Today@Dal

Vice-President Research Martha Crago is starting a regular column for University Affairs. Here is her first submission:

Being an administrator requires solving dilemmas. Those I have helped to solve are typically local and circumscribed, but larger country-wide dilemmas also weigh on my mind. The dilemma I’ve been thinking about lately relates to all three of the administrative positions I have held: dean of graduate and postdoctoral studies, vice-president, international and now vice-president, research. However, this particular dilemma is going to take more than one administrator to solve it.

On April 9, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science journal published a riveting article about systemic flaws in the biomedical research enterprise in the United States. The authors, Alberts, Kirshner, Tilghman and Varmus, all outstanding researchers, describe a malaise in the biomedical sciences that they think is becoming increasingly important. This malaise concerns bright young research trainees who may not have a job when they complete their doctoral and postdoctoral studies. The authors present data about how, after a period of almost constant expansion, research dollars in the U.S. are not keeping up with the demands of expanding scientific research laboratories. In these labs, doctoral and postdoctoral students conduct much of the research. The authors state: “the training pipeline produces more scientists than relevant positions in academia, government, and the private sector are capable of absorbing.” This is a pretty dire warning and it presents us all with a dilemma.

Looking at it from an administrator’s perspective, I have been asking myself: why and how are universities and their researchers being encouraged to keep the training pipeline so full?

Read the rest of this piece on the University Affairs website.