Shannon Lucid Quotes
When I got my PhD, it was a time when there were just no jobs for PhDs. Period. PhDs were getting the lowest paid technician jobs, if they were lucky, in any kind of science.
Lucid, Shannon. Interview. MAKERS: Women Who Make America, PBS, 2012.
At the time there was great demand for skilled computer programmers and other technical skills. But there was insufficient demand for many of the skills that the American Workforce such as airplane mechanics, or TV Camera people for example.
Uchitelle in writing about one of the nation’s economic recessions thought that it should be an interesting slant to do an article about Harvard alumni who had been laid off to show that education and training were not sufficient to have job security. Lelyveld, one of the greatest newspaper editors in the history of American journalism had also been a Harvard graduate.
He was only referring to the English ships. In addition there were French and German ships plying the Africa trade.
Well over a century ago, this prescient economist pointed out that in a very competitive economy, people would have to develop and have multiple skills to remain employable. The competition also produces technological obsolescence.
Shannon Matilda Wells Lucid is an American biochemist and a retired NASA astronaut. At one time, she held the record for the longest duration stay in space by an American, as well as by a woman. She has flown in space five times including a prolonged mission aboard the Mir space station in 1996; she is the only American woman to have served aboard Mir. In 2002, Discover magazine recognized Lucid as one of the 50 most important women in science.
