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Postdocs under pressure: ‘Can I even do this any more?’

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Re: Postdocs under pressure: ‘Can I even do this any more?’

#151

Post by physicsguy »

angrais wrote: post #102
yodsanklai wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but it absolutely does exist and is unfortunately thriving I'm sure it exists. I may be wrong since it's based on personal experience, but I can't believe it's thriving (at least, in my field, computer science). These things are taken more and more seriously. If anything, I can only imagine they occur less and less frequently.

In my experience, and that of my colleagues within a UK institution, also in computer science, the university does indeed take it seriously. We've had external auditors come in and ultimately do nothing. The problem is that the university is setup to protect itself when such reports are made, so rarely is anyone fired or such. It's a much worse situation for the student than academic.

I live in the U.K. and did my PhD in a big department.

A friend of mine got cancer and then was told by his supervisor after he returned that he wasn’t good enough anymore and he should quit. He found a new supervisor and is now doing fine.

A female colleague did her PhD in Sweden and got hit on by her supervisor who kept staring at her chest every meeting, and eventually led to her leaving academia entirely.

That’s a minority of people I know working in academia but it’s not small.

Re: Postdocs under pressure: ‘Can I even do this any more?’

#152

Post by phist_mcgee »

blackrock wrote: post #120
phist_mcgee wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a PhD. The acquisition of that certification was perhaps the most meaningless thing of my life. Behind my Bachelor's by far. No one was really proud of me, and I only finished it because I have a problem with not finishing things. Finish it if you have it in you, cut it loose if you do not. Dr. means nothing, and no one in the real world will care either way.

What field is your PhD in?

Computer Science. But it was quite qualitative and involved a fair bit of human research as well.

Re: Postdocs under pressure: ‘Can I even do this any more?’

#153

Post by jpeloquin »

mattkrause wrote: post #139
supernova87a wrote: post #31

I mean, isn't it clear, ever since the bulk creation / funding of so many colleges (and faculty positions) pre + post WW2, the US faculty job market has been on a decline ever since -- (that is, from the average postdoc's point of view of success % when seeking a faculty position). It is structurally not a growing, dynamic market where you're going to have an easy time. I would call it stagnant, or in the worst case,…

> there's just no spot for the people below even to compete This is often stated like a fact of life, but it’s really just a decision that we’ve collectively made. The NIH and NSF will happily give you $75,000 to train three grad students, but not to hire one experienced staff scientist, even though there may be few positions for the students at the end and the staff scientist may be more efficient.

Where extramural NIH competing grant application are concerned, I thought PIs were pretty much free to include a staff scientist, or anyone else, in the budget as "key personnel". Anecdotally, the NIH hasn't raised this as an issue in any of the grants I've been involved with. Would you mind clarifying the context in which you've seen / heard of the NIH requiring budget revisions to exclude staff?

Overall I agree that the NIH & NSF extramural funding policy is designed with the sole goal of maximizing the number of tenure-track faculty. The messaging around sequestration, and the Grant Support Index mechanism, made it explicit that the main policy goal was to keep creating tenure-track faculty at the same rate. Even if this isn't sustainable. There are many programs to buoy the supply of (aspiring) tenure-track faculty, but few for any other career path. I'm just not aware of any policies to prevent grant recipients from hiring staff should they choose to do so.

Re: Postdocs under pressure: ‘Can I even do this any more?’

#154

Post by mattkrause »

jpeloquin wrote: post #153
mattkrause wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's just no spot for the people below even to compete This is often stated like a fact of life, but it’s really just a decision that we’ve collectively made. The NIH and NSF will happily give you $75,000 to train three grad students, but not to hire one experienced staff scientist, even though there may be few positions for the students at the end and the staff scientist may be more efficient.

Where extramural NIH competing grant application are concerned, I thought PIs were pretty much free to include a staff scientist, or anyone else, in the budget as "key personnel". Anecdotally, the NIH hasn't raised this as an issue in any of the grants I've been involved with. Would you mind clarifying the context in which you've seen / heard of the NIH requiring budget revisions to exclude staff? Overall I agree tha…

It's not so much a policy itself so much as it is the entirely-foreseeable consequence of other policies. As far as I know, the NIH has only one mechanism for directly supporting staff scientists: the R50. I think the NCI is the only institute that does them, and there aren't many.

You're right that staff scientist can, theoretically, be funded by research project grants...but it's tricky. Students and postdoc funding comes from many sources: institutional training grants to the program, individual fellowships from the NIH, NSF, and private foundations, and sometimes even internal money (either as a RAship or in exchange for TAing). Virtually all of these are limited to those within a few years of their PhD[0]. Anyone more senior needs to be paid from research funds. The "workhorse" grant of the NIH is an R01. Most labs have 1, maybe 2, and their standard "modular" budget is $250k/year [1]. Profs with soft money jobs typically have to cover much of their salary from these grants. Adding on another $75k + 25-30% fringe for a staff scientist therefore puts a pretty big hole in the budget, even before you've started to buy reagents, equipment, scan time, etc.

This biases labs towards hiring trainees. Even if you are paying several of them them with grant money now, there's a decent chance that some of them can be moved onto a non-research grant funding stream later. In contrast, the staff scientist costs more now and will definitely cost even more later. Some places are also wary of letting staff scientists write grants[2], which makes it even harder for them to defray their own costs.

[0] The CZI-funded "Imaging Scientist" is one notable exception, but for a fairly specific type of person.

[1] You can do some extra paperwork to request more than this amount, but people's advice on whether this is wise is all over the map and depends on your study section, career stage, and the phase of the moon.

[2] Ghostwriting one for the prof to submit is an option, but an unsatisfying one since it won't show up on your CV, which makes it harder to (eventually) move on.

Re: Postdocs under pressure: ‘Can I even do this any more?’

#155

Post by mattkrause »

chrisseaton wrote: post #147
valarauko wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fresh postdoc able to secure an academic job joins as an "Assistant Professor". Fresh Assistant Professors usually cannot recruit PhD students, have limited funds to establish their lab, and no job security. It takes several grades and 15+ years to reach the position of "Professor", which comes with tenure.

I don't understand how you can go from being a postdoc to being a professor. That seems to really diminish the value of the title 'professor' to me, if people can get it as basically their first permanent academic job.

What do you think the intermediate job should be?

For what it's worth, the job titles can be ambiguous.

The formal progression in the US/Canada is usually "Assistant Professor" -> "Associate Professor" -> "Professor." However, someone in any of these positions can be called a (lowercase-p) "professor", with the most senior job referred to as a "Full (or University) Professor."

Re: Postdocs under pressure: ‘Can I even do this any more?’

#156

Post by mattkrause »

michaelhoffman wrote: post #42
chrisseaton wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know what you mean by my "chair". Becoming a professor is called getting your 'chair' isn't it? I don't know any professors who don't also have tenure - that seems a contradiction in terms to me. But if you don't know what I mean we're probably talking about different things and possibly talking at cross-purposes.

> Becoming a professor is called getting your 'chair' isn't it? No. > I don't know any professors who don't also have tenure - that seems a contradiction in terms to me. Assistant professors generally do not have tenure, and at some institutions being an associate professor or full professor is no guarantee either. > But if you don't know what I mean we're probably talking about different things and possibly talking…

I think this is a confusion between "professor" (i.e., anyone on the tenure track) and "Professor" (i.e., Full/University Professor).

Re: Postdocs under pressure: ‘Can I even do this any more?’

#157

Post by mattkrause »

DrAwdeOccarim wrote: post #90
ramraj07 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the nearly unlimited potential upside" is very low probability, and if people are being fully honest with themselves, they often already know before they start their postdoc whether it's going to be worth their time. The reality is that in academia, pedigree matters, being surrounded by very smart people matters, name matters. If you don't have all of these then your postdoc is doomed to be nothing more than a medio…

It's like a weighting function to your research output: (Pedigree + Name of PI) * first author CNS papers. You sure can succeed with a ton of first author CNS papers, but if you have some good pedigree and name of PI you don't need any many.

And of course, your ability to get CNS papers is strongly determined by your Pedigree + PI too.

It obviously matters when submitting a paper, but it even determines what sort of experiments you can afford to work on and for how long. An HHMI-funded megalab can keep throwing things at the wall until they find some CNS-bait. Smaller groups may have to publish something to keep the lights on, even if it's less "complete."

Re: Postdocs under pressure: ‘Can I even do this any more?’

#158

Post by flobosg »

flobosg wrote: post #4

I’m currently writing my dissertation and still debating whether to stay in academia or not. I mean, even if I had not been academically unsuccessful during grad school I will get a piece of paper saying "You have a PhD" in the end. If you fail during your postdoc you are left with basically nothing. That’s a huge burden.

I just find a typo! I meant

> even if I had not been academically successful

Sorry about that.

Re: Postdocs under pressure: ‘Can I even do this any more?’

#159

Post by PeterisP »

chrisseaton wrote: post #19
aaronblohowiak wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you get lucky in academia you get the possibility of tenure track which is a made race to publish and that means not only doing your research, but grant writing, dealing with internal politics and discovering life as a manager of grad students... oh yea, and can you lecture these undergrads too?

This isn't what I see in practice. Most professional researchers at the level of being a professor teach a couple of masters lectures for topics they're genuinely interested in and the rest of the time enjoy working on their research.

There's a significant gap between the experience of a bunch of elite research-oriented universities, and the vast majority of universities where the professors are not "professional researchers at the level of being a professor" but rather teaching staff that might try to get some minimal research done but don't get much support and aren't really expected to succeed.

The professors we read about on HN are the exception rather than the norm. The median professor working in a mid-rank institution (not a top-100 institution, not even close to that) does have academic freedom, but most of their time is taken with non-research duties, they do not have an a research group under him/her as they do not have an active research grant which would fund that, and so the median professor does a very limited amount of research which comes out, if I recall the statistics correctly, to approx. 1 paper per year.

Re: Postdocs under pressure: ‘Can I even do this any more?’

#160

Post by PeterisP »

chrisseaton wrote: post #37
michaelhoffman wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what you mean by my "chair". The biggest worry for most professors I talk to in grant-funded fields (which is most of the natural sciences and engineering) is not getting grant funding and having to lay off some or all members of our research group. In Canada, biomedical grant application success rates are around 14% so this is a pretty big worry. People who are pre-tenure or in organizational units wher…

> I don't know what you mean by my "chair". Becoming a professor is called getting your 'chair' isn't it? I don't know any professors who don't also have tenure - that seems a contradiction in terms to me. But if you don't know what I mean we're probably talking about different things and possibly talking at cross-purposes.

An "endowed chair" is the best type of full professorship, but it's an exception rather than the norm. There are elite institutions where most full professorships are endowed chairs, there are very wealthy institutions where that happens for lower titles, but in general most professorships are not as such.

Furthermore, it's not something that's available right away (exceptions do happen for exceptional people, but they're exceptions).

For a random example of a successful professor, look at the carreer ot Terrence Tao (https://www.math.ucla.edu/~tao/preprints/cv.html), James and Carol Collins chair in mathematics at UCLA. He got his PhD in 1996, got full professorship at 2000, and was a non-tenured non-chaired Assistant Professor for the four years in between.

Seriously, just look up a random professor from your local community college (not something like Stanford) and take a look at their CV - how many years it took for them until the full professor position.

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