I SPENT a year in an emerging ghetto. By the time I pulled out, most people I knew were on drugs. Gangs proliferated, their language laced with defiance. A few of us were lucky enough to pursue a career. Most were just looking to hang on, hoping things would improve. Things didn鈥檛 improve. I visited some old grad-student colleagues recently and found that I was one of the few with a steady job.
Four years ago, the job market for research physicists tightened up in the US. With the supply exceeding demand, employers became more selective. Suddenly, some of the most promising scientists of my generation were asked in job interviews if they had ever taken a class in public speaking. Spirits broken, they returned from interviews with the advice 鈥渨ork on your communications skills鈥�. The advice became a grad student mantra.
Their failure shocked us. We had all assumed that our futures didn鈥檛 require skills in public speaking. If forced to teach, we would simply do as our mentors did. We would stride into the classroom with our eyes fixed on, say, a curious discolouration of the ceiling. Then, for the next fifty minutes we would talk to the chalkboard. Now we were being asked to make eye contact.
Advertisement
By mid-1991, every one knew that most universities weren鈥檛 hiring, though it took us longer to realise this than almost everyone. We had no choice but to do the unthinkable 鈥� we would consider working for industry. Unfortunately, most of us didn鈥檛 know the difference between macroeconomics and oatmeal. The interviews were short, we started exploring alternatives.
I remember the day I learnt the word 鈥渁rgyle鈥� from a dejected colleague. Showing foresight, he interviewed with the computer trading division of a brokerage firm. At some point during the interview, one of the company gentry fanned him away, commenting: 鈥淵ou鈥檒l never get a job wearing socks like that.鈥� Socks? Most of us were just learning to tuck in our shirts.
As the situation became more hopeless, the physics neighbourhood soured. Years earlier, a stroll past the open doors along the physics department hallway always led to a breezy conversation about the day鈥檚 headlines. Now, few doors stood open. Conversation focused on the latest disappointment. A ghetto took root.
No one pushed Prozac, at first. Students began ingesting the bottled confidence behind closed doors. But by the time I graduated in March of 1992, a few colleagues began flacking Prozac to fellow students suffering from mounting depression. Recently, I went to a friend鈥檚 house for a reunion of my grad-school colleagues now living in the Washington DC area. He whispered to me that of the fourteen, nine were on Prozac.
Along with the drug came a gang. A contentious lot, they followed a time-worn script: Us versus Them. They claim that the sources of the problem were department chairmen unwilling to take action, or ageing faculty members unwilling to retire, or the reluctance of the National Science Foundation to admit to a problem. In short, they claim the trouble is 鈥渢he system鈥�.
They call themselves the Young 杏吧原创 Network, and they wear indignation like a tartan. They point fingers, index or middle, and raise their voices as one. The group therapy consoles them, but it doesn鈥檛 help them to work their way out of the grad ghetto. Physics jobs are scarce, and the gang rarely considers alternatives. Instead, they take academic postdoctoral appointments.
Postdocs are the migrant workers of Generation X. Currently, a postdoc appointment keeps money trickling in, but carries little opportunity for advancement to a permanent academic job. In most cases, it just perpetuates the dream that someday soon a tenured position will open up. Colleagues now seasonally drift from university to university with their possessions stuffed into the trunk of a rusting Chevy. They find a grad ghetto wherever they park.
How do we clean up the grad ghettos? Inner-city ghettos from east Los Angeles to southeast Washington DC address their troubles by encouraging birth control, reforming the educational system, promoting role models, and restructuring the welfare support net. In one form or another, these ideas are being tried in nearly every grad ghetto from Stanford to MIT.
Birth control is as touchy a subject in a physics department as it is in a confessional. Despite the friction, several universities are reducing the entering class in order to control the physics population. To make physics grads more marketable, some universities are requiring them to take nonphysics courses. The American Physical Society scours Wall Street and Hollywood Boulevard for physicists in 鈥渁lternative careers鈥�: the inspiring anecdotes are then circulated around the grad ghettos. And funding agencies are considering changes that allow students to broaden their research experience.
These are promising ideas, but it鈥檚 likely that things will get much worse before they get better. When the government completes its budget-balancing slaughter, at least 20 per cent fewer physicists will be employed in national labs. And the cut in federal research support will ripple through the system leaving a downsized academic enterprise. With even more physicists searching for even fewer jobs, more grad students will wind up as migrants.
To cope with the dilemma, many students rely on advice from recent ghetto survivors. Since I鈥檓 still in the academic world, I鈥檓 viewed less as a survivor and more as a ghetto landlord. Occasionally, however, a student will ask me for advice and I give a heartfelt reply. 鈥淒on鈥檛 dismiss an option you haven鈥檛 pursued. And, don鈥檛 forget to tuck in your shirt.鈥�