Not to be outdone by Cath, Jenny or Richard, I too have been published this month in Our Most August and Noble Parent, Nature.
-
A Meandering Scholar
Wherein I hope to document the path of change: The continuing evolution of the Postdoctoral Fellow within academia.
-
I Can Has Letter in Nature Too!
- Date:
- Wednesday, 27 Aug ust 2008 - 19:11 UTC
Last updated: Wednesday, 27 Aug 2008 - 19:11 UTC
-
Comments
-
I can has autograph?
Also, my “paper” was a real name in Nature FAIL. Congrats on getting the real thing!
I can no has.
Buggeration, Despite My Athens, cannot access.
Oh, well done! I’ll have to read it later, though.
Ian, you’re a star. I was cheering along with you, being heartily sick of this pervasive myth amongst scientists that we are in danger of running out of scientists and therefore must do everything we can to produce even more postdoctoral burger flippers.
Cath: I’ll email you my John Hancock when I work out how the scanner works…
Graham: It’s a correspondance type letter >:) Jenny gives you the gist in her comment. A Distinguished Prof wrote that we need more scientists & money, I disagreed…
Bob: Cheers mate :)
Jenny: What alarms me still is the fact that “we’re” in Egypt about all this. Almost every postdoc I speak to says (s)he is definitely getting their own lab & gaonna be faculty, and faculty who find out I’m leaving the bench look at me as if I’m a loser/contagious/mad, bad and dangerous to know.
When you point out the stats (freely available) it’s “close the blast doors”, no one wants to know!
Ach. The lunatics are taking over the asylum.
True ‘nuff. But, hang on… you didn’t even “do” a
stint in hellpostdoc!…maybe that’s why you’re the only
dwarf fetishistsane one around here…Excuse me, Madam, but does this bus go to the station?
“Are we training too many students?”
Definitely not. I wish we had some more. If we don’t get more students, they’ll eliminate one of the finest majors in Bioscience engineering here in Leuven (i.e. Land and Forest Management).
“And what should we do with all the postdocs?”
Good question, but i’m not complaining.
(Btw, I Can Has Letter in Nature Two :)
Post-docs, an endangered species. Rumour has it that, with the change in UK employment law, many Russel group universities will no longer be re-employing post-docs after a 3 year contract. They are getting scared of post-docs being declared permanent employees and obtaining redundancy rights.
There is a bit of a delay with all this business, isn’t there? A student entering grad school would not be ready for a professorship for a good decade, at best. If young people now (can’t believe I just used that phrase) are not encouraged (or even actively discouraged) from entering science, will there not be a shortage of them later on?
Just playing devil’s advocate here. Overall, I do agree.
no longer be re-employing post-docs after a 3 year contract
That is already the case in the MRC. Postdocs are re-badged as “Career Development Fellowships” in order to justify a temporary contract for three years. After the 3 years are up then it’s either “goodbye” or in a few cases “would you like to stay for ever?”
Well I think it’s
defintelydefinitely clear (that I can’t spell in the morning), that things are considerably different between the US and Europe (Raf, including you in that: affiliation, not location). I was concerned about this (sort of) when I wrote the rebuttal to Prof. Strange, who is at Reading Uni).Here in the US postdocs are increasingly being used as “slave labor” (their term, not mine). You get a very highly trained scientist, they don’t get benefits and the pay is shite so essentially, financially and scientifically, it makes sense for PIs to employ more postdocs. You get two postdocs for every technician you can hire:
Postdoc = avg. salary US$37,000 with no fringe
technician = avg. salary US$48,000 + 20% fringe costs
It’s horrible. There are thousands and thousands of disenfranchised scientists (mostly foreign born) working in terrible, abusive conditions. OK, it’s not a sweat-shop, but it’s not A) ethical or B) what “we” train for.
In the US, the graduate school system is a cash-cow for the universities. Students generate enormous revenue for their institutions and the US system brings them in by cohorts of 12-20/yr/program. And it’s really hard to get rid of ‘em once they’re in.
I remember when I worked as a tech in the UK, students who didn’t make the grade were shown the door. Sometimes even at viva stage. Here you just become a burden to the lab you’re in, but you usually graduate. Eventually.
Anna: That is a valid point, and I’m certainly not saying we need to have an embargo on training for a generation! LOL But with only 15% of postdocs getting full-time tenure track positions becasue the jobs are’t available “we” need to be preparing our young scientists for the distinct possibility, nay! Certainty, that they’ll likely not be a professor one day.
Hmmm… I smell another blog post in this. I’m co-authoring an opinion article for NAFSA about this issue right now…
Anna> The delay is there for sure and yes, I agree that maybe it is time to be scared of what kind of “regrowth” we will have in the scientific community in say 20 years… but part of that problem (getting enough undergrad/grad students) would be the current situation. [in US] the number of post-docs with nowhere to go after thier 3-5 yrs post doc is growing and there is an abudance of graduates/post docs but after the post doc it is slim chances of getting a grant.
The “non Academia route” is sometimes looked upon as Ian was describing loser/contagious/mad, bad and dangerous to know but more alarming, imho, is that Industry/“regular jobs” don’t necc. want to hire an [overeducated/trained] post doc.
I would second the fact that before you had more undergrad students and sifted through them before graduate school. Now it feels like the sifting comes after a few years of post doc?
I’m not really sure that the idea of “some post docs falling away after thier stint” is a bad one. After all, there would be some people who realise that they might not want to be sceintist. Although, I think that these people probably would have left prior post doc and not “due to funding and the harsh reality” after 5 years of post doc?!
And Ian> I really liked the A major overhaul of the academic training pathway for life-scientists is long overdue
maybe this is the key in order to make some of the scientists/decision makers to look at it with newer eyes. A pathway that is currently over flowing the next level/gene and at the same time having a feed back stating “do not produce more undergraduates”. The system is just a tad bit out of balance…
nice job :)