On the latest NIH soft-money kerfuffle

The commenter who writes as "lou dobbs" sent this link to a post Drugmonkey wrote about some things said by Francis Collins in an interview.

Basically, the relevance to postdocs is this quote:

But Dr. Collins said he was looking more at universities themselves, saying that the age bias actually originates with institutions that don't allow their younger researchers to apply for grants.

At first, I thought I couldn't get riled up about this, I'm tired, whatever.

....And then I started writing.

In short, I call bullshit. Nothing is going to change until the funding agencies admit that they have to take the reins.

1. Universities won't let younger researchers apply for grants.

TRUE. But they blame the NIH guidelines, the cost to cover salaries and benefits, and lack of lab space.

2. Faculty won't help younger researchers apply for transition grants, much less allow them to apply for their own funding.

TRUE. They claim the low rates of funding make it barely worth the time it takes for a younger researcher to write the grant, since that is time they can't spend doing the faculty member's already-funded projects. They also refuse to share their lab space to support a younger researcher setting up her/his own project on a bench in their lab.

3. NIH encourages younger researchers to independently apply for independent funding.

BULLSHIT. NIH guidelines match university guidelines. They require certain types of appointments, and they require that the university guarantees "support".

What this means in practice is that universities effectively ban postdocs from applying for funding, because they can't guarantee support to everyone whether or not you get the grant. It's just not practical.

NIH continues to reinforce the catch-22: you can't get the job title without the funding, and you can't get the funding without the job title.

It all seems backwards to me. Seems to me that the university should be allowed to guarantee resources IF AND ONLY IF the grant is awarded. Then the university isn't risking anything.

But NIH WON'T LET THEM DO THAT.

4. NSF is different, they allow younger research to independently apply for independent funding.

BULLSHIT. NSF has the same rules. They use the same university guidelines requiring appointments and resources.

5. This is true for everyone, so it's fair.

BULLSHIT. What really sticks in my knickers is that MDs can be "independent" a lot sooner, despite having MUCH less research experience.

They're allowed to apply for their own funding, because their salaries will be covered by clinical work whether or not they get the grant.

Does that make sense from a business perspective, if universities are companies?

Yes.

Does it make sense in terms of research qualifications or potential for progress?

NO.

I'm not sure where Francis Collins thinks universities are supposed to get the money to pay PhD researchers' salaries, if not from research grants.

We don't see patients whose health insurance pays a fee. We don't sell a product that is available right now - that's the nature of basic research. Which everyonesays they know is important, except they certainly don't treat us that way.

Meanwhile, we're supposed to believe that it's some amazing privilege to work as overeducated postdoc slaves with no guarantee of future employment past a handful of years.

And families don't want to pay more for college tuition. There's more and more rumbling about online education and the end of the university as we know it.

Personally, I think science has been going to hell in a handbasket for a while. I wonder if Francis Collins isn't just helping to speed the process. Maybe these genome project type d00ds just want all research to be done in private Institutes? This article certainly seemed to imply that NIH wishes universities would be more like the Whitehead.

Lately I do wonder if we shouldn't separate undergraduate education from research centers. It seems nearly impossible to be equally good at teaching and research. In fact, I sometimes wonder if the two aren't mutually exclusive.

But I somehow doubt that would solve our funding issues. Unless it's actually the case that the bigger the university, the more money they waste?

....Yeah, I think that's probably true. In myriad ways.

Worth a read: End the University

I'm not really into link-blogging per se, but if you do nothing else productive today, go read this.

Marc C. Taylor, department chair and professor of religion at Columbia, is proposing some old ideas for fixing higher education that we've been talking about for ages. Funnily enough, some of these are the same "solutions" that science curricula/med school departments/NIH program projects already use (with no obvious benefits, I might add).

Allow me to elaborate (after all, it's a blog).

1. Restructure the curriculum to get rid of overspecialization.

Great idea, Marc, but here's why it won't work in the absence of other changes you propose (see below).

The curriculum is not the same as the departments. I didn't understand this fundamental problem until I started looking for a faculty position of my own.

I was trained in a sort of "umbrella" graduate program, as these are becoming the norm in the biomedical sciences. However, departments still don't hire this way. If they can't figure out where to put you, forget about getting a job. So the structure of the university has to change first or in parallel for this suggestion to be of any use.

2. Abolish permanent departments and create problem-focused programs.

Great idea, Marc, but it would have to happen everywhere simultaneously for this to get any traction. Any idea how to make that happen?

Here's the thing. This suggestion suffers from the same problem as suggestion #1 up there, that some schools have already tried to start problem-focused programs as cross-departmental efforts. Again, the employment opportunities for the graduates of these programs rest on the assumption that employers will know what these programs are.

In addition, NIH has been funding problem-directed program projects for years. You know what happens? People apply for the money under the guise of doing something related to the problem at hand, and then they go right on doing what they've been doing.

To put a finer point on it, in the absence of forced retirement and abolishing tenure, as you propose below, this suggestion would amount to nothing more than the renaming of existing departments.

You're also missing a couple of critical points in your Op-Ed, Marc. You say even for undergraduate programs, you want to do this?

Here's the thing. The way education works now, you have to give grades. There is a clear differential between students who pay tuition, and faculty who get paid to teach. What you're proposing isn't going to sit well with people who insist on hierarchies, and who refuse to treat high school graduates as adults rather than children (even though they kinda are, actually, adults already).

What you're really proposing, from what I can tell, is to turn universities into giant think-tank research companies, where students are paying for the privilege of being interns?

Which is not necessarily bad. I'm against grading, personally, but how are you going to standardize evaluations? How are you going to justify it if you have to kick someone out? Are you going to fall back on the established rules and regulations used in industry? In which case, how are you going to avoid corruption from students offering to pay extra to get ahead? Since they're paying to be there anyway, this sets up a dangerous precedent, methinks.

Also, how are you going to distribute the money? Don't you think the departments that work directly on how to generate tangible, marketable products (chemistry, engineering) are going to have a hard time justifying inclusion and payment for departments who don't (like yours)?

3. Marc writes: Increase collaboration among institutions. All institutions do not need to do all things and technology makes it possible for schools to form partnerships to share students and faculty. Institutions will be able to expand while contracting. Let one college have a strong department in French, for example, and the other a strong department in German; through teleconferencing and the Internet both subjects can be taught at both places with half the staff.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, Marc. This suggestion is not helpful. Half the staff? Why? Shouldn't we, in the current economy, be looking for ways to GENERATE jobs, rather than cut them?

Your statement about one college having a strong department in one thing, and another in a different area... this already happens. You don't have to codify it.

What's interesting to me is that you're proposing to formalize something that students and postdocs already do: generate collaborations across institutions to get what we need. Even when our PIs/advisors/faculty won't speak to each other, or don't know about each other, we will and we do.

It doesn't mean there have to be fewer jobs. But I really don't see why you're trying to propose that anyway.

I won't claim to know the data on distance learning, but personally I don't really want to do it if I don't have to, and I don't really see why anyone would.

4.Transform the traditional dissertation.

Do it. I absolutely agree with this. Nobody reads them anyway, not even the thesis committees. Might as well make them in a format accessible and useful to the public.

But beware: this might encourage students by giving them a way to actually make a contribution to society!

I'm just sayin'.

5. Marc writes: Expand the range of professional options for graduate students. Most graduate students will never hold the kind of job for which they are being trained. It is, therefore, necessary to help them prepare for work in fields other than higher education.

This one cracks me up. He has NO idea how to do this.

What jobs, Marc?

Also, this is something we've been proposing for ages in the sciences, but nobody really listens to us. We've said for a while that there should be different tracks in graduate school for those who want to do science journalism vs. policy vs. product development vs. basic research vs. teaching.

So, great idea Marc. Not original, but always glad to see it mentioned. Wish somebody would start doing it already.

6. Impose mandatory retirement and abolish tenure

HAHAHAHAHA.

Well anyway. Yeah.

But what Marc then proposes is to replace tenure with 7-year renewable contracts.

Guess what that is, Marc? That's soft-money. That's the same thing that medical schools do already.

Do you know what complete lack of job security does to a person? I guess not, because here's what you said about it:This policy would enable colleges and universities to reward researchers, scholars and teachers who continue to evolve and remain productive while also making room for young people with new ideas and skills.

Um, yes in theory, but in practice here's what happens instead.

The rich get richer and step on the younger ones trying to make it up the ladder.

The internal politics get so much worse because of these kinds of policies. Just ask around. You have a big med school at Columbia. Ask over there.

Finally, Marc writes: For many years, I have told students, “Do not do what I do; rather, take whatever I have to offer and do with it what I could never imagine doing and then come back and tell me about it.”

Yeah, because it's impossible to tell students that it's a good idea to go to grad school, or that they'll have more than a 1 in 300 chance of getting a faculty position at the end of all of it.

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I like that this guy has a conscience, and spoke out in such a public fashion. When I saw this article, there were already >400 comments on it.

Next question: do Op-Ed articles (or blogs) ever really lead to real change? We all wrote tons about Larry Summers, but look where he ended up.

Tell me what you think and how we can put this into action. I think this restructuring education thing could be a good career for me, if the university systems would just hurry up and collapse already.