degrees, those with double majors in
Can't give you that exactly BUT you should be able to get a good sense of it
from the following
Median personal income by date of doctorate and field
95-6 93-4 90-2 85-9 80-4
70-9 60-9 <60
Bio 30K 35K 48.5 58
65 73 80 78
Chem 40 56 60
69 77 81 79
75
Comp 63 68 76.8 78
90 84
Math 40 40 45
53.5 60 75 72.8
Phys 44 48 55
65 77 84 84
79
Psych 39 45 50
59 65 69 70
70
Eng 60 63 69
75 81 90 93
85
HelSci 48 50 55 62
75 76 95
All data from a 1997 NSF SESAT survey. All amounts
in thousands of dollars. This includes, in field,
out of field, under bridge. Where there were blanks
the sample was judged too small to evaluate. Quibbles
and niggles should go to the NSF data base where
methodology is explained. Questions may be put
to named responsible people at NSF. In other
words Art, if you have questions ASK them first
to people who can give you answers.
Most of the arguement around here has centered on the fate of people who
make their living in science RESEARCH careers. Traditionally that means
people who received degrees from Colleges of Science/sometimes Agriculture or
Medicine. It means degrees in Mathematics, Chemistry, Physics, Biology.I'd like to see the household income figures for the PhD Households where the
degree was in BIOSCI. That subject area, including all the medical science and
agrigulture science variants, account for a huge proportion of the total number ofPhD degrees earned each year.
About 35% Go look at the survey of earned
doctorates. I posted some figures a few weeks ago
Phys Sci Bio Sci
Eng
US citizen 3443
5121 2474
Green Card 429
605 399
Other Country 2146(36%) 2109(27%)
2193(43%)
Left out Math, computer science, earth science,etc.
I'd venture that these degree holders are for the
most part not earning near the median figure given for all PhDs in the Census data.
Remember, the median INCLUDES all Ph.D., English, Sanskrit,
History, etc., and these are not huge earning fields either.
In
any case the data on median income by field and date of
doctorate above pretty much answers your question. Given
that it only goes to 1995, and we had five fat years since then
the numbers for the 2000 survey should be higher.
Sadly I have no hard data to back up my assertions. But I am not blind.
Not the issue. The reality is that there is a lot of published data
available on the internet from many sources. Look for it.
It may
be that your impression is not idempotent with reality.
I see people on the postdoc trail to doom; I see people with very low salaries;
Even those I know who have solid positions seldom make above the Median cited
in those census figures. And, some of those PhD households have other
professionals
earning within that household; e.g. the biosci guy who's spouse has a high
management
position; the biosci gal who's husband is a physician.
income for the Ph.D. holder, so that takes care of your concerns
on one issue. Not again, median means half earn more and half
earn less. I know that, you know that, some people act as if
it is a huge surprise.
josh halpern
Josh Halpern
Arthur Sowers wrote:
> On Thu, 22 Mar 2001, Josh Halpern wrote:
> > A few comments and some information:
> > Derek Oliver wrote:
> > > Arthur Sowers wrote:
> > > > On Wed, 21 Mar 2001, Derek Oliver wrote:
> > > > > Arthur Sowers wrote:
SNIOpp...
> > > > And, I have lots of questions about the high end incomes, too. I don't
> > > > know if Josh left it out, or that's the way the census data is
> > Anyone who looked at the URL would know that your statement
> > is at best a red herring and at worst.......No Art, no straw to grasp
> > there
> Oh, so you mean that you sellected out stuff without the caveats? That is
> scientific misconduct.
I selected ALL the data for households with specified educational
degrees. The URL was given. The pdf document contains
an explanation of the methodology and the instruments which
were used to collect the data. You are a lying hyena, wallowing
in your own failure and trying to draw others into your morass
of self pity. The more of your nonsense I see, the clearer
it becomes why you got kicked out.
> > > > compiled. I'd bet that they drop, say, the top couple of percent because
> > > > of weird stuff like stock options, unusual business deals, or CEO
> > > > salary, etc., that are not "ordinary" income.
> > > (i) the census almost certainly leaves it out because it's a
> > > small fraction of the total (<15%)
> > The table is MONEY INCOME OF HOUSEHOLDS. This
> > means that when things like stock options, etc, are cashed
> > they become money income (As many are finding out,
> > options can have zero value, when the price at which
> > the option is made is higher than the actual price.) Salaries
> > are money income. Capital gains are not money income
> > for the table, but neither are food stamps, health benefits,
> > subsidized housing on the other side.
> How would you know? I saw the census form. It did not break things down
> like the IRS 1040
Again, you show again that not only are you a jackel,
you are an illiterate one. The survey used is described in
the first four pages of the URL. It was neither the census
form OR the IRS. 1040. The definition I gave is the
definition the Bureau of the Census used. As given in
the UR, jerk. No, I withdraw that. Stupid jerk.
> > Capital gains are not likely to affect the table, because
> > people who have substantial capital gains are almost
> > certain to have money income above 75K$ anyhow.
> How would you know?
Because there are numerous statistical studies that show that
the vast majority of capital gains go to people whose money
income is in the top brackets. That's how. You may cover
your birdcage with the Wall Street Journal, but you obviously
don't read it.
> > Food stamps, and other such non cash benefits
> > will affect the table, because people receiving them
> > will be most likely in the lower income area, and the
> > actual value of the non-cash benefit means that the
> > table understates their actual income.
> Getting farther from the real issue, eh Josh?
No, showing that if anything, real income is higher than money
income, not lower as you tried ineffectually to imply. But that's
you Art, ineffectual, self-promoting, but ineffectual.
> > Finally, the table includes retired people. Those
> > living under bridges will most likely have income
> > below $10K:(
> >
> > All of this is set out in gory detail in the first four pages
> > of the pdf file referenced as the source of data.
> Still did not answer any of the reasonable questions I asked.
Art. At this point anyone with sense does not give
a pound of reprocessed bird poop about your "questions".
They are obviously a flailing attempt to divert attention
from some real data.
> > In USENET lingo, READ THE GD FAQ!
Gee, telling someone to read a document before
showing how stupid they are is passing the buck.
You fail. Oh yes you did.....silly me.
josh halpern
Arthur Sowers
On Thu, 22 Mar 2001, Josh Halpern wrote:
>
>
> Tneck Sweater wrote:
>
> > X-No-Archive: Yes
> > Derek Oliver wrote:
> > > Arthur Sowers wrote:
> > REST DELETED-as it is repeated ad nauseum elsewhere.
> >
> > I'd like to see those salary figures for PhDs in biosci alone.
> > Cut out the clinical psychologists who are in private practice clinics; remove
> > the engineers; delete the folks with business degrees, those with double majors in
>
> Can't give you that exactly BUT you should be able to get a good sense of it
> from the following
>
> Median personal income by date of doctorate and field
>
> 95-6 93-4 90-2 85-9 80-4 70-9 60-9 <60
> Bio 30K 35K 48.5 58 65 73 80 78
> Chem 40 56 60 69 77 81 79 75
> Comp 63 68 76.8 78 90 84
> Math 40 40 45 53.5 60 75 72.8
> Phys 44 48 55 65 77 84 84 79
> Psych 39 45 50 59 65 69 70 70
> Eng 60 63 69 75 81 90 93 85
> HelSci 48 50 55 62 75 76 95
So you're saying bio degree got in '95-6 has a median income of
$30K? Physics has $44K? Chem 40K? What happened to all those $60-70K
averages you were posting back in the past? Bio is certainly lower than
the others, but as medians, these seem too low. Sure, raises come with
time (and a lot of the older guys are in tenured positions where salaries
are higher and promotions give bigger increases).
> All data from a 1997 NSF SESAT survey. All amounts
> in thousands of dollars. This includes, in field,
> out of field, under bridge. Where there were blanks
> the sample was judged too small to evaluate.
Too small? I thought they had sampled the living daylights out of all the
S&Es.
Quibbles
> and niggles should go to the NSF data base where
> methodology is explained.
Nah, the messenger gets shot around here.
Questions may be put
> to named responsible people at NSF. In other
> words Art, if you have questions ASK them first
> to people who can give you answers.
Why do this when you are so forthcoming with all those rows and columns of
"data".
> > Most of the arguement around here has centered on the fate of people who
> > make their living in science RESEARCH careers. Traditionally that means
> > people who received degrees from Colleges of Science/sometimes Agriculture or
> > Medicine. It means degrees in Mathematics, Chemistry, Physics, Biology.
> >
> > I'd like to see the household income figures for the PhD Households
>> where the
> > degree was in BIOSCI. That subject area, including all the medical
>>> science and
> > agrigulture science variants, account for a huge proportion of the total
>> number of
> >
> > PhD degrees earned each year.
>
> About 35%
You left out chem, too.
Go look at the survey of earned
> doctorates. I posted some figures a few weeks ago
> Phys Sci Bio Sci Eng
> US citizen 3443 5121 2474
> Green Card 429 605 399
> Other Country 2146(36%) 2109(27%) 2193(43%)
>
> Left out Math, computer science, earth science,etc.
>
> > I'd venture that these degree holders are for the
> > most part not earning near the median figure given for all PhDs in the Census data.
>
> Remember, the median INCLUDES all Ph.D., English, Sanskrit,
> History, etc., and these are not huge earning fields either. In
> any case the data on median income by field and date of
> doctorate above pretty much answers your question. Given
> that it only goes to 1995, and we had five fat years since then
> the numbers for the 2000 survey should be higher.
And more adjuncts since 1995.... I doubt it.
> > Sadly I have no hard data to back up my assertions. But I am not blind.
>
> Not the issue.
Not the issue with dahd, but you throw it at me all the time and dahd and
I agree on a lot more things than you and I.
Art
=== no change to below, included for reference and context ====
The reality is that there is a lot of published data
R. Martin
IMO people have a right NOT to be lied to by those in authority.
I'm sympathetic to those who pursued a science career under the
mistaken impression, fostered by the authorities, that there would
be plenty of desirable jobs. YMMV.
> After all, why should they have any more 'right' to a
> particular
> career than anyone else?
Should they have less?
rest snipped
Regards,
Russell
Arthur Sowers
And, there is plenty of propaganda "leaked" to the press about a variety
of professions & occupations about shortages, its just that they don't
tell you they want cheap help or they want their inboxes piled high with
resumes/CVs.
As far as rights to a job/career, there are tons of MDs, lawyers,
corporate CEOs who feel they have a right to $150-250/hour, or more, as
well as ordinary citizens that just need to eat, pay the rent, and
taxes. Rich Lemert feels he would like to play King/God/Overling and have
as many people as possible grovel while he considers throwning them a few
grains of rice... or maybe nothing at all.
> > After all, why should they have any more 'right' to a
> > particular
> > career than anyone else?
>
> Should they have less?
Rich wants us all to _see_ a full glass of water where there is only half
or less, and wants to _give_, at most, a few drops of water, but
certainly no more than one teaspoonfull and say "Just because your body
physiologically needs at least a half glass, I'm only going to give you a
fraction of that".
Art
> rest snipped
>
> Regards,
> Russell
>
Jeffrey J. Potoff
"R. Martin" wrote:
>
> Rich Lemert wrote:
> > I know this is one of your favorite themes (PhD's should, by rights,
> > beentitled to as long a career in their chosen field as they desire), but I'm
> > afraid
> > I would need more information before I can feel too sympathetic about a lot
> > of these people.
>
> IMO people have a right NOT to be lied to by those in authority.
Who's lying? Any high school student can talk to a guidance couselor,
their parents, friends of their parents, look up data in the library,
read the newspaper, watch the news on TV, etc. If you get bamboolzeled,
it would appear you aren't much of a researcher to begin with. What if
someone paints a picture that's a bit too rosey? Any scientist worth
his/her salt knows that they should confirm any data they use. The
"lies" of the evil "authorities" (whatever that means) would surely be
exposed when those alleged statements did not agree with other sources
of information.
> I'm sympathetic to those who pursued a science career under the
> mistaken impression, fostered by the authorities, that there would
> be plenty of desirable jobs. YMMV.
>
> > After all, why should they have any more 'right' to a
> > particular
> > career than anyone else?
>
> Should they have less?
No, and no one has ever proven that PhD graduates "rights" to a career
are less than anyone else's "rights" to any other career.
Jeff
Jeffrey J. Potoff
Arthur Sowers wrote:
>
> email and post...
>
> On Fri, 23 Mar 2001, R. Martin wrote:
>
> > IMO people have a right NOT to be lied to by those in authority.
> > I'm sympathetic to those who pursued a science career under the
> > mistaken impression, fostered by the authorities, that there would
> > be plenty of desirable jobs. YMMV.
>
> And, there is plenty of propaganda "leaked" to the press about a variety
> of professions & occupations about shortages, its just that they don't
> tell you they want cheap help or they want their inboxes piled high with
> resumes/CVs.
>
> As far as rights to a job/career, there are tons of MDs, lawyers,
> corporate CEOs who feel they have a right to $150-250/hour, or more, as
> well as ordinary citizens that just need to eat, pay the rent, and
> taxes.
I wouldn't perceive any of this as a right. I get paid what my employer
feels I am worth. If I don't agree, I have the "right" to find a higher
paying job elsewhere. But there is no intrinsic right that guarentees
me X number of dollars per year just because I want them.
> Rich Lemert feels he would like to play King/God/Overling and have
> as many people as possible grovel while he considers throwning them a few
> grains of rice... or maybe nothing at all.
Since when has Rich said he wants to control anyone or anything? Is
Rich in any kind of position to be throwing out your precious grains of
rice?
>
> > > After all, why should they have any more 'right' to a
> > > particular
> > > career than anyone else?
> >
> > Should they have less?
>
> Rich wants us all to _see_ a full glass of water where there is only half
> or less, and wants to _give_, at most, a few drops of water, but
> certainly no more than one teaspoonfull and say "Just because your body
> physiologically needs at least a half glass, I'm only going to give you a
> fraction of that".
Holy crap, Art. Nothing I've read from Rich suggests what you're saying
at all. He's saying, you get a degree, you take your chances, just like
everyone else in this country. Are you going to tell me that all
telecomunications majors are "owed" a job, even though this is one of
the most popular majors in college and also one of the most worthless?
Jeff
Rich Lemert
> email and post...
>
> On Fri, 23 Mar 2001, R. Martin wrote:
>
> > Rich Lemert wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > I know this is one of your favorite themes (PhD's should, by rights,
> > > beentitled to as long a career in their chosen field as they desire), but I'm
> > > afraid
> > > I would need more information before I can feel too sympathetic about a lot
> > > of these people.
> >
> > IMO people have a right NOT to be lied to by those in authority.
> > I'm sympathetic to those who pursued a science career under the
> > mistaken impression, fostered by the authorities, that there would
> > be plenty of desirable jobs. YMMV.
>
> And, there is plenty of propaganda "leaked" to the press about a variety
> of professions & occupations about shortages, its just that they don't
> tell you they want cheap help or they want their inboxes piled high with
> resumes/CVs.
>
> As far as rights to a job/career, there are tons of MDs, lawyers,
> corporate CEOs who feel they have a right to $150-250/hour, or more,
Another topic we've been over before. Just because they "feel" they havea right to
this type of salary doesn't mean the "do" have that right. Their
"right" is the right to seek the best price for their services that a fair market
will provide, and to get that they have to demonstrate that they have earned
it. In fact, MDs and lawyers are really a poor choice to argue about "rights"
to a specific salary since neither the medical nor the legal professions are
true _open_ markets.
> > > After all, why should they have any more 'right' to a
> > > particular
> > > career than anyone else?
> >
> > Should they have less?
Why do you think they have less? (Probably the old "grass isgreener" syndrome - "I
see only the good things in other people's
lives, so they must have it better.")
Scientists have just as much right to a "full and successful career" as
any other Joe Blow - the right to seek that career subject to the needs
and demands of the marketplace. There is NO right to _having_ a
successful career - for anyone. There is only the right to _seek_ that
career.
As for everyone's favorite straw men - lawyers and physicians - see
how long their careers last if every client they represent gets the book
thrown at them or every patient treated for the mildest ailment dies.
Rich Lemert
R. Martin
>
> "R. Martin" wrote:
> >
> > Rich Lemert wrote:
>
> > > I know this is one of your favorite themes (PhD's should, by rights,
> > > beentitled to as long a career in their chosen field as they desire), but I'm
> > > afraid
> > > I would need more information before I can feel too sympathetic about a lot
> > > of these people.
> >
> > IMO people have a right NOT to be lied to by those in authority.
>
> Who's lying? Any high school student can talk to a guidance couselor,
> their parents, friends of their parents, look up data in the library,
> read the newspaper, watch the news on TV, etc. If you get bamboolzeled,
> it would appear you aren't much of a researcher to begin with.
Yeah, I wasn't wasn't much of a researcher when I was eight years old.
For that matter I wasn't when I was in high school. Neither were you.
Your argument is specious.
> What if
> someone paints a picture that's a bit too rosey? Any scientist worth
> his/her salt knows that they should confirm any data they use. The
> "lies" of the evil "authorities" (whatever that means) would surely be
> exposed when those alleged statements did not agree with other sources
> of information.
You apparently were not, say, eight years old during the 50's or early
60's, so you clearly do not know what I'm talking about. Too bad.
Regards,
Russell
> > I'm sympathetic to those who pursued a science career under the
> > mistaken impression, fostered by the authorities, that there would
> > be plenty of desirable jobs. YMMV.
> >
> > > After all, why should they have any more 'right' to a
> > > particular
> > > career than anyone else?
> >
> > Should they have less?
>
> No, and no one has ever proven that PhD graduates "rights" to a career
> are less than anyone else's "rights" to any other career.
>
> Jeff
--
Information is often unavailable. When it is available it is often
unclear, and when it is clear it is often inaccurate.
clarosa
Arthur Sowers
On Sat, 24 Mar 2001, Jeffrey J. Potoff wrote:
>
>
> Arthur Sowers wrote:
> >
> > email and post...
> >
> > On Fri, 23 Mar 2001, R. Martin wrote:
> >
> > > IMO people have a right NOT to be lied to by those in authority.
> > > I'm sympathetic to those who pursued a science career under the
> > > mistaken impression, fostered by the authorities, that there would
> > > be plenty of desirable jobs. YMMV.
> >
> > And, there is plenty of propaganda "leaked" to the press about a variety
> > of professions & occupations about shortages, its just that they don't
> > tell you they want cheap help or they want their inboxes piled high with
> > resumes/CVs.
> >
> > As far as rights to a job/career, there are tons of MDs, lawyers,
> > corporate CEOs who feel they have a right to $150-250/hour, or more, as
> > well as ordinary citizens that just need to eat, pay the rent, and
> > taxes.
>
> I wouldn't perceive any of this as a right.
You might not, but the MDs, lawyers, and CEOs (and for that matter, lots
of high end politicians) not only _operate_ under this assumption, and
their wallets prove it.
I get paid what my employer
> feels I am worth. If I don't agree, I have the "right" to find a higher
> paying job elsewhere. But there is no intrinsic right that guarentees
> me X number of dollars per year just because I want them.
What made you apply for the job you are in now? You mean you don't have a
"right" to that job that you were offered? You must have felt that you
deserved and/or wanted it...after all, you accepted the offer.
And, you would have not felt bad if you didn't get offered some job?
> > Rich Lemert feels he would like to play King/God/Overling and have
> > as many people as possible grovel while he considers throwning them a few
> > grains of rice... or maybe nothing at all.
>
> Since when has Rich said he wants to control anyone or anything?
Every time he says what the rest of us should want or not want.
Is
> Rich in any kind of position to be throwing out your precious grains of
> rice?
I don't think so, but he does.
> >
> > > > After all, why should they have any more 'right' to a
> > > > particular
> > > > career than anyone else?
> > >
> > > Should they have less?
> >
> > Rich wants us all to _see_ a full glass of water where there is only half
> > or less, and wants to _give_, at most, a few drops of water, but
> > certainly no more than one teaspoonfull and say "Just because your body
> > physiologically needs at least a half glass, I'm only going to give you a
> > fraction of that".
>
> Holy crap, Art.
Holy crap, Jeff.
Nothing I've read from Rich suggests what you're saying
> at all. He's saying, you get a degree, you take your chances, just like
> everyone else in this country.
Not everyone, the priviledged "make" their chances. And, I listed some of
them.
Are you going to tell me that all
> telecomunications majors are "owed" a job, even though this is one of
> the most popular majors in college and also one of the most worthless?
Ask all of those who are working on a degree if they don't care what
happens when they finish. Or, do you think they all expect to just float
around living on air.
Ask all the ones who get laid off involunatarily how they feel about it.
Ask all of the ones who worked hard at anything and in the end not get it,
or have any of it taken away from them how they feel about it.
Or, if you get denied tenure, you're going to celebrate with joy?
Art
> Jeff
>
Jeffrey J. Potoff
"R. Martin" wrote:
>
> Jeffrey J. Potoff wrote:
> >
> > "R. Martin" wrote:
> > >
> > > Rich Lemert wrote:
> >
> > > > I know this is one of your favorite themes (PhD's should, by rights,
> > > > beentitled to as long a career in their chosen field as they desire), but I'm
> > > > afraid
> > > > I would need more information before I can feel too sympathetic about a lot
> > > > of these people.
> > >
> > > IMO people have a right NOT to be lied to by those in authority.
> >
> > Who's lying? Any high school student can talk to a guidance couselor,
> > their parents, friends of their parents, look up data in the library,
> > read the newspaper, watch the news on TV, etc. If you get bamboolzeled,
> > it would appear you aren't much of a researcher to begin with.
>
> Yeah, I wasn't wasn't much of a researcher when I was eight years old.
When I was eight I knew I was going to be an engineer. I considered
other careers as I got older, but always came back to engineering. But
I don't see how this is relevant. You don't make any career decisions
at that age. Or at least, you don't make any that you can't easily
reverse.
> For that matter I wasn't when I was in high school. Neither were you.
I wasn't? At 15 I taught myself how to rebuild engines from top to
bottom (and just about anything else in a car) from books. How come I
didn't end up in with a biology PhD and no future for employment? I've
already discussed the rational for making my career decisions in this
newsgroup. Everything I listed above, I did as a high school student,
and later in my junior and senior years of college before going on to
graduate school.
Jeff
Jeffrey J. Potoff
clarosa wrote:
>
> Stop posting to sci.research.careers... you are a mere engineer.
An engineer who was smart enough to get the right degree so he could
find a job after he got his PhD and still do science research. I bet
you never have looked up what I do for research, have you? Once you
figure out how the library works, you might want to. Then tell me, is
that work science or is it engineering?
You seem to think that s.r.c is really all about biology, just like Art
thinks that Science is the only respectable journal to publish in or
look for "science" jobs. I think you need to realize that there is a
lot more to science and science jobs than biology.
Jeff
Jeffrey J. Potoff
I wanted it.
> You mean you don't have a
> "right" to that job that you were offered? You must have felt that you
> deserved and/or wanted it...after all, you accepted the offer.
I was qualified and I wanted the job. I was not entitled to this job,
or any other job, however. The job was not "owed" to me. The job was
offered to me, and I accepted.
>
> And, you would have not felt bad if you didn't get offered some job?
>
Sure, but that doesn't mean that I am somehow entitled to a job. I am
entitled to life, liberty and the persuit of happiness, according to our
Bill of Rights. I haven't found anything in that document about the
"right to work". Free speech, yes, gun ownership, yes, job, no.
> > > Rich Lemert feels he would like to play King/God/Overling and have
> > > as many people as possible grovel while he considers throwning them a few
> > > grains of rice... or maybe nothing at all.
> >
> > Since when has Rich said he wants to control anyone or anything?
>
> Every time he says what the rest of us should want or not want.
When has he said that?
>
> Is Rich in any kind of position to be throwing out your precious grains of
> > rice?
>
> I don't think so, but he does.
Since when?
>
> > >
> > > > > After all, why should they have any more 'right' to a
> > > > > particular
> > > > > career than anyone else?
> > > >
> > > > Should they have less?
> > >
> > > Rich wants us all to _see_ a full glass of water where there is only half
> > > or less, and wants to _give_, at most, a few drops of water, but
> > > certainly no more than one teaspoonfull and say "Just because your body
> > > physiologically needs at least a half glass, I'm only going to give you a
> > > fraction of that".
> >
> > Holy crap, Art.
>
> Holy crap, Jeff.
>
> Nothing I've read from Rich suggests what you're saying
> > at all. He's saying, you get a degree, you take your chances, just like
> > everyone else in this country.
>
> Not everyone, the priviledged "make" their chances. And, I listed some of
> them.
>
> Are you going to tell me that all
> > telecomunications majors are "owed" a job, even though this is one of
> > the most popular majors in college and also one of the most worthless?
>
> Ask all of those who are working on a degree if they don't care what
> happens when they finish.
Many will say they care, but their actions prove otherwise. Why does
someone get C's in a college level class? Rarely does this happen
because of lack of intelligence.
> Or, do you think they all expect to just float around living on air.
Honestly, Art, some students live like this. I have had students
register for a course I'm teaching, show up a few times during the
semseter, turn in one or two homework sets, maybe take one of the 3-4
exams, never drop the course and obviously get an F. Why? What a waste
of money. They would be better not going to college at all.
I have seen students go to school, get a worthless degree, and then hang
around the college town living with 3 or 4 other people, working some
meanial job to pay the rent, but nothing more.
> Ask all the ones who get laid off involunatarily how they feel about it.
>
What's the alternative? No layoffs, the company continues to lose money
and finally go out of business. Instead of a few people losing their
jobs, now everyone has lost their job.
> Ask all of the ones who worked hard at anything and in the end not get it,
Yeah, it sucks. That's why I work hard and smart enough that I get what
I want.
> or have any of it taken away from them how they feel about it.
>
How can someone take something away from you unless you let them?
> Or, if you get denied tenure, you're going to celebrate with joy?
I suppose you'll have your answer in 5 years.
Jeff
R. Martin
>
> "R. Martin" wrote:
> >
> > Jeffrey J. Potoff wrote:
> > >
> > > "R. Martin" wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Rich Lemert wrote:
> > >
> > > > > I know this is one of your favorite themes (PhD's should, by rights,
> > > > > beentitled to as long a career in their chosen field as they desire), but I'm
> > > > > afraid
> > > > > I would need more information before I can feel too sympathetic about a lot
> > > > > of these people.
> > > >
> > > > IMO people have a right NOT to be lied to by those in authority.
> > >
> > > Who's lying? Any high school student can talk to a guidance couselor,
> > > their parents, friends of their parents, look up data in the library,
> > > read the newspaper, watch the news on TV, etc. If you get bamboolzeled,
> > > it would appear you aren't much of a researcher to begin with.
> >
> > Yeah, I wasn't wasn't much of a researcher when I was eight years old.
>
> When I was eight I knew I was going to be an engineer. I considered
> other careers as I got older, but always came back to engineering. But
> I don't see how this is relevant.
Well then, let me explain it to you. When I was 8, I knew I was going
to be a scientist, just like you knew you were going to be an engineer,
so you should be able to follow the argument that far, right? Part
of the reason was the post-Sputnik "please-be-a-scientist-they-are-
gods-and-will-save-us-from-the-Red-hordes" propaganda put out by our
government. We still see it today with the periodic "our-students-
are-terrible-in-science-and-math-we-must-do-something-to-compete-in-
the-global-market-in-the-21st-century" pronouncements that are put out
about twice a year, but it was much worse in the late 50's and early
60'. You may have been really sophisticated in the ways of government
propaganda when you were 8, but most American kids who grew up in the
50's actually believed their government. Many of us learned to
distrust it only later during Viet Nam, Kent State, and Watergate.
> You don't make any career decisions
> at that age.
You just contradicted yourself.
> Or at least, you don't make any that you can't easily
> reverse.
Really? You seem to not understand how people work. Ever hear of
Robert Goddard? How about Albert Einstein, or any number of other
great scientists and engineers who decided on their life's work at
an early age and pursued it with single minded fervor? No, not
everyone makes these decisions based on what the high school
counselor suggests.
>
> > For that matter I wasn't when I was in high school. Neither were you.
>
> I wasn't? At 15 I taught myself how to rebuild engines from top to
> bottom (and just about anything else in a car) from books.
What teenage gear-head doesn't do that? I thought I was hot stuff when
I was in high school, too (although I was into relativity theory, not
cars), but as I learned more I later figured out that I didn't know
nearly as much as I thought I had. Can you say you have not learned
20 times as much as you knew in high school while in college and grad
school?
> How come I
> didn't end up in with a biology PhD and no future for employment?
How should I know, or was that a rhetorical question? When you come
right down to it, it was probably random chance. Can you honestly
say that if you'd become fascinated with biology at age 8 you wouldn't
have ended up that way?
> I've
> already discussed the rational for making my career decisions in this
> newsgroup. Everything I listed above, I did as a high school student,
> and later in my junior and senior years of college before going on to
> graduate school.
>
> Jeff
Good for you. I did stuff, too. For instance, I overhauled a particle
accelerator the summer after my freshman year in college. Between
my sophomore and junior years I rebuilt a 6" astronomical refractor
for the school and helped build a planetarium. I spent a semester
and two summers at three different national labs before I even started
grad school. So what? Your original question was "Who's lying?"
Pretty much everyone who wants to have more students in science and
engineering. Our respective resumes are irrelevant to that answer.
Not everyone has your background, or my background, so judging their
situations as if they do is invalid. I'm glad you have a fine career.
Perhaps you should learn to be less judgmental about those who don't.
Reagrds,
Russell
Derek Oliver
Arthur Sowers wrote:
> On Sat, 24 Mar 2001, Jeffrey J. Potoff wrote:
> > Arthur Sowers wrote:
> > > As far as rights to a job/career, there are tons of MDs, lawyers,
> > > corporate CEOs who feel they have a right to $150-250/hour, or more, as
> > > well as ordinary citizens that just need to eat, pay the rent, and
> > > taxes.
> >
> > I wouldn't perceive any of this as a right.
I agree. To have a "right" to something not usually
accessible to the majority is essentially a priviledge which
comes with attendant responsibilities that are also somewhat restricted.
Thus it is expected by the vast majority of our community
that medical practitioners are registered and their
credentials certified, it is expected that one drives only
after one has demonstrated sufficient aptitude that one can
be granted a drivers licence, the baying hounds demand
police checks of teachers etc, we have building codes & standards.
Some of us are perverse enough to think that that in the
context of today's society requiring a licence for a firearm
is somehow different, but I digress....
> You might not, but the MDs, lawyers, and CEOs (and for that matter, lots
> of high end politicians) not only _operate_ under this assumption, and
> their wallets prove it.
They may very well assume it, but I do not think that the
fatness of their wallets has anything to do explicitly with
their assumption, rather, it reflects our willingness to let
them name their prices. Their hubris is one thing that they
have the majority of influence over, our role as a society
is to make some sort of collective decision as to how much
of that hubris we believe, and part with our hard-earned accordingly.
Derek Oliver
I've got that old Ernest Rutherford feeling again.
Y'know, the bit about everything being "....physics or stamp-collecting."
Derek
--
Rich Lemert
Just to extend this point a little further . . .
Assuming that one of Art's claims is valid, but using a more realistic number,
let's say that you were one of four candidates brought in to interview for this
position. Is Art implying that all four of you have an equal "right" to this job?
Are you somehow violating the "rights" of the other three candidates by accepting
this job when it was offered to you, instead of stepping aside and letting one of
them take it? It seems that the only way everyone's "rights" would be satisfied
in Art's world would be for all four of you to share the job.
Rich Lemert
Josh Halpern
> Stop posting to sci.research.careers... you are a mere engineer.
An employed (assistant) professor of engineering.
josh halpern
Josh Halpern
Derek Oliver wrote:
> Arthur Sowers wrote:
> > On Sat, 24 Mar 2001, Jeffrey J. Potoff wrote:
> > > Arthur Sowers wrote:
SNIP...
> > You might not, but the MDs, lawyers, and CEOs (and for that matter, lots
> > of high end politicians) not only _operate_ under this assumption, and
> > their wallets prove it.
This is an amusing lesson in the construction of strawmen.
It tries to enforce a similarity among four very different
groups, and from that draw a single conclusion. Let
us deconstruct (or in computer talk, ungroup) the four.
The most obvious thing is that CEOs and high end politicians,
are positions one reaches at the END of a career, while
MDs and lawyers range across the entire range of ages
and experience. One qualifies for the latter two by earning
a very specific degree and passing a qualifying exam, lord
knows what the qualifications are for the first two.
Now, interestingly enough, AFAIK, "high end politicians"
do NOT charge by the hour until they get unelected and
become lobbyists. Mostly politicians pay is pretty low
compared to their equivalents in industry, etc. Neither
do CEO's get paid by the hour although some get an ungodly
amount of money. This brings up another point, while there
are a few CEOs and lawyers who earn ungodly sums, many
earn much less. As to MDs, there you could make the
best case for the proposition that they feel the world owes
them $150-250/hr. That's why the US needs a single
payer health system.
> They may very well assume it, but I do not think that the
> fatness of their wallets has anything to do explicitly with
> their assumption, rather, it reflects our willingness to let
> them name their prices. Their hubris is one thing that they
> have the majority of influence over, our role as a society
> is to make some sort of collective decision as to how much
> of that hubris we believe, and part with our hard-earned accordingly.
> Derek
josh halpern
Jeffrey J. Potoff
Russell, I don't mean to discount what you have to say, but I want to
avoid getting dragged down into this quagmire. My main premise was that
students have access to many different resources of career information
that they can use to help them make decisions about what path to
follow. The things I listed, such as looking up info in the library,
talking to people in industry, the high school guidance couselor, etc,
were all things I did before I made my leap into college. They were
simple things that anyone should be able to do. Anyone that getts to
the end of their PhD in a science or engineering field only to find out
"whoa, this job market sucks," made critical mistakes long ago.
Do I feel sympathy for someone who can't find a job? Sure I do. Do I
feel much sympathy for someone who can't find a job and claims that it's
all the fault of the "evil empire" and authories conspiring against
them? No.
Jeff
Arthur Sowers
The governments (fed, state, etc.) have a right to tax you, anything you
need like food & housing.... they have a right to get money before you get
food, housing. You get sick, maybe you have a right to see a doctor, and
the doc has a right to get into your wallet or you don't get well. You
want a gun, the store has a right to charge you money for it.
You don't need a right to breath air.
> > > > Rich Lemert feels he would like to play King/God/Overling and have
> > > > as many people as possible grovel while he considers throwning them a few
> > > > grains of rice... or maybe nothing at all.
> > >
> > > Since when has Rich said he wants to control anyone or anything?
> >
> > Every time he says what the rest of us should want or not want.
>
> When has he said that?
Lots of times.
> >
> > Is Rich in any kind of position to be throwing out your precious grains of
> > > rice?
> >
> > I don't think so, but he does.
>
> Since when?
Lots of times.
> >
> > > >
> > > > > > After all, why should they have any more 'right' to a
> > > > > > particular
> > > > > > career than anyone else?
> > > > >
> > > > > Should they have less?
> > > >
> > > > Rich wants us all to _see_ a full glass of water where there is only half
> > > > or less, and wants to _give_, at most, a few drops of water, but
> > > > certainly no more than one teaspoonfull and say "Just because your body
> > > > physiologically needs at least a half glass, I'm only going to give you a
> > > > fraction of that".
> > >
> > > Holy crap, Art.
> >
> > Holy crap, Jeff.
> >
> > Nothing I've read from Rich suggests what you're saying
> > > at all. He's saying, you get a degree, you take your chances, just like
> > > everyone else in this country.
> >
> > Not everyone, the priviledged "make" their chances. And, I listed some of
> > them.
> >
> > Are you going to tell me that all
> > > telecomunications majors are "owed" a job, even though this is one of
> > > the most popular majors in college and also one of the most worthless?
> >
> > Ask all of those who are working on a degree if they don't care what
> > happens when they finish.
>
> Many will say they care, but their actions prove otherwise.
This isn't much different than saying black people won't get anywhere
in life because they are not white.
Why does
> someone get C's in a college level class? Rarely does this happen
> because of lack of intelligence.
So, the only way to get an A is to work hard, eh?
And, by extension, all work will be rewarded? I don't think so.
> > Or, do you think they all expect to just float around living on air.
>
> Honestly, Art, some
_all_ is different than _some_. Re-read my sentences and yours.
students live like this. I have had students
> register for a course I'm teaching, show up a few times during the
> semseter, turn in one or two homework sets, maybe take one of the 3-4
> exams, never drop the course and obviously get an F. Why? What a waste
> of money. They would be better not going to college at all.
>
> I have seen students go to school, get a worthless degree, and then hang
> around the college town living with 3 or 4 other people, working some
> meanial job to pay the rent, but nothing more.
>
> > Ask all the ones who get laid off involunatarily how they feel about it.
> >
>
> What's the alternative?
That is not the answer to my question.
No layoffs, the company continues to lose money
> and finally go out of business. Instead of a few people losing their
> jobs, now everyone has lost their job.
Go out of business, and the few executives get the golden parachutes, the
rest get the boot.
> > Ask all of the ones who worked hard at anything and in the end not get it,
>
> Yeah, it sucks. That's why I work hard and smart enough that I get what
> I want.
Do you think you will always get what you work hard and smart enough for?
> > or have any of it taken away from them how they feel about it.
> >
> How can someone take something away from you unless you let them?
If I put a gun to your head and say give me your wallet or I shoot
you, what will you do? Or, if I come up to you with two thugs and just
beat the crap out of you so you are beaten, then take your wallet.
> > Or, if you get denied tenure, you're going to celebrate with joy?
>
> I suppose you'll have your answer in 5 years.
You mean you can't tell me now? Because you don't know or haven't thougth
about it? Real smart and hard work?
Art
> Jeff
>
Arthur Sowers
On the contraray, my observation of the feelings amongst the practitioners
(I'm on another mailing list) is that they worked hard to get where they
are, they deserve (i.e. have a right to) better treatment/pay/environment
and they generally get it AND they fight for it (forming unions).
rather, it reflects our willingness to let
> them name their prices.
Just as it is the willingness of PhDs to generally let "the system" push
them around.
Arthur Sowers
I wonder if they sent a physicist down to the Panama region when Malaria
was wiping everyone out, what he would do? Write up some wave
equations? Or collect stamps?
Art
Arthur Sowers
Lets say you are a hungry dude who is around the fishing pond and you know
there are fish in it. If you are close to starvation and had your hook in
the water and were fishing as hard as you could and still had not, up to
that moment, caught a fish for dinner... you would not say, or be ready
to say, or be close to being ready to say (with tears in your eyes), in
one way or the other, I have a right to catch that fish...so I can live?
> Are you somehow violating the "rights" of the other three candidates by accepting
> this job when it was offered to you, instead of stepping aside and letting one of
> them take it? It seems that the only way everyone's "rights" would be satisfied
> in Art's world would be for all four of you to share the job.
By the RL system of reality, any individual born at any given time, really
has no right to anything.
Art Sowers
> Rich Lemert
>
>
Arthur Sowers
A temporariily employed assistant professor of engineering.
Art Sowers
> josh halpern
>
>
R. Martin
>
> Russell, I don't mean to discount what you have to say, but I want to
> avoid getting dragged down into this quagmire. My main premise was that
> students have access to many different resources of career information
> that they can use to help them make decisions about what path to
> follow. The things I listed, such as looking up info in the library,
> were all things I did before I made my leap into college. They were
> simple things that anyone should be able to do. Anyone that getts to
> the end of their PhD in a science or engineering field only to find out
> "whoa, this job market sucks," made critical mistakes long ago.
Your premise is true in theory, IMO flawed in practice. Yes, some
people made critical mistakes, but were they really such unavoidable
mistakes? How much info is there in a small town library about a
career in, say, astrophysics? Sure, today we'd get on a computer,
fire up a search engine or post to a NG and viola, a vast amount of
information, probably more than we could assimilate (but that is a
separate problem). Most of the people with PhDs today got them before
the days of the WWW. I didn't have that in the 60's. Similarly, my
high school guidance counselor said "You've got great grades, you've
aced all the science and math courses we offer, it's the late 20th
century so you should have a great career as a scientist or engineer.
After all, look at all those NASA jobs, Boeing is designing an SST,
we'll be building cities on the moon within your lifetime, and you can
help make it happen." Think I'm BSing you? I'm not. If you ever get
a chance watch a rerun of "The 21st Century" with Walter Cronkite. It
is a documentary series done in the mid 60's, IIRC, about what lives
we'd be leading today given the advances in science and technology
that were going on. Fascinating stuff, completely brainwashing to a
12 year old. Remember, Walter was voted the must trustworthy man in
America some years back. BTW the ratio of high school guidance
counselors to students is often 1:500, even today. That doesn't give
them much time for individual attention. And how much do you think
they really know about careers in science? If students happen to
check out this NG at least all the griping and arguing may give them
temporary pause. ;-) Quite frankly, the only honest advice I got on
a science career was from the relativitic astrophysicist I asked to
work for as a graduate student. He told me he A) had no funding for
an assistantship and B) I probably couldn't make a living doing it
anyway. No one else ever talked about the career potential.
> Do I feel sympathy for someone who can't find a job? Sure I do. Do I
> feel much sympathy for someone who can't find a job and claims that it's
> all the fault of the "evil empire" and authories conspiring against
> them? No.
>
> Jeff
No one I know claims it is ALL the fault of anyone or anything.
Neither is the individual always totally to blame for what happens
to them. That's my point.
Regards,
Russell
Arthur Sowers
On Sun, 25 Mar 2001, Josh Halpern wrote:
>
>
> Derek Oliver wrote:
>
> > Arthur Sowers wrote:
> > > On Sat, 24 Mar 2001, Jeffrey J. Potoff wrote:
> > > > Arthur Sowers wrote:
>
> SNIP...
>
> > > You might not, but the MDs, lawyers, and CEOs (and for that matter, lots
> > > of high end politicians) not only _operate_ under this assumption, and
> > > their wallets prove it.
>
> This is an amusing lesson in the construction of strawmen.
No entertainment, they make lots of money. No strawmen. Its fact.
> It tries to enforce a similarity among four very different
> groups, and from that draw a single conclusion. Let
> us deconstruct (or in computer talk, ungroup) the four.
> The most obvious thing is that CEOs and high end politicians,
> are positions one reaches at the END of a career, while
> MDs and lawyers range across the entire range of ages
> and experience. One qualifies for the latter two by earning
> a very specific degree and passing a qualifying exam, lord
> knows what the qualifications are for the first two.
I don't see any deconstruction here, but I do see an "us" ..as in plural
of me.
> Now, interestingly enough, AFAIK, "high end politicians"
> do NOT charge by the hour until they get unelected and
> become lobbyists. Mostly politicians
Low end politicos, yes.
pay is pretty low
> compared to their equivalents in industry, etc.
They get very nice pension/retirement plans. The pres gets offices,
bodyguards, and the red carpet. Plus, very high end honoraria for
speaking. Etc.
Neither
> do CEO's get paid by the hour although some get an ungodly
> amount of money. This brings up another point, while there
> are a few CEOs and lawyers who earn ungodly sums, many
> earn much less.
Hmmmm, doesn't this sound like ME talking about PhD salaries running all
over the range...compared to you talking about $85K+ for "head of
household PhDs" stuff?
As to MDs, there you could make the
> best case for the proposition that they feel the world owes
> them $150-250/hr. That's why the US needs a single
> payer health system.
Socialized medicine. (I'd also like to socialize lawyers, too).
Also, there are consultants knocking down lots of money, too.
Where's the deconstruction?
Art
=== no change to below, included for reference and context ====
> > They may very well assume it, but I do not think that the
Arthur Sowers
On Mon, 26 Mar 2001, Jeffrey J. Potoff wrote:
>
> Russell, I don't mean to discount what you have to say, but I want to
> avoid getting dragged down into this quagmire. My main premise was that
> students have access to many different resources of career information
> that they can use to help them make decisions about what path to
> follow.
Having access is like saying "here, go figure it out for yourself" and
most people do not, de novo, do this. Our whole society is full of "fine
print" and the majority of people don't bother with the fine print. If you
want to say "go figure it out yourself" but not "buyer beware" then you
are in the position like the tobbacco executives who knew for a long time
that nicotine was adicting but kept their mouths shut about it and lied to
the public. There are many examples of this.
The things I listed, such as looking up info in the library,
> talking to people in industry, the high school guidance couselor, etc,
> were all things I did before I made my leap into college. They were
> simple things that anyone should be able to do. Anyone that getts to
> the end of their PhD in a science or engineering field only to find out
> "whoa, this job market sucks," made critical mistakes long ago.
But the institutions mostly hide the facts. There is no disclaimer in any
of the graduate school catalogs but there is a vague implication that,
getting a degree results in the necessary and sufficient condition for a
career (by completing all program requirements for the degree).
> Do I feel sympathy for someone who can't find a job? Sure I do. Do I
> feel much sympathy for someone who can't find a job and claims that it's
> all the fault of the "evil empire" and authories conspiring against
> them? No.
Sorry, there are a lot of evil empires out there. Adolf Eichman was tried
in a court and he said he was just obeying orders. The court felt
otherwise. Monopolies in the past (eg. Rockefeller), and in the present
(eg. Microsoft). Price fixing, collusion, corruption, etc., etc., all
conspire against all of us.
When you write the phrase above "...and claims that it's all the fault
of...?" you are: i) denying that person any right to a "fair trial," and
ii) being judgemental in a way that prejudicially refuses to consider
circumstances beyond the control of the individual.
Art
=== no change to below, included for reference and context ====
> Jeff
Josh Halpern
Arthur Sowers wrote:
> On Sun, 25 Mar 2001, Josh Halpern wrote:
> > Derek Oliver wrote:
> > > Arthur Sowers wrote:
> > > > On Sat, 24 Mar 2001, Jeffrey J. Potoff wrote:
> > > > > Arthur Sowers wrote:
> > SNIP...
> > > > You might not, but the MDs, lawyers, and CEOs (and for that matter, lots
> > > > of high end politicians) not only _operate_ under this assumption, and
> > > > their wallets prove it.
> > This is an amusing lesson in the construction of strawmen.
>
> No entertainment, they make lots of money. No strawmen. Its fact.
And that is about the only thing they have in common. So do
rock and baseball stars. AFAIK
josh halpern
Rich Lemert
> On Sat, 24 Mar 2001, Rich Lemert wrote:
>
> > Jeffrey J. Potoff wrote:
> >
> > Just to extend this point a little further . . .
> >
> > Assuming that one of Art's claims is valid, but using a more realistic number,
> > let's say that you were one of four candidates brought in to interview for this
> > position. Is Art implying that all four of you have an equal "right" to this job?
>
> Lets say you are a hungry dude who is around the fishing pond and you know
> there are fish in it. If you are close to starvation and had your hook in
> the water and were fishing as hard as you could and still had not, up to
> that moment, caught a fish for dinner... you would not say, or be ready
> to say, or be close to being ready to say (with tears in your eyes), in
> one way or the other, I have a right to catch that fish...so I can live?
You are exactly right, for once. You have already exercised all the rights to
whichyou are entitled in this scenario: your right to access to the pond, and your
right to
_try_ to catch a fish. If you had a 'right' to catch a fish, though, would require
some means of enforcing that 'right'. If this were possible, no fisherman anywhere
would ever go home with an empty creel.
To put it another way, you very often have the right to seek a particular outcome,
but there is no inherent right to receiving that outcome.
>
>
> > Are you somehow violating the "rights" of the other three candidates by accepting
> > this job when it was offered to you, instead of stepping aside and letting one of
> > them take it? It seems that the only way everyone's "rights" would be satisfied
> > in Art's world would be for all four of you to share the job.
>
> By the RL system of reality, any individual born at any given time, really
> has no right to anything.
Art's logical system: It's cloudy today, therefore it will never be clear sky
anywhereat any time for any reason.
Rich Lemert
clarosa
fun!!!
Jeffrey J. Potoff
Arthur Sowers wrote:
>
> On Sat, 24 Mar 2001, Jeffrey J. Potoff wrote:
> >
> > Sure, but that doesn't mean that I am somehow entitled to a job. I am
> > entitled to life, liberty and the persuit of happiness, according to our
> > Bill of Rights. I haven't found anything in that document about the
> > "right to work". Free speech, yes, gun ownership, yes, job, no.
>
> The governments (fed, state, etc.) have a right to tax you,
Not without representation.
> anything you need like food & housing.... they have a right to get money before you get
> food, housing.
Now governments have "rights?" That's a new one to me.
> You get sick, maybe you have a right to see a doctor, and
> the doc has a right to get into your wallet or you don't get well. You
> want a gun, the store has a right to charge you money for it.
>
> You don't need a right to breath air.
Is smoking a right? How about driving?
>
> > > > > Rich Lemert feels he would like to play King/God/Overling and have
> > > > > as many people as possible grovel while he considers throwning them a few
> > > > > grains of rice... or maybe nothing at all.
> > > >
> > > > Since when has Rich said he wants to control anyone or anything?
> > >
> > > Every time he says what the rest of us should want or not want.
> >
> > When has he said that?
>
> Lots of times.
We must be reading two different newsgroups then.
>
> > >
> > > Is Rich in any kind of position to be throwing out your precious grains of
> > > > rice?
> > >
> > > I don't think so, but he does.
> >
> > Since when?
>
> Lots of times.
When? Give me an example.
> > > Ask all of those who are working on a degree if they don't care what
> > > happens when they finish.
> >
> > Many will say they care, but their actions prove otherwise.
>
> This isn't much different than saying black people won't get anywhere
> in life because they are not white.
Only if you're an idiot.
>
> Why does
> > someone get C's in a college level class? Rarely does this happen
> > because of lack of intelligence.
>
> So, the only way to get an A is to work hard, eh?
No, but a good way not to get one is to not go to class, not take exams
and not do homework. The correlation between work ethic and grades has
been fairly straightforward in the courses I've taught. I have clusters
of students who work conscientiously, they get A's and B's. And I have
another cluster of students who work very erratically, they get C's and
below. Some are actually quite smart, but have trouble mustering the
stamina to put in more than a week's worth of effort at a time.
>
> And, by extension, all work will be rewarded? I don't think so.
>
> > > Or, do you think they all expect to just float around living on air.
> >
> > Honestly, Art, some
>
> _all_ is different than _some_. Re-read my sentences and yours.
>
I read them. You say all, I say some, meaning I have an exception to
your "rule."
> students live like this. I have had students
> > register for a course I'm teaching, show up a few times during the
> > semseter, turn in one or two homework sets, maybe take one of the 3-4
> > exams, never drop the course and obviously get an F. Why? What a waste
> > of money. They would be better not going to college at all.
> >
> > I have seen students go to school, get a worthless degree, and then hang
> > around the college town living with 3 or 4 other people, working some
> > meanial job to pay the rent, but nothing more.
> >
> > > Ask all the ones who get laid off involunatarily how they feel about it.
> > >
> >
> > What's the alternative?
>
> That is not the answer to my question.
Neither is anything you've posted.
>
> No layoffs, the company continues to lose money
> > and finally go out of business. Instead of a few people losing their
> > jobs, now everyone has lost their job.
>
> Go out of business, and the few executives get the golden parachutes, the
> rest get the boot.
What's your point?
>
> > > Ask all of the ones who worked hard at anything and in the end not get it,
> >
> > Yeah, it sucks. That's why I work hard and smart enough that I get what
> > I want.
>
> Do you think you will always get what you work hard and smart enough for?
Always have, except I never could run a 2 minute 800 meters, and even
that I felt deep down inside I have always felt it was just a mental
block that kept me from going faster.
>
> > > or have any of it taken away from them how they feel about it.
> > >
> > How can someone take something away from you unless you let them?
>
> If I put a gun to your head and say give me your wallet or I shoot
> you, what will you do?
I won't visit neighborhoods where this would happen. I proactively
prevent someone from stealing my things or threatening me with physical
harm.
> Or, if I come up to you with two thugs and just
> beat the crap out of you so you are beaten, then take your wallet.
>
Then I'll take advantage of Michigan's new concealed weapon law and
dispatch the three of you.
> > > Or, if you get denied tenure, you're going to celebrate with joy?
> >
> > I suppose you'll have your answer in 5 years.
>
> You mean you can't tell me now?
Fine, I'll get tenure and celebrate with joy.
> Because you don't know or haven't thougth about it? Real smart and hard work?
I have a plan, it's in place and being followed. What more do you
want? At least I didn't sign on for some soft-money position like
certain other people who think they know everything did.
Jeff
Jeffrey J. Potoff
Arthur Sowers wrote:
>
> On Mon, 26 Mar 2001, Jeffrey J. Potoff wrote:
>
> >
> > Russell, I don't mean to discount what you have to say, but I want to
> > avoid getting dragged down into this quagmire. My main premise was that
> > students have access to many different resources of career information
> > that they can use to help them make decisions about what path to
> > follow.
>
> Having access is like saying "here, go figure it out for yourself" and
> most people do not, de novo, do this.
I did it, what can't anyone else do it?
> Our whole society is full of "fine
> print" and the majority of people don't bother with the fine print.
I do, because that's were all the important information is. It's called
being thorough and I thought that's what most scientists were supposed
to be.
> If you
> want to say "go figure it out yourself"
I say, "I figured it out myself, why can't everyone else?"
> but not "buyer beware" then you
Oh yes, I should paste a big disclaimer above the door to my new lab.
"Warning, doing research in this group may or may not lead to great fame
and riches. The surgeon general of s.r.c. has determined that research
is hazardous to your financial health. Proceed at your own risk."
> are in the position like the tobbacco executives who knew for a long time
> that nicotine was adicting but kept their mouths shut about it and lied to
> the public.
And once the public knew it didn't make a damn bit of difference.
Warnings are on each pack of cigarettes, "Warning causes lung cancer,
emphasema, heart disease, etc," but people continue to smoke.
> There are many examples of this.
Many examples of what?
>
> The things I listed, such as looking up info in the library,
> > talking to people in industry, the high school guidance couselor, etc,
> > were all things I did before I made my leap into college. They were
> > simple things that anyone should be able to do. Anyone that getts to
> > the end of their PhD in a science or engineering field only to find out
> > "whoa, this job market sucks," made critical mistakes long ago.
>
> But the institutions mostly hide the facts. There is no disclaimer in any
> of the graduate school catalogs but there is a vague implication that,
> getting a degree results in the necessary and sufficient condition for a
> career (by completing all program requirements for the degree).
If someone is smart enough to get a degree, they're smart enough not to
need a disclaimer "warning, getting a degree does not guarantee
employment." Although postings of certain individuals to s.r.c seem to
imply otherwise.
>
> > Do I feel sympathy for someone who can't find a job? Sure I do. Do I
> > feel much sympathy for someone who can't find a job and claims that it's
> > all the fault of the "evil empire" and authories conspiring against
> > them? No.
>
> Sorry, there are a lot of evil empires out there.
Are they all out to enslave PhD graduates?
Adolf Eichman was tried
> in a court and he said he was just obeying orders.
I don't remember him being in a position to direct graduate studies.
> The court felt otherwise. Monopolies in the past (eg. Rockefeller),
Was he for or against more PhD graduates?
> and in the present (eg. Microsoft).
Now Microsoft is conspiring against PhD graduates?
> Price fixing, collusion, corruption, etc., etc., all conspire against all of us.
>
> When you write the phrase above "...and claims that it's all the fault
> of...?" you are: i) denying that person any right to a "fair trial,"
I didn't realize that getting a job was a "fair trial." Everyone has
equal opportunity to apply for work.
> and ii) being judgemental in a way that prejudicially refuses to consider
> circumstances beyond the control of the individual.
So we should all just throw up our hands and cry "I have no control over
everything, I leave my life in g-d's hands." Give me a break. Have you
ever noticed how things aways go right for some people and always go
wrong for others? Why is that? Are those people really that lucky or
unlucky? Or do the "lucky" people do something that improves their
chances of success that the "unlucky" people don't? Some people make
things happen, other people have things happen to them.
Jeff
Arthur Sowers
On Mon, 26 Mar 2001, Rich Lemert wrote:
> Arthur Sowers wrote:
>
> > On Sat, 24 Mar 2001, Rich Lemert wrote:
> >
> > > Jeffrey J. Potoff wrote:
> > >
> > > Just to extend this point a little further . . .
> > >
> > > Assuming that one of Art's claims is valid, but using a more realistic number,
> > > let's say that you were one of four candidates brought in to interview for this
> > > position. Is Art implying that all four of you have an equal "right" to this job?
> >
> > Lets say you are a hungry dude who is around the fishing pond and you know
> > there are fish in it. If you are close to starvation and had your hook in
> > the water and were fishing as hard as you could and still had not, up to
> > that moment, caught a fish for dinner... you would not say, or be ready
> > to say, or be close to being ready to say (with tears in your eyes), in
> > one way or the other, I have a right to catch that fish...so I can live?
>
> You are exactly right, for once. You have already exercised all the rights to
> whichyou are entitled in this scenario: your right to access to the pond,
> and your
> right to
> _try_ to catch a fish. If you had a 'right' to catch a fish, though, would require
> some means of enforcing that 'right'.
Stick of dynamite; if there is even one fish there, it will float to the
surface in seconds. Such is the "power" of _power_.
If this were possible, no fisherman anywhere
> would ever go home with an empty creel.
Besides boats, they have vast nets, sonar, crews, and other
electronic/computer technology.
> To put it another way, you very often have the right to seek a particular outcome,
> but there is no inherent right to receiving that outcome.
Them's with resources do harvest efficiently and greatly (eg. MafiaSoft)
> >
> >
> > > Are you somehow violating the "rights" of the other three candidates by accepting
> > > this job when it was offered to you, instead of stepping aside and letting one of
> > > them take it? It seems that the only way everyone's "rights" would be satisfied
> > > in Art's world would be for all four of you to share the job.
> >
> > By the RL system of reality, any individual born at any given time, really
> > has no right to anything.
>
> Art's logical system: It's cloudy today, therefore it will never be clear sky
> anywhereat any time for any reason.
Correction: Art's logical system: Know (or learn) which fishing ponds have
a lot of fish, then go there. Know which have few or none, then don't go
there.
Art
> Rich Lemert
>
>
>
Arthur Sowers
yeah, I can pretty much troll out a few guys, and vice versa.
;-)
Art
=== no change to below, included for reference and context ====
Arthur Sowers
On Tue, 27 Mar 2001, Jeffrey J. Potoff wrote:
>
>
> Arthur Sowers wrote:
> >
> > On Sat, 24 Mar 2001, Jeffrey J. Potoff wrote:
>
> > >
> > > Sure, but that doesn't mean that I am somehow entitled to a job. I am
> > > entitled to life, liberty and the persuit of happiness, according to our
> > > Bill of Rights. I haven't found anything in that document about the
> > > "right to work". Free speech, yes, gun ownership, yes, job, no.
> >
> > The governments (fed, state, etc.) have a right to tax you,
>
> Not without representation.
In theory, yes. In practice, you are a grain of sand on a beach and the
muckos in office are kissing up to the payola.
> > anything you need like food & housing.... they have a right to get money before you get
> > food, housing.
>
> Now governments have "rights?" That's a new one to me.
Don't pay your real estate taxes and they will come up and have the
sheriff remove you, physically, from your house, and your belongings, and
put a for sale sign in front of it. Don't pay your income taxes and the
IRS will put you in jail. Don't pay your car insurance and you'll get a
notice in a few days revoking your drivers license...etc., etc.
> > You get sick, maybe you have a right to see a doctor, and
> > the doc has a right to get into your wallet or you don't get well. You
> > want a gun, the store has a right to charge you money for it.
> >
> > You don't need a right to breath air.
>
> Is smoking a right?
That is debatable.
> How about driving?
The Depts. of Motor Vehicles would say no.
Others would feel differently.
> >
> > > > > > Rich Lemert feels he would like to play King/God/Overling and have
> > > > > > as many people as possible grovel while he considers throwning them a few
> > > > > > grains of rice... or maybe nothing at all.
> > > > >
> > > > > Since when has Rich said he wants to control anyone or anything?
> > > >
> > > > Every time he says what the rest of us should want or not want.
> > >
> > > When has he said that?
> >
> > Lots of times.
>
> We must be reading two different newsgroups then.
NO.
> >
> > > >
> > > > Is Rich in any kind of position to be throwing out your precious grains of
> > > > > rice?
> > > >
> > > > I don't think so, but he does.
> > >
> > > Since when?
> >
> > Lots of times.
>
> When? Give me an example.
Pay me a consulting fee and I'll dig them up.
>
> > > > Ask all of those who are working on a degree if they don't care what
> > > > happens when they finish.
> > >
> > > Many will say they care, but their actions prove otherwise.
> >
> > This isn't much different than saying black people won't get anywhere
> > in life because they are not white.
>
> Only if you're an idiot.
This is not a serious reply to my sentence.
> >
> > Why does
> > > someone get C's in a college level class? Rarely does this happen
> > > because of lack of intelligence.
> >
> > So, the only way to get an A is to work hard, eh?
>
> No, but a good way not to get one is to not go to class, not take exams
> and not do homework.
I'm not talking about charity, here. "No tickie, no washie" is a norm of
society. But, fraud is where there are two parties and one carries out
promised deeds in exchange, but does not get compensated. Or, when you DO
work hard and get nothing in return for it.
The correlation between work ethic and grades has
> been fairly straightforward in the courses I've taught.
Courses DO NOT represent REAL LIFE. After college, degrees, etc., the
world does not work on grades. It works on a mixture of products/services
AND politics.
I have clusters
> of students who work conscientiously, they get A's and B's. And I have
> another cluster of students who work very erratically, they get C's and
> below. Some are actually quite smart, but have trouble mustering the
> stamina to put in more than a week's worth of effort at a time.
There is all ranges of tallents out there. Big deal. Sometimes guys with
Cs become presidents of the USA, etc.
> >
> > And, by extension, all work will be rewarded? I don't think so.
> >
> > > > Or, do you think they all expect to just float around living on air.
> > >
> > > Honestly, Art, some
> >
> > _all_ is different than _some_. Re-read my sentences and yours.
> >
>
> I read them. You say all, I say some, meaning I have an exception to
> your "rule."
I'll reapeat: Not all work will be rewarded.
> > students live like this. I have had students
> > > register for a course I'm teaching, show up a few times during the
> > > semseter, turn in one or two homework sets, maybe take one of the 3-4
> > > exams, never drop the course and obviously get an F. Why? What a waste
> > > of money. They would be better not going to college at all.
> > >
> > > I have seen students go to school, get a worthless degree, and then hang
> > > around the college town living with 3 or 4 other people, working some
> > > meanial job to pay the rent, but nothing more.
> > >
> > > > Ask all the ones who get laid off involunatarily how they feel about it.
> > > >
> > >
> > > What's the alternative?
> >
> > That is not the answer to my question.
>
> Neither is anything you've posted.
Too bad.
> >
> > No layoffs, the company continues to lose money
> > > and finally go out of business. Instead of a few people losing their
> > > jobs, now everyone has lost their job.
> >
> > Go out of business, and the few executives get the golden parachutes, the
> > rest get the boot.
>
> What's your point?
I said it above: Not all work will be rewarded.
> >
> > > > Ask all of the ones who worked hard at anything and in the end not get it,
> > >
> > > Yeah, it sucks. That's why I work hard and smart enough that I get what
> > > I want.
> >
> > Do you think you will always get what you work hard and smart enough for?
>
> Always have,
So, because of that (past history), you think you will, in the future,
always get what you work for?
except I never could run a 2 minute 800 meters, and even
> that I felt deep down inside I have always felt it was just a mental
> block that kept me from going faster.
Ah, so you are a self-limited superman, eh? You could walk on water except
for a mental block, eh?
> >
> > > > or have any of it taken away from them how they feel about it.
> > > >
> > > How can someone take something away from you unless you let them?
> >
> > If I put a gun to your head and say give me your wallet or I shoot
> > you, what will you do?
>
> I won't visit neighborhoods where this would happen.
Sorry, you fail. You asked (above) "How can someone take...." and I said
how and asked what would you do. Your answer says what you would do, but
your answer does not acknowledge that if I stand next to you and put a gun
to your head, then you are in deep trouble.
I proactively
> prevent someone from stealing my things or threatening me with physical
> harm.
yeah...sure... only I hate to be a gun advocate and say "but, Jeff, the
only way out is to pull and shoot your gun faster than the bad guy".
> > Or, if I come up to you with two thugs and just
> > beat the crap out of you so you are beaten, then take your wallet.
> >
>
> Then I'll take advantage of Michigan's new concealed weapon law and
> dispatch the three of you.
Are you in Michgan? An exposed and pointed and cocked gun has a legup on a
concealed weapon.
> > > > Or, if you get denied tenure, you're going to celebrate with joy?
> > >
> > > I suppose you'll have your answer in 5 years.
> >
> > You mean you can't tell me now?
>
> Fine, I'll get tenure and celebrate with joy.
Rather confident aren't you? Or, maybe you think you are better than Brian
Moore.
> > Because you don't know or haven't thougth about it? Real smart and
> > hard work?
>
> I have a plan, it's in place and being followed. What more do you
> want? At least I didn't sign on for some soft-money position like
> certain other people who think they know everything did.
First, my first job after my postdoc was an all hard money and
permanent position that did not require grants. Three-four years later and
after a reorganization, this changed. When my program was shut down, I
still had active grant support.
Second, I didn't have as much choice at the time when I took what I could
get. Ten to fifteen years from now, you would be old enough to start to
understand this, but not now.
Third, it is possible that in your department, you could, at some point in
the future, have a change in chairs and you might find that it is possible
to wake up one day and find yourself _off_ the tenure track, and a year
later, _off_ any appointment you thought you had. This has happened to
various people I've known.
Fourth, if I were you, I would not be so cocky about your future. If and
when you get tenure, then you can strut around, if you want, like Jesus
Christ or some prima dona, and look down your nose at others. But, untill
then, I'd advise you to be humble.
Art
> Jeff
>
Arthur Sowers
On Tue, 27 Mar 2001, Jeffrey J. Potoff wrote:
>
>
> Arthur Sowers wrote:
> >
> > On Mon, 26 Mar 2001, Jeffrey J. Potoff wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > Russell, I don't mean to discount what you have to say, but I want to
> > > avoid getting dragged down into this quagmire. My main premise was that
> > > students have access to many different resources of career information
> > > that they can use to help them make decisions about what path to
> > > follow.
> >
> > Having access is like saying "here, go figure it out for yourself" and
> > most people do not, de novo, do this.
>
> I did it, what can't anyone else do it?
First, you were probably more lucky than you will admit.
Second, why can't anyone else do it is a good question and yet many do NOT
go figure it out before they jump in.
Tell me why so many people get into deep credit card debt. It happens.
> > Our whole society is full of "fine
> > print" and the majority of people don't bother with the fine print.
>
> I do, because that's were all the important information is. It's called
> being thorough and I thought that's what most scientists were supposed
> to be.
Scientists are carefull about only a few things, and its too few.
> > If you
> > want to say "go figure it out yourself"
>
> I say, "I figured it out myself, why can't everyone else?"
Good for you, now, what about all the others? You just want to say "tough
luck?"
> > but not "buyer beware" then you
>
> Oh yes, I should paste a big disclaimer above the door to my new lab.
> "Warning, doing research in this group may or may not lead to great fame
> and riches. The surgeon general of s.r.c. has determined that research
> is hazardous to your financial health. Proceed at your own risk."
Yes. Actually, I drafted up a model Graduate Catalog disclosure statement
more than a year ago. You can go to appliance stores now and get
government mandated energy efficiency statements on these appliaces and
its a good idea. There is also govt tested car crash results. I think that
is a good idea, too. You have all kinds of labels on foods now, disclosing
what is in them, and I think that is a good idea. Cans of paints,
chemicals in hardware stores... say whats inside, poison characteristics,
etc., disclaimers... all good ideas.
And, you want to keep it all secret? Or, assume that you don't have to
tell anyone anything and let them "guess" or figure it out on their own?
> > are in the position like the tobbacco executives who knew for a long time
> > that nicotine was adicting but kept their mouths shut about it and lied to
> > the public.
>
> And once the public knew it didn't make a damn bit of difference.
There are, now, for the first time, some court cases that the tobbacco
companies are losing. I would not say "it didn't make a damn bit of
difference". Jerry Kessler said on TV a few weeks ago that he still thinks
tobbacco needs to be shut down. Tobbacco is "in" our culture very deeply,
but I cannot say that one day (just like slavery) it will not end. You can
talk about alcohol and prohibition not working. But, it is a good
excercise to make a list of things that have become controlled (another
success in this respect is asbestous [its banned now]).
> Warnings are on each pack of cigarettes, "Warning causes lung cancer,
> emphasema, heart disease, etc," but people continue to smoke.
>
> > There are many examples of this.
>
> Many examples of what?
Warnings, disclosures, etc.
> >
> > The things I listed, such as looking up info in the library,
> > > talking to people in industry, the high school guidance couselor, etc,
> > > were all things I did before I made my leap into college. They were
> > > simple things that anyone should be able to do. Anyone that getts to
> > > the end of their PhD in a science or engineering field only to find out
> > > "whoa, this job market sucks," made critical mistakes long ago.
> >
> > But the institutions mostly hide the facts. There is no disclaimer in any
> > of the graduate school catalogs but there is a vague implication that,
> > getting a degree results in the necessary and sufficient condition for a
> > career (by completing all program requirements for the degree).
>
> If someone is smart enough to get a degree, they're smart enough not to
> need a disclaimer "warning, getting a degree does not guarantee
> employment."
I disagree. See below.
Although postings of certain individuals to s.r.c seem to
> imply otherwise.
I still read some literature and at least for the biomeds, there is a NRC
consensus study showing PhDs in bio are being produced 2X above the job
market. This has been known for a few years now, but when I read articles
about what anyone is doing about it, I read that nothing is being
done. So, the young people come into the pipeline, become grad students
and postdocs and then half of them get disappointed.
> >
> > > Do I feel sympathy for someone who can't find a job? Sure I do. Do I
> > > feel much sympathy for someone who can't find a job and claims that it's
> > > all the fault of the "evil empire" and authories conspiring against
> > > them? No.
> >
> > Sorry, there are a lot of evil empires out there.
>
> Are they all out to enslave PhD graduates?
PhDs who can't get regular jobs have a strong incentive to get temporary
jobs, even as postdocs. From that point on, its a crapshoot.
> Adolf Eichman was tried
> > in a court and he said he was just obeying orders.
>
> I don't remember him being in a position to direct graduate studies.
No, he turned the valve on the gas chambers.
> > The court felt otherwise. Monopolies in the past (eg. Rockefeller),
>
> Was he for or against more PhD graduates?
He was for gassing more Jews.
> > and in the present (eg. Microsoft).
>
> Now Microsoft is conspiring against PhD graduates?
Conspiring to expand the wallets of Bill Gates and Steve Balmer, and
contract the wallets of everyone else.
> > Price fixing, collusion, corruption, etc., etc., all conspire against all of us.
> >
> > When you write the phrase above "...and claims that it's all the fault
> > of...?" you are: i) denying that person any right to a "fair trial,"
>
> I didn't realize that getting a job was a "fair trial." Everyone has
> equal opportunity to apply for work.
Oh? You mean you didn't want to be judged fairly (meaning you wanted to
be offered a job) on your application?
> > and ii) being judgemental in a way that prejudicially refuses to consider
> > circumstances beyond the control of the individual.
>
> So we should all just throw up our hands and cry "I have no control over
> everything, I leave my life in g-d's hands." Give me a break. Have you
> ever noticed how things aways go right for some people and always go
> wrong for others? Why is that? Are those people really that lucky or
> unlucky? Or do the "lucky" people do something that improves their
> chances of success that the "unlucky" people don't? Some people make
> things happen, other people have things happen to them.
Ah, "some people make things happen" ... and you think that happens all
the time? How about you name a few people, just two or three, that are
very well known and nothing bad ever happened to them and they got
everything in their life by just pure work. I can think of a few, but most
people I've heard about have had some problems in their lives. Some
overcame their problems, others did not. Out of a few, I've known some
that developed medical problems and no amount of _work_ kept them from
premature death. I know of some divorces and none of them speak about them
with any happiness. Some tried counseling and it didn't work. I know of a
lot of situations where there was a victim that had little control over
the outcome. Tire failures have been in the news recently and a lot of
people died or were hurt; you think something like that can't happen to
you?
I think you are counting a lot of chickens before they are hatching. When
positive attitudes beget overconfidence, then failures will be harder to
take and adjust to. However, I also know of people whose egos swelled with
time and they simply start acting as if they should be compared with
deities.
Art
> Jeff
>