Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.
APPENDIX D 39 TABLE 1. Brown University Statistics of Ph.D. Programs (I) All Biomedical Ph.D. Programs at Brown U.S. citizens/total applicants 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 80/117 81/136 63/116 77/130 70/158 86/188 97/240 82/228 68% 60% 54% 59% 44% 46% 40% 36% (II) Graduating Brown BioMed Undergraduates who go to Graduate School 1985 1986 1987 12% 9% 5% STATEMENT BY BARTON W. GIDDINGS I am pleased to address this Committee on the training of biomedical and behavioral sciences researchers. My primary concern with respect to current training efforts is that many talented people do not choose careers in science because of formidable economic disincentives. No career path, except some medical specialties, requires more training than biomedical research. A Ph.D. in Biology at M.I.T. now averages approximately six years (some students take longer!), and postdoctoral research in the lab in which I work takes, on average, four years (and I have met many people in the field who need a second period of postdoctoral training). Together, this represents ten or more years of post-baccalaureate training, most of it at an extremely low salary, most or all of it with no health insurance or other benefits, and with no guarantee of a job or salary when the long training period ends. Do we really doubt what constitutes the âmost significant challenge we faceâ? I have enjoyed a wonderful scientific training experience as a graduate student in a prestigious laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but my own situation clearly illustrates the economic difficulties of this long training process: I am a sixth-year graduate student with perhaps one more year before finishing my Ph.D. My NRSA training grant provides $8,800 taxable salary per year. This amount is supplemented by $5,200 from my institution, for a total of $14,000 per year. Assuming that I, like the average graduate student in my department, work 60 to 70 hours per week, that puts my hourly wage at about four dollars per hour (about two- fifty per hour from the NRSA grant). Furthermore, I receive no employment benefits. I pay for health insurance for my family (wife and two children) out of my stipend at a cost of $2,808 (twenty percent of my total income). I receive no child care or other benefits. I have heard some try to justify my small stipend with a variety of arguments, including the cost of educating graduate students (tuition) and the view that a graduate student is but a trainee, unworthy of more than a pittance. Neither of these arguments, however, addresses my concern that requiring scientific trainees to endure a very long period of training without adequate economic rewards discourages many from undertaking careers in research. Many of my college friends majored in science. These people were the kids who loved science in high school, took Advanced Placement math and science classes, and were motivated to study science as undergraduates. But virtually all of these friends, though trained in science and engineering, chose careers in non- scientific fields such as law and business. I recognize that this observation is anecdotal. Nevertheless, it is obvious that career choices are governed by the economic laws of supply and demand: the higher the wage for a given job, the more people will be willing to do that job. My friendsâ career choices offered better monetary rewards and did not require the long period of economic deprivation demanded by science. Their choices reflect the values that our society apparently assigns to different types of work. I also believe that these substantial economic difficulties constitute a continued obstacle to efforts to recruit more women and minorities to research. I have participated in a Whitehead Institute program in which local high school students, including a large number of female and minority students, attend a series of lectures and meet scientists at our research institute. When I talk to these students (who are among the most talented at their schools) about careers in research, the long training period and low salary are among their most frequently voiced concerns. Thus, while our efforts may convince these students that âscience is neat,â I am afraid that they, like my college friends described above
