Nearly 50% of researchers quit science within a decade, huge study reveals | Hacker News Reader

Nearly 50% of researchers quit science within a decade, huge study reveals

nature.com

12 pointsmitchbob11 comments

Quitting implies there is a problem, the authors even state so. But is it really¹? I'm quite sure "Over 90% of college students quit college within a decade". They graduate.

Should science grow exponentially? Is there no value in a PhD graduate that isn't a researcher? Get everyone a PhD and chain them to a desk for research!

(1) Except for gender (and others not in scope) where past discrimination is still felt.

"We encourage young people to go into the sciences and then treat them like shit when they do.

--heard from a scientist on a podcast once

If you don't publish by 30...

Has this statistic changed much over time?

Well, yes. There's a vast overproduction of PhDs.

Counterpoint: there's a vast underinvestment in academia and universities are cutting faculty jobs in favor of underpaid sessional instructors. We're paying much more for administration and executive salaries which don't add value to society, only line their pocketbooks with taxpayer dollars and ever-increasing tuition.

There will always be a perceived underinvestment in academic research. That's because "reproduction" of PhDs is so rapid that their number will expand to fill any funding available and then some. Aside from short lived transients, fields will exist in a state of Malthusian equilibrium, with most PhDs failing to stay in academic research. And this overabundance explains the relatively low salaries.

Do you have a source for this?

I worked in biotech / pharma for a little over a decade, a big chunk of PhD’s are doing work that doesn’t require a PhD…as in open to someone with a MS or PhD.

And then mamy jobs “require” a PhD, but I’ve seen what they do and it’s semi-mindless and very repetitive.

That's not a source, though.

Every tenured professor is expected to have at very least one PhD student. A PhD takes on average less than 8 years and a tenure more than 20.

Though I think a more reasonable replacement rate is 10+ PhD graduates per professor. I do not think this problematic somehow, unlike what overproduction implies.

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