Graduate students, too, are squeezed between an expanded research enterprise and a contracting job market. The growth of research assistantships and the lengthening of time required to complete the doctorate reflect the need for graduate students as labor. We do little to prepare doctoral candidates to pursue alternative careers, to be more effective teachers, or even to confront the professional and personal challenges of academic life. Finally, the legacy of the Endless Frontier has altered life irreversibly for faculty. The new order has augmented their productive capacity but attenuated their institutional loyalty.
Faculty are more peripatetic.
Their membership in the invisible international academies of their disciplines is far weightier than their attachment to their own university and their students. The resolution of these conflicts depends on a simple principle, which in turn rests on a notion about generational equity. We need to return students to the center of our institutional concern. It's difficult for me to think of an academic scientist, no matter how distinguished, who has not contributed more through producing students than through the work of an active career. People, not things, are the mainstream of technology transfer.