Sunday, September 1, 2019

PhD students in physics

I have experience as a graduate and undergraduate student in the United States and as a member of the graduate faculty in Chile. I also have observed as a postdoctoral researcher in Sweden and Belgium.

I read Make science PhDs more than just a training path for academia with interest. First, I think that often advisors and supervisors are more selfish than her committee member was, and the priorities are  the advisors/supervisors publications and the successful graduation of the PhD student. Only the most promising students get guided towards proposal writing. Additionally, the networking required now to be successful with the academic path is a high hurdle and often ignored in favor of the advisor's own needs.

But my core response is that there is just not a lot of time. Most of the time PhD students do really need in additional 2-4 years after the completion of their PhD to develop as a scientist. Cutting short the development would prolong this.

While you can argue that Lecturers, Science Communicators, Applied Scientists and Technicians do not need this development, Research Scientists and Research Professors do. And when I say that an additional 2-4 years are needed, I am only talking about development that the PhD student needs to do good science, the requirements to be successful in a search for an academic position takes additional skills in grant writing and networking which can also be a challenge for some and can take additional time to develop.

While I have been focused more on the Research Scientist and Research Professor trajectories, it is obvious to me that the Lecturer trajectory could use additional development after a traditional PhD as well. I think that this has become understood across physics.

It does not surprise me that the Science Communicator and Applied Scientist trajectories could use additional development. And I am sure that often part of the problem is a lack fo respect of other directions by the research professors that guide and mentor the PhD students. However, it seems to me that rather than bifurcating the PhD that the best approach is a combination of the following:

  1. There is a certain amount of work in science that is low value and that PhD students usually end up doing as cheap labor. It might make sense to make time for PhD students by keeping them focused on high value labor and hiring more technicians for the low value labor. The PhD students time is valuable even if their labor is cheap. I think the best approach to make this change is a recognition of the problem in the field and maybe PhD student unions.
  2. While in physics incoming PhD students are often well prepared for the physics, they are often lacking some fo the technical skills in communication and scientific computation that they need to finish a PhD and follow a good career trajectory after their graduation. This development takes time. It might be a good idea to follow Engineering and recommend that US Science students do 4 years of academic study and a 1 year internship before starting their PhD.
  3. Finally, it is important that these other trajectories become more valued. I have begun to see this with Lecturers with the creation of the Teaching Professor position with equivalent pay (and status?) as Research Professor. As part of this, there should be respectable and respectably paid positions which provide additional training towards a trajectory as a Lecturer, Science Communicator or Applied Scientist just as there are postdoctoral researcher positions which provide additional training towards the Research Professor and Research Scientist trajectories.