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More than 40% of postdocs leave academia, study reveals

nature.com

21–30 of 250 posts

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

#21
post #15

I'm not sure about the situation elsewhere, but in Lithuania, it feels like professors produce articles or tackle topics solely to check a box. Most of the content generated by universities here seems completely irrelevant and ends up being discarded after completion. The courses are very bland and uninformative too.

Oh don't you worry, most of them are like that almost everywhere.

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

#22
post #2

Logic checks out. Not everyone should be a professor. The question is: should they have done a PhD and postdoc?

It's like being a professional athlete. Until you get to the first division you don't know if you have what it takes and no one else does either.

I think that's generally true but I've noticed that there are a couple of people in every cohort who have the right stuff. They're good and everyone knows it, including themselves.

Glad this post was revived after being dead for some reason.

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

#24
Had a friend once who wanted to do research in an urgently necessary direction. Didn't get the money or academic support.

Couple years later she told me that happens a lot but one is so focused on their work and the illusion that "once I'm there ..." so strong, that one ignores the hard evidence and much debated proof, despite, well, one's own training.

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

#27
Academia is one of those realms where I just wish things would collapse. Working conditions are terrible for the educational level they expect, yet there are always more and more graduate students and post-docs to exploit, so the wheels keep turning.

A naive perspective is a glut of experts is a good thing because a society with more experts could produce more innovations and development but because of the pecularities of academia, you instead get extreme competition and little to no innovation really. You do get a lot of following and hyping trends for grant money. I'm not sure what the solution is.

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

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ditto, I would have thought it would be somewhere in the mid to high nineties.

I couldn't read the whole article due to the paywall. I wonder (now that my knee has stopped jerking) whether they consider non-tenure-ladder professorial positions at universities as 'academia'. e.g. adjuncts, lecturers, staff or contract researchers, lab administrators, ...

For sure they do. I can't see it being only 40% otherwise.

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

#29

Academia is one of those realms where I just wish things would collapse. Working conditions are terrible for the educational level they expect, yet there are always more and more graduate students and post-docs to exploit, so the wheels keep turning. A naive perspective is a glut of experts is a good thing because a society with more experts could produce more innovations and development but because of the peculariti…

isn't competition good for innovation?

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

#30

Academia is one of those realms where I just wish things would collapse. Working conditions are terrible for the educational level they expect, yet there are always more and more graduate students and post-docs to exploit, so the wheels keep turning. A naive perspective is a glut of experts is a good thing because a society with more experts could produce more innovations and development but because of the peculariti…

isn't competition good for innovation?

No, only if you have a narrow definition of innovation. Producing something actually new and actionable isn't always aligned with doing something that gets citations.
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