That’s way too low. What are the other 60% thinking?
More than 40% of postdocs leave academia, study reveals
151–160 of 250 posts
Re: More than 40% of postdocs leave academia, study reveals
#152I'd argue it's likely that there are _too many_ postdocs pursuing it in the first place.
Re: More than 40% of postdocs leave academia, study reveals
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
Postdocs always seemed like a scam to me. Almost by definition, if you're doing a Postdoc in a STEM field, you're probably qualified for a relatively well-paying job in industry [1]. And it's not like universities don't know this, people have been complaining about it for forever. They know if they were to just hire a person with a relevant PhD to do work, they'd ask for a good wage, so instead they dangle this "mayb…
> Almost by definition, if you're doing a Postdoc in a STEM field, you're probably qualified for a relatively well-paying job in industry Be careful: many people who are great postdocs are rather overqualified (and thus rather not suitable) for many jobs in industry. Getting well-payed in industry requires in my opinion skills that are opposite to those that make you a great postdoc: In industry you must not be a tru…
That depends entirely on the company. Where I am, what you say is mostly nonsense. Postdocs usually end up being the people leading (head down focused design or management) new projects that are directly or indirectly related to their research.
Re: More than 40% of postdocs leave academia, study reveals
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
isn't competition good for innovation?
As a former postdoc in the physical sciences (who is now out of academia mostly for family reasons), I don't like the constant argument I hear about whether competition is good or bad in research and especially academic research. I think it is the wrong question. Competition is inherently good in that whatever researchers are competing over will be optimized in the long run. We wish that we were optimizing for new/gr…
Thanks for sharing this. I basically agree, and have a lot to say about the neither-black-nor-white state of academia but have never managed to communicate my thoughts as well as you did here.
Re: More than 40% of postdocs leave academia, study reveals
#155My spouse is a molecular biologist pursuing her PhD in RNA therapy. She works ~2x longer and 10x harder than I do, with only a third of the yield. You can only sustain that for so long. She's in academia solely because she's good at it. However, there are a few things I've observed from the sidelines: - PIs can make your life absolutely miserable for no reason, and it's difficult to switch labs if you're otherwise ma…
Poor pay is an understatement. Back in 2010’s when I graduated, I was making USD$21K per year! If you calculate the hourly rate it is probably close to $3/hour given that PhDs work every day, and specially in the holidays that the advisor has more free time. We were jokingly say that they don’t dare to call it a salary, that is why they call it a stipend.
are you in the US? that's surprisingly low as by the mid/late 2010's PhD students in stem fields were averaging 30k. for the many postdocs on nih-supported grants i seem to remember ~60k being standard at that time. eg https://www.niaid.nih.gov/grants-contracts/salary-cap-stipen... .
Re: More than 40% of postdocs leave academia, study reveals
#156what does it mean to "leave" acadamia? Like it somehow goes away if your not part of an institution?
You cut your ties with it. You go away, it stays.
Re: More than 40% of postdocs leave academia, study reveals
#157Not surprising. I quit after about a year. I could have stayed on but I realized that it just wasn't right for me. By then I had figured out that most research is done by post docs and phd students and it doesn't pay very well. Not that I cared about the money but I started thinking about what is next and did not like the perspective. Professors are basically there to manage the process and haggle for funding. They t…
This shift from hands on research to project management is pretty similar in industry from what I have seen. All of our principal applied scientists basically do the same thing. They don't really spend any time actually getting their hands dirty. Maybe other companies are different?
Re: More than 40% of postdocs leave academia, study reveals
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It's entirely anecdotal, but in my experience in academia (which consisted of 4 years of post-master's PhD), I've seen this happen exactly 0 times.
In a lot of fields, postdocs are required if you want a shot at a tenure-track position.
For the most part, it’s just another artificial rung the system uses to justify exploiting people.
Re: More than 40% of postdocs leave academia, study reveals
#159This 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.…
generally you are somewhat right, but it's complicated by country. for example it would be less surprising that a UK-style 3 year PhD might want a couple more years training after.
Re: More than 40% of postdocs leave academia, study reveals
#160This 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 don't think I ever remember a time when the walls of the pyramid were shallow enough that the base could support all of the people at the top. 2 out of 5 people getting all the way to the end and discovering that research or teaching are not them living their best life sounds either very sad or pretty good depending on your perspective. A lot of people convince themselves that what they aren't feeling now will fina…
* discovering that research or teaching are not them living their best life sounds either very sad or pretty good depending on your perspective.*
It’s not the research or teaching that drive people out of academia. It’s the endless and humiliating scrambling for money. Everyone who’s not a psychopath hates that part of the job, and the people who are any good at it have options outside of academia.