“U.S. science is perceived to be—and is—losing the race for global STEM leadership,” McNutt said. A country’s strength in science, she argued, shapes its defense capacities as well as its ability to spread its values abroad.
lol even the science foundation people have to justify stuff by saying it’ll be good for imperialism
even the science foundation people have to justify stuff by saying it’ll be good for imperialism
The US is spreading genocide just fine; I’m not sure what “values” she thinks are in danger of not being spread.
lol even the science foundation people have to justify stuff by saying it’ll be good for imperialism
One of my favourite figures in science was the American chemist Harrison Brown. Not only was he a very good chemist, but he had a knack for basically scamming the US military into funding important research that he privately knew could never be applied to weapons. And he didn’t just do that scamming for his own projects, but he applied those scamming skills to help his colleagues get funding for theirs. He was a one-man reverse-military-industrial-complex.
Brown was also the PhD advisor for Claire Patterson, the man who figured out how old Earth is by comparing isotopes of uranium and lead. During that research he developed the world’s first proper cleanroom protocols for chemists. He later spearheaded the fight against the use of lead in consumer products (paint, toys, solder, gasoline, etc) after discovering how prevalent it was during his experiments to figure out the age of Earth. He personally travelled the entire world to gather samples to prove that lead pollution was a relatively recent phenomenon cause by industrial activity, and not something naturally-occuring as the oil companies and their hired guns were arguing.
As it turns out, a system where your best and brightest get paid jack shit after going insanely in debt to be there only to end up working for some underfunded research lab that’s going to sell all their work to private capital to be gouged for profit or locked in a vault for all eternity isn’t one that entices people to join it.
Who would’ve thunk?
STEM people usually get paid to do their doctorates. It’s just that it is far too tempting for most of them to stop at a bachelors and make money than pursue the higher education necessary to actually advance the field, particularly for engineers. However, the real thing is that China just has way the fuck more people, so even if there were, by percentage, statistically less people pursuing higher level education, the actual amount of people doing this research in China is staggering.
STEM people usually get paid to do their doctorates
Stipends are usually very low and criminally low when you compare to what someone would make if they didn’t do a doctorate
To say nothing of the debt from their undergrad and grad degrees
And in a capitalist system like the US, that blob of way the fuck more people would then get the wildly antiproductive backhand of free market dynamics and make the entire field unsustainable for everyone, leading to the same systemic issues and undercutting actual scientific research
I was at a crossroads in my grad school career. I was getting my MSc paid for and studying something important in STEM, but the future to go PhD looked like shit, as you say. literally, my only compelling rationale to get a PhD in the US was it would make–emigrating out of the US on a path to citizenship elsewhere–more feasible.
but I knew the US was failing a decade ago when I saw how aggressively China was courting young, English speaking academics on campuses to do their research and scholarship in China. I was in the middle of my own program, but considered doing it when I finished.
then I saw articles about how many young academics were leaving to do research in China on like NPR and next thing you know, the US government threatens to withhold any DoD grants from any research university that allows the organization hosting those recruitment opportunities on campus. and overnight those doors all shut with perfunctory apologies from university administration for terminating exchange programs.
I knew we were falling way behind before, but once the US schools shut their doors because the US threatened the DoD money laundering bag, I knew we were completely fucked.
You can still leave tho, I have a family friend who has a PhD. They have little to no issue getting around and getting visas. Getting out of the country is still feasible. I would get an engineering PhD or material science PhD and see if I can book it to China.
yeah, the ability to leave easier wasn’t worth the 5 more years in the shitty academy making poverty wages and being a serf for some careerist.
I chose to finish my MSc and work in environmental outreach and later government service, where the wage isn’t sexy, but it pencils out for a simple life. I do not regret it, because now I have some formal education, broad experience and a few bucks in my pocket if I want to leave. cash in hand creates emigration opportunities too.
“Coordinated national research strategy?”
Yikes. Sounds authoritarian
Just for that complaint playa, tonight we will give $95 million to a football coach
why do science when that cost monie idiot
