We're living in a fool's paradise

lostinrates

misskool wrote: »

Not all scientific research can be commercialised but all scientific research is knowledge. You can't make renewable energy or medical technology without understanding core elements in it

To put things into perspective, a fresh PhD student in their short term contract position will earn £24.5k a year (without London weighting). This is all the best and brightest brains of the country are worth.

Thansk Misskool, you are always good for this info! How much would a more senior positon earn? what is the top of he scale, and the ....shhhh..averages?

Opps...she answered while I was typing.....

yes, my family members would sit nicely along that range I can check but I think the two entry levels I know at Ivy Leages aren't earning too much more than that sort of amount?

CLAPTON

Lets get this right

we have a former head of the FSA lecturing other people on financial responsibility and 'people not getting it'

and people are taking him seriously?

ruggedtoast

misskool wrote: »

Not all scientific research can be commercialised but all scientific research is knowledge. You can't make renewable energy or medical technology without understanding core elements in it

To put things into perspective, a fresh PhD student in their short term contract position will earn £24.5k a year (without London weighting). This is all the best and brightest brains of the country are worth.

Unless they go into Finance. I used to work in a business school, we used to get seriously bright students from all around the world applying. I remember thinking what could all these people achieve if they were working on something like cold fusion or cancer research - instead of going off to work as quants or somesuch job, creating mathematical models that didnt in the end, even work.

Most of them were completely open that they just wanted the money - but then if you have the choice of working for Goldman Sachs earning £100k a year before you're 25, or working in medical research for £25k a year for the rest of your life, theres no contest.

dopester

misskool wrote: »

To put things into perspective, a fresh PhD student in their short term contract position will earn £24.5k a year (without London weighting). This is all the best and brightest brains of the country are worth.

Yes. That is all they are worth.

My Dad regularly told me of his regrets about choosing Chemistry for his degree. Then going on to do even high quals in it. Always told me there is no real money or opportunity in it, although it could help you into things like oil-work jobs abroad with it, if you want that sort of life.

The facts of life about pay-and-reward could not be magically altered to make pay fairer for my Dad, so don't see the average-level science people doing much better today either. Whereas some schmuck air-head in finance can command way more just past entry level.

Mistymaid

Shouldn't the point be focused more around the fact that we don't actually have any more money?

Even for the brightest brains in the country I would have thought this small mathematical equation is easy to work out.

The purse is empty - how do you magically pull out 8% of nothing?

To be honest I've yet to hear anybody in any industry turn around and say they don't earn their wages or deserve a pay rise. Everybody will give you chapter and verse on why they, in particular, deserve it.

Thing is, look around you, we have MP's, the people who are supposed to be leading by example, fleecing the coffers for all they can and then trying to justify it. How on earth can anybody else be expected to think "okay, I'd better be tightening the purse strings then."

Out,_Vile_Jelly

I work at a university (one of the world's best incidentally) and think the profs are generally good value for their salary- they have to balance teaching undergrads (who get more demanding each year, probably rightly so considering the amount they pay in fees), supervising postgrads, churning out papers in top quality journals (in order for their institution to do well in RAE ratings) and cosying up to industry in order to keep commercial funding coming in (mine are particularly good at this).

The 8% thing sounds like union guff to me; academics are acutely aware of the precarious nature of university finances and budget restrictions- usually because people like me are always telling them what they can and can't buy.

StevieJ

Out,_Vile_Jelly wrote: »

I work at a university (one of the world's best incidentally) .

Is that Manchester

Out,_Vile_Jelly

StevieJ wrote: »

Is that Manchester

Manchester- that's in the blank part of the map outside Zone 3 I think??

StevieJ

Out,_Vile_Jelly wrote: »

Manchester- that's in the blank part of the map outside Zone 3 I think??

How are these to be going on with

Ernest Rutherford working at Manchester University discovered how to split the atom in 1919.

The first computer with a stored programme and memory, nicknamed "Baby", was developed at Manchester University in 1948 by professors Tom Kilburn and Fred Williams

John Dalton was the scientific colossus of early industrial Manchester. His atomic theory (1803) with its pioneering work on the constitution of elements was the precursor of all modern chemistry whilst his lectures on meteorology turned the study of the weather into a science. He was also the first to describe color blindness.

JP45

Polling data shows that 48pc of the public are against any spending cuts

This was the other point that I found quite startling. How can almost half the British public seriously believe that the government can rebalance the books without any spending cuts. What would these people rather have - massive tax rises, or do they believe that the government can somehow just continue borrowing ad infinitum.