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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

#231

Post by shellfishgene »

hyperbovine wrote: post #133
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.

You should absolutely only do a postdoc on the supposition that you will get a tenure track faculty position afterwards. It makes no sense financially or emotionally to do one if your goal is to go into industry.

A large percentage of phds do a postdoc because it's easy and familiar, not because it's part of strategic planning of their career...

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

#232

Post by musicale »

maiar wrote: post #158
wesselbindt wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most of the pyramid's growth is at the bottom.

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

#233

Post by musicale »

maiar wrote: post #227
KingMob wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crazy to think that 50 years ago, postdocs were rare.

They should have stayed rare, but they’re a way for universities to get free money from the government as well as a temporary (but sadly permanent) fix for academia’s deep structural problems.

Why pay for more of those expensive, unruly, hard-to-fire professors when you can hire cheap adjuncts and postdocs to do teaching and research?

The administrative organization continues to expand, and it must be paid for somehow.

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

#234

Post by musicale »

absolutelastone wrote: post #172
godelski wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But a postdoc at a university is an underpaid training position for the most part. That's not really true or fair. You're talking about a person who's done likely 4 years of undergraduate and between 4 and 8 (median 5?) years of graduate studies and gained a Ph.D. This person is without a doubt "an expert" in their field. Does that person still need training? Sure. But who doesn't? You're also talking about someone…

Training is how the low pay is justified. I certainly agree it's not a good deal, more of a supply and demand effect. Are you saying I'm wrong about the definition? It's pretty universal: https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf21327 I do agree it probably gets used more as an easy way to get experience, the usual thing organizations crave in their new hires. But it isn't the only way. Top graduates can get temporary research…

> Training is how the low pay is justified

And it is mostly nonsense. The true justification is saving money.

See also: adjunct faculty.

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

#235

Post by musicale »

godelski wrote: post #186
absolutelastone wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't just job ads. For half the schools there was a formal definition. Also it has this part: "In 2001, NSF and NIH established a formal postdoc definition as “an individual who has received a doctoral degree (or equivalent) and is engaged in a temporary and defined period of mentored advanced training to enhance the professional skills and research independence needed to pursue his or her chosen career path.” An…

> “an individual who has received a doctoral degree (or equivalent) and is engaged in a temporary and defined period of performing independent research.” Would be just as accurate. Btw > “an individual who has received an undergraduate degree (or equivalent) and is engaged in a temporary and defined period of mentored advanced training to enhance the professional skills and research independence needed to pursue his…

NSF and NIH want cheap labor as much as universities do. They realized that they could it past graduation.

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

#236

Post by musicale »

analog31 wrote: post #195
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 left academia after my PhD, with no regrets. As a grad student, for the duration of your thesis work, you're locked into a specialty at a specific institute that isn't necessarily first-tier, may need to work at a level of intensity that prevents you from attending to a proper job search, and may end up under a professor who doesn't adequately support your career (e.g., with reputation and favorable recommendations…

It's not as if there is a surplus of academic job slots that are going unfilled. The pyramid where one professor trains multiple grad students quickly becomes unsustainable.

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

#237

Post by KingMob »

musicale wrote: post #233
maiar wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should have stayed rare, but they’re a way for universities to get free money from the government as well as a temporary (but sadly permanent) fix for academia’s deep structural problems.

Why pay for more of those expensive, unruly, hard-to-fire professors when you can hire cheap adjuncts and postdocs to do teaching and research? The administrative organization continues to expand, and it must be paid for somehow.

Bureaucracy has gone up, sure, but not nearly as much as the number of people seeking PhDs.

That also used to be much less common back in the day.

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

#238

Post by analog31 »

musicale wrote: post #236
analog31 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I left academia after my PhD, with no regrets. As a grad student, for the duration of your thesis work, you're locked into a specialty at a specific institute that isn't necessarily first-tier, may need to work at a level of intensity that prevents you from attending to a proper job search, and may end up under a professor who doesn't adequately support your career (e.g., with reputation and favorable recommendations…

It's not as if there is a surplus of academic job slots that are going unfilled. The pyramid where one professor trains multiple grad students quickly becomes unsustainable.

Indeed, and in my field, it even had a name: The "Birth Control Problem." In fact, the problem extends to post-docs. Professors were even training multiple post-docs. I saw that quite clearly.

I was lucky to have role models: My parents were both industrial scientists, so the idea wasn't foreign to me. And I figured that I could always become a coder if things didn't work out. ;-)

Re-reading, I may have been unclear: I meant that some people take temporary post-docs with no intention of staying in academia.

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

#239

Post by musicale »

KingMob wrote: post #237
musicale wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why pay for more of those expensive, unruly, hard-to-fire professors when you can hire cheap adjuncts and postdocs to do teaching and research? The administrative organization continues to expand, and it must be paid for somehow.

Bureaucracy has gone up, sure, but not nearly as much as the number of people seeking PhDs. That also used to be much less common back in the day.

Assuming I'm reading them correctly, these seem to be Yale's numbers:

2003: 2294 Arts & Sciences PhD students and 3500 administrators + managers

2021: 2895 Arts & Sciences PhD students and >5000 administrators + managers

So administrative growth seems to have outpaced PhD student growth by some margin over that time period.

Regardless, the secret to high research productivity (per dollar) at universities is cheap labor from grad students and postdocs.

Sources:

https://oir.yale.edu/data-browser/student-data/enrollments/g...

https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2021/11/10/reluctance-on-the-...

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

#240

Post by KingMob »

musicale wrote: post #239
KingMob wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bureaucracy has gone up, sure, but not nearly as much as the number of people seeking PhDs. That also used to be much less common back in the day.

Assuming I'm reading them correctly, these seem to be Yale's numbers: 2003: 2294 Arts & Sciences PhD students and 3500 administrators + managers 2021: 2895 Arts & Sciences PhD students and >5000 administrators + managers So administrative growth seems to have outpaced PhD student growth by some margin over that time period. Regardless, the secret to high research productivity (per dollar) at universities is cheap lab…

I was thinking of a longer time frame, though. Also, Yale might not be representative overall.

According to the census, from 2000-2018, the percentage of the population holding PhDs doubled: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/02/number-of-peo...

So Yale's PhD count grew a bit, but nowhere near as much as the rest of the country's.

----

But mostly, PhDs used to be way rarer in the back in the 50s (along with college degrees in general). If you look at Figure 1 in this NSF report (https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf25300/figure/1#), it shows the number of PhDs tripling in just 15 years from 1958 to 1973. After 1973 it slows down to merely doubling over the next 50 years.

Admin growth might be a factor, although I'd want to look at national data first. Your own article says "... Yale had the highest manager-to-student ratio of any Ivy League university, and the fifth highest in the nation among four-year private colleges" so maybe it's an outlier.

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