Pessimistic Links

Just in case you are feeling good about things in general (or about the state of higher ed in the West), these links will cure you...

1. Paula Stephan in Chemistry World: Too many scientists? She uses "pyramid scheme" to describe the current way of training PhDs.

   [Update: The Science Careers essay announcing Prof. Stehpan as the Person of the Year is very good too. I thank Swarup for the link, via a comment on this post].

2. Beryl Lieff Benderly in Miller McClune: The Real Science Gap: "Business leaders have cried "scientist shortage," but scores of thousands of young Ph.D.s are laboring in U.S. university labs as low-paid, temporary workers, ostensibly training for permanent faculty positions that will never exist."

3. Livre d'Or: Dear Brilliant Students: Please Consider not Doing a PhD. Long rant -- overly pessimistic, UK-centric, and perhaps humanities centric, as well. Has some brutally frank commentary about academic culture -- especially about student-adviser relationship. [Thanks to Appaiah for the e-mail alert]