Money, dough, bullion, $$$, Benjis, and jobs for graduates! Woo-hoo! Did you get half Very-Goods, half Excellents, but were left out to dry for FY2008 at NSF or NIH? Are you about to graduate, and the post-doc offers and job postings you expected never materialized? I don't want to jinx anything, but it looks like it paid off to fawn over Obama after all. FY2009 should already be way better with the NIH receiving nearly $4 billion and NSF $3 billion if the stimulus package passes. There is also a chance that the new Prez, by all indications a friend of science [1,2,3,4], will seek steady increases. If you haven't already seen it, this letter written to Obama by 49 Nobel laureates argues for something along those lines, as well.
Maybe I'm an eternal optimist, but this looks pretty good, guys. I just hope it doesn't turn into $50 million grants for tired work and Eppendorf bling-bling in a handful of labs. (I hope it's declared unpatriotic to buy pre-cast gels.)
6 comments:
Hooray! I've got a bunch of applications out for postdocs this year, but to be honest I'm really worried about the financial climate and what it means for the academic job market. This is really good news, albeit a bit to late to help me this year.
More than anything else, I have been repeatedly surprised over the past week (and pleasantly so) that Obama actually does seem to be the guy I thought I was voting for. How often does that happen in American politics?
I agree. Having a new president even say "science" in an inauguration address is a huge improvement over the anti-intellectualism of the past 8 years.
Did you guys catch Rahm Emanuel's visit to Meet the Press a few weeks ago? David Gregory was grilling him about inclusion of things like money for Pell Grants and basic research in a stimulus package and Emanuel responded by saying, "I do believe investing in our basic science research is good economic competitiveness and does create jobs today and lays the foundation for competitiveness." He's obviously not the wordsmith Obama is, but he seems to be on the same page with regard to the importance of basic science.
Let's hope that republican senator Charles Grassley doesn't screw things up.
He seems bent on holding up NSF funding because six NSF employees were found to be watching porn at work.
Google: National Science Foundation under news for the stories.
Original NSF report:
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2009/oig0901/oig0901_3.pdf
Let me suggest that you write your senators. The latest news is not good.
Details on the latest version are here: http://sefora.org/2009/02/07/senate-passed-stimulus-package-by-the-numbers/
Looks like the NSF increase was slashed, but not entirely eliminated.
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