Issue 4 (March 2007) of the Europe4Researchers Newsletter describes how the EU has five full-time researchers for every nine in the United States and ten in Japan. And that the comparative lack of researchers is particularly visible in business, with almost a third fewer researchers employed in this sector compared to the US!
The irony is that EU countries still produce more science and engineering graduates - including those with PhDs - than the US and Japan. However, unemployment among doctoral researchers in the EU is relatively high, while their salary remains low in comparison to other professionals with a similar education. Why? Europe4Researchers suggests that there is insufficient demand for researchers by the business sector in Europe.
What's clear is that co-operation would be very helpful, across government, academia and the business sector. The business sector may not be hiring PhD's if they are not trained in the right sub-fields of science, engineering and technology or if these PhD's do not have adequate administrative skills, soft skills etc.
If this is the case, then the business sector should send a clear message to academia that the quality of labour supply needs to be improved. If this is not the case, then govt. should impress upon the business sector the importance of hiring PhD's in science, engineering and technology to enable commercialised innovation, patenting and technical progress.
Another question is what is happening to all the EU-produced researchers that can't get a job? A very tentative suggestion is that they are finding employment in the US. This is based on the fact that the US produces less PhD's in these areas than the EU, but somehow has more PhD's working in these areas than the EU.
The irony is that EU countries still produce more science and engineering graduates - including those with PhDs - than the US and Japan. However, unemployment among doctoral researchers in the EU is relatively high, while their salary remains low in comparison to other professionals with a similar education. Why? Europe4Researchers suggests that there is insufficient demand for researchers by the business sector in Europe.
What's clear is that co-operation would be very helpful, across government, academia and the business sector. The business sector may not be hiring PhD's if they are not trained in the right sub-fields of science, engineering and technology or if these PhD's do not have adequate administrative skills, soft skills etc.
If this is the case, then the business sector should send a clear message to academia that the quality of labour supply needs to be improved. If this is not the case, then govt. should impress upon the business sector the importance of hiring PhD's in science, engineering and technology to enable commercialised innovation, patenting and technical progress.
Another question is what is happening to all the EU-produced researchers that can't get a job? A very tentative suggestion is that they are finding employment in the US. This is based on the fact that the US produces less PhD's in these areas than the EU, but somehow has more PhD's working in these areas than the EU.
1 comment:
Interesting... However, I'd be wary of over-interpreting too much from the Japanese figure in particular. I'm sure it has true that they have a 2:1 ratio of researchers compared to the EU, but it's worth bearing in mind how protectionist and/or statist their economy is... it's hard for trends to be acted on in Japan, as the country is highly inflexible in temrs of what it does with employees...it hires people to greet others in public places, for example. I don't know how active Japanese research is in areas other than their established ICT strength, either.
The US case is more interesting - apart from the brain drain (which most top academics accept to exist - look at how they vote with their feet for tenure in a US institution / a job with a scientific company) - they have had a common research area for longer, of course, so part of this advantage may simply be due to history leaning on the present figures.. but that can't be all.
Training may well be part of it: without touching off the difficulties of operationalisation (what a cop out), I would say that the 'can do' culture affects things such as start-ups and campus companies generally. More entrepreneurial researchers will serves as advertisements to prospective researchers that their career can go beyond academia and into business (and back again...). See the CV of Craig Venter (the US guy who raced Sulston to crack the human genome) as an illustration - he simply couldn't have been a European researcher.
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