The e-Astronomer (Andy Lawrence) visited Caltech last week, but I missed his talks since I was traveling myself. He posits an interesting comparison between young hopefuls in academia and The Industry — hanging around, trying to get noticed in notoriously competitive milieus:
Caltech is famous for being a tad competitive shall we say. I got entertained at lunch by various grad students and postdocs. They seemed relaxed, but with a pushy edge. At that stage, young scientists are desperate to get noticed, and are simultaneously confident and insecure - will the world decide you are a genius or a dullard?
The next morning I was doing LA tourism with my family. I found myself on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine St, staring at the sidewalk-stars and trying hard to absorb the vibrations of Hollywood history. In the glory days, this was the spot where starry-eyed hopefuls would hang around, drinking coffee very very slowly, just waiting to be spotted and carried off to stardom.
In some significant ways, trying to make a career in artistic fields (movies, theater, art, music) is very similar to academia. Most obviously, the number of people who would like to have such jobs is much larger than the number of jobs. And that means competition, like it or not. Occasionally you will hear the claim that we should be producing fewer Ph.D.s, since there aren’t anywhere near enough jobs for everyone who graduates. This is just a clumsy attempt to hide the problem by re-arranging the bottleneck to before grad school rather than after. We certainly need to be absolutely honest about job prospects — they are always bad, no matter what specialty one chooses! But there is no way around the fact that somewhere along the line, most people who would like to be employed as professional scientists or scholars more generally are going to be disappointed.
Still, the ways in which the academic pipeline differs from the road to Hollywood superstardom are equally significant — and we have it much better than young actors. Even though the numbers are discouraging, we do have a highly structured system, in which training is taken seriously and — equally importantly — there is a fairly clear point past which one recognizes that the chances for success are extremely slim. Unlike a struggling actor who hangs around doing local theater and occasional commercials, perpetually hoping for that big break, the up-or-out nature of academia tends to let you know with relative clarity that it’s time to look elsewhere. Really, it’s more like professional sports than it’s like Hollywood — we have a structured minor-league/intercollegiate-sports system, with explicit coaching and well-known paths to advancement.
Indeed, one could argue that in recent years the relentless up-or-out pressure has gotten soft, as more people take multiple postdocs and linger on for a while. (Or, in fields where they are common, adjunct professors and lecturers, which is generally a much worse gig.) From the point of view of the universities that are choosing new faculty members, years of postdoctoral experience provide a lot of data on which to base hiring decisions, which one could at least argue helps the meritocratic case. It’s no fun to be stuck in postdocs for years and years, but nor is it fun to be told that you have passed your sell-by date, no more jobs for you.
So to all those grad students hanging around in the lounge, trying to say clever things to impress the visiting speaker — it could be worse! You could be hanging around soda shops, hoping to be discovered by wandering tenured professors.
October 13th, 2008 at 11:33 am
I think Andy may be confusing the Caltech’s brand of social awkwardness with “relaxed, but with a pushy edge.” The students are probably a lot more secure and self-content than he gives them credit for. But nice observations anyway.
October 13th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
At first glance I thought California & Lake was a Chicago reference and I was really curious where that comparison was going
October 13th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
California & Lake is not exactly Caltech’s address, but it’s the closest major intersection. We need a more evocative label for the location!
October 13th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Well, Burger Continental, probably sort of a Caltech equivalent to Schwabs, is pretty close to California & Lake. Of course, if you consider that the main Caltech campus is bounded on the south by California, the bounding streets to the west, Wilson, or east, South Hill, lead to other interesting possibilities for the name of the Institute. In any case, hanging around Caltech looking for a path to permanent employ in astrophysics might be regarded as a form of “Hill Street Blues.” Sorry…
October 13th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
i don’t see why “rearranging the bottleneck” should be dismissed so quickly. it would save many people from wasting years of their lives earning a grad degree they don’t need and won’t use. yes, disappointment hurts no matter what stage of your life it hits. but if people are going to be shunted into other careers anyway, why not allow them to move along before they’ve put in that huge sunk cost? why set them up for failure and bitterness? (unless PI’s just don’t want to discourage the flow of free labor…)
October 13th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Well, let’s imagine that we put the question to the people who would actually be affected by such a policy. “Dear Applicant: Ordinarily, we would have been happy to accept you into graduate school here at Awesome U. But this year we are only accepting one-fifth of our usual class size, since we care about you and would like to save you disappointment some day down the road. It’s true that you might have worked your way up and found a faculty job, but on the basis of your undergraduate transcript we don’t think your chances are as good as some other people’s. You’ll thank us later.”
Do you think that would be popular among the applicants?
October 13th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Sean correctly notes that scientists-in-training have it better than aspiring actors. Here are two other reasons the grad students hanging around in the lounge can be a little less nervous:
1) It seems to me that the odds are much more in the favor of science grad students than for actors. Admittedly, this is based on only anecdotal evidence. As a former University of Chicago grad student who is very close to a graduate of the NYU Graduate Acting program, I’ve had a view into both worlds, and the difference in prospects is pretty clear. The actors get a role for a few months, and then they go back to waiting tables for a few months. It’s very discouraging. While I’ve seen some have some success (an HBO movie, a Broadway role), even they still struggle. At least post docs last a couple of years at a time. Moreover, just about everyone I’ve kept up with from grad school is doing well. To be fair, most are no longer pursuing tenured jobs at research universities (though some are doing so quite successfully), but that’s almost entirely by choice - and none of us are struggling. Which brings me to my second point -
2) Training in science opens up doors to many career options. Leaving acting is much harder. Several of my friends from grad school decided that teaching was far more interesting than research, so they’re now teaching at small colleges or high schools. The former scientists I know have left (again, almost all by choice, not desperation) to enter various industries that use their science skills, become science advisors at patent law firms or public policy organizations, join consulting firms and branch out into something entirely new, or (like me) join the “malefactors of greed” on Wall Street. The good news here is that if you’re a nervous grad student, at least you should know that you’re getting training and skills that are highly valued outside of academia.
October 13th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Graduate school is such a huge investement of time on such specialized fields - it is much better to have the bottleneck before than after, especially in fundamental physics.
I say this because I have lost many good friends to the rat race. It is especially depressiong to watch friends who are as much in the long haul as you are, to be lost to the sytstem. There should really be better filtration before grad school than after - this is really a no-brainer, really.
October 13th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Mark H. echoed my thoughts exactly, and he even has the same name and first initial of his last of someone I know exactly who decided that Academia is not for him and now happily rakes in the big bucks elsewhere.
On the other hand, for failed actors, you can always try politics.
October 13th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
ST & Curious — I’ve been running grad admissions for many years now. I can say securely that it is almost impossible to deduce from a graduate school application who’s going to wind up as a tenure track professor and who isn’t. We’ve had students who came in looking like a rock star, just to drop out and join the LaRouches (true story). We’ve had people who squeaked in off the wait list, who’ve turned out to be some of our most well-known graduates. The differences among these people are not easily quantifiable GRE scores or GPAs.
I just don’t trust us to make the initial decision about who is a worthy apprentice at the level of hair splitting that requires matching the numbers of tenure-track job openings a year. I do trust us to help students understand the job market, and to help train them for whatever career path they decide is best (teaching, industry, academia, etc, where “etc” does not include the LaRouches).
Note also, that matching that number presumes that a TT career path is the only one that is “worthy”, which is bogus.
October 13th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
As someone who spent many years within Caltech astronomy, I can tell you that Andy L. has hit the nail on the head in his description of those lunches!
October 13th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
It’s only a waste if you hate grad school, or don’t find it interesting or worth the time. Everybody goes through rough patches in grad school, but if you dislike it nearly all the time and are only sticking it out to get a “good job” afterwards, do yourself a favor and cut it short - move on to something else, because you also won’t like the “good job.” Don’t waste your life suffering. On the other hand, if you find grad school interesting, then it’s usually worth doing for its own sake, not for the pot of gold at the end. People who leave the field did not “waste” their lives in grad school, and most of the people I’ve known who have left don’t feel that way, even though they may be temporarily grumpy. (The grumpiness fades - lots of people are happier outside than in. I think making the job search process more humane would increase overall satisfaction much more than reducing the supply of grad students would.)
October 13th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
The only problem I see is faculty who think a tenure-track job is the only reason to get a PhD. This attitude does a great disservice to the students, most of whom, just by the numbers, can’t get such a job. We don’t need fewer PhD’s, just ones that are more prepared for non-academic jobs, both in skills and disposition.
October 13th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
I have a couple of questions. When people apply to graduate school in astronomy and physics, is the long-term goal of the vast majority to be tenured professors? If so, are they aware that their chances are so slim? If the answer to the first question is Yes, and the answer to the second question is No, the science faculties at all univerisites certainly have a reponsibility to make the facts known to all applicants. It should actually be part of the grad. school application process. Applicants should be sent the relevant statistics regarding their career prospects in academia.
Mark H above mentioned former grad. school colleagues moving on to different careers, including teaching high school. I don’t have a PhD, but I imagine that it would be a major bummer to bust my butt to get a physics PhD and then end up teaching high school physics. Besides that, if you consider the tremendous amount of taxpayer funding that is used to support universities, it’s a massive waste of public resources.
That, in turn, reminds me of an article that I read about 15 years ago about the beuaty school business. At the time beauty schools, which are all private businesses, were graduating aroung 300,000 people per year certified to cut hair. Unfortunately, the industry only needed about 100,000 new employees each year. This meant that 2/3 of the graduates would not be able to work in their chosen field. Since most of those 200,000 funded their beauty school education with federally guranteed student loans, they ended defaulting on those loans, which in turn cost the taxpayers quite a bit. The owners of the schools, of course, didn’t have to worry about that and made nice profts. It appears that the same phenomenon occurs at every level of education after high school.
October 13th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
The aspiring-actor/asipring-scientist analogy fails in one very important regard. The aspiring scientist (i.e. grad student) lends his vitality and intellect to the research work of his advisor, and he devotes prime years of his live to that effort, only to often discover that his own career impetus has expired even as he has enhanced the CV and reputation of his advisor. In other, snarky words:
“Thanks for writing those papers to which I added abstracts and introductions. They really helped me to obtain a favorable decision from the tenure review committee. I hope you enjoy your new career in [management consulting / mortgate-backed security analysis / taxi driving]. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to start on my summer conference itinerary: Les Houches for two weeks, then a festschrift at Erice, then a workshop at the Institute d’Etudes Scientifique de Cargese.”
October 13th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
“Rearranging the bottleneck” just reinforces the increasingly outdated concept that a PhD is preparation for an academic research career and nothing else. If I had to go back, I would almost certainly do a physics PhD again (albeit perhaps in a different subfield), and I would almost certainly actively pursue a non-research career again; and from talking to many of my former grad school colleagues, now also in alternative careers, I’m not alone.
Besides, if you cut the number of grad students, how are all those poor faculty going to get their research done?
(Now, I do know a couple of folks on their third or fourth postdocs who need to have it gently pointed out that there are reasons all their faculty/researcher job applications have failed, and that it’s not going to get better.)
October 13th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
Just wanted to point out that it is nearly impossible to know prior to grad school whether an academic or research career is something you would be happy doing for the rest of your life. The first time a person is really living the day-to-day life of a researcher is during grad school (after classes are over). So in order to make informed decisions regarding academic or industry (or otherwise) career paths, the grad school stage is pretty critical.
I find it interesting that all the discussion has been about rearranging the bottleneck to “before grad school”. Why not reduce the flow between grad school and postdocs?? As far as I understand it, the number of available postdoc positions matches the number of graduating PhDs. Seems like the big cut is then going from postdocs to faculty jobs.
October 13th, 2008 at 10:23 pm
Growing up in the sixties I wanted to be both Fred Hoyle and Eric Clapton. So 0.5/2 aint bad. By the way Sean, your title is better than mine. Rats.
October 13th, 2008 at 11:26 pm
Reducing the number of PhD’s is a flawed argument-because PhD scientists aren’t just needed in academia. As a PhD physicist or mathematician you are very useful to many areas of private industry-optics or the defense industry for example. In most cases the work from your dissertation probably won’t be directly applicable, but you might still find yourself working on some interesting applied physics problems. Also the national labs hire PhD scientists in large numbers. I work at Sandia which has about 10,000 employees and Los Alamos is about the same size. Jobs in the national labs might call more directly on your physics skills and there are opportunities to work on exciting projects (quantum computing, nuclear fusion, solar energy to name a few). So I don’t think the number of PhD’s should be reduced. What should happen instead is educating students to the fact they have other opportunities besides academia where they can still work in scientific or at least applied science research. What they should do if they are going into something more esoteric (like say general relativity) is put some time into beefing up other skills that will be useful in the “real world” so they will be competitive inside and outside academia.
October 14th, 2008 at 3:10 am
At the risk of saying nothing, I can see both sides of the more/fewer PhDs argument.
What would be nice is to know if there is any rationale at all underlying the current number of PhDs graduating in (say theoretical) physics. It clearly isn’t to prepare precisely the right number of tenured faculty, we’ve established that. Also, the idea isn’t just to give the opportunity to anyone who just wants to study more physics. Getting into a PhD programme isn’t easy, nor should it be, and plenty of good candidates are turned down from grad school, I’m sure.
Finally, although people have underlined how useful PhDs are outside of academia as well as being fun to do and providing us with new professors, I’m not enlightened as to whether the optimal amount of PhDness is leaking out into the wider world. Maybe we need less, or indeed much more. Does anyone know?
In short, I suspect there is very little reason deciding the total number of PhDs graduating each year, and it is simply market forces of one kind or another that fixes it. But if anyone knows of an overall strategy, I’d sure be interested in what it is.
October 14th, 2008 at 5:56 am
Fewer grad students means that universities need fewer advisors, and can lay off faculty. Or is there any reason why universities should accept decreased productivity?
October 14th, 2008 at 7:14 am
Some of the above posts are anecdotal of the form: “my friends from grad school are happily doing other things than Physics”. Selection, of course; people don’t keep up friendships with whiners, they keep up friendships with people who enjoy their companions and the moment, whatever that moment is. One comment above, that it would be a “major bummer” to get a Physics PhD only to become a high-school teacher, very clearly shows this kind of attitude. There are Physics PhDs out there, I’m quite sure, who enjoy their high-school teaching, and others who don’t. Of course enjoying the people you’re with and the moment is as good a way to improve your chances of doing well in academia as it is in any other endeavor; there are considerable numbers of positive thinkers who would not be in their academic posts if they didn’t have their genuine collegiality and interest in their students on their side. You have to be very good indeed at research to get away with being unpleasant to be with.
October 14th, 2008 at 7:21 am
Like the financial - the education systems needs revamping - from the bottom up - not everyone should or can continue at higher levels - The capacity for complex thinking and the strength to take on unpopular trains of thought and to endure - is not the present day trail to a happy under the umbrella tenured position.
One of the horrors of slavery is having a master who is not as smart and knows it.
October 14th, 2008 at 8:42 am
At first glance I thought California & Lake was a Chicago reference and I was really curious where that comparison was going
Anyone who’s hanging out at California & Lake in Chicago, waiting to be noticed by a big-time agent or a tenured professor, has been slightly misinformed.
October 14th, 2008 at 10:45 am
From my experience, the problem is student awareness. It is not the university’s job to tell a student that he or she will never make it in academia prior to even entering grad school. From my perspective, I was not aware about the dismal prospects for landing an academic job basically up until the point when I was applying for postdocs. Most of the advice I had received was from professors who had long since cleared the bottleneck and were comfortably enjoying their job, perhaps having lost perspective of how difficult the inbetween time really is. Plus, many of them were older professors who got their job at a time when (and this is a quote from one of my previous advisors) “a PhD alone was enough to get a job as a professor”. Times have changed, and most students aren’t aware of this until too late.
October 14th, 2008 at 10:47 am
Just to play devil’s advocate, given the numbers, if a PhD is for a high percentage a glorified vocational degree, maybe the training should be adjusted as such. Maybe there should be more classes and research directed toward students interested in the private sector, rather than spending a good chunk of your 6.5 years (average last time I checked) doing somebody else’s research. My only concern is that many students are being used to support somebody else’s research grant without getting proper training for the type of job they will likely end up in.
October 14th, 2008 at 11:31 am
What I find really sad are all the kids who grow up being natural scientists and thinking the world is wonderful, only to have academics who act worse than corporate ladder climbers crush their dreams along with anyone who might make a real contribution to the world.
There is a better way, if only we can stop hitting our heads on the stairs like Whinnie the Pooh being dragged off to bed by Christopher Robin.
October 14th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
&E — The solution to what you’re suggesting is the physics masters program. UW runs a great one that offers evening classes, so people can work on their degree while still having jobs. They do much of the same coursework as during the first years of the PhD, but I there’s no qual. They also do a research project or two, but not a multi-year thesis. The program only takes about 2 years, and the coursework can be tailored for specific fields, including physics education. It’s a fantastic option.
October 14th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
When i promote graduate school to the students i mentor, i strongly advocate for the education part of the concept. No one, no matter how focussed and skilled they are at any task, can be guaranteed a life-supporting job in that vocation (ask yourself why the same Foley artists keep getting nominated for Oscars). This applies to skilled labors and to higher-level thinking. Receiving a graduate level education in the US is a rare gift, beyond par with many possible other experiences. The numbers are staggering (or in this case, lack thereof); so few Americans are afforded the chance to spend one, two, or seven years, in an environment dedicated to thought and idea. As Julianne says above, graduate education: “It’s a fantastic option.”
October 14th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
[…] re-start ? Meanwhile Sean Carroll leveraged my “Hollywood and Vine” post concept, but his post is getting all the comments !! (OK, he had a nice picture and a better title…) Then […]
October 14th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
Julianne, the physics master’s degree has always been perceived as a consolation prize for the grad student who couldn’t pass the quals. Unlike an engineering master’s, which carries a lot of weight in industry recruitment, I have never met an industry recruiter who values the physics master’s degree over the physics bachelor’s degree. Perhaps it has some value for teaching at the high school or community college level.
October 15th, 2008 at 1:58 am
Julianne,
The fact that undergraduate schools are NOT useful filters as they stand is my point. So your observation about grad school admissions could be read either way.
I have three perhaps naive suggestions for (American) undergrad schools to better prepare prospective grads. 1. Make in-class exams more challenging. I am a firm believer that real-time problem solving skills are very important for grad school, at least in theoretical physics and american schools do a terrible job of this. “Take home” exams should be banned for most courses. 2. Focus more on depth and less on bredth. Undegrad schools should give a good student real skills, not leave them a jack of all trades. 3. Make sure that they have real research experience if they want to go on to grad school. Make it the students responsibility to find the advisor and find a project. This is the hardest, but the skills you get here will turn you into a doer and not merely a learner. That switch in mindset is the hardest.
In short, make it tougher in undergrad school, if you have a professed desire to go on to graduate school. Despite my dislike of Europeans who try to condescend everything American, I must say that undergraduate schools in the US are really wimping it. I would not send my kids there.
Also, I am not suggesting that this bootcamp is for everybody. But at least these should be an option for people who would like to go on to graduate school. I also focus on the US because that is the case I am familiar with. I went to grad school there (a while ago), and have taught in a big school etc.
October 15th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
I am a writer and actress with an interest in astronomy, and the only time I hang out in soda shops is when I need the caffeine in a Coke or Pepsi. Those of us in the creative arts do what we do because we love it–whether in a rinky dink theater or on Broadway. I’m guessing it’s the same way for science grad students and PhDs. Forget the issue of fearing you’re setting people up for “disappointment.” As long as a person finds a way of doing what he or she loves, there is no disappointment. And the only time to give up on a dream one loves is when one’s casket is being lowered into the ground. I’m not a naive 18-year-old saying this, but someone who strongly objects to this whole money-centered culture. Too many people give up their dreams, go to industry and do some finance thing and end up being the equivalent of the walking dead. It’s not a big break any of us need, it’s fulfillment of the soul.
Here in the US, we actually have a serious problem with the decline of education, especially in science. We need more, not fewer people with science backgrounds encouraging others to enter the field; we need to bring back the excitement of the Apollo days when kids wanted to go into science. In this information age, science writing is also an important option, as our populace is woefully under-informed in this area. We need to get universities to change their priorities from football to academics so they start hiring more scientists and creating these positions, which our 21st century world requires. Our schools are also quite deficient in teaching writing skills; as a result, we have insufficient people with the skills in both writing and science needed to communicate science with the public.
One thing the current economy makes obvious is that no career path is a sure thing. Going the corporate route may end up being more difficult than the performing arts or science. That is why it is so important that people of all ages pursue what they love and do so with a dogged persistence and determination to never, ever quit.
October 15th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
ST — What you’re proposing will definitely act as a filter, but again I’m not sure that what it’s filtering on correlates all that well with “getting a tenure track position”. It may be that excellent performance on timed analytical tests correlates strongly with success in theoretical physics, but I’d be surprised if it was as strongly correlated for experimental physics or astrophysics. Long term success frequently rests on many intangibles (creativity, drive, effort, social skills, adaptability), few of which we can assess reliably in undergraduates or even young graduate students. I can’t really see the changes you’re proposing (with the exception of research experience, which in fact almost all applicants in the US now have through various NSF REU programs) elucidating these.
October 15th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Lauren, your exhortation to encourage science students is eloquent and clearly heartfelt. The concern that I have is this: maybe we shouldn’t get kids excited about becoming, say, astronomers, when astronomy is such a rare career option. Sure, the excitement about astronomy might propel those kids to become highly educated in science, and it’s good for our society and our economy when those kids move on to productive technical careers outside of astronomy. But that’s a small consolation to the kid who wanted to be an astronomer, and ended up as a life insurance actuary.
October 15th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Sorry, I meant to address my reply to “Laurel”, not “Lauren”
October 15th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
How about focusing on creating more opportunities in astronomy and in related fields? That involves advocacy for more full time academic opportunities and also for new space exploration initiatives. We are at a point where our technology allows us to make incredible discoveries and breathroughs never before imaginable. The US is already falling behind in its space program and in science in general. As distasteful as some may find it, advocacy, lobbying and political action seem to be required here. I’m ashamed that my alma mater, Rutgers University, is cutting academics left and right while spending money like there is no tomorrow on its football program. Some may argue that football brings in money; however, the overwhelming majority of that money is funneled back to football and does nothing for academics. Universities are academic, not athletic institutions, and academics need to come first. At all levels, we as a culture need to be actively promoting academics and learning.
Another option for those interested in astronomy might be working with some of the private companies exploring commercial spaceflight. In the absence of government support, this may become the next big venue for these endeavors.
October 16th, 2008 at 6:03 am
&E wrote:
From my experience, the problem is student awareness. It is not the university’s job to tell a student that he or she will never make it in academia prior to even entering grad school. From my perspective, I was not aware about the dismal prospects for landing an academic job basically up until the point when I was applying for postdocs.
Hmm. I agree it’s not the ‘job’ of the university accepting the student into their PhD program to tell the student that she won’t make it. But I do think that undergraduate advisors could say something about the prospects for physics PhDs. At my undergrad institution, the job market was not mentioned at all in the talks on applying to grad school given by physics faculty. I don’t think we should shift the bottleneck earlier by forcibly reducing the number of PhDs offered, but I think more could be done to give bright-eyed and bushy-tailed undergrads a realistic picture of the academic job market. This would encourage a self-selection process where those who are less willing to slog it out in the academic rat race can bow out at an early stage instead of going in with unrealistic expectations.
I first learned about the state of the academic job market through reading blogs like this one. None of my physics professors ever mentioned it without prompting. They were quite willing to admit to the dire state of the academic job market if you asked them specifically about it. But my worry is that many undergrads don’t even think to ask about it, because it doesn’t occur to them that it could be that bad.
October 16th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
My experience matches Lauren K’s observation: successful PhDs do research because they love it & can’t imagine doing anything else; much smarter PhD students who can do awesome math but don’t really care tend to drop out.
But this is all above some threshold of competence in doing research. Julianne says that getting an excellent Batchelor’s is not a guide to PhD. Very right. Doing science needs such a different attitude from learning course work that some folks just never get it.
So however many people you admit to PhD programs, some fraction would never make good researchers. We all know a bunch of people who got their PhDs, but barely. Which leads to the somewhat cruel truth: if we admitted PhD students at the same rate as research jobs opened up, we’d be stuck with a lot of underperforming researchers. The losses along the pipeline are necessary to keep the quality of the professors and researchers high. Kind of red in tooth and claw, and we should try to make the losses fair, but they seem inevitable.
So the edginess of the Caltech students talking to Andy is understandable, and appropriate.