I was a Life Sciences PhD student for 6 years and started a postdoc, but then jumped ship and became a software developer for a non-science company. My salary is more than 2x as high as what I was making as a postdoc, and 3x greater than what I had been living on as a grad student. The salary thing is huge. From my point of view, research science was becoming a luxury/hobby profession of people whose spouses make a lot of money or who are independently wealthy.
The only two solutions I see are either funding for NIH and basic sciences drastically increases (my preferred solution), or there is some breakthrough which makes biotech and life sciences industry more profitable and able to hire all the entry level PhDs.
Notice how the engineering and physics PhDs make up only a small fraction of the donut chart? That's because those folks graduate with skills that are desirable to industry because they can translate into profit. The biotech industry does not need smart and inexperienced idea people. The biotech industry prefers very senior level scientists with proven track records of profitability, and worker drones who have bachelors or masters degrees who are not on the scientist track.
When I started my bio PhD, people were looking at me in puzzlement when I started spending more time programming and doing math. Now that I am in the software industry, a lot of them are asking me how to get a job.
>From my point of view, research science was becoming a luxury/hobby profession of people whose spouses make a lot of money or who are independently wealthy.
Up through the 19th century, this was primarily the case. Of course back then there was a lot of low hanging fruit as compared to now.
My sister recently finished a postdoc and her and her husband moved to the SF area (Mountain View), and quickly realized she couldn't do another one (that limit mentioned in the article I'm gathering). She's not had any luck finding a job in her niche (Virology), and I suggested she hop on a bootcamp type training for software development. She's right there where it's hopping, she could pull it off (she's smarter than I am and I manage).
She's fallen off the face of the earth I guess. I've tried contacting her a few times over the last month or two and never get a response. Maybe she's busy doing just that. Hopefully, the way she was talking finding an Industry job with her PhD is hard.
One problem is that being a PI no longer seems to mean what it used to. For a PI, productivity is writing grants and getting other smart people to do research and write papers. While it may vary from field to field, I've worked for several PIs who have fantastic funding and are great at marketing their research, but don't have the knowledge to reproduce their own labs' experiments. My impression is that, for many successful scientists, the career arc goes something like:
- Get really good at doing science as a graduate student and postdoc.
- Become a junior PI, spend most of your time selling your science, and train your graduate students and postdocs for a few years. You need to keep up with the literature to know what to do next, but you rarely have time to perform experiments yourself.
- Become a senior PI. Now your lab is established, and you can hire half a dozen knowledgeable postdocs to teach the others in your lab. As your field advances, you need to keep up enough to sell the discoveries your lab has made to grant review panels, but you don't actually have to know how to do the science. That's for those below you.
There are some clear exceptions. Some PIs really do know how to do everything. Some PIs even keep running experiments while also writing grants and running a lab, although that's not necessarily an easy task. But for most PIs, the arc above seems to be the way it goes. You take the brightest, most talented scientists, and once they reach they become really knowledgeable, you turn them into professional grantwriters.
I'm not sure what the solution is, but I feel like there has to be a better way. To start, maybe we should think about limiting lab size, so that your lab seeks to maximize the productivity per employed scientist rather than the total amount of funding that you can obtain. Without so much pressure to accumulate funds to grow their labs, perhaps PIs could spend less time writing grants and more time running labs. Also, with smaller labs you can afford to hire more PIs and give a career path to more of the postdocs that you are "training."
I liked your post and agree that this is a really fundamental problem. However, I disagree with this:
Also, with smaller labs you can afford to hire more PIs and give a career path to more of the postdocs that you are "training."
That would probably be better for the postdocs, but I think it would have a negative impact on the overall production of new science. A PI who runs a big lab with a proven track record of success is going to be a better investment most of the time. Splitting the labs up also means that even more people are exposed to the type of grantwriting inefficiencies that you describe above.
What I like about the superdoc idea is that right now (modulo some pretty rare positions) science feels like "PI or bust." I think there are lots of people who can make useful scientific contributions but probably shouldn't be PIs. Figuring out something for these people would be good for them and (IMO) good for the system.
The Germans have a simple and efficient system: you can only be employed as a graduate researcher at a University for 6 years. If you get a PhD, the time increases to a total of 12 years. If you make it to professor (full, not assistant or associate) in that time, you'll get hired for life. If not: goodbye.
Oh, you worked as a lab assistant while studying to get a food in the door / gain some experience / pimp your CV? Tough luck: if you did that for more than 10 hours per week, this time is counted toward your 6 (or 12) years.
This beautiful regulation comes by the beautiful name of the Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz.
Cutting back on PhDs generated would be a good idea, but is probably an even harder sell (so much cheap labor!)
If postdocs are so prized, then one obvious solution is to reward them. Both the 2014 National Academies report and earlier reports urged US lab heads to consider creating senior staff scientist, or ‘superdoc’, positions. These would be higher-paid, permanent jobs for talented postdocs who have no desire to start their own labs.
This type of thing becoming more common would fix a lot of academic career problems. I think it would also be a very good first step in actually reducing the number of incoming PhD students, since the productivity of such a researcher will usually exceed the amount of graduate student you could replace them with.
As someone who had to work really hard to get into a PhD program, but now has a great job as a research scientist and is going to be starting a professorship in August, I have to disagree with giving out fewer PhDs as a solution. People that want to pursue careers in research should be allowed to get the necessary training. What we need is to have considerably better mentoring and training in jobs outside of academia during the PhD: science communication, industry, entrepreneurship, teaching, science policy advising, and consulting. I think a postdoc's value largely consists in improving one's credentials for academia, so only the few PhDs with a realistic chance of getting a professorship after their PhD should spend more than a year or so doing one.
Actually, the string theory group at Rutgers rather impressed me. Given the extremely weak job market for string theorists, they decided to limit the number of students that they took on to the very few that they thought would have a chance at finding a permanent job eventually...
Article touches on some realities that I've witnessed first-hand, such as a starting salary of US$42,840, which, let's be honest, doesn't really go up that much over the course of 3, 5 or 10 years. Maybe $10k more after 10 years. These are, mostly, people who took out loans to achieve a PhD in a true STEM field...you know, the EXACT professional area that a great number of political / economic / intellectual "leaders" say we need to further support.
Yet there's the persistent decline in NIH funding, money going to "safe" research topics (as in, no room to grow the field, just backing winners), and the looming shadow of arrangements where publicly funded research is channelled into private or otherwise "protected" areas. The glut of post docs is basically the symptom of this disease that is ruining a professional, highly skilled field. According to the article, the recommendations put forward recently are similar to the ones mentioned 15 years ago - so, the problem was ignored then / kicked down the road - and now we're on the cusp of a gigantic pile of non-performing student loans because there's no work to be had to earn an income and repay the loans that were taken out in pursuit of work.
It's really too bad. This is no easy conundrum, not at all. What's the best advice? If you're looking into bench science as a career, DON'T. Become a veterenarian. Go into geriatric nursing. Basically do anything but try to make a living in science, because it's simply not worth trying anymore.
I have finished my 5 year postdoc in bioinformatics, writing mainly 10K lines of C/C++, setting up big-data servers with commodity hardware, for two projects. 1 got published in Nature Methods, one in Nucleic Acids Res. I have no intention to continue in this system in a deeply financially distressed state and am looking for good ideas going forward. Opening a lab and writing grants is out of question for me.
You shouldn't need to be doing a Master's, PhD, postdoc, or have tenure to do science and succeed. The problem is the credentialing. The impossible task is to get rid of all the fuddy-duddy decision makers (including the vast majority of postdocs themselves!) who buy into the system because... "I suffered and made it, so that's what these whipper-snappers should do too!".
note: I have PhD from a top tier university and will soon be a professor at another top tier university. And yes, I badly want things to change and to be to able to hire high school kids or soccer moms but won't be able to under the current system.
I am perplexed by the so-called postgraduate studies and their reward systems. I completed my PhD (in my last 20s) in a second world country about few years ago and continued working as a faculty at a neighbouring university in the same country. I pulled out (or technically resigned) as a senior lecturer, when I couldn't endure being bullied any longer by my senior academics, who had only earned their "DTech" in their 50+ yrs of age.
I am now working with a pretty new institution in a first world country and will be starting a Postdoc soon. Taking a look at the salary for the Postdoc, it's like I am back to the same rat race as a PhD student years ago. And I now have a family! The new job, though a permanent position, isn't a full-time; so, all employees are advised to look elsewhere. All effort to get into the industry proved abortive; and I saw that a number of my folks in the industry are earning 10-20k more than me (i.e. senior dev. vs senior faculty). Yet they don't have those fanciful postgraduate degrees.
The postdoc opportunity, as for now, seems to be an avenue to get into a top-tier or well-established institution in the first world country though. The long and the short of it is that academics don't get rewarded like their peers in the industry. In addition, postdoc offers are just another way of being a student - call it a professional student. But I will console myself be calling it a consultant. The postdoc offer isn't that bad compared to others that I had. It includes travelling to another first world country for a year or more to complete the other part of my research.
I would support the "superdoc" idea--but I also think that in some fields, we need to allow graduate students (and postdocs) a certain amount of time for career development. If someone wants to do a PhD in physics because they love it, but wants to pick up some CS or finance courses along the way to hedge their bets, we should encourage that...
On one hand, it appears this article is talking about it trying to keep these postdocs in academia (noting the statement in the article of equal numbers of NYU postdocs leaving academia following the position cutting).
Ignoring that, as someone involved in a group with 4 open positions that have been open for the better part of a year, the shortage is there. It's not so much that there is a shortage of people capable of applying who "kind of" meet the requirements, but truly capable engineers in this field who could pick up the work required are definitely in short supply, PhDs or no.
As complete nonsense from people who believe the labour market should be replaced by socialist managers able to dictate the price independently of actual supply and demand.
These people are often described in the press as "business leaders".
There's a shortage of jobs for people with genuine STEM degrees to fill, in academic research specifically, so that's a pretty strong start. I don't have the numbers offhand, but NIH funding has been significantly reduced. States, such as Wisconsin, have reduced contributions to higher education. Thus, we are in the midst of a shortage of effective STEM research and development. It is a self-inflicted wound.
[+] [-] xb|11 years ago|reply
The only two solutions I see are either funding for NIH and basic sciences drastically increases (my preferred solution), or there is some breakthrough which makes biotech and life sciences industry more profitable and able to hire all the entry level PhDs.
Notice how the engineering and physics PhDs make up only a small fraction of the donut chart? That's because those folks graduate with skills that are desirable to industry because they can translate into profit. The biotech industry does not need smart and inexperienced idea people. The biotech industry prefers very senior level scientists with proven track records of profitability, and worker drones who have bachelors or masters degrees who are not on the scientist track.
[+] [-] IndianAstronaut|11 years ago|reply
>From my point of view, research science was becoming a luxury/hobby profession of people whose spouses make a lot of money or who are independently wealthy.
Up through the 19th century, this was primarily the case. Of course back then there was a lot of low hanging fruit as compared to now.
[+] [-] will_work4tears|11 years ago|reply
She's fallen off the face of the earth I guess. I've tried contacting her a few times over the last month or two and never get a response. Maybe she's busy doing just that. Hopefully, the way she was talking finding an Industry job with her PhD is hard.
[+] [-] simonster|11 years ago|reply
- Get really good at doing science as a graduate student and postdoc.
- Become a junior PI, spend most of your time selling your science, and train your graduate students and postdocs for a few years. You need to keep up with the literature to know what to do next, but you rarely have time to perform experiments yourself.
- Become a senior PI. Now your lab is established, and you can hire half a dozen knowledgeable postdocs to teach the others in your lab. As your field advances, you need to keep up enough to sell the discoveries your lab has made to grant review panels, but you don't actually have to know how to do the science. That's for those below you.
There are some clear exceptions. Some PIs really do know how to do everything. Some PIs even keep running experiments while also writing grants and running a lab, although that's not necessarily an easy task. But for most PIs, the arc above seems to be the way it goes. You take the brightest, most talented scientists, and once they reach they become really knowledgeable, you turn them into professional grantwriters.
I'm not sure what the solution is, but I feel like there has to be a better way. To start, maybe we should think about limiting lab size, so that your lab seeks to maximize the productivity per employed scientist rather than the total amount of funding that you can obtain. Without so much pressure to accumulate funds to grow their labs, perhaps PIs could spend less time writing grants and more time running labs. Also, with smaller labs you can afford to hire more PIs and give a career path to more of the postdocs that you are "training."
[+] [-] bkcooper|11 years ago|reply
Also, with smaller labs you can afford to hire more PIs and give a career path to more of the postdocs that you are "training."
That would probably be better for the postdocs, but I think it would have a negative impact on the overall production of new science. A PI who runs a big lab with a proven track record of success is going to be a better investment most of the time. Splitting the labs up also means that even more people are exposed to the type of grantwriting inefficiencies that you describe above.
What I like about the superdoc idea is that right now (modulo some pretty rare positions) science feels like "PI or bust." I think there are lots of people who can make useful scientific contributions but probably shouldn't be PIs. Figuring out something for these people would be good for them and (IMO) good for the system.
[+] [-] kleiba|11 years ago|reply
Oh, you worked as a lab assistant while studying to get a food in the door / gain some experience / pimp your CV? Tough luck: if you did that for more than 10 hours per week, this time is counted toward your 6 (or 12) years.
This beautiful regulation comes by the beautiful name of the Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz.
[+] [-] detaro|11 years ago|reply
a) become professors and suddenly (have to) care about other things than teaching
and/or
b) they have to leave (either because they become professor somewhere else or because they didn't at all)
[+] [-] dnautics|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bkcooper|11 years ago|reply
If postdocs are so prized, then one obvious solution is to reward them. Both the 2014 National Academies report and earlier reports urged US lab heads to consider creating senior staff scientist, or ‘superdoc’, positions. These would be higher-paid, permanent jobs for talented postdocs who have no desire to start their own labs.
This type of thing becoming more common would fix a lot of academic career problems. I think it would also be a very good first step in actually reducing the number of incoming PhD students, since the productivity of such a researcher will usually exceed the amount of graduate student you could replace them with.
[+] [-] chriskanan|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ylem|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gaius|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 6stringmerc|11 years ago|reply
Yet there's the persistent decline in NIH funding, money going to "safe" research topics (as in, no room to grow the field, just backing winners), and the looming shadow of arrangements where publicly funded research is channelled into private or otherwise "protected" areas. The glut of post docs is basically the symptom of this disease that is ruining a professional, highly skilled field. According to the article, the recommendations put forward recently are similar to the ones mentioned 15 years ago - so, the problem was ignored then / kicked down the road - and now we're on the cusp of a gigantic pile of non-performing student loans because there's no work to be had to earn an income and repay the loans that were taken out in pursuit of work.
It's really too bad. This is no easy conundrum, not at all. What's the best advice? If you're looking into bench science as a career, DON'T. Become a veterenarian. Go into geriatric nursing. Basically do anything but try to make a living in science, because it's simply not worth trying anymore.
[+] [-] searine|11 years ago|reply
Most graduate STEM students have tuition reimbursed and are paid a stipend.
There is still a glut of post-docs though, and 42K isn't a living wage for a 30 year old person with that kind of skill.
[+] [-] noipv4|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] untilHellbanned|11 years ago|reply
note: I have PhD from a top tier university and will soon be a professor at another top tier university. And yes, I badly want things to change and to be to able to hire high school kids or soccer moms but won't be able to under the current system.
[+] [-] drethemadrapper|11 years ago|reply
I am now working with a pretty new institution in a first world country and will be starting a Postdoc soon. Taking a look at the salary for the Postdoc, it's like I am back to the same rat race as a PhD student years ago. And I now have a family! The new job, though a permanent position, isn't a full-time; so, all employees are advised to look elsewhere. All effort to get into the industry proved abortive; and I saw that a number of my folks in the industry are earning 10-20k more than me (i.e. senior dev. vs senior faculty). Yet they don't have those fanciful postgraduate degrees.
The postdoc opportunity, as for now, seems to be an avenue to get into a top-tier or well-established institution in the first world country though. The long and the short of it is that academics don't get rewarded like their peers in the industry. In addition, postdoc offers are just another way of being a student - call it a professional student. But I will console myself be calling it a consultant. The postdoc offer isn't that bad compared to others that I had. It includes travelling to another first world country for a year or more to complete the other part of my research.
[+] [-] asmicom|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ylem|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanAndersen|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noobiemcfoob|11 years ago|reply
Ignoring that, as someone involved in a group with 4 open positions that have been open for the better part of a year, the shortage is there. It's not so much that there is a shortage of people capable of applying who "kind of" meet the requirements, but truly capable engineers in this field who could pick up the work required are definitely in short supply, PhDs or no.
[+] [-] tjradcliffe|11 years ago|reply
These people are often described in the press as "business leaders".
[+] [-] 6stringmerc|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] civilian|11 years ago|reply
Technology, Engineering, Math--- yes, there's a shortage.
Sciences like physics and chemistry (especially petrochemistry!) are definitely still needed.
Sciences like biology and life sciences have far too many graduates. Graduates like me (B.S. in Biochem) and I'm now doing webdev!!!
[+] [-] ForHackernews|11 years ago|reply
The "STEM shortage" meme is pushed by capitalists who want a cheap and compliant workforce.
[+] [-] mcmancini|11 years ago|reply