Searching for a job in a tight job market is a nerve-racking experience. For a vast majority of young scientists this is debilitating. It is difficult to stay focused when one has to move every few years and apply for a new job year after year. Work suffers considerably
A flooded job market makes it easier to hire safely, which is a rational department policy. However, there are many examples from previous eras where mathematicians at top schools did not start at top tier institutions. In a flooded market, the most daring and original thinkers may be passed over for safer candidates, whereas in previous markets (where the number of candidates did not greatly exceed the number of positions) they were hired and nurtured by lower ranked departments.
There is a considerable pressure to get results quickly, to publish as much as possible, and to work on popular problems/in popular areas.
People who are good at many things, people who can move freely between doing science and doing applications are more likely to leave. The opportunity cost of staying in science is particularly high for such individuals. (1997 is the best year in 25 years to be graduating from college. A new graduate may start at $50,000 a year.) We are driving bright people with a broad range of talents out of science. The cost of such a loss is especially high for pure mathematics, which is often perceived to be out of touch with the rest of the world.
Many more bright undergraduates choose to pursue professional careers (medicine, law, management, computers) over careers in science when scientific job market is tight. (E.g. applications to math departments fell by 30% between 1994 and 1996 - see the February 1997 issue of the Notices.)
We may be selecting for people who have high regard of their own abilities.
Talented women and members of under-represented minorities tend to undervalue their abilities.
Training researchers is expensive. For example, an NSF graduate fellowship followed up by an NSF postdoc is over $100,000. When such a person becomes a computer programmer, all but a fraction of the $100,000 is wasted along with the six figure opportunity cost of the individual.
A well-publicized glut of PhDs does not exactly support recent AAAS/AMS/AIP/APS/etc requests for increased Federal funding for the sciences. The scientific establishment is opening itself to some damaging questions about its own credibility.
A drop in the proportion of Americans among scientists erodes public support for science (``science is something foreigners do"). Since basic research is a public good, it threatens the future of research.
Overproduction shifts power from the faculty to the administration. A buyer's market allows administrations to do things like cut graduate programs (U. Rochester), eliminate faculty positions (U. Massachusetts), and gut tenure (U. Minnesota) without fear that current faculty will leave en masse (even if they do, the positions can be readily filled). Overproduction leaves departments with relatively little leverage to protest stagnant salaries and increased teaching loads.
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last modified Thu May 8, 1997