Science: The Outsourcing

Rising Above the Gathering Storm, a 2005 report on the state of US science, and the update issued in September make for "depressing reading," says NeuroDojo's Zen Faulkes. A recent summary in Science by Beryl Benderly says that, among other troubles for US researchers, American corporations will start to export their research work because labor costs for American scientists and engineers are more than the companies wish to pay. "In other words, industry positions for people with doctorates are vanishing because American corporations are outsourcing research," Faulkes says. "That pretty much leaves becoming a professor or leaving science as the only long-term career choices for a person with a freshly minted PhD in the United States. That's terrifying."