Category Archives: Jobs

We Should Pay People What They’re Really Worth

Posted on September 28, 2013 by mikethemadbiologist

From “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs” (boldface mine): There is a whole class of salaried professionals that, should you meet them at parties and admit that you do something that might be considered interesting (an anthropologist, for example), will … Continue reading →

Posted in Jobs | 6 Comments

But This Will Be Excellent Training For Science

Posted on September 25, 2013 by mikethemadbiologist

From a post about excessive amounts of homework (boldface mine): Every parent I know in New York City comments on how much homework their children have. These lamentations are a ritual whenever we are gathered around kitchen islands talking about … Continue reading →

Posted in Education, Jobs | 8 Comments

But Whatever Could We Spend Money On? The Transportation Edition

Posted on May 25, 2013 by mikethemadbiologist

With our most recent bridge collapse–at least they’re not as frequent as gun-associated mass murders–there have been renewed calls for fixing the damn bridges. While a lot of commentators have focused on a chart showing how transportation budgets, as a … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, Fucking Morons, Jobs, Transportation | 1 Comment

Guess What? Still No STEM Crisis

Posted on April 25, 2013 by mikethemadbiologist

By way of our far-flung network of correspondents, we discover that there are still too many STEM graduates for STEM jobs: Our examination of the IT labor market, guestworker flows, and the STEM education pipeline finds consistent and clear trends … Continue reading →

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Soft Market for Scientists

Posted on April 13, 2013 by mikethemadbiologist

Update: After tweeting with Noah Smith, I realized this post came out all mangled. The point was not to bash foreign scientists, but to point out that the strongest advocates for H1-B visas as well as more PhDs (from anywhere) … Continue reading →

Posted in Jobs | 4 Comments

Regarding Immigration, We Need More Chaim Yankels

Posted on March 5, 2013 by mikethemadbiologist

One of the incongruous things about the proposals to focus on high-skilled immigrants is that the forbears of most of the people making these arguments, in most cases, were probably anything but high-skilled. They were, to use a Yiddish phrase, … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, Immigration, Jobs | Comments Off on Regarding Immigration, We Need More Chaim Yankels

The PhD Glut Makes the Big Time

Posted on February 21, 2013 by mikethemadbiologist

Well, I guess all of that complaining about the non-existent STEM crisis finally got some attention by the Very Serious People, in this case The Atlantic. It’s worth a read, although there are lots of issues about quality of life, … Continue reading →

Posted in Funding, Jobs, NIH | 6 Comments

Unemployment and the Long and Short Run

Posted on February 10, 2013 by mikethemadbiologist

While Paul Campos is writing specifically about law professors, I think every academic economist should take this to heart (boldface mine): A particularly critical benefit of their jobs that tenured legal academics tend to undervalue when they burble on about … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, Jobs | Comments Off on Unemployment and the Long and Short Run

The PhD Glut Isn’t Just Biomedical: Welcome to the Sh-tstorm, Chemists

Posted on February 4, 2013 by mikethemadbiologist

Economist and author of How Economics Shapes Science Paula Stephan notes that there’s a PhD glut in chemistry too (boldface mine): It did not take long, however, for this to change. Faculty quickly learned to include graduate students and postdocs … Continue reading →

Posted in Education, Funding, Jobs, NIH, NSF | 4 Comments

Nobody Really Cares About Deficits: It’s the Economy, Stupid

Posted on May 29, 2012 by mikethemadbiologist

Remember that phrase? Anyway, I’ve long been convinced that “deficits” are what people say when the economy is bad. Since the U.S., for most of the last eighty years, has run deficits (and this isn’t a bad thing), it also … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, Fucking Morons, Jobs | 2 Comments