2. The Scene
The majority of funding for astronomy research in the US
comes from the federal government
State governments + private money are non-negligible,
but minor players overall (in other words, they matter
for individual people/institutions, but do not drive the
field as a whole)
this means that astronomers have to understand
politics
3. The Federal Budget
The initial budget proposal comes from the
President’s office, but is only revealed after months of
negotiations with individual agencies
The President’s budget is an intensely political
document: specifically highlights priorities via budget
bumps or zeros; executive has wide latitude to
propose starting and ending programs
4. The Federal Budget
You might read descriptions of what happens next: the
proposal goes to Congress, they pass a budget
resolution setting overall spending levels, then 12
different subcommittees hold hearings and vote on
bills, and then they are passed and go to the President
for his signature or veto
Note that, confusingly, bills must essentially be passed
twice: once they are “authorized” (but this doesn’t
involve any $$) and once they are
“appropriated” (which is actually giving programs $$)
the amounts in the two bills are usually different, as
are the bills passed by the House and Senate
5. The Federal Budget
Even though it sounds terrible, the above budget
process is considered to be the “ideal”---this is how
the system is supposed to work
Nonetheless, this process hasn’t happened in many
years and isn’t going to happen anytime soon
It’s politically challenging to pass any budget legislation
at all, and instead we operate under “continuing
resolutions” (new budget = old budget) for extensive
periods of time
6. The Federal Budget
we’re currently under a CR (lasting through Dec 7),
and may either get a new one, or a bill
(note:“fiscal years” start Nov 1)
further, it’s rare that any of the 12 individual
appropriations bills are actually passed these days---
usually an “omnibus” bill that includes all
appropriations is passed instead
(can also get a “minibus”)
the 2011 “sequester” has had its caps lifted every year
and this will probably continue
7. Who Cares if Budgets are Weird?
the federal agencies basically never know how much
$$ they are going to have any given fiscal year, so they
can’t plan---leads to continual delays
huge amount of time wasted preparing budgets that
are irrelevant
“small” things like science get left behind (lots of
Congressional support for increasing science funding,
but it is not the most important priority in political
fights)
8. The Agencies Aren’t Really in
Charge
let’s say you have some mission that you don’t want to
spend $$ on any more
an admin at an agency can request it be dropped from
the budget, but if Congress appropriates funding
anyway, there’s not much you can do about it
this happened a couple of years ago with
NASA and SOFIA
9. Who’s Got the $$
NASA is the 400-lb gorilla: its overall budget is
$19.5 billion
About 29% of this goes to science at all, and the
budget for astrophysics is about $1.4 billion (planetary
science + heliophysics are separate)
currently this is split explicitly between JWST and
other astrophysics---a result of huge cost overruns for
JWST and increased congressional oversight
will we get the JWST budget line back after it launches?
good question!
11. Who’s Got the $$
Broadly speaking, NASA pays for science in space
(in some situations they support ground-based
facilities or operations that support space mission
goals, such at the Keck Interferometer or the high-res
planet spectrograph for WIYN to support TESS)
NASA $$ is generally more directly tied to exploiting
data from particular missions: it would be hard to get
funding for projects not related to specific missions
and their science goals
12. Who’s Got the $$
NSF is the 2nd main federal agency supporting
astronomical research
NSF’s overall budget is $7.8 billion, which is much
smaller than NASA’s, but they spend a lot more of it
directly on science (of course, they support way more
fields too!)
Astronomy (AST) is found within MPS ($1.4 billion)
but itself receives ~ 250-300 million
(also PHY, e.g. LIGO)
sometimes there is AST funding from
MREFC (for big facilities), e.g., LSST
13. Who’s Got the $$
MREFC funding is a double-edged sword: it enables
facilities AST could never afford on its own
however, it only pays for construction, not operations
hence it can let you build “too much house” that you
can’t afford to run (essentially the situation we are in
now with ALMA, DKIST, and LSST)
this is recognized as an issue, and MREFC-like
operations funding may be possible in the future
14. Who’s Got the $$
traditionally, NSF supports ground-based astronomy
through facilities and direct grants
this distinction has blurred a bit recently but is still
more or less true
15. Who’s Got the $$
in recent years, the department of energy (DOE) has
become a significant funder of effort in astrophysics
DOE’s total budget is $30 billion (!)
the DOE office of science budget for high energy
physics is ~ 820 million; funding for the “cosmic
frontier” is about 130 million
they fund some facilities (the dark energy camera; the
LSST camera) as well as some people
(mostly not astronomers, except Sean!)
16. Who’s Got the $$
NASA: 1350 million
NSF: 250 million
DOE: 130 million
you can immediately see that most of the $$ is with
NASA
it’s also clear that no state or private contributions
make anything more than a marginal difference
17. How Do We Spend the $$?
astrophysics is a leader in all sciences: it was the first
to have a community-wide, once-a-decade survey on
science priorities
this has been hugely influential and adopted by other
communities
the flip side is that the priorities are taken very
seriously by the agencies, Congress, and the OMB ---
you can’t go back later on
18. How Do We Spend the $$?
decadal surveys are carried out under the auspices of
the National Academy for Sciences
involve a large number of astronomers (both Steve
and Megan involved in the 2010 survey)
the committees don’t come up with ideas out of
nowhere---years ahead they solicit “white papers”
with ideas for specific missions or science cases
(a white paper call, due Feb 2019, is currently out)
19. How Do We Spend the $$?
for large projects, the process is now more formalized:
mission ideas are “costed” specifically for the decadal
survey
(response to many projects being “under-costed” in
the 2001 survey)
preparation has already started for the missions that
want to be first for the 2020 decadal survey
27. lesson: today’s big facilities are so expensive that we
can only afford 1 per decade (if that---see JWST)
means that you need to get as broad a science case as
possible to get community support
this is why WFIRST and LSST won in 2010, and it’s
why something broad is likely to win in 2020
How Do We Spend the $$?
JWST saga has many regretting the “flagship” model,
but IMO backing away from this would be a mistake
28.
29. recall that all priorities are $$ dependent---you have
to pay for what you have first, or give it up!
this has led to the closing of facilities (on the ground)
and missions (in space) by NSF and NASA, and it’s
only going to accelerate in the future
more expensive missions to build are more expensive
to run, so operating budgets can consume an ever
expanding part of one’s budget...
How Do We Spend the $$?
30. you probably care about getting a job, and you should
so you should be an informed consumer (of
astronomy jobs!) and understand the market
Demographics
jobs for which astronomy research is a central
component are either faculty jobs at universities/
colleges (many mostly teaching-intensive) or jobs at
observatories/institutes (like STScI)
31. faculty jobs are driven fundamentally by student
demographics: large universities need to hire faculty to
teach their students
Demographics
baby boom
college now
32. growing population + increasing relative returns to
education (= if you don’t have a college degree you
can’t get a good job) means that universities are going
to continue to grow
Demographics
they want to use MOOCs, etc, to reduce faculty
populations, but these have made minimal inroads
other subjects have moved to adjuncts, but still not
widely used in astronomy
my view is that faculty hiring in astronomy, while
unlikely to increase quickly, is also unlikely to decrease
33. however, large correlated variations year-to-year
means that luck is still very important
Demographics
34. jobs at national observatories are under huge
pressure, though if you’re willing to live in Chile there
are great opportunities
Demographics
STScI hired a bunch of people in tenure-track
equivalent jobs recently, and will in the future
if you are willing to live in a country with a developing
scientific presence (e.g., China; Gulf states) there are
additional opportunities
35. What About the Supply Side?
PhD numbers increasing (larger when
astro-related HE physics included)
Seth et al 2009
36. What About the Supply Side?
the biggest effect of influx of federal $$ is
postdocs (nearly all supported on NASA
mission $$)
37. What About the Supply Side?
many of these people go onto soft $$ and
can survive for a while, but prospects of
permanent positions are not great
38. Demographics
Overall: ~ 1/3 to 1/2 of astro PhDs get
long-term positions in astronomy
(broadly defined)
I don’t think this is going to change much
(get much better or worse) in the next ~
10 years, though of course the future is
uncertain
39. Demographics
Overall: ~ 1/3 to 1/2 of astro PhDs get
long-term positions in astronomy
(broadly defined)
I don’t think this is going to change much
(get much better or worse) in the next ~
10 years, though of course the future is
uncertain
(currently 1/3 of MSU PhDs
get faculty jobs)
40. Demographics
Big change in last ~ 5 years is emergence
of “data science” as named discipline for
which astro PhDs are very well suited
data science isn’t going anywhere, but
there is also a coming proliferation of
people with data science-focused degrees
5 years from now when you graduate, things
will be different! the real world changes much
faster than the academic world
41. Your Career
NOTE: much of this cribbed from
articles and talks by
Julianne Dalcanton, Sean Carroll,
Peter van Dokkum, and probably others
42. Your Career
Assume for the moment that you do want
a coveted long-term position in astronomy
the main thing to be aware of is that
nearly every job is different (even if they
look the same on the outside)
the odds that you get a job are about how
well you fit with that job
so, in some sense, success in astronomy is
about maximizing the odds of finding a match
43. Grad School
things you should do in grad school:
get good at one thing, and get your name associated
with that thing (this could be exploiting a survey,
learning a simulation technique, etc)
try to learn some hard things (you have lots of
time in grad school---it’s hard to do this later)
go to as many talks as possible: deciding
you only care about one thing is like
putting all your chips on one bet
44. Grad School
don’t be afraid to “calve” off small,
impactful results into individual papers
try to publish some before the end of grad
school (it takes time for impact to
accumulate---if you are publishing your first
papers the year you’re applying for fellowships/
postdocs, no one will know who you are)
if you’re an observer you should talk to
theorists, and if you’re a theorist you
should talk to observers
45. Grad School
the secret about grad school is that no
one knows or cares how long it takes
so if your advisor is on board, you should
definitely stay an extra year if you can
publish more papers
once you graduate a clock starts: most
fellowships have years since PhD limits,
and once you are ~ 2+ postdocs past PhD
your CV starts to look a little “stale”
46. Networking
people are much more likely to hire or
award fellowships to people they know
if you have a famous, gregarious adviser
then you are in good shape---most people
don’t
therefore it is absolutely essential to talk
to as many astronomers as possible
(especially in your subfield) while still in
grad school
47. Networking
convince your advisor to pay for you to go to conferences
in your subfield, and talk to senior astronomers rather
than hanging out with other grad students
once you’re an older grad student, email
people in charge of seminar series at nearby
universities and get invited to give talks
talk to visiting astronomers if your research
interests are even vaguely related to theirs
(you need something to say, but not much)
you must have a web page if you have any scientific
presence at all (even a conference poster)
48. Networking
note that every job you will ever apply for
requires at least 3 letters of recommendation
even as a grad student applying for jobs, it is much
much better if at least one of these comes from
someone outside your PhD institution
in fact, this doesn’t even have to be someone
you have ever written a paper with!
(one of my letters for this job was written by
someone I had not collaborated with)
49. Networking
in fact, your advisor’s letter is probably only
the 2nd most important letter (it should be
excellent, but alone it’s useless)
the most important letter should be by someone who
is known to the people reading the letter, who knows
your work, and who can compare you favorably to
successful astronomers who are slightly older
a natural place to get such a letter is from your
advisor’s collaborators---you should be thinking
about who this might be year(s) ahead of time
almost always, for US jobs foreign letters aren’t good
50. Postdocs
As I mentioned earlier, postdoc positions have
exploded with NASA’s Great Observatories
and now nearly everyone can get one
these are either “fellowships” (where you
generally get a budget and can do whatever
you want) or funded for a particular project
51. Postdocs
It’s a widespread but patently false belief that
only people who get named fellowships get
good long-term jobs
in fact, for many people it can make more sense to
get a postdoc working with an exciting survey or
other group than being on your own (young people
do all the actual work on big surveys)
I did basically nothing useful for the first ~ 2 years
of my Hubble fellowship
52. Papers
most important part of a paper is the title
it’s not a guessing game: your title should be
informative (i.e., it should contain, if possible, your
conclusion)
it should be understandable to people outside your
subfield
it should not be funny (unless you have a
permanent job, then do whatever you want)
53. Papers
what parts of papers get read?
title: nearly everyone on arXiv
abstract: your subfield
figures: subset of your subfield
text: maybe one grad student or postdoc
54. Papers
what parts of papers get read?
title: nearly everyone on arXiv
abstract: your subfield
figures: subset of your subfield
text: maybe one grad student or postdoc
clear implication is that you should spend a lot of time
getting the title, abstract, and (maybe) figures right
55. Papers: Short or Long?
a paper should only have one main point
this doesn’t mean it has to be short---though if it
can be short, it should be
you should write one or two long papers at some
point so you don’t seem slight, but see the previous
slide and above: if your paper is trying to make
many large points, split it up
56. Choosing Topics
(something to think about for the future)
don’t work on something if you know that
someone else is already working on it with
comparable resources to you
i.e., you should not directly compete with someone
unless you have a good reason to do so!
at the same time, try to assess the relevance of
your subfield to the rest of astronomy: if you crack
a problem, will people care?
57. Choosing Topics
you need to enjoy what you are doing
(or else you won’t do it very well)
with every project, you should be pushing on your
abilities in some area, be it small
(no paper should be entirely routine)
