No students want to do condensed matter experiments?
I have observed an interesting phenomenon: few of physics students want to join a traditional lab that mainly does transport measurements.
A probably extreme situation happens in the department I got my PhD in a nice public university. The department directory listed 17 faculty members in condensed matter experiment group, 3 associated faculty members, but only 8 graduate students. And among the listed 8 students, I personally know one already defended and left, two are planning to do that next year, and one is taking time off. Although some faculty members have students from other departments, and some students may be not listed, but still the ratio is less than one student for each faculty members.
The situation seems a little better in the place that I am staying as a postdoc, a private university. The department directory listed 7 members in the condensed matter experiment group, but doesn’t separate graduate students from different sub-fields. In our lab that does low temperature experiment, we only have one 6th year graduate student who is leaving the next year. Since the labs are close, I know the situation of other three groups out of the 7. Two have two students and one has probably 6 (really an exception). However, here it seems each group occupies much larger lab space and in principle can accommodate more people.
Isn’t it a little waste of the resource? It is true that the competition in the academy is hard, and getting a PhD in physics is probably no longer a good career choice. But for a group, without incoming students, besides the funding issue, a lot of lab know-how will be lost that makes it more difficult to get new students. Anything can change this? Be more open-minded and encourage students to go to industry? I do not know the answer.