Most federal support for graduate students comes by way of grants awarded to individual professors for their research. The professors then hire doctoral students as research assistants. Ms. Austin was among those who said federal agencies must put more money directly into the hands of the students to give them more control over their own education. She acknowledged that many scientists would resist such a shift, but she was unsympathetic. Students have been told for years, 'No one is promised a job.
Life is tough.
Neal Lane, director of the National Science Foundation, said at the forum that the N.S.F. supported the idea of shifting more money to support graduate education as opposed to the individual research projects of faculty members. Some people are not waiting for changes in federal policy to experiment with new programs. James F. Reddoch, a graduate student in biochemistry at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, runs a campus program in which students bring in speakers with Ph.D.'s who have pursued careers outside academe. I went for two months without telling my mentor that I was running this group. It may not seem like a revolutionary idea, he said, but it is something of a milestone for scientists to be suggesting that a Ph.D. can be used for careers other than research.