Columbia Journ. Rev: With so much talk about it, a story on science job market goes free on line
Beryl Lieff Benderly is among the people, when at annual ScienceWriters20XX meetings or similar confabs, it’s always a particular pleasure to run across. Friendly, thoughtful as a sage, and sane as judges should only hope to be. Not that we’re close friends, but the feeling is always one of security and gratitude that stems from being in good company. She won the Diane McGurgan service award from the Nat’l Assoc. of Science Writers a few years back for being such a beaver on committees and such (she’s now on the NASW board as secretary). Funny thing is, I have tended to forget between encounters exactly what it does she does, you know? I have a bad trait of forgetting who does what in general and she’s high on my list of how’s-it-going targets when I don’t even know what the ‘it’ is and hope to get a clue in reply.
Well, the last week or so a piece she wrote for the Columbia Journalism Review has been kicking up a storm of praise and discussion on the NASW-Talk email list-serve. I saw the chatter, but couldn’t easily see the article, it being behind a pay-wall, so I gave up. Now, thanks to an intercession with his superiors by the CJR’s science-journalism ace, Curtis Brainard, it is out in the open. Anybody who once in awhile writes on the business and profession of science – not just research results and the adventures and other hijinks of researchers – needs to read it. A freelancer, she has a regular slot at Science magazine for a monthly column on the so-called STEM labor force, hence has close acquaintance with such issues. She offers counter-intuitive correctives directed at people who believe the US is not training enough scientists and engineers, and that it is a local labor shortage that compels industry and other tech employers to hire so many foreign citizens. Truth is, she writes, US grad students and post-docs in most disciplines typically face job limbo, going from internship to temporary fellowship for years before getting a decent paycheck from a solid position.
The CJR piece is a close relative of another, longer analysis on the same lines that she wrote in 2010 for Miller-McCune magazine, and on which ksjtracker posted at the time. It was a prize-winner.
- Charlie Petit
