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More than 40% of postdocs leave academia, study reveals

nature.com

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Re: More than 40% of postdocs leave academia, study reveals

#121

Post by jltsiren »

openrisk wrote: post #110
chollida1 wrote: post #107

Isn't this a good thing? We want to train highly skilled people and then unleash them in the private sector to create new companies or help push existing companies forward. I'm not sure what the right percentage would be for postdocs leaving academia, but i would have assumed it was around 90% if you made me guess. That just seems healthy.

> We want to train highly skilled people After how many postdocs is one "highly skilled"? Postdocs are foremost a failure of the academic job market (supply of eager researchers much larger than available academic positions) that over time has become some sort of ingrained filtering mechanism.

There are different kinds of postdoc positions.

Fellowships are generally the good ones. You get to explore research directions under the guidance of a more experienced researcher. Because you have independent funding, your mentor is not your boss, and you are relatively free to choose what to work on and how.

On the other end of the spectrum, some postdocs are just people a PI has hired to work on a well-defined project. Either because the institute does not have more appropriate job titles or because postdocs are cheaper than professional researchers. These are fundamentally ordinary jobs, and like any job, they can be good or bad.

Re: More than 40% of postdocs leave academia, study reveals

#122

Post by [deleted] »

s0rce wrote: post #115
karaterobot wrote: post #96

This is only surprising if you expect that every postdoc should stay in academia, or would want to. Being in academia is not the only way to do research, and is not a prerequisite to using your degree. The private sector is a thing, and postdocs leaving academia can do perfectly good work in their field while actually making a grown up salary.

I think that all postdocs should stay in academia, why else would you do a postdoc? I assume (maybe wrong?) that most of the postdocs had intended to stay when starting the postdoc.

[deleted]

Re: More than 40% of postdocs leave academia, study reveals

#125

Post by NotAnOtter »

karaterobot wrote: post #96

This is only surprising if you expect that every postdoc should stay in academia, or would want to. Being in academia is not the only way to do research, and is not a prerequisite to using your degree. The private sector is a thing, and postdocs leaving academia can do perfectly good work in their field while actually making a grown up salary.

I theory the incentive is to 1) eventually become a professor and 2) have more say over what projects you get to work on.

Both of these aren't real incentives for the bottom 80% of postdocs.

Re: More than 40% of postdocs leave academia, study reveals

#126

Post by aleph_minus_one »

chollida1 wrote: post #107

Isn't this a good thing? We want to train highly skilled people and then unleash them in the private sector to create new companies or help push existing companies forward. I'm not sure what the right percentage would be for postdocs leaving academia, but i would have assumed it was around 90% if you made me guess. That just seems healthy.

> We want to train highly skilled people and then unleash them in the private sector to create new companies or help push existing companies forward.

Many of these people will become very frustrated in the private sector because they will very commonly talk to a brick wall with their ideas in the private sector. The private sector is commonly not the kind of environment where highly intelligent, novel, bright ideas are rewarded.

Re: More than 40% of postdocs leave academia, study reveals

#127

Post by dcreater »

dekhn wrote: post #117

my postdoc advisor (a tenured professor at berkeley) made us clean the air vents in the office by standing on a tall ladder with a vacuum as well as clean the floors. I didn't leave academia, but I did leave that lab. That's some sort of power-play I have no time for.

Please name and shame. This is atrocious. Considering the fact that most graduate students/postdocs are immigrants on specific visas, this is tantamount to fraud.

Re: More than 40% of postdocs leave academia, study reveals

#129

Post by abdullahkhalids »

absolutelastone wrote: post #112
karaterobot wrote: post #96

This is only surprising if you expect that every postdoc should stay in academia, or would want to. Being in academia is not the only way to do research, and is not a prerequisite to using your degree. The private sector is a thing, and postdocs leaving academia can do perfectly good work in their field while actually making a grown up salary.

These are good arguments about phd's not going into academia. But a postdoc at a university is an underpaid training position for the most part. Not a worthwhile sacrifice if you want to work in the private sector in my field. Maybe it's more important for industry jobs in biology or something. Personally I think it's a warped system that takes advantage of cheap labor from developing countries. And it feeds itself.…

That's mostly reasonable. But for some people at least, the PhD doesn't give them all the skills they are looking for, so they might do another post-doc (2-3 years at slightly better than PhD lifestyle), before jumping ship.

Re: More than 40% of postdocs leave academia, study reveals

#130

Post by wisty »

burnte wrote: post #119
karaterobot wrote: post #96

This is only surprising if you expect that every postdoc should stay in academia, or would want to. Being in academia is not the only way to do research, and is not a prerequisite to using your degree. The private sector is a thing, and postdocs leaving academia can do perfectly good work in their field while actually making a grown up salary.

Right? I'm surprised 60% stay.

Sunk cost? Selection bias? I don't think you can get a PhD by accident, you have to really want to work in academia (or a specific industry). And I doubt getting a second post doc position is all that hard (as long as you're willing to travel), given they're capable of getting the first one. My understanding is that universities quite like being able to hire cheap, hard working, disposable researchers.

People who go into academia are probably willing to live the life of an underpaid researcher. The fact that they have the post-doc title instead of the professor title probably is that big a deal, nor is the salary going to change their decision. The lack of autonomy is probably annoying, as is the lack of stability. Having to worry that they might change labs and maybe cities every 3 years, and not knowing for sure if they'll get a job is probably the only thing actually making them quit.

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