The Washington Post, "U.S. pushes for more scientists, but the jobs aren’t there": Told You So

Those who regularly read this blog know that my perception of higher education differs from that of the White House and Thomas Friedman. I have been saying that a graduate degree in the sciences does not necessarily take you anywhere career-wise in a brave new world in which "good" is not good enough. Moreover, I have persistently been making this point as it applies to drug discovery and Big Pharma.

For those who doubted me, it's worth reading a new WAPO article entitled "U.S. pushes for more scientists, but the jobs aren’t there" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/us-pushes-for-more-scientists-but-the-jobs-arent-there/2012/07/07/gJQAZJpQUW_story.html?hpid=z1), by Brian Vastag. As observed by this article:

"The pharmaceutical industry once offered a haven for biologists and chemists who did not go into academia. Well-paying, stable research jobs were plentiful in the Northeast, the San Francisco Bay area and other hubs. But a decade of slash-and-burn mergers; stagnating profit; exporting of jobs to India, China and Europe; and declining investment in research and development have dramatically shrunk the U.S. drug industry, with research positions taking heavy hits.

Since 2000, U.S. drug firms have slashed 300,000 jobs, according to an analysis by consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. In the latest closure, Roche last month announced it is shuttering its storied Nutley, N.J., campus — where Valium was invented — and shedding another 1,000 research jobs.

. . . .

Largely because of drug industry cuts, the unemployment rate among chemists now stands at its highest mark in 40 years, at 4.6 percent, according to the American Chemical Society, which has 164,000 members. For young chemists, the picture is much worse. Just 38 percent of new PhD chemists were employed in 2011, according to a recent ACS survey."

And the outlook does not stand to grow more sanguine. As I said in the past, one scientist-extraordinaire armed with a laptop is today worth more than a mediocre R&D army.