Ireland's need for scientists

oscarBravo

Taken to PM.

edit: for the benefit of other participants in this thread, ISAW has stepped outside for a short walk to clear his head.

transylman

Normal service resumes.

I was talking to a postdoc in England about the ratio of postdocs to postgrads in most university departments. She seems to know a lot about the situation in our area (physics). She said that ideally, to get research done, universities would like to take on postdocs but since they are much more expensive universities make do with higher numbers of postgrads. She also said that the ratio was about 1 to 4. I do know of some places, such as the Tyndall institute in Cork, where the balance is weighted more towards postdocs.

According to her the situation in England if you want to builld up a research centre in a particular area is:

The Department should already have some experience in the area. Based on this you apply to EPSRC (Third level funding body) for a grant.
Using this money you set up the group and produce your initial results.
EPSRC and others then examine results and use certain metrics to see if they are getting value for money.
If you pass this stage you then get another grant (cant remember what it was called) which is much larger in value and guaranteed for a number of years.

Of course no system is perfect and having connections helps a lot. I would be interested to know how all this copares with funding in Ireland.

GuanYin

Time for people here to act on their words

For anyone who has obtained a degree or higher degree in the science/research industry in the last 10 years from Ireland.

This survey

http://www.sciencecouncil.ie/survey.html

ArthurDent

psi wrote:

Time for people here to act on their words

For anyone who has obtained a degree or higher degree in the science/research industry in the last 10 years from Ireland.

This survey

http://www.sciencecouncil.ie/survey.html

Cheers did that - the ad in the Irish time for this was slightly different it asked for participation for those that were actively involved in research to fill out - whereas here it also included those who had left research too and the reasons why.

r3nu4l

psi wrote:

Time for people here to act on their words

For anyone who has obtained a degree or higher degree in the science/research industry in the last 10 years from Ireland.

This survey

http://www.sciencecouncil.ie/survey.html

Done, thanks for that!

coffee_cake

I'm trying to do the survey, am finishing my msc this year, but it has the highest graduation date as 2006... and there's no "I didn't do a phd because I wanted an msc first" option...
Maybe I should give up.

r3nu4l

psi wrote:

Time for people here to act on their words

For anyone who has obtained a degree or higher degree in the science/research industry in the last 10 years from Ireland.

This survey

http://www.sciencecouncil.ie/survey.html

I just wanted to update people on this thread. I filled in the survey and on May 22nd received this email:

Technopolis, Forfas and the ASC Task Force would like to thank you very much for your contribution to the survey on the attractiveness of researcher careers in Ireland. The result of this survey will be particularly valuable for the ASC Task Force to come forward with proposals on a career structure for researchers, as set out in the Strategy for Science, Technology and Innovation 2006-2013 (SSTI).

We are now performing phone interviews (20mn) in order to strengthen and go more in-depth into some of the survey results.
In this context we would be very grateful if we could phone you in the coming week to discuss your own professional trajectory, the underlying reasons, the problems you encountered etc, as well as your personal opinion on the barriers and opportunities of a researcher career in Ireland.

Of course, all discussions will remain strictly confidential. Only, the aggregated results of this survey will be made available.

As a result, I completed a phone interview today with a French girl (the surveyors) asking me about my scientific career from degree to PhD, post-doc and my reasons for leaving research.

I was asked if I had attempted to leave academic research for industrial research and how those attempts had panned out.

I was asked for my recommendations for the Irish Government. I replied with the following:

There should be a proper career pathway for post-docs
This pathway should include designated salary bands so that post-docs are can be aware of potential earnings
There should be the potential for permanent post-doc positions and/or long term contracts 5yrs+ for all post-docs
Post-docs should have full entitlements and employment rights and be protected from bullying bosses who hold power over their career development

I stated that all PhD students should be trained in cGMP, cGLP and Irish and European lab, manufacturing and production standards. This training should be to a standard recognised by industry. I recommended that this should be examinable and occur in the first year of the PhD with a refresher course during the last 12 months of the PhD.

This recommendation was triggered by my own experience where despite my PhD and post-doc experience I was told by industry that I would only be entitled to a graduate salary because I didn't have formal training in these particular standards :mad:

I also stated that I was very concerned by the Government and opposition pledges to increase the number of PhD positions in Science by the thousands since there will be very few jobs for those people to go into when they qualify and that this would lead to a situation where those willing to work for the lowest salary would be the ones to get the job.

I said that the grant application situtation should change as I knew from (first-hand) experience that some grant applicants deliberately reduce proposed salaries because they know that this has some bearing on whether a grant application will succeed or fail.

Finally I said that while the Government have praised themselves for bringing in "high-tech" science job, most of these jobs are actually low-end jobs where a PhD is deemed to be "extremely over-qualified" and where anyone with a PhD would themselves feel their talents were wasted! I said that I felt that if the Governemnt were serious about making Ireland a serious scientific "fourth-level" economy then we need proper education, jobs, opportunities and career paths for these people. Otherwise, like me, they will (very, very reluctantly) leave scientific research and enter into commercial businesses so that they can have a career path and make enough money to actually pay a mortgage and be able to afford to raise a family.

I was told that they will send me the final report for comment before submitting it to the Government. I won't be able to upload this to boards.ie until it is published by the Government...that could be some wait if they don't like what they see and hear!

GuanYin

Good job, well done on taking the time to do the survey too.



I'll be very, very interested in the report.

Jackie laughlin

Deja vu! I'm back on the site having been absent for some months and this thread has started again.

All this 4th level and knowledge economy stuff is guff from people who study neither technology nor society.

Information technology has reduced the need for science and engineering graduates. Lecturers in these areas, faced with declining student numbers, talk up vacancies. Ask the graduates. There are few - very few - vacancies, even in I.T.

There will never be large numbers of people employed in research. It is a vital but minority activity. Research has always been foreign to Ireland. Indeed even development has been foreign to Ireland.

The silliest education policy we could adopt would be to expand 3rd level science and engineering and we certainly don't need many Ph.Ds. in these fields. What we do need is mass competence in and basic familiarity with science and technology. An obligatory 2nd level course is required. Moreover, ALL graduates should be competent in maths, computer literate and able to read and research technical material.

Face it: the future of education is the humanities BECAUSE of the information society. The clever thing would be to make our humanities graduates technology savvy!

r3nu4l

Jackie laughlin wrote:

Face it: the future of education is the humanities BECAUSE of the information society. The clever thing would be to make our humanities graduates technology savvy!

Sorry Jackie but that is one of the silliest things I've read in a long, long time. Do you really believe that a cure for AIDS will be brought about by having more PhDs in Sociology or Anthropology? Focus groups perhaps? Panel discussion on how to de-stigmatise the status of AIDS patients in society? Or do you think further scientific research is the answer? Have you ever been vaccinated for anything in your lifetime? Do you think a geo-political sociologist specialising in urban renewal and the paradigm shift in urban-rural translocationalism* developed that vaccine, or was it a scientific researcher?

Maybe I'm missing your point but that appears to be what you are saying.

*and they say scientists use too much jargon :rolleyes:

Jackie laughlin

Yep, you're missing my point and I readily accept that that may be my fault. However, I did say that "It is a vital but minority activity." I did not say that we needed to increase the numbers of Ph.Ds. in the humanities.

I'm saying nothing like, we don't need scientific research. To repeat, it is vital. My point is that it will involve a tiny number of very specialised people. It's not a basis for industrial/employment policy.

What we do need is highly educated people who are also competent in matters technological.

Your mocking approach to humanities reflects the depth of the problem. Too few people realise the change that ICT has wrought. It is no longer merely desirable, or merely possible but essential that the rift between science and humanities be abolished for the mass of educated people. None of this is inconsistent with small numbers of highly specialised workers.

r3nu4l

Hi Jackie, we seem to be missing each others points quite a lot I wasn't mocking humanities at all, I was simply saying that humanities alone cannot solve the problems of science. Humanities is becoming increasingly important in Science particularly the field of Bioethics where bioanthropologists and sociologists amongst others are very important to development of research and the direction of research.

As for technology, well most of the most recent major biological discoveries have been made using a field called Bioinformatics (Mrs. r3nu4l has a PhD in bioinformatics but doesn't use boards.ie so I'll try to explain here). Bioinformatics involves the gathering, storage and analysis of huge numbers of gene sequences from many different organisms including the human genome. The analysis (referred to as data-mining) is all done on computer using incredibly complex programming algorithms, usually written together by biologists and programmers.

The reason that the Government wants to increase the number of PhDs in Science and Humanities is because they want a slice of the research action (which can be very profitable!!). There are many research hubs worldwide, Cambridge is one. The Government aren't saying they want everyone to do a PhD but they do want companies to recognise that there is a waiting pool of talent. Patents lead to profit, you don't get patents without research.

All of that said, I actually agree that it is far too early to start increasing the number of PhDs by the thousand. Research should be an attractive prospect in order to get motivated people. Motivated people produce results

Jackie laughlin

Thanks for this.

I'm vaguely familiar with the field of bioinformatics. Exciting stuff!

The problem with govt. thinking right now is that it is simplistic. They've been sold a pup by a combination of vested interests in the universities and people who listen only to others in the same bunker. Idle Ph.Ds. waiting to be put to work may attract research contracts and investment. However, in the world of employment policy this could be no more than a side issue. I'm afraid too that vacancies for all levels of science and engineeering graduates are few and far between. Without exception the recent (say, in the last 10 years) science or engineeering graduates of my acquaintance are either out of work, working out of their fields or working as technical managers of some sort.

When the govt., business leaders, journalists and most public intellectuals in Ireland talk about "the information society" or "the knowledge economy", they seem to have little idea of the extent of what has happened and is happening. Their education-policy responses are terribly out of date; they are addressing a world now gone. "Fourth level" is a childish catchphrase, unless you happen to work in a university and want to expand your research, research funding and reputation among a tiny elite. Soon funding will be in proportion to Ph.D. students, most of whom will be mere fodder for the lucrative 4th level production line.

karen3212

When was the last time anyone heard a decent debate about the future of our economy on RTE television. Why is our public paid broadcaster constantly discussing house prices, and nothing is said about a real knowledge economy.

My sister's friend finished her phd recently, guess where she got a job, the USA. The only other offer she got was from Australia. Yes, those countries are smart and like to steal well educated, publicly educated foreigners. FFS does anyone know how to get our public information systems to work/report on real issues so the ordinary person on the street knows how we should move forward and can vote for it.

Jackie laughlin

Karen,
RTE has produced several programmes about the dangers of an economy so heavily dependent on construction. Construction is easy to understand and easy to present. Getting to grips with the reality of life changed by ICT requires effort (study). Few journalists would be willing, able or permitted by their employer to do this. However, isn't it odd that when someone says, "knowledge econony" in an interview, the journalist never asks for a definition. There's a great dangerous pretence that we all know what it means.

Meanwhile, we talk about producing more science and engineering graduates, when it is clear that we already produce far too many.

r3nu4l

To be fair Jackie, the same can be said for humanities/arts graduates. I know plenty of History, Anthropology and sociology graduates working in banks, building societies and car sales...and the list goes on.

We produce far too many non-targetted graduates. It's all well and good talking about transferrable skills but what's the point of doing history for three years if you end up working in a bank!* Would a finance/economics degree not have been better? I'm very cynical about Government reasons for "giving everyone the opportunity of 3rd-level education". I think this has more to do with keeping the emplyment live register figures down than developing properly structured degree courses that will give graduates a fighting chance of getting a good job.

The fact that so many of Irelands Scientists move abroad for science jobs is testament to the fact that there are jobs to be had and that these people are needed in those countries. The Government needs to bring those jobs to Ireland so that our graduates can get jobs in Ireland. The work is there and there are plenty of diseases that need curing so just bring the jobs to Ireland and let the Scientists get on with it.

I do agree with your point about vested interests. I was told quite clearly in private by a University lecturer that academics would not support proper career structures for university lab researchers because it is better for them the way it is now. The same academic told me that he would deny having ever said that if I ever mentioned it...what does that say?

I also agree that "knowledge economy" is a phrase bandied about quite a lot. I believe that about 20 years ago the phrase "graduate economy" was often employed.

Finally Jackie, please don't try to turn this into a Sci vs Hum debate, it shouldn't be that at all. You seem to imply that everything is rosy in the world of humanities when it it far from so. Humanities produces far more graduates every year than Science and many of these graduates go on to work in careers that are in no way related to their degree or education (as stated above but worth repeating).

I also know for a fact that humanities academic departments across Ireland are now seeing similar problems in that they are employing lots of post-docs who end up on short-term contracts with no rights, no career path, no gaurantee that there salary will increase with inflation etc... I've met and talked with these people so don't tell me the problem doesn't exist.




*Lets leave aside the "learning for the joy of it" argument here, most people go to University with the intention of getting a degree that will get them a good job with career prospects afterwards! I was lucky enough to enjoy my degree because I love science.

Jackie laughlin

How could you possibly think that I want to turn this into a humanities Vs sciences debate? In fact, I've said quite the opposite. I've said that an educated person today MUST be competent in science/technology/maths. ALL humanities graduates should be so.

The last thing we need in this age is more career-specific degrees. The technology has changed everything. There will always be a need for specialists at the high end but we are talking here about employment policy, i.e. the mass of the people.

Coopers have gone, typists have gone, clerks have gone, technicians have gone, computer programmers have gone, translators, engineers and scientists are next. This is not an exhaustive list and of course none of these have gone or will go completely but their numbers are and will be few. Do you remember when money was pumped into training thousands of computer programmers just as high level applications were making them redundant? Well, we're about to repeat the mistake with science/engineering education.

Humanities departments are certainly playing the 4th level game; they too see that income depends on creating numbers of Ph.Ds. It is not the academics (science or humanities) who are to blame but the policy nutters who talk as if we the date were frozen about 1980.

I happen to think that a good 3rd level education should be a right for anyone intellectually capable of receiving it. Moreover, that is precisely what the economy and society need.

By the way, I too love science.