Solar and Space Physics Students Being Left Out In The Cold

Giving a course in basic space physics ca. 1988.

The report appearing in Eos - Earth and Space Science News (15 July) was distressing to say the least. It noted the current extreme difficulty of newly minted Ph.D.s in solar and space physics getting full time academic research positions.  And despite the critical role space and solar physics plays in our daily lives - from the interference of large solar flares with airplane navigation systems to the solar wind's interaction with the magnetosphere (see image) to coronal mass ejections, solar and space physics remain relatively tiny enterprises.

Indeed, according to the report, only 50 to 70 students in these disciplines graduate per year in North America. This is literally pathetic given that we need many more of such specialists, over say more investment bankers or Wall Street brokers.

The cruel facts? Despite the National Research Council's finding that nearly all of these grads desire research positions, only about a third find them - and even those don't last for long (especially if the person fails to get tenure.)

A lot of this has to do with the rise of temporary faculty in many universities, These adjunct professors are now approaching nearly half of the total faculty population. They are only paid per credit hour, have zero financial security and other benefits. Instead they  must cobble together enough hours to forge a  decent career. Even then they must often fall back on food stamps, e.g.

http://www.salon.com/2014/09/21/professors_on_food_stamps_the_shocking_true_story_of_academia_in_2014/

This has to make any old line  or retired academician wince given the entire purpose of getting to graduate school and hopefully gaining the coveted Ph.D. was to finally ensure financial security. Not necessarily to get rich, but just be financially secure to the point you don't have to depend on government handouts.

The other aspect, of course, is grant funding for research projects. If such money isn't available, and it generally comes from the government, then the 'well' of that academic department will dry up .

The sad fact today for the aspiring Ph.D. is that even if they make it through the sundry  hurdles there are no assurances of glory...or academic jobs. As I noted in earlier posts, the newly minted Ph.D. must compete with postdocs as well as adjunct lecturers and already ensconced TAs (and RAs!). Since most universities (especially after the credit meltdown) are on tight academic dept.  budgets (most of the $$ going for jazzed up dorms and athletic centers), it makes more sense to hire more adjuncts or keep postdocs longer than to bring in full time Ph.D.s. A potential to generate research funding is the main item which may elicit a university to look more closely at a prospect, but even here those prospects suffer because of the current impetus toward congressional budget cuts - given the size of the deficit.


Still, two authors cited in the report - Moldwin and Morrow ('Space Weather', 2016) found that success was more likely for a grad who: a) published a full paper within a year of submitting their dissertation, and b) who continued to publish for at least 4 more years.  They also found that 'there was no relationship between department size and a Ph.D.'s likelihood of finding a research career".

Nonetheless the pair still found "large differences between individual institutions" This is understandable because in many schools space and solar physics will have relatively small or poorly funded departments and the subjects may be viewed as too irrelevant or obscure to attach importance.  Indeed, the authors recommend "investigating financial support models, admissions policies and qualifying exams as well as department culture"..

I was fortunate in my solar physics research as the Barbados government paid for a full four years of it, since the importance of solar flares and their geo-effective influence was grasped. Others without such funding didn't fare as well. It was that funding that enabled me to publish multiple papers even before the dissertation was completed, see e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2016/06/establishing-physics-identity.html

One hopes that these recent graduates will eventually be able to find needed funding, grant money to allow them to achieve successful careers in their chosen fields. A necessary component of that is not attaining a position that translates into becoming food stamp dependents.

In the meantime, those of us fortunate to have had such careers - even for a decade or so - must now share our insights into solar and space physics to make the taxpaying public more aware of their importance.

Four Year Colleges Aren't The Only (or Best) Solution for High School Grads!

LEFT: Loyola freshman Theology class, ca. 1964.  All incoming students had at least  SAT scores  in the upper 25th percentile - and no such thing as remedial courses were heard of.  Also, the SAT was a genuine aptitude test back then -not an achievement test.


  I have always believed that a college- university degree is not just about getting a top paying job, but also being given the tools to attain a better quality of life.  Those tools include: critical thinking and reasoning skills, exposure to a wide spectrum of ideas, philosophies, and 3) appreciation of literature and art.  Sady, most high school grads and their parents aren't looking for college to teach the art of living but in fact to earn a good living. Though, most will be majorly disappointed as they will end up either over-educated with nothing to show jobwise for their investment, or they will have spent thousands of dollars they can't afford - with no degree- and ending up with a minimum wage job.

Is there an alternative that is rational and practical? Yes, and it requires people - students and parents- not to look at a four year college as the only solution for high school grads. As reported in the Denver Post November 15, Colorado now needs 47 percent more  workers to fill "middle skill" jobs: RNs, airplane mechanics, auto mechanics, electricians, plumbers etc. Colorado, also, is not unique in such mid-level skill job needs - one can find them across the country.

Are High School students too "good" for these jobs? That's nonsense given the entire German labor system is predicated on apprenticeship for a craft. A terrific aspect of the German "master craftsman" model is that once one gets through the program required - including taking a number of examinations- he receives the equivalent recognition (including a certificate) of a Bachelors' degree. This is achieved with no additional cost.

The nature of master craftsmen in different countries can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_craftsman


As noted in the section under U.S.:

"While guilds as such do not exist, many trades continue the apprentice-journeyman-master model. Carpenters, electricians, pipefitters and plumbers are notable examples. Even in academia, the tradition survives, with elementary, middle and high school completing general education; with post secondary degress awarded in the Associates, Bachelor and Master levels; and PhD students as apprentices, post-docs and associate professors as journeymen and full professors as masters."

These are aspects of which most people may not be remotely aware.

The natural route now to craftsman status and good future work in the U.S., as noted by Dick Hilker in his op-ed piece in the Denver Post yesterday, is the community college. Hilker quotes Rhonda Bentz (the state system's media and government relations director)  that :

"the Voc-Technical route is the educational system's best kept secret. Students come for two year degrees and then get real jobs."

As Hilker goes on to note:

"In other words there are solid alternatives to spending big bucks at Big State U. to major in Tibetan Culture or Music Appreciation before winding up as a clerk at Mega-Mart."

A brutally frank observation, but which no rational person can dispute.

Here's another brutal fact: those who believe they will be saved by higher aspirations, i.e. going into academia via the Ph.D. route, are also in for a shock. Universities across the board are now scaling back costs by hiring more and more adjunct professors and lecturers, many of whom now have to go on food stamps because they can't cobble together enough 'gigs' (teaching courses at different colleges,usually)  to earn even a lower working class level income.

These are facts, not fantasies.

In the case of astronomy, we in The American Astronomical Society are regularly besieged with dire warnings of the pressures brought to bear by budgetary constraints on astronomy and astrophysics jobs. One editorial in an AAS Newsletter noted, for example, that more than 6 out of 10 jobs for Ph.D. degrees in astronomy are currently outside the academic marketplace. The percentage is slightly better (5 of 10) for Masters recipients.

The newly minted astrophysics or astronomy Ph.D. basically faces a herculean task in getting his or her foot in the academic door. First, he must compete with postdocs - those with Ph.D.s already in hand who now are hired at lower than standard pay rates to teach classes and work for 3-5 years "earning their stripes". Next on the totem pole are the graduate teaching assistants who teach tutorials as well as lower level classes and problem-solving sessions. 

Finally, there are the adjunct lecturers, who are paid by the hour only and hired just to teach a course or two. Adjuncts receive no benefits at all and are what some call the "temps" of the academic world. 

Prognostications now are for academia to go nearly 90% adjunct by 2030, with the attendant economic insecurity.  There are no trends, meanwhile, to counter this as universities are scrambling for more funds not to hire more general academics in their disciplines but to hire more 'star' professors, Nobel Prize Winners, etc. - who can bring in the research grants - but who also cost a lot to support.

Community colleges, meanwhile, are a definite solution that is both realistic and rational. Especially given that nearly 60% of incoming college students now don't finish their degrees. Thus, as Hilker notes "California is now considering making a community college degree mandatory before a student can enter a state university"

Thus, a student who can't finish a 4-year degree will now have an option, in most cases,  before s/he comes to the point of quitting. So rather than waste tens of thousands of dollars the student  will come away with something (A.A. degree or trade certificate) allowing them to economically advance. 

Community colleges also provide a major economic solution because they can be accessed for half the cost or less of state universities, mainly because they aren't research institutions "where professors get big bucks for not doing much teaching" in the words of Hilker. This is also a boon given 51 percent of college students, according to a Brookings Institution study, don't even know how much student debt they will owe. (28 percent of entering freshmen don't.)

It is time for serious alternatives to four year colleges, if we are to get the massive student debt - now over one trillion dollars- under control. 

The Plight of the Adjunct Professor: Is There An Equitable Remedy?

The world of academia is indeed somewhat strange to those who may peer from the outside in. Why, for example, at so many universities does one see TAs (graduate student teaching assistants) giving important introductory courses while the "hot shots" (tenured profs, often with multiple prizes or Nobels to their names) huddle in their offices pouring over abstruse research papers? Well, because the latter are the ones bringing in "the coppers" via grant money or donations, or whatnot. In addition, they are the ones providing the university with its name cachet - by way of published research that also makes its way to the media. (Not always with accurate results!)

Stranger still is the plight of the adjunct professor, hired part time to teach only a discrete number of credit hours in one or two particular courses and without any job security, benefits - and barely earning a minimum wage in many cases. This has only come to the fore recently with a widely circulated article, 'The Ph.D. Now Comes With Food Stamps', published in The Chronicle of Higher Education. See:

http://chronicle.com/article/From-Graduate-School-to/131795/

Add to that economic denigration the fact that non-tenured track instructors have been found to be superior instructors to tenure track profs - according to a recent study from Northwester University.  Neither is this the only study to find this..  In their book, Off Track Profs: Nontenured Teachers in Higher Education John G. Cross and Edie N. Goldenberg studied student evaluations at 10 "elite" universities from 1989 to 2001. The authors concluded that non-tenure track profs "sometimes, but not always" obtain higher scores than other types of instructors.

Of course, any studies based on student evaluations ought to be treated with some degree of skepticism. My own experience, especially in the States, is that most students lack the proper maturity and judgment to deliver an objective assessment of a professor's worth, or competence.  One recent letter writer to The New York Times (Sunday Review, p. 2, Nov. 17), a professor at St. John's University School of Law, observed aptly:

"Student evaluations can be manipulated. I get better evaluations when I hand out doughnuts during the classes when students fill out evaluations, even if I announce that I am attempting to affect results."

He adds that "adjuncts have a greater incentive to manipulate evaluations than tenured faculty" which is no doubt true in many cases. After all, lose that adjunct job - as "lower caste" as it's perceived to be and it becomes less likely you will keep the 'Wolf" from the door, in the form of the collection agencies.

The Law prof also is spot on when he observes (ibid.):

"While students are able to evaluate some things other important matters are beyond their ability to evaluate. For example, students cannot be expected to know when professors make inaccurate statements or skip over important points."

Another thing I found, in my brief stint as a Calculus physics adjunct (soon after returning to the U.S. from Barbados in 1992) is that too many students expect high grades even when they haven't earned them. They therefore see the evaluation as a means to "punish" the prof who didn't deliver what they believed they deserved - but in fact hadn't turned in labs for 3 weeks and even when they did left half of the experiments unreported, documented or explained. Yet they believed they ought to get a 'B' just for turning them in!

So here I must also agree with the St. Johns prof that "student evaluations are a better measure of popularity than competence."

In other words, adjuncts may certainly be better teachers than the tenured profs but studies independent of student evaluations are needed to prove it.

So why are the adjuncts treated so shabbily and is there anything that can be done to change that? If we know the reasons for the first, then we might be able to provide solutions.

A clue appears in the  article The Disposable Academic in the December 18, 2010 issue of The Economist  p. 156). The  piece concludes the Ph.D. degree is now all but useless and people essentially are investing a sizeable amount of money on a faint future chance of betterment - that never materializes. How or why has this come to be?  The reasons are complex and not always well understood. In the U.S. at least, the reasons are twofold: a) a current glut of Ph.D.s and b) inadequate research funding to support them.

The most forthright answer in terms of (b) was also proffered in the Times' Letters, which was:

"We cannot afford to pay adjunct faculty as much as tenured track faculty because their jobs generally don't include bringing in external dollars to keep the whole enterprise going. At a time when state legislatures keep cutting back on resources to universities, I don't see that we will be able to resolve the discrepancy any time soon."

This probably is the kind of statement that resonates with the cliché "the truth hurts". But there it is. In the case of astronomy, we in The American Astronomical Society are regularly besieged with dire warnings of the pressures brought to bear by budgetary constraints on astronomy and astrophysics jobs. An editorial in one AAS Newsletter noted, for example, that more than 6 out of 10 jobs for Ph.D. degrees in astronomy are "outside the academic marketplace". The percentage is slightly better (5 of 10) for Masters recipients.

This reflects the other aspect that so many continue to want to get the magic letters behind their names - producing more than the academic market can absorb. As with the normal labor pool, this creates a "labor surplus" that paves the way for poverty level wages (forcing food stamp applications) because universities find it cheaper to get the teaching job done with adjuncts. They leave the research and grant scavenging to the tenured.

The solution then appears to be obvious, although those aspiring to Ph.D.s may not like it: that is, stop glutting the market with higher degrees! Let the law of supply and demand work in your favor, and let the absence engender a labor shortage which the universities will then have to fill. (They may be able to do so with TAs up to a point, but not entirely, just as they can't use RAs entirely in the research environment.)

Ph.D. students themselves often pass as cheap labor, especially in American universities where they must double as research or teaching assistants. In the first case, they basically do all the scut work and research on behalf of the supervisor who ultimately may claim most of the credit for the work. As a teaching assistant, the Ph.D. student gets to grade all the primary staff's papers and hold tutorials. Most Ph.D. students - as I was- rightfully describe it as "slave labor" - given you're working seven days a week and 10 hours a day for a menial "assistantship".  Free time? Don't make me laugh!

According to The Economist article, 43% in the U.S. leave a program without finishing the Ph.D. The reasons again are as diverse as there are candidates: being enmeshed in negative office politics, philosophical clashes with one's advisor, exploitation by one's advisor (e.g. to get you to write papers to which s/he can attach his or her name and exclude yours), and poor organization of the department. But also noted in the same article, research has shown "those who finish the Ph.D. are no cleverer than those who do not.. Poor supervision, bad job prospects or lack of money cause them to run out of steam".

Meanwhile, those who do leave a Ph.D. program often have much more success in finding a non-academic job that pays well but that is also satisfying. The Ph.D.'ers, on the other hand, find a lack of jobs for their specific high credentials, and end up on food stamps while doing adjunct work. Who are you going to cry for more?

The sad fact today for the aspiring Ph.D. is that even if they make it through their sundry hurdles there are no assurances of glory...or academic jobs, at the end.  The wonderful futures they imagined as tenured profs sitting in their hallowed offices in the halls of ivy may turn out to be pipe dreams They may instead have to look forward to a lifetime of peripatetic adjunct teaching, scraping together many hours at different institutions just to make ends meet - just to avoid food stamps.

I don't see this changing any time soon, so long as states continue to cut funding, especially for higher education. State universities are then forced to "catch as catch can" by grabbing as many grant -seeking tenured profs as available, leaving the adjuncts to the low paid teaching jobs. Bear in mind the lower funding thresholds mean more private assistance is needed and also that fewer research opportunities are available. It also means that corporate funders are more likely to insinuate into the fabric of academia today. And so we see outrages like "studies" showing "millions more need statin drugs" - because academic research funded by Big PhRMa disclosed it.

Hopeful Ph.D.s already serving a adjuncts can at least take heart concerning one reality: The tenured profs can't last forever, Eventually they will die out and the universities will need to replace them. Unfortunately, no one knows how long that will take.