I began to think that we, the current generation of practicing scientists, are in the middle of a sea of change and many of us don't have a clue. We act as if the world hasn't changed. But it has and the students know it. In the life sciences today, as in other fields, scientists trained for traditional academic research posts increasingly craft careers that consist of successive periods of employment in a variety of different institutions, agencies and businesses. Most often one doesn't know exactly why it is that a colleague decides to move on unless one probes.
Students know what's happening.
It summarizes the findings of a survey done by graduate students of the Stanford Ph. D. class of 1996. With the likely end of ever-increasing federal research budgets we have reached the outer limits of the frontier. The view facing a new scientist resembles less an unlimited vista and more a busy, crowded city. Many were rather disillusioned and a few admitted that they would not have entered a Ph.D. program had they known at the start what they knew now. At the same time, the need for sophisticated scientific training continues to increase in all sectors of human endeavor.