Raise the minimum age requirement for scientist and research director

[Alberyk]

After removing the multiple PhD requirement from the research director page, I also noticed that a somewhat similar situation was present in other science jobs.

I believe that we should increase the minimum age for scientists, xenobiologist and the research director. It is really strange that you can be one at 25 years old, while the wiki claims that you also needs PhD in your field. Research and science takes time, and it feels really unbelievable that young people would get this kind of title so fast. So, I propose that we raise the mininum age for the scientist, xenobiologist and research director by five years. Lab assistant and roboticists can stay the same.

Other solution would be to create lore for how much time this stuff takes.

[Scheveningen]

agreed

[AmoryBlaine]

I can get behind it. But let's see what the Sci Mains think.

[Aphelion]

Yep

All my science characters have spent a minimum of 8 years in university getting their PhDs.

Also, in reality. Even after getting a PhD, scientist isn't a guaranteed job, you would need to have some experience for that. Generally a lab assistant would have anything from a bachelor's degree to a PhD, my science characters tend to have this progression of...
> Getting PhD

> Getting Employed as Lab Assistant for X company

> A fair few jobs working with various things

> Getting to be a researcher 

 

That said, for some characters I've skipped the lab assistant part, instead opting that NT university has a job-program that can have scientists who graduate from it high recommendations for the role.

[Shenaanigans]

Yeah realistically the average person is going to finish their Bachelor's at ~22 and then take within the range of 5-8 years (just based on the average time it takes to gain a PhD in today's world) to get their doctorate so that puts you at a youngest of 27 before you would be qualified. Assuming you oomy zoomy your PhD. And go right from school to working on a prestigious research station rather than taking a post-doc position somewhere else to get a little more experience.

Edited January 10, 2020 by Shenaanigans

[Carver]

I'm always down for raising the minimum age, especially for a position demanding experienced and mature personnel.

[MoondancerPony]

I dislike this. A PhD for a research position where most of what you're doing is grunt work is silly. This also overlooks the fact that lots of career researchers don't get doctorates, they get Master's degrees instead. Yes, doctorates get more funding, but a Master's lets you get into the field and workforce faster. It's kind of the entire point.

At most, I'd be okay with changing it so that you need to be enrolled in or have completed some form of graduate program (a Master's degree or a doctorate, whether it's a Ph.D, PharmD, whatever). Even that seems like a stretch to me; undergraduate research is becoming a much, much larger and respected phenomenon. I don't mean that we should have 17 year old scientists, but this is super silly if your argument is 'realism'.

As an example, someone with lots of AP/IB/CLEP credits (which is becoming more and more common) could start off as a sophomore or even a junior in undergrad their first year. That means they could possibly get their bachelor's degree at 20 or 21, then go straight into a Master's or PhD program, especially if they're in an early acceptance program (which isn't that hard to get into; for example, I got into it, and I'm dumb as a rock). Then it's just smooth sailing from there; you can get a Master's degree in a year and a half to two years, giving you a Master's at 21(.5)-23.

If you manage to get into an accelerated master's program, that can reduce the time it takes to get a Master's by an entire semester in some cases; you'd get around a semester of your graduate coursework done as an undergraduate. In the unlikely scenario that someone starts as a junior and gets in an accelerated master's program, they could get a Master's at 21-22.5.

If you're going for a Ph.D, you could still get it within four to seven years, meaning it would be anywhere from 28 (as a very high estimate of the lower bound) to 25 (as a low estimate). 

That said: Xenobiology is a dangerous field. You would definitely need some experience working under someone before you're allowed to work unsupervised. 

Also, no one will be leading Research without a graduate degree and workforce research experience. The entire point of a PhD program is to prove that you can manage a research project; having it be the requirement for a Research Director would make sense, and you wouldn't get a Command role without previously having experience in a research job unless you're an IPC.

Therefore, I propose the following:

1. Raise the minimum age for Xenobiology to 28; this implies a bare minimum of a graduate degree and several years of research under a supervisor, i.e. as a lab assistant.
2. Raise the minimum age for Research Directors to 30; you'd need not only a graduate degree, but several years of work experience, ideally with NanoTrasen (or a competitor, assuming you later defect to NT).
3. Keep the requirements for Scientists the same.

However, this doesn't solve the core issue that I feel raising the minimum age is trying to fix: Bad roleplay, a lack of believable research characters, and a general unprofessional quality of roles that should be professional (like Xenobiologists dying every shift). Therefore, I am going to propose some alternate solutions to solve this problem that don't involve something that can easily be fixed by just increasing a number, though probably in another thread.

[Aphelion]

1 hour ago, MoondancerPony said:

However, this doesn't solve the core issue that I feel raising the minimum age is trying to fix: Bad roleplay, a lack of believable research characters, and a general unprofessional quality of roles that should be professional (like Xenobiologists dying every shift). Therefore, I am going to propose some alternate solutions to solve this problem that don't involve something that can easily be fixed by just increasing a number, though probably in another thread.

Slight tangent, but I entirely agree with this point.
Hard to solve, probably doable if we had an actual entry level science role. (One that isn't usually populated with people who already know the role quite well).
Honestly the incompetence in science is tough, since the only effective way to learn science stuff is to actually do it. Not to mention, that's the funnest part of science, learning new mechanics and shit.

[Zundy]

Considering we have Lab Assistants we should probably have a series of tiered roles for science allowing for characters to naturally progress imo but yeah that's for another thread.