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Fewer U.S. scientists are pursuing postdoc positions, new data show

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Re: Fewer U.S. scientists are pursuing postdoc positions, new data show

#11

Post by robertlagrant »

alephnerd wrote: post #9
robertlagrant wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Paying postdocs private sector hourly salaries will probably resolve the issue What's the actual issue, though? Is there something bad that this effect is causing?

Salaries are basically limited to $50-70k a year with 50-60 hour workweeks. If you did a PhD in Biochemistry, you could make $100-200k a year plus stock working 40-50 hours a week at most working for Pfizer in Cambridge MA instead of earning around $60k working 50-60 hours as a Postdoc at a regional Boston based program like BU or Northeastern - you have to pay the same amount for rent and groceries, but you earn hal…

But what's the actual problem that fewer postdocs causes?

Re: Fewer U.S. scientists are pursuing postdoc positions, new data show

#12

Post by alephnerd »

betaby wrote: post #10
alephnerd wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The researchers who would replicate studies would be postdocs themselves.

..and having a lot of them didn't improve the situation.

There was a shortage of them already. The shortage only got worse

Re: Fewer U.S. scientists are pursuing postdoc positions, new data show

#13

Post by dreamcompiler »

robertlagrant wrote: post #8
alephnerd wrote: post #2

Unsurprising. The pay sucks, hours are long, and the largest industry to hire postdocs (Biomedical) is going through a fairly severe recession that has impacted lab developers in Boston and SF as well. Edit: My analysis of the second order effect is wrong. From the article - "Much of the shift can be attributed to employment numbers in the biological and biomedical sciences, which saw a 3% drop in the total number of…

> Paying postdocs private sector hourly salaries will probably resolve the issue What's the actual issue, though? Is there something bad that this effect is causing?

Lack of research. Most academic research is done by postdocs through grants from e.g. NSF. NSF and other grantors cap postdoc pay at below living wage in expensive cities like Boston. (The professor and university who hire the postdoc have very little flexibility to pay them more.)

Add that it's a temp job with no security and fewer people want to sign up. So a lot of cutting-edge research can't get done.

Re: Fewer U.S. scientists are pursuing postdoc positions, new data show

#14

Post by nextworddev »

sct202 wrote: post #7

Postdocs are such a scam role. These are PHD educated scientists who have spent 4+ years on PHD getting paid like $50k-$70k/year with basically dead end jobs where they must leave to another place to get a tenure track role since they're already considered 2nd class at the institution the postdoc is at.

I’m guessing one big driver is fewer professor jobs open

Re: Fewer U.S. scientists are pursuing postdoc positions, new data show

#15

Post by COGlory »

I made $16,800 a year while getting my PhD. Sometimes that required me to teach, when we had funding, it was just research. Grueling hours, abusive PI, for 6 years of my life. I helped bring in over 4 million dollars in grants to my university. After about two years, I was highly skilled and founded a new core facility that I kept running for the next 4 years while finishing my PhD.

When I graduated, I had someone offer me $42,000/yr for a postdoc. At age 30. I politely declined and took an industry job for $125k instead.

We don't need H1Bs. We need better PhD student and postdoc wages.

Re: Fewer U.S. scientists are pursuing postdoc positions, new data show

#16

Post by alephnerd »

robertlagrant wrote: post #11
alephnerd wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Salaries are basically limited to $50-70k a year with 50-60 hour workweeks. If you did a PhD in Biochemistry, you could make $100-200k a year plus stock working 40-50 hours a week at most working for Pfizer in Cambridge MA instead of earning around $60k working 50-60 hours as a Postdoc at a regional Boston based program like BU or Northeastern - you have to pay the same amount for rent and groceries, but you earn hal…

But what's the actual problem that fewer postdocs causes?

Much less experimental and fundamental research.

Companies aren't going to invest in experimental research in the biotech space as the costs are so high.

Most compounds end up getting validated in some way shape or form by researchers, then productionized by the private sector.

This has a pipeline effect on development in the industry.

For example, mRNA Vaccine research was purely experimental research done by postdocs and junior researchers at UPenn in the 1990s, before being commercialized by BioNtech and Moderna in the mid-2000s.

Re: Fewer U.S. scientists are pursuing postdoc positions, new data show

#19

Post by alephnerd »

COGlory wrote: post #15

I made $16,800 a year while getting my PhD. Sometimes that required me to teach, when we had funding, it was just research. Grueling hours, abusive PI, for 6 years of my life. I helped bring in over 4 million dollars in grants to my university. After about two years, I was highly skilled and founded a new core facility that I kept running for the next 4 years while finishing my PhD. When I graduated, I had someone of…

> We don't need H1Bs. We need better PhD student and postdoc wages.

You need both.

Your PhD classmates from abroad (most likely Russia, China, Korea, and India) would have gotten an H1B after they graduated from the PhD program, and their (edit: post-) postdoc employment would have been on an H1B.

I'm assuming this was the late 1990s or early 2000s based on the numbers provided

One of my friends who did their PhD and postdoc at Stanford has been facing the J1 to H1B hellhole because employers increasingly make the applicant pay for the entire O-1 process now. They decided to screw the whole process and return to China.

Re: Fewer U.S. scientists are pursuing postdoc positions, new data show

#20

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS »

nextworddev wrote: post #14
sct202 wrote: post #7

Postdocs are such a scam role. These are PHD educated scientists who have spent 4+ years on PHD getting paid like $50k-$70k/year with basically dead end jobs where they must leave to another place to get a tenure track role since they're already considered 2nd class at the institution the postdoc is at.

I’m guessing one big driver is fewer professor jobs open

Yeah the competition for those professor jobs is pretty fierce. Don’t you basically have to do a postdoc to be considered for a tenure track position in the States these days (unless you are some prodigy)?
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