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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

#81

Post by pca006132 »

krallistic wrote: post #49
pca006132 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sometimes just wonder, a lot of professors are bad at teaching because they don't have to be good at it. Is it the same for universities? It feels like reputation for universities are quite detached from the courses they have or teaching quality. Rankings focus a lot on quantitative measures, but teaching quality is hard to measure quantitatively. The output of universities, i.e. the quality of their students, depe…

Teaching is not really relevant in the hiring process of professors. I saw several committees for prof position and teaching is treated like a checkmark. You should done it and provide a small sample lecture (which you prepare much more than your average lecture) and don't have to suck at it. After this checkbox, the differentiating factors are about citations and how much grant money you can/could/do have... (Wester…

I feel terrible for the idea of jugding academics based on the amount of grant money they can get... It feels like encouraging a lot of smart people to find ways to waste money, even when they know that they don't really need that much for their project.

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

#82

Post by pca006132 »

Ekaros wrote: post #45
pca006132 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on incentives. From what I can see in CS, a lot of young researchers are focused on short-term projects, disconnected from actual problems, and spend lots of effort to package the result to increase the chance of getting a paper in top conferences/journals, because they need this for their career. They will be forced to leave academia if they don't have enough results in time, from what I know. And even fo…

In the end my take is that there is too much supply for research for the funding that exist. So lot of it focuses on wrong metrics and as thus is somewhat wasted. Or energy is spend on wrong things like chasing that funding. I am not sure if we can afford more funding, so maybe amount of research should be cut in some way...

Or maybe try not to judge researchers based on the amount of grants that they can get...

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

#83

Post by xhkkffbf »

mold_aid wrote: post #67
michaelt wrote: post #43

According to https://data.aaup.org/academic-workforce/ there are 270,000 tenured professors in the United States. Assuming a tenured professor holds that position from age 35 to age 65, that's 9000 tenured positions to be filled per year. According to https://ncses.nsf.gov/surveys/earned-doctorates/2023 there are 57,000 research doctorates granted per year. So 84% of people granted PhDs don't make it in academia.

Hi - please don't assume that retirements become job postings. Tenure lines have to be granted in many cases; if a dean is told by the provost to trim, then tenure lines are not granted after a retirement. My department has not matched its attrition rate for some time now.

I thought the 40% number seemed lower than my experiences suggest. But this is a solid point that suggests that even 84% is too low. I guess it could be as high as 90%.

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

#84

Post by nothacking_ »

As they should. More often then not, going into academia means horrible working conditions and horrible pay... and there's job satisfaction when your instead of doing things you like or ones enrich society, you spend most of your time in a never ending fight for grant money.

Leaving is completely logical for anyone that wants to actually do impactful research, or wants to make a living wage, and wants sane hours and sane management.

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

#85

Post by jjk166 »

zaik wrote: post #51
noobermin wrote: post #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 peculariti…

Yet, the ideas that have thrown incredible amounts of money against them on the open market all have been developed in academia. The current AI craze, the internet, the physics required for chip production, encryption, etc.

Academia works on nearly everything, so it's no surprise that successes come out of it. Especially if you are willing to squint your eyes a little and describe something which has a few elements of the final useful innovation (but noticeably not the secret sauce) a precursor then anything can be traced back.

That does not mean academia, nonetheless academia in its current form, is the optimal system for producing innovations. How much effort is being wasted on things that will never pan out? How many great potential innovations are not being researched right now because the system does not prioritize them? How many needed to start in academia vs how many just happened to?

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

#86

Post by jjk166 »

wordpad25 wrote: post #29
noobermin wrote: post #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 peculariti…

isn't competition good for innovation?

The peacock is a product of competition. Of course the competition was for passing on genes, not survival, so the peacock developed a massive tail which is a huge waste of resources and attracts predators. But surviving with such a handicap is super sexy to other peacocks.

Competition is great at meeting the criteria of the competition. If the competition values anything other than innovation, like say grant money awarded or social standing, it is suboptimal for promoting innovation.

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

#88

Post by jjk166 »

voxl wrote: post #77
verzali wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is in a way, since postdocs are often bad preparation for industry. Postdocs usually learn skills that are useful in academia, not the skills that are useful in industry. And the knowledge they focus on is often hyperspecialised, and not necessarily valuable in industry (though that does vary by field). Essentially, postdocs can be a good way to waste the most valuable years of highly intelligent people...

Comments like these make me want to vomit with how out of touch industry people are. No, fiddling with AWS or writing some simple Go code is not beyond the capabilities of a postdoc... You really are not doing anything that complicated. Switch the roles and you would be completely useless.

Glad to see self awareness is instilled by the academic process.

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

#89

Post by motorest »

rscho wrote: post #33
llm_trw wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ML papers by Western universities barely touch on the problems that practitioners face. The only papers I see that are routinely useful have half the authors having a .in or .cn email at the end with the rest having Indian and Chinese names in US institutions. The only western papers which aren't extended advertisements for their company are from people who are making something for themselves. For example the best pa…

Certainly, some countries have a more engineering-focused academic style. Western academia has always been more about advancing knowledge, which IMO is academia's mission.

> Western academia has always been more about advancing knowledge, which IMO is academia's mission.

You can advance knowledge in ways that are aligned with the nation's strategic needs. That would imply the career path of researchers would be oriented towards industry instead of pie in the sky projects.

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

#90

Post by verzali »

voxl wrote: post #77
verzali wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is in a way, since postdocs are often bad preparation for industry. Postdocs usually learn skills that are useful in academia, not the skills that are useful in industry. And the knowledge they focus on is often hyperspecialised, and not necessarily valuable in industry (though that does vary by field). Essentially, postdocs can be a good way to waste the most valuable years of highly intelligent people...

Comments like these make me want to vomit with how out of touch industry people are. No, fiddling with AWS or writing some simple Go code is not beyond the capabilities of a postdoc... You really are not doing anything that complicated. Switch the roles and you would be completely useless.

Hmm, I'm not a coder. In my field you do need some specialised knowledge you generally get through experience. And then you have the soft skills, like being able to work in a team, being able to run projects, understanding business needs vs doing what's technically interesting, etc. Postdocs do have some of those skills, but there is not much you get through a postdoc specifically vs doing a PhD or spending 7-10 years in an industry role. And, to be honest, your attitude is part of the problem - I sure wouldn't hire someone who will look down on the job or think they are too smart to do it, and neither should someone with 10 years experience be happy getting a job writing simple AWS code.

The point I'm trying to make is more about the opportunity cost, not the skills you get out at the end.

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