*Concerns of Young Mathematicians* Volume 3, Issue 32 Oct. 25, 1995 An electronically distributed digest for discussions of the issues of concern to mathematicians at the beginning of their careers. Please direct submissions and questions to Nancy Wilson, nwilson@stmarys-ca.edu , editor for the month of November. Next issue: Wednesday, 1 November 1995 October Editor: Frank Sottile sottile@math.toronto.edu November Editor: Nancy Wilson nwilson@stmarys-ca.edu To subscribe: Contact Charles Yeomans at cyeomans@ms.uky.edu Back issues and other information are available via anonymous FTP to ftp.ms.uky.edu, in pub3/mailing.lists/ymn-list. Or connect to the YMN homepage on the WWW, the URL: http://math34.gatech.edu:8080/YMN/ymn.html The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of the administrative board or membership of the Young Mathematicians' Network. The editorial policy of this newsletter is to encourage discussion of issues, and facilitate the dissemination of information, relevant to the concerns of young mathematicians. Table of Contents Item # Title ------ ----- 1 Editor's notes 2 News for CYM from France Stathis Tompaidis 3 SIAM undergraduate web page Kelly Black 4 Letter to the editor: Granville's reply to Godev 5 Let's all vote for Curtiss [sic] Bennett and nobody else. Not! Nicolas Robidoux 6 Closing Credits _______________________________________________________________ Item #1 Editor's notes: I recently glanced at the November AMS Notices, and saw, among other things, that the annual AMS-IMS-MAA survey on employment of new doctorates had not yet appeared, but that it would appear in the December Notices. It is, however, available by request from Elizabeth Foulkes at edf@ams.org. I plan to ask for a copy. In this issue, we begin with a news item from France. Next is an announcement of a SIAM web site for undergraduates, with a request for brief articles about the current job climate. Andrew Granville defends his point of view in the aftermath of an article of last week. Our responses to the candidate survey continue; Nicholas Robidoux shares his point of view on voting strategies and measures to help students realize the present realities of choosing a mathematical career. Have a nice week, Frank Sottile _______________________________________________________________ Item #2 News for CYM from France Stathis Tompaidis This is from Radio France-Info, reported without comment: Last Thursday, October 19, 300 students of mathematics closed the entrances to the campus of Toulouse, France (a city of 400,000 people in SouthWest France) demanding the creation of 100 new positions in mathematics in their University for next year. Today, October 25, 50 students of mathematics are on strike (as the radio reported since yesterday) with the same demand (i.e. creation of 100 new position in the department). Enjoy, Stathis Stathis Tompaidis stathis@lie.univ-rennes1.fr _______________________________________________________________ Item #3 Call for submissions to SIAM web page for undergraduates SIAM has a WWW page specifically geared towards undergraduate mathematicians. Included in the pages is an essays section. We would like to post articles from recent graduates, and how they feel about the current job climate. It is important that we get this message out to as many people as possible. If anybody would like to have a brief essay published in this forum please see our web page at http://www.math.unh.edu/~siamug and look in the "Essays" section. There is also a forum that will allow anybody to post a brief paragraph if they prefer. Sincerely, Kelly Black ------------------------------------------------------------------ Kelly Black Phone: (603) 862-3587 Department of Mathematics FAX: (603) 862-4096 University of New Hampshire e-mail: black@vidalia.unh.edu Durham, NH 03824 (USA) WWW: http://www.math.unh.edu/~black ______________________________________________________________________________ Item #4 Response to Godev's `Impotence of Fact in the Face of Blind Faith' Andrew Granville Dear Editor, In the October 18th issue of your newsletter, I was attacked by Dr. Kalin Godev's article `Impotence of Fact in the Face of Blind Faith', for my response to your survey about the current job crisis for new Ph.D.s. I am upset about this because I believe he has taken what I wrote, out of the context in which it was written. Indeed, in subsequent e-mail correspondence, we have discovered that our views are not entirely different, after all. Let me re-iterate what I wrote before: (quotes ``.'' are from original response) ``It is obvious that the problem of `too few jobs for too many qualified applicants' is not going to go away''. However I do not believe that the answer is to produce fewer Ph.Ds. On the contrary, many groups, in industry and in government, state that there are NOT ENOUGH qualified mathematicians. Evidently the answer to our problem is to dedicate significant resources NOW to re-thinking how we direct students, and building new links to non-teaching mathematics professions. ``However our professional organizations are rather conservative, and will probably take little action until there is a crisis that affects far more than ten or fifteen per cent of graduates''. Dr. Godev wrote ``The fact that Mr. Granville made a decision to ignore the statistics and continue to propagate a decade old Myth, when the market says otherwise, makes him, in my personal opinion, a poor choice to be on any of the AMS Committees.'' The Myth in question, I presume, is that one of these days the academic job situation will `turn around'. Personally I doubt that will happen, as should have been clear from the first sentence above. I believe that Dr. Godev contends that the only feasible answer is to produce fewer Ph.Ds; I don't agree with him, and believe that we must take a more optimistic approach. More personally insulting, Dr. Godev wrote `there will always be people who chose to ignore the facts for a variety of reasons such as running for office', in reference to the quote he found offensive. Just to set the record straight, I personally don't care greatly whether I get elected or not. I was asked to run by the President of the AMS, I didn't `apply'. When I was deliberating whether to agree or not, a senior colleague pointed out that it did give me a rare opportunity to write a statement on a `political issue' that would be widely circulated (in the Notices of the AMS); and since I feel strongly that the AMS fails us on a variety of issues, that that might make running worthwhile. As it happens I got to write three such statements (all on different issues, for Notices AMS, and for the AWM and YMN newsletters), and have enjoyed some of the ensuing debate ... except when quoted out of context! Sincerely yours, Andrew Granville _______________________________________________________________ Item #5 Let's all vote for Curtiss [sic] Bennett and nobody else. Not! Nicolas Robidoux Sorry guals (=guys+gals). I will dilute your grand scheme for one community/one vote. While Andrew Granville seems to be in denial, I do like Dr. David Bressoud's answer more than Curtis Bennett's (see YMN Volume 3, Issue 30) so at this point my vote goes for both. In some way, I do not think that mathematicians are being overproduced, no more than musicians, artists, English majors and philosophers are being overproduced; the problem is that many "youths" are enticed to the program under the false impression that a job in the ivory tower awaits if they follow the piper. Given that in this market "non-traditional" PhDs may be more likely to get a job while any attempt at arbitrarily limiting enrollment probably will keep these people off the program, in some way we may be making things worse by imposing caps on enrollment. My main partial solutions have been presented many time, and I reiterate here: --Coerce departments to include honest employment information with their application packets. This information could take the form of an AMS produced pamphlet, for example, with the statistics and some essays on the employment situation in the sciences in general and mathematics in particular, and maybe on why one should opt for grad school despite the employment situation; while we are at it, a few accounts of what grad school is like may be very useful. Forcing departments to properly keep track of their graduates so that they include with the pamphlet a standardized picture of the afterlife after their local version of purgatory would be very good, but politically difficult to implement I imagine. --Another way to make the implied promises of a job less misleading is to redesign the programs so as to make the graduates more employable, and then work hard to help them find jobs. I would very much like candidates to commit to the above and include it in their platforms. If you are ready to do so, let us, the voting masses, know. If we do not hear from you, we will assume that you do not browse through YMN and deduce that you do not care about the issue (nothing like a little blackmail to make everyone feel better). Nicolas "I see the light at the end of the tunnel" Robidoux "and I hope it's not an oncoming train." P.S. Either way, I won't close my eyes. Nicolas Robidoux nicolas@taos.arc.unm.edu _______________________________________________________________ Item #5 Closing Credits Charles Yeomans cyeomans@ms.uky.edu Mark Winstead mwwinst@bilbo.pic.net Nancy Wilson nwilson@stmarys-ca.edu Emil Volcheck volcheck@acm.org Frank Sottile sottile@math.toronto.edu Vic Perera vicum@math.ohio-state.edu Franklin Mendivil mendivil@math.gatech.edu Kevin Madigan madkev@aol.com Leigh Lunsford lunsford@math.uah.edu Steve Kennedy skennedy@mathcs.carleton.edu Matt Hudelson hudelson@pi.math.wsu.edu Silvia Heubach silvi@cinenet.net Greg Dresden dresden@fireant.ma.utexas.edu Bob Dobrow bdobrow@cs-sun1.nemostate.edu Lyle Cochran lcochran@fresno.edu Kevin Charlwood charlwk@snoopy.tblc.lib.fl.us Wendy Brunzie brunzie@mathfs.math.montana.edu Frank Arlinghaus frank@math.ysu.edu Edward Aboufadel aboufade@gvsu.edu _______________________________________________________________ End of Journal -- Next week: The Discussion Continues