regulation for internships and Phd’s?

BBC Radio 4′s Start the Week radio program featured Ross Perlin who has recently written Intern Nation: How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave New Economy. On the program he discussed the current trend for, particularly politics students to undertake multiple unpaid internships in order to gain employment after University. In Washington DC (as well as Whitehall), internships are now a pre-requisite to working in government. Starting out as a short piece of unpaid work undertaken by newly qualified medics, this phenomenom has now taken off across nearly all industries across the western world. The promise of tutoring / training in the profession as the interm “learns the ropes” is replaced with interns doing regular roles within the company without the wage, putting further pressure on the full time staff who are being replaced with free labourers.

After my recent “phd? ph don’t” article, I found many similarities with internships and the current rise in non-funded Ph.D projects (694 on findaphd.com), not to mention post doctoral researchers being steadily replaced with cheaper (or free) Ph.D students. Students sign up for a Ph.D project that has no grant funding associated with it and get no pay from their supervisor or institution as they undertake the work. The student then works part time somewhere (usually in the service industry) to get enough money to pay for food and lodgings, or is sponsored by a wealthy family. There is no guarantee of training or a successful Ph.D outcome at the end and the student works any number of hours in any conditions towards the promise of one day having the illusive qualification.

The minimum wage law was mentioned in relation to internships, and that under normal circumstances it would be illegal to employ a person for no pay. However “students” and “internships” are a loophole that doesn’t apply. The radio program called for an investigation or regulation of internships to prevent exploitation, and it would be interesting if this regulation was extended to cover Ph.D students.

It would be interesting to me to see an independant auditor monitoring skills development and progression within the Ph.D program, as well as corporate governance of the project as it would put much needed pressure on academia to clean up the system and ensure students don’t wash out through no fault of their own, or drive themselves to bankruptcy before they ever start working. Not to mention an honest days pay for an honest days work.

Ph.D? Ph. don’t.

A recent post over at techcrunch caught my attention: “Obama: I Want People To Feel The Same About The Next Internet Breakthrough As They Did About The Moonwalk“, and was also picked up on slashdot in an article “why science is a lousy career“.

This reminded me of an article from a few months ago about women and careers in science, that also got picked up on Radio 4. It looks as though many of the issues affecting the scientific field is common irrespective of location or gender. Obama’s call for more people to train as scientists is very similar to Cameron’s call for scientific entrepreneurs to save their nations from the current economic collapse.

The discussions that emerge around these stories all echo each other in the unanimous view that while the politicians tout these skills as building the foundation of a future with a prosperous society, those in the field view a career in science is a waste of time. Under-paid, over-worked, and under-appreciated are common terms that crop up in the accompanying forums. There are many articles that document the extraordinary impact on work-life balance for academics, and even this morning as I was continuing to write this post, a nature article was released that continues to debate the issues.

My own feeling is that Ph.D students are being exploited for their funding, presented with under-prepared, under-staffed, under-equipped projects that the PI can walk away from if it fails, having enjoyed the funding and absolved from guilt by attributing the failure to the incompetent student. Even if the student is fortunate enough to graduate and leaves academia the years of training are then used to propel them into a low level technician role which now demands a doctorate. There are many issues that have contributed to a massive systems level abuse of science over the last decade. A push by the last UK government to raise the level of education for all began increasing the levels of degree places. I can’t really complain about this because it gave people like myself from poorer working class backgrounds access to higher education. However, this has consequently elevated the basic requirement for jobs in a supply and demand market, presenting a self-perpetuating problem that has erupted in the wake of the global financial collapse.

While the government was busy selling “education for all”, universities were enjoying their increased business. While students were enjoying the new opportunity to study for a degree, there were more graduates hitting the job markets which meant the students quickly needed a method of differentiating themselves to get the better jobs. The universities were presented with an opportunity to hold onto the students business a bit longer and, dressing it up as seeking to give their students a competitive advantage, they bolted a masters degree straight on the end of the undergrad degree. The masters degree then became expected from job applicants and students required further qualifications to differentiate themselves. Some masters programs are now offering automatic progression to Ph.D, again locking in the student (and their money) for 3-4 years, and placing the doctorate as the new selection criteria for employers. Meanwhile, the new cash injection transformed university buildings from dusty old poorly equipped faculties to state of the art, award winning buildings. The age of the dusty old professor have also passed as those at the top of the academic tree also enjoy the fruits of the recent success.

For a while there seemed to be a symbiotic relationship developing between academia and industry with industry contracting out their R&D to academia, funding Ph.D and masters programs, as well as post doctoral research. Academic institutions began to create biotechnology centres were academic research could be rolled out to business start-up ventures and for a while there was a bright future of well funded, next generation science and entrepreneurial ventures poised to feed back into the governments coffers with tax and employment. Industry was also enjoying the flood of post docs and could flaunt the prestige of exclusively staffing their departments with doctorate level employees to their customers. However, the sudden economic collapse has crippled the public funding sources, and industry is contracting R&D out to cheaper labour in China and India. Academia is faced with reverting back to it’s old lifestyle as the suddenly rich revenue streams have just as suddenly turned barren. Cuts in academic research is pushing increasing numbers of academic researchers into the private sector, increasing the number of highly qualified applicants in the job market where the Ph.D grows as the minimum level of qualification for a scientific role. This leaves new students without funding for their Ph.D and unable to gain private sector employment without having at least a masters degree. Increased tuition fees to maintain the university infrastructure is locking out students at the very beginning. In time, this may reduce the general level of qualifications in the market place and force industry to recruit less academically qualified personnel, thus restoring the value of academic qualifications. However in the medium term, there are enough post doctoral graduates to lock a generation out of the job market.

Back in academia there are still ongoing problems even if universities cut the number of Ph.D studentships. Many academic projects in Europe rely on entirely staffing labs with Ph.D students. Quite often labs have a 10:1 ratio of student:post doc. This reduces the number of post doc positions and the “training process” of the Ph.D has been replaced with grunt labour, and not the cloning process described in Nature. From my own perspective Ph.D students are just ideal cheap labour and expected to be fully trained on admission (at my own Ph.D studentship interview I was asked how many publications and grant applications I had obtained). Ph.D students also have no rights as employees, they can be forced to work unlimited hours in any conditions, with any form of abuse deemed necessary to maintain motivation, and you can dismiss them at will claiming incompetence. Some labs will offer 1 Ph.D between numerous students and watch them fight it out amongst themselves for the eventual winner, working beyond breaking point for those elusive magic letters.

Even if achieved, the Ph.D is just the beginning. Without a steady stream of high impact publications from successful projects the next research post can be almost impossible, and if you’re over 30 and not a PI then you’re washed up already. Publications are the currency of academia, and if you’re on a bad project and miss a publication then you’re behind and may never catch up with your colleagues. This has lead to a stampede of publications with the numbers of pubmed records increasing exponentially. Paradoxically, 50% are never read and 90% are never cited. However, they serve their purpose in propelling the researchers along the ladder as they collect up their numbers to get to the next posting. Some have advocated the use of citation scores to weed out the junk but ultimately it’s the raw number that still counts. Even if you maintain the high impact publications and gain a 2nd post doc you start all over again for another 3 years of instability and blind chance. I’ve often heard that a career in science is similar to a crapshoot. You simply roll the dice and see what happens. If it’s snake eyes you’re out and it’s so long, and thanks for all the fish.

So if you’re reading this considering your next career path, consider whether this lifestyle is really worth the £25-30k salary with no Christmas bonus, no stock option, and if you’re a student, often no pay at all, no sick pay, no cost of living rise, no maternity leave, no rights, and no representation, then think long and hard about whether that Ph.D really is worth the bragging rights on the cheque book.

Yep, then you’ll apply anyway because there’s no other option.