Thank you so much Holden for giving a platform for the voices of concerned graduate students, who are living so directly many of the failures of the current academic model. We need to do so much better as nourishing the next generation of scientists and regarding them as full human beings, then bringing the scientific work out into the public that such work was always meant to serve. I had an absolutely terrible graduate school experience marked by just about every one of the problems these students outlined here. When I and my peers spoke about it, we were threatened into silence. My hope is that empowering today's up-and-coming scientists to shape their own work and training experiences can help us all prevent any more of this abuse and waste of amazing scientific potential.
Do you agree with panelist Alan Rich’s point that the canonical experience for a doctoral student in the sciences is to experience “the light fad[ing] from their eyes”? What do you think causes that? Holden, how would grad students nurture that light and still get the experience and funding they need if they had more freedom? I guess I’m looking for more specifics. It sounds to me as though freedom to pursue rich learning experiences + demand of meeting lab expectations = soul crushing workload.
It's great to read about this, and feel a little bit hopeful thinking about students like the ones mentioned here being future leaders. There are of course very large systemic vulnerabilities that have been around for the last 30 years or so (the doubling-if we could invent a time machine....) but in the current crisis legitimately threaten collapse. The biggest one is the over-reliance on abundant trainee labor to fuel scientific productivity (and bring more indirects to universities), which has visibly compromised the quality of training and perhaps led to lower ROI for the public. That's a controversial statement, but people way more famous than I have said this (and gotten booed off the stage by other people way more famous than I). Anyway. During this 30 year period, the number of biological/biomedical science PhDs graduating annually has doubled, while training funds have been relatively flat and the proportion supported by R grants has exploded. R grants, unlike training funds, are not linked to accountability for the quality of training and mentoring. Of course a vibrant high quality training environment will also be a productive one, but there are sometimes conflicts between training and raw productivity that must be managed. Again, this is old news. Shirley Tilghman and others were already raising concerns about this when I was a postdoc in the 90s.
These students are right to identify and talk about incentive structures. Early career faculty are especially in a bind because they really do have to demonstrate their ability to establish themselves as independent scientists with a sustainable funding track record. PhD training with an early career faculty member can be an excellent experience in so many ways, but also one that has it's unique emotional stresses and uncertainties.
I am also sympathetic to university leaders whose main focus right now is staying out of the crosshairs and working to stabilize their institutions, which means being somewhat responsive to external realities and unlikely to go to the March for Science with a Just Trust Science T-shirt on. This often makes faculty and students unhappy, and I'm going to scream at the next highly protected person who snarks about "bending the knee" or "complying in advance" from the faculty lounge or student happy hour. I'm sure they would be much more upset when the layoffs and stipend freezes happen than they currently are by the Provost not taking the day to attend March for Science.
I want to call attention to something that these students are expressing that I find particularly challenging working in grad ed at this time (compared to my earlier days as a faculty member and my probably rosy nostalgia from my own time in training); the expectation for validation from those they see in authority. This phrase, asking for PIs to "give graduate students more freedom" to pursue their interests. I guess I have never understood why this freedom must be granted, why students don't just claim it and take care of themselves. Even way back in the olden days, the faculty that I knew (we didn't call them "PIs" back then, probably because they were not paying us from the R grants) were always expressing their opinions about how I should live my life, what career I should pursue (of course being TT faculty at an R1), whether I should put off child bearing until tenure or skip it entirely (the two options), whether I should pursue faculty positions at SLACs (a woman Nobel Laureate characterized this, to my face, as "a woman's career" with great disdain), or chose "the best job" or a job in the same place as my partner. But as annoying as it was, I don't think I ever expected that they should "give me freedom". It's my life and while I valued advice and perspective, I'm the one making decisions about it. Now of course this means that if I took advantage of a teaching opportunity, I was not to expect that my productivity in lab could drop off. And of course I would have to deal with snide comments and what not. But when you have a fellowship, and you are getting your work done (because you also want the papers) there's not much the "PI" can do. And I have also found that students often over estimate the disapproval of their advisor. Many are supportive, many more are neutral, as long as progress is being made.
So, while the structural and systemic vulnerabilities (ignored by major funding agencies for decades now) are probably the biggest factor impacting the quality of training and the training experience, I would encourage today's students to put less weight on what others think, pursue the life and career that will be most meaningful to them, and do it in a way that does not compromise their ability to meet the objectives for which they decided to pursue a PhD in the first place.
WOW! I am a business person involved with scientists. I could not agree more with the idea of liberating our best thinkers to think and advocate outside of the lab. I agree that the future of mankind rests in the hands of our young scientists wrestling with the toughest medical and environmental problems. Not to mention their role in understanding the capabilities of AI--whatever that is. SPEAK UP!
Thank you so much Holden for giving a platform for the voices of concerned graduate students, who are living so directly many of the failures of the current academic model. We need to do so much better as nourishing the next generation of scientists and regarding them as full human beings, then bringing the scientific work out into the public that such work was always meant to serve. I had an absolutely terrible graduate school experience marked by just about every one of the problems these students outlined here. When I and my peers spoke about it, we were threatened into silence. My hope is that empowering today's up-and-coming scientists to shape their own work and training experiences can help us all prevent any more of this abuse and waste of amazing scientific potential.
Do you agree with panelist Alan Rich’s point that the canonical experience for a doctoral student in the sciences is to experience “the light fad[ing] from their eyes”? What do you think causes that? Holden, how would grad students nurture that light and still get the experience and funding they need if they had more freedom? I guess I’m looking for more specifics. It sounds to me as though freedom to pursue rich learning experiences + demand of meeting lab expectations = soul crushing workload.
It's great to read about this, and feel a little bit hopeful thinking about students like the ones mentioned here being future leaders. There are of course very large systemic vulnerabilities that have been around for the last 30 years or so (the doubling-if we could invent a time machine....) but in the current crisis legitimately threaten collapse. The biggest one is the over-reliance on abundant trainee labor to fuel scientific productivity (and bring more indirects to universities), which has visibly compromised the quality of training and perhaps led to lower ROI for the public. That's a controversial statement, but people way more famous than I have said this (and gotten booed off the stage by other people way more famous than I). Anyway. During this 30 year period, the number of biological/biomedical science PhDs graduating annually has doubled, while training funds have been relatively flat and the proportion supported by R grants has exploded. R grants, unlike training funds, are not linked to accountability for the quality of training and mentoring. Of course a vibrant high quality training environment will also be a productive one, but there are sometimes conflicts between training and raw productivity that must be managed. Again, this is old news. Shirley Tilghman and others were already raising concerns about this when I was a postdoc in the 90s.
These students are right to identify and talk about incentive structures. Early career faculty are especially in a bind because they really do have to demonstrate their ability to establish themselves as independent scientists with a sustainable funding track record. PhD training with an early career faculty member can be an excellent experience in so many ways, but also one that has it's unique emotional stresses and uncertainties.
I am also sympathetic to university leaders whose main focus right now is staying out of the crosshairs and working to stabilize their institutions, which means being somewhat responsive to external realities and unlikely to go to the March for Science with a Just Trust Science T-shirt on. This often makes faculty and students unhappy, and I'm going to scream at the next highly protected person who snarks about "bending the knee" or "complying in advance" from the faculty lounge or student happy hour. I'm sure they would be much more upset when the layoffs and stipend freezes happen than they currently are by the Provost not taking the day to attend March for Science.
I want to call attention to something that these students are expressing that I find particularly challenging working in grad ed at this time (compared to my earlier days as a faculty member and my probably rosy nostalgia from my own time in training); the expectation for validation from those they see in authority. This phrase, asking for PIs to "give graduate students more freedom" to pursue their interests. I guess I have never understood why this freedom must be granted, why students don't just claim it and take care of themselves. Even way back in the olden days, the faculty that I knew (we didn't call them "PIs" back then, probably because they were not paying us from the R grants) were always expressing their opinions about how I should live my life, what career I should pursue (of course being TT faculty at an R1), whether I should put off child bearing until tenure or skip it entirely (the two options), whether I should pursue faculty positions at SLACs (a woman Nobel Laureate characterized this, to my face, as "a woman's career" with great disdain), or chose "the best job" or a job in the same place as my partner. But as annoying as it was, I don't think I ever expected that they should "give me freedom". It's my life and while I valued advice and perspective, I'm the one making decisions about it. Now of course this means that if I took advantage of a teaching opportunity, I was not to expect that my productivity in lab could drop off. And of course I would have to deal with snide comments and what not. But when you have a fellowship, and you are getting your work done (because you also want the papers) there's not much the "PI" can do. And I have also found that students often over estimate the disapproval of their advisor. Many are supportive, many more are neutral, as long as progress is being made.
So, while the structural and systemic vulnerabilities (ignored by major funding agencies for decades now) are probably the biggest factor impacting the quality of training and the training experience, I would encourage today's students to put less weight on what others think, pursue the life and career that will be most meaningful to them, and do it in a way that does not compromise their ability to meet the objectives for which they decided to pursue a PhD in the first place.
WOW! I am a business person involved with scientists. I could not agree more with the idea of liberating our best thinkers to think and advocate outside of the lab. I agree that the future of mankind rests in the hands of our young scientists wrestling with the toughest medical and environmental problems. Not to mention their role in understanding the capabilities of AI--whatever that is. SPEAK UP!