Backside of the scientific medal

Yesterday I bumped into one of my old friends from Copenhagen University, which like me was working on a facinating scientific project, but only recieved minimum wage (or maybe even lower, not sure). He was working in the Space department/Mars group collaborating with NASA regarding the new "Curiosity" rover on Mars. We both joked about the time and effort we had spent on university degrees just to come out to a society where there was no "real" jobs for us. Then he told me a story about one of his collaborators in USA that had programmed and was controlling the camera of Curiosity. He was now waiting tables at a cafe as a main job, and making sure that the camera of Curiosity was working right in his spare time... even at that level, even after the tremendious feat of getting the rover to Mars there is not enough funding for the scientist and engineers. I hope things change soon...