Time to leave the ivory tower
Few people outside Academia know the many challenges the scientific career entails today. From the hurdles of publishing and the shortcomings of the publishing system itself to the lack of funding and the excess of PhD students, nowadays, a scientific career is far from the professional prestige and security it once meant.
An example of how bad employment is for PhD holders is that in 2010 in the UK, only 19 per cent of them were working in higher education research roles three and a half years after graduation. This is a low percentage of higher education employment from a career that supposedly prepares students to work in it. And these numbers are not significantly different in other developed countries. Yet, governments and universities insist on increasing the number of graduates, especially in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineer, Mathematics).
This apparent contradiction has resulted in a debate about the future of a scientific career. Some radically propose to stop undergraduate students from pursuing a PhD, whilst others suggest reforming actual doctoral studies' content and structure.
While the debate continues, some universities have adapted their doctoral studies to the XXI century's market needs. Still, there is a limit to what they can do to tackle the other two problems scientists will face during their career: the scientific system (i.e., the need to publish to secure future funding) and the publishing system (i.e., that negative results are not published, that the peer-review system might be corrupted).
Unfortunately, little to none of this, and its effects on the students' wellbeing (e.g., burnout, depression), is told to undergraduate and graduate students interested in pursuing a scientific career.
I think it is time to let students know what working in science means, the challenges of the system they will have to face, and how they can prepare themselves before and during their scientific career for the rapid changes in the employment market.
Moreover, it is time for scientists in developing countries, like Mexico, to have this debate, learn from developed countries experience, and start working towards the future instead of inviting students to become scientists within a broken system.