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Is a Postdoc Worth it?
Jim_Austin writes "In a very funny column, Adam Ruben reviews the disadvantages and, well, the disadvantages of doing a postdoc, noting that 'The term "postdoc" refers both to the position and to the person who occupies it. (In this sense, it's much like the term "bar mitzvah.") So you can be a postdoc, but you can also do a postdoc.'"
Unfortunately, for my field, a postdoc is required for just about everything outside of industry. Even teaching position at community colleges want postdoc. And since there is a flood of people with them already, they can be picky and get them.
To me, the increasing use of them is a sign of oversupply of interested people and not enough 'real' jobs for them. We are beginning to see very long postdoc times (during which the postdoc isn't actually rolling in money...)
if you know what I mean.
"Despite its masculine undertones, the term "postdoctoral fellow" is actually gender-neutral. This has led to much confusion when female doctoral students have told their friends or family, "I’m planning to become a fellow."
I did a postdoc. After several 3 month contracts I started looking a bit more broadly (was in bioinformatics/statistics). By chance I saw a job for a street light bulb changer. They got a 3 year contract, a couple of percent more pay and about 20 days per year more holiday. So I went into SEO for remortgage websites and tripled my salary.
My post-doc was the most grueling and difficult thing I've ever done. Two and a half years of crushingly long days, hard deadlines and uncertain future. I guess I got my faculty job out of it (and traded up to the same thing again for another 5 years before tenure review)... so I guess it's worth it?
Now I'm left wondering if tenure is even worth the struggle at the end. Bear in mind, tenure in Australia is not a "secure job for life" as people in the US seem to think it is. We're actually having a lot of difficulty convincing newly minted grads to come and do PhDs when they see all the junior faculty are deeply bitter, cynical and exhausted. But hey, I build robots for a living, so I tell myself when I see those same grads getting jobs that pay more than mine does with zero years experience..
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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When I graduated with my CS PhD back in the early 2000's, I couldn't find a single job due to some combination of the dot-com bust and my being not ready for industry. I was lucky enough to get a postdoc position with IBM Research. The salary was average (only $95K/year) compared to software engineers, but the experience was great. My manager hid all politics from me, and I wasn't subject to the rigors of performance reviews. Ten years later, I've had a relatively decent career, and having IBM Research on my resume sure does look good.
No.
(Brought to you by a postdoc.)
...
Have a concrete plan to feed yourself. Or save the schooling for retirement, after you've saved up enough to live on. Digging yourself a hundred thousand dollar hole isn't a great idea right out of the gate.
...
They're talking about science and engineering postdocs in the article, not humanities. Science and engineering postdocs are paid, just not very well, and science and engineering graduate students are also paid as well as having their tuition covered, so the point about debt is moot. Grad school and such in these disciplines is mostly about opportunity cost (years in your 20s potentially squandered) and potentially limiting your future career opportunities depending on your field and/or continued desire to remain in the academy.
Phd in French Lit - worthless Phd in chemistry - worth it!!! You do the math!
Try to find people who exemplify whatever success you are seeking in your own field, and ask about their experiences. (Of course there's always a slim chance you'll break the mold...)
Postdocs aren't all bad. I'm convinced that the issue with academia is that everyone thinks they are outstanding. As a result, postdocs that have a rough time of it blame the postdoc, not themselves. In other words, I made a decent wage and had normal hours. YMMV.
The people going the post-doc route either hoped to become faculty at a University somewhere, or were foreign nationals who needed a green card, and the universities were the only ones willing to do the paperwork. Then again, sometimes the Universities would string the post-doc along and only put in a half-hearted effort on the green card.
He was a Ph.D, taught at University of Arkansas. Told me it definitely depended on the field, and that even a Doctorate in some fields (Business) was considered a bit questionable. But he said the number of people who get postdoc's is based on the number of people who A=(can't figure out what they want to do) + B=(can't find a job), more than C=(fields that need post-doctorates). So I looked at my dad, and quit at a Masters.
Gently reply
If grad school has at best a questionable return, how could a postdoc - indentured servitude, slavery - be any better an idea?
In plain English, it's cheap labor. As I understand it, once upon a time in America, somebody reasonably good who got their Ph.D. could move to a faculty position fairly quickly. Not tenured at first of course, but likely tenure track. When we started getting more Ph.D.'s than we needed, they invented the post-doc. String 'em along, get lots of cheap labor, and every once in a while give somebody a faculty position so the rest could dream. But hey, everybody knows we've got a STEM shortage, right?
Back in the 80's the NSF pushed for a big increase in student visas. They noted that it would probably push down the salaries of Ph.D.'s, though I'm sure that wasn't a motivation.
There was an interesting editorial in Nature back in 2005 commenting on how postdocs earn barely more than a janitor at Harvard.
http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v37/n7/full/ng0705-653.html
With the economy having gone south and the inevitable funding cuts that has brought about, the situation is even worse now.
I moved halfway around the world for my postdoc (from Australia to the US), for a job that pays approximately half what I'd get in Australia. (Postdocs in the US are paid far less than Postdocs in Australia. Maybe that's why there are so many Postdocs in the US. They can hire more of them for the same amount of money.)
Sometimes, I do wonder what I'm doing here. And then I remember how I have a job that I absolutely love. That I can go home every evening looking forward to going to work the next day. And when I am reminded of that, I think how incredibly lucky I am to be doing what I'm doing. And if I have to accept lower pay and the lack of job stability as a trade-off, I am perfectly willing to do so.
This doesn't mean that I think Postdocs are getting a great deal, of course. We know we aren't. But we never got into this profession for the money anyway.
Knowing all that I know now, would I still have gone through all those years of grad school and gotten my PhD and moved halfway around the planet for a postdoc? Was it all worth it? I believe I'd say yes.
Think of it as a year-long or two-year-long work contract. That's it. It's a way to get some experience, put food on the table, and figure out what the hell you are going to do when it ends. In my case it was 4 years of employment in a series of contracts before getting a "real job" elsewhere with some permanence to it. I enjoyed my time as a postdoc, but when other opportunities came up, I gave them my notice and left.
The article is sarcastic and funny mainly because some people put in all those years of effort and mistakenly think a PhD or postdoc magically "graduates" into a real professor position eventually. Nope. You're entirely on your own to figure out how to make that happen, if ever. But after ~10 years of post-secondary education you better be able to take on a career challenge like that or you are guaranteeing you will be one of those 6/7ths that don't go on to be a professor. It's a tough path. It does work sometimes, but you have to focus on making your CV stand out from the others. A postdoc gives you time to do that if you are well-motivated and organized. The worst is if you are so intensely devoted to the short-term tasks of your degree and postdoc that you don't think about the longer-term goal and how to build towards it. You should be thinking about employment all the way through, otherwise you're in for a big shock at the end.
I'm doing a postdoc right now, and while I don't mind the 60 hour weeks, the uncertainty is what gets at me. After a long education one basically becomes a vagabond, drifting from university to university, never knowing where one will be working in 3 years' time. And the last year of each postdoc is spent writing applications for other places. In my home country, there are 1-2 available permanent positions every decade or so in my field, each of which typically has more than 100 applicants from all over the world. Getting one of those is pretty unlikely, to put it mildly. So I'll have to choose between permanently moving far away from friends and family, or leave my field of research. Unless I'm better than all the 100+ other applicants.
The postdoc situation is a symptom of there beeing too little resources invested in science compared to the number of people who want to do science. Instead, society is investing resources in things like moving imagniary money around really fast (yes, high frequency trading and other finance is a big employer of drop-outs from my field - they can emply more people, and pay much higher salaries, despite their detrimental effect on society). Yes, I am a bit bitter.
When I was younger, I wanted to go into academia. The idea of devoting a lifetime to pushing back the boundaries of science, even if only in some small way, appealed to me.
Looking back on it, and hearing the stories, I wonder why I ever thought it was a good idea. (Ignoring the fact that I'm far too stupid to qualify anyway.) Why do people do this to themselves?
If you are asking /. you might not be convinced, or worse, not passionate about it.
What other thing you desire or better yet, you really need, can be attained with the same amount of money, time and sacrifice that you'd pour in a postdoc?
Most people do not realize there's better ways to invest in time, money and sacrifice.
Some need to pay for the education and be chased with deadlines to learn and/or get something done.
If you must go for formal education, I personally find more benefit in studying something new I don't have a remote clue about.
Long article to say: postdoc is a lot of work for low pay and iffy career prospects.
Well duh.
On the flip side, if you are doing it, chances are "a lot of work" is a plus not a minus. As Aldous Huxley said: "An intellectual is a person who's found one thing that's more interesting than sex." Yes, the pay is low but you get to use someone else's money to fund your research. If you want to worry about science and not administrative issues then postdoc days are the golden days.
If you like crippling debt and no better chances at employment. If you are going into the education field and hope to become a tenured professor, then you need to do it. Otherwise it's just pissing away your money and time.
Even to become one of NASA's top scientists you dont need it.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Science and engineering postdocs are paid, just not very well
Do a search on STEM postdoc job ads - $50k is considered very generous. No, you won't starve, some people get by on less (though usually in low cost-of-living places rather than the high CoL areas where the better universities typically are). $50k/yr is about $24/hr assuming 40 hr weeks, but that's a ridiculous assumption. A goof-off postdoc probably does at least 60 hrs/wk, so that's $16/hr if you were paid on straight time. Hourly workers are supposed to get time and a half for OT, so an hourly worker doing 60 hrs/wk would pull in $50k if they worked 60 hrs/wk and had a base rate of $13.74/hr. How long after high school to get a Ph.D.? It varies quite a bit, but say 8-9 years on average. No big deal. Personally I don't understand why, however lazy and unmotivated Americans are, there aren't more of them clamoring for postdocs, when for a little education they can rake in big bucks like that.
If it's fun, there's not much opportunity cost.
I had a cousin who was a genius, at least in chemistry. After he got his BS in chemistry, he went into the army where he was assigned to the chemical weapons area. He was so knowledgeable in chemistry (started with a chemistry set during grade school) that everywhere he went, he had to have two marines carrying 45s protecting him. After his 4 years, he went back the college to get a masters and doctorate in chemistry. He was then recruited by Stanford University to teach chemistry. He then got a post doctorate, then a post post doctorate, and I think a post post post doctorate in chemistry. He knew so much more than all of his professors that he continuously encountered jealously and hatred from them. They stuck him into a room running some kind of machine. He was said to be rather upset at this because is was monotonous and boring work. He was supposed to get a professorship several times, but the jealously of the other professors prevented this from ever happening. I was surprised to discover on the web that he had died at the age of 50. He had apparently been on SSI disability, so I am guessing that his work in the army chemical weapons area caused him to get cancer or some other deadly disease.
All his education was basically for nothing, except for his own need and personal satisfaction.
he term "postdoc" refers both to the position and to the person who occupies it. (In this sense, it's much like the term "bar mitzvah.")
I've been Jewish for a long time -- since before I was born -- and I've never heard of the Bar Mitzvah (or Bat Mitzvah) celebrant called a "Bar Mitzvah". Usually we say "Bar Mitzvah boy" or "Bat Mitzvah girl", or something similar.
I'm not strictly observant, but I think I would have heard that usage by now ...
I recently finished a book where the author analyzes the entire process of getting a PhD in physics. For various reasons, it's not at all worthwhile. You will never be in a position to realize your dream of doing interesting research or becoming a professor. I'll let others describe the various problems, but they're fairly self-evident.
So let's think out of the box. Is there a way to do interesting research without the PhD?
It turns out there's a ton of interesting things being done by home experimentation nowadays. Actually, this used to be common - a gentleman scientist was someone with an independent income who tinkered with home research. Many had quite elaborate laboratories and discovered useful things.
If you want to be a researcher, you could approach the problem intellectually. Establish a steady income from which you can support yourself and family, allocate some time and money to setting up a lab, and do your own research.
Ben Krasnow built an electron microscope (!), and is experimenting with vapor-phase deposition of conductive traces. Robert Murray Smith makes graphene and conductive ink, Brad Graham built a rock disaggregator (which is, incidentally, totally frightening), Lindsay Wilson built an untrasonic drill, Timothy Ferriss is scientifically studying of nutrition, I am trying to detect dark matter (no link - sorry)
Lots of people are doing interesting research at home with a modest budget. If you can give up the big questions (Higgs Boson, Penicillin replacement, Egyptian archaeology), there's a wide swath of interesting areas just waiting to be explored.
They're talking about science and engineering postdocs in the article, not humanities. Science and engineering postdocs are paid, just not very well,
I could be wrong here, but I'm pretty sure the definition of "postdoc" includes some sort of pay. (I suppose there might be some strange European situations where you only get room and board, or something....) I've never heard of a postdoc in the humanities that didn't pay something. In fact, many postdocs in the humanities (Mellon fellows, etc.) pay as well as postdocs in the sciences, though they tend to be more competitive. Some humanities postdocs may pay very little, but if you're not getting paid anything, I don't think you have a postdoc. Maybe you have an "apprenticeship" or maybe you're a "volunteer," but I don't think even humanities programs tend to employ research fellows with no pay.
and science and engineering graduate students are also paid as well as having their tuition covered,
True, though the top-tier humanities schools also cover tuition for graduate students, often with stipends as well.
I'm also reasonably certain that there are plenty of colleges in the U.S. that would gladly take your money to earn a master's degree in chemistry or something. Most Ph.D. programs in sciences and engineering have at least tuition waivers (if not stipends), but lots of schools -- even top-tier ones -- will allow a student to pay for a master's degree.
so the point about debt is moot.
Perhaps I read the GP wrong, but I think there is also a concern about graduate school debt and the effect it may have on subsequent choices. If you go into debt in graduate school, it puts even more pressure on you to be able to get a job immediately out of graduate school, so you can pay off loans. Often the most reasonable choice is a post-doc, which barely lets you earn enough to live on, particularly with debt to pay off. It's all a bad cycle.
Moral of the story still is: don't go into debt to go to graduate school, unless you're getting a credential (professional degree) or something that will raise your salary in a job or profession you're already in. If you're not talented enough to get into the graduate schools in your field that will give you a free ride, chances are you'll never be able to get a job in academia. And yes, that includes the humanities.
And yes, debt can happen to people in the sciences for graduate school, even with a tuition waiver. Grad school stipends are sometimes quite minimal (even smaller than postdoc pay), and I know a few people who had their way "paid" through graduate school in the sciences, but ended up coming out with tens of thousands of dollars in debt... either in loans or credit cards or whatever.
So... no, the point about debt is NOT moot.
>Now I can understand wanting to be lesbian, to an extent, but gay? Why would you want that?
What are you talking about? Lesbians *are* gay.
I realize by 'gay' you meant 'male homosexual' but that word doesn't meant that. We do have other terms for 'male homosexual' like 'stool pusher', but they're considered colloquial.
There never has, nor will be, a shortage of mathematically and scientifically minded individuals. They drive the economy, and can do it mostly single-handedly.
Graduate students in STEM fields typically do not accumulate student loan debt from grad school. In fact, many STEM U.S. grad students work and get paid as TAs or as RAs (research assistants). From talking to dozens of other CS PhDs, the pay is about 23K/year (which is about what I got). That amount is enough to get by when you're a PhD student.
From the "You should only care about money dept."
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I don't know or understand all the negativity regarding doing a postdoc or a PhD - I personally am having a blast doing my PhD! I do research in materials science, and while the money is not spectacular, I enjoy myself immensely. And you know, at the end of the day that's really what matters. Maybe the ones who complain are doing postdocs in economics, political or social sciences, humanities... or some other subject that to me does indeed sound boring... I don't know. I can only say that for me it has been rewarding and I would be more than happy to recommend it to anyone with a passion for what they study. I must mention that I have no study debt - in Finland higher education is free for all, so we don't worry about paying back tuition fees and such. Life is good :)
Most of the ones I've known (from when I was in grad school and then from when I worked at a major biotech) do postdocs in order to build their research portfolio. If you want to a faculty research (not teaching) position in science, you need publications. These require research. Research requires time and money and in this day and age, the time typically spent in grad school is not enough to do a lot of top-quality research. And, grad school time is often spent teach undergrads, doing coursework, etc - whereas postdocs can usually afford to spend all their working hours on research.
So yes, postdocs aren't paid well, but most of that is because the position itself typically funds work that the postdoc needs and *wants* to do. It's a symbiotic relationship between PI and postdoc.
There are always, of course, the stars who are good enough to get research positions straight out of grad school. I've known a few.
There never has, nor will be, a shortage of mathematically and scientifically minded individuals.
If people who can earn Ph.D.'s in math or science are a dime a dozen, then why the demand for lots of visas for grad students and postdocs?
They drive the economy, and can do it mostly single-handedly.
Then you'd think they could earn a decent living doing it.
Post-Doc?
Hell does even a Doc worth it? Even there is a Master even worth the years of experience lost?
I guess it depend of the career.
Elok
I've got a great idea for a new online game: "Droll humor or actual idiot - you decide".
When the economy gets hot, and you ditch mesh generation altogether and jump to computational electromagnetics. While doing the jump be careful not to collide with the Computational electromagnetics PhD jumping to mesh generation ;-)
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
You sir, are my hero.
From the "You should only care about money dept."
Umm, no -- from the be realistic about your life dept.
If you're independently wealthy and just want a Ph.D. in English lit. or art history, by all means, go for it and pay the $150k or whatever! If you're retired or have money to burn or whatever, I applaud your effort to become more educated. Seriously, I really do. I wish more people who had the means did such things with their money.
But as someone who actually has degrees in fields that are NOT considered "lucrative," because I deliberately decided to do something I enjoy, rather than earn the most money I could... I think I have plenty of experience to give advice here.
And being realistic is not the same as "only caring about money." If there were a higher demand for Ph.D.'s in the field you love, there would be more opportunities for "full rides" for graduate school in your field. If you aren't talented enough to get one of those, the chances that you will subsequently land a nice tenure-track job somewhere are very low.
I know people with Ivy League Ph.D.'s in the humanities who graduated half a decade ago, have a number of publications in top journals, have teaching experience, and they STILL can't find a decent tenure-track job. If you're paying $100k to get your crappy graduate degree from Upper Bucksnort University, you really think you have a chance?!?
I'm not trying to quash anyone's dreams, but you need to ask yourself what you're getting for that $100k+ investment, other than a boatload of debt.
By all means, keep the dream: go out and get a job, save up some cash, and then if when you're 35 or 40 or whatever, go back and get that Ph.D. with the money you saved -- if you still really want to. I admire people like that a great deal.
But shelling out for graduate school when it won't help you be able to do what you want to do anyway, and it could actually HURT your future by having crippling debt and branding you as "overcredentialed" as you try to find a realistic job.
P.S. Yes, I have a job in what I wanted to do, and no, I do not have any debt from graduate school. But I know a few people who do have ridiculous debt from graduate school, have no job or some crappy job that isn't anything that they ever wanted to do, and are struggling to get out of debt... there's no chance that they will ever get a decent academic job.
I did 4 years of Postdoc (in Japan). It was fun, in Japan the payment for Postdocs is ok, and i worked in a field i liked to work in since i was 16years old. I contributed to some publications (10 Impact points per year) and did some really nice experiments. To me it felt like playing with the most expensive lego bricks which i ever was allowed to play with. I had the priviledge to see parts of the world which i would not have dramt about when before my masters thesis. I met some interesting, peculiar, and exceptional people (coauthors from ~12 nationalities).
OTOH, it was hard work (>80h per week average, in critical times >400h/month), strange habits, uncertainity, and a lack of decent positions after it.
I got out of it, to a technical consulting company. I earn less than the people who started 10 years younger, but somehow doing a phd/postdoc kept me young and agile. I am now more or less resistant to stress (did not feel it since i started the job), am used to pick up new things at a high pace.
I can only say: i did it, it was fun and broadened my view. My PhD and postdoc thought me that persistence in following something you want to do leads to success. I managed to get rid of my attenton span problems. I quit as postdoc when it stopped being fun and when i did not see decent positions around, i left science. I dont regret having done my postdoc, i did not regret for a single day leaving it.There was a time when a very different path in my life would have been very possible. I proably also would not have regret it.
Remarks: you have to have a compatible partner or risk a series of relationships. IMHO the only point where i really seen from behind could have spent some attention on. I also saw people not being able to handle the pressure. I saw people doing postdocs until they where older than 40 because they became too anxious or to incompetent in other things to leave. I saw people fuckign up their lifes for good. People not good enough to get any decend publicaitons, but valuable in the lab, hoping that the professor who kept them forever in a dependent relationship would give them the life-long position as assitant. I habe seen people growing old faster than they should and people breaking down. I have heard of people becoming so fristrated that they sabbotaged the co-workers experiments.
So my advice is: do it als long as you do it for fun. Dont get addicted.
Because someone in 200k USD of debt and used to a 1st world lifestyle generally doesn't want to work for slum wages, whereas if you import someone used to the 3rd world, slum wages look amazing. See Hans Rosling's talks for many similar points on populations.
Do that many people pay for their PhDs? I'm not paying for mine; I wouldn't do it if I had to (racked up enough debt from law school). I look at it as a low-pay but enjoyable job that I can live on for a few years before trying the tenure-track-job lotto.
Some pay more; it depends on the field and the place you work. At the national lab level, STEM postdocs don't make *less* than $60k/year, fellowships can bump that value up a bit.
But yah, postdoc spots at most universities pay terrible.
Do you know how easy it is to find sex if you're gay? A gay friend has remarked on several occasions how bad he feels for straight men having trouble getting sex.
Look a few posts up - that was my original point.
Do a search on STEM postdoc job ads - $50k is considered very generous. No, you won't starve, some people get by on less (though usually in low cost-of-living places rather than the high CoL areas where the better universities typically are). $50k/yr is about $24/hr assuming 40 hr weeks, but that's a ridiculous assumption.
I'll agree with you that 50k is not much for someone with a STEM education. However, most people get by on less, as 50k is in the 56th percentile for incomes in America.
At the national lab level, STEM postdocs don't make *less* than $60k/year
So raise it from $13.74 to $16.48/hr. I'm still not impressed.
I think the point about debt was moot because most science and engineering grad students don't have debt. I know I don't and I don't know anyone who took out loans for STEM grad school.
Well, not if the alternative was starting a very successful business.
I agree that years in your 20s potentially squandered sounds a lot like nonsense though. As if getting a 'real job' somehow guarantees your time is spent meaningfully.
Lots of people are doing interesting research at home with a modest budget. If you can give up the big questions (Higgs Boson, Penicillin replacement, Egyptian archaeology), there's a wide swath of interesting areas just waiting to be explored.
But maybe not a good idea for the fields of Chemistry or Microbiology, as you may end up with a SWAT team knocking at your door.
Seriously, you need to shit or get off the pot. I know people in their 40's who are still students. Get the fuck out there into the workforce where you belong. Stop hiding from it behind an ever-increasing pile of paper.
You European? Up north, maybe a Dane or Swede?
Your post describes exactly why I went into Engineering. Its the thing I seemed I was programmed to do since I came out of my mama's womb. Everyone seems like they have this thing for what they find fun to do. Designing electronic gadgets is mine.
A stint in Aerospace removed a heck of a lot of drive out of me. Applying modern management methods to artistic types burns them out damn fast.
Currently, I am working in another little startup. If I had any significant bills to pay or had a family to support, I would be in dire financial straits. I would earn more spendable money being a greeter in Wal-Mart, but I would not enjoy standing eight hours a day robotically saying "Welcome to Wal-Mart" to everyone as well as inspecting every shopping cart that tripped their Sensormatic EAS system.
Sitting in a cubicle trying to implement my designs is not my idea of fun. I am a lab rat. I hate cubicles. I hate ties and dress codes. I hate meetings - if you have anything to say, drop by for a chat - but this thing of requiring me to drop everything and show up somewhere at a fixed time is ridiculous. Its a bad design. Kinda like me memory-mapping I/O ports right in the middle of a memory space currently used by a memory chip.
That was my greatest disappointment when the new wave of management overran the small business I used to work for. Thank goodness I was paid well there before the management coup because we had a lot of successful products to sell. I do not know a single one of the creative types that were able to stand up to the modern management methods. But the stockholders seemed to love them. Pure case of "tragedy of the commons" if you ask me. Destruction of our future product stream for a short term benefit of hyping the sales and profit of our existing line. It seems only people overly concerned with profit, and not design quality, rank that as being so damned important.
I would say if someone else is paying for your study, go for it. A lot of corporations - especially in the Military-Industrial Complex - justify their bid on the amount of credentialed and degreed personnel they are placing on the customer project. Whether or not these people are internally driven to do the technical part of the job seems to be of little importance to the management team. They want certs to sell.
If you are thinking of getting into debt for this, please oh please think twice. My own experience shows there is a terrific glut of very highly qualified "do-ers" out there already. The de-industrialization of America has left cadres of engineering types left over from the hey-days of the 60's on the streets.
As America, banker to the world, transitions from a manufacturing based economy to a service based economy, it seems to me the best jobs are to be found in services catering to helping others comply with government mandates. Every new law passed mandating compliance with some government requirement is a gold-mine for those prepared to assist existing businesses in complying with it. Legalized extortion. While the government holds the gun on the business, you go for their wallet.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
__END__
=head1 Postdoc
Embedding Perl's Plain Old Documentation in your source as a particularly perverse take on self documenting code.
=cut
Nope. Why?
right. I didn't have any debt until I landed a faculty position.
I believe you are doing what we all should be doing.
Find our niche. Do it for yourself. Build your own dream - not slave away at minimum wage building someone else's dream.
This wage-slave thingie is as bad as prostitution.
My respects to you, Sir.
You provide a service to the community that is far more valuable than most.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
"String 'em along, get lots of cheap labor, and every once in a while give somebody a faculty position so the rest could dream."
It is worse when the postdoc is at the same place as the Ph.D. The incentive is that one sees a "jump" in salary from one stage to another (a grad student making 25k becomes a postdoc making 50k, who in turn becomes a "research professor" or assistant professor without tenure making 75k). By the time the person realizes the missed opportunity cost and lack of good prospects in the future, it is often a bit too late. In some cases, one would end up specializing way too much in one obscure area (which would have seemed to be the most important thing when one is in the thick of it), and really may not be able to figure out why the rest of the world doesn't care. Worse when the obscure area is a shrinking field.
For people that are motivated, there is still some good if one excels at the game. This rule of prison life is very applicable: Assert your dominance [independence, importance, etc.] from the start or you'd become someone's bitch.
Science and engineering postdocs are paid, just not very well, and science and engineering graduate students are also paid as well as having their tuition covered, so the point about debt is moot.
It's not moot at all. Many of those grad students will have built up $100k of debt from their *undergraduate* degree, and depending on the type of loan may even build up more from interest while it's deferred in grad school. When they graduate, they will now be a postdoc barely able to start paying off that debt.
Dp you see your "gay friend" every morning when you shave? Come on, you know you and your friend have one thing in common - you!
I think the point about debt was moot because most science and engineering grad students don't have debt.
I don't know the stats, but I'd bet that a lot of science and engineering graduate students have debt from undergraduate loans... but I'm guessing that's not what you mean.
I know I don't and I don't know anyone who took out loans for STEM grad school.
Congratulations! You must not know anyone who went to a crappy school or did their graduate degree part-time!
According to the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS), which is admittedly a bit out of date since the most recent stats are from 2008, roughly 75% of graduate students in engineering and science fields received some form of financial aid or grant. That does NOT mean they all received full rides with stipends -- it means that they might have received something between a few thousand dollars in tuition rebate up to a full ride.
So, approximately 25% of STEM graduate students in the U.S. in 2007-08 were paying FULL PRICE for tuition, with no stipend, no grants, and no financial aid. I'm wiling to bet that many more accumulate at least some debt during grad school, whether that's because they don't receive a complete tuition waiver, or they don't get a stipend, or they don't get a stipend that's enough to reasonably live on. Is it true that "most science and engineering grad students don't have debt"? Possibly. But there's a fairly large percentage who probably do -- at least 25%, and possibly 50% or higher.
Now, if you restrict that pool a bit, you might get to your group of friends. If you look at only full-time STEM graduate students (as opposed to the working dad trying to finish up his master's on the side), you get up to above 85% who receive some sort of funding.
If you restrict it only to full-time doctoral students in STEM fields, you get up to around 95%.
Let me try again: your point is NOT moot about grad school.
My point was that most of those people who are going to schools in STEM fields where they aren't getting aid are mostly going to crappy schools, and they'd probably be better off working rather than dumping money into a graduate degree they have to pay for. I do agree with you that most science and engineering grad students going to good schools don't have debt.
Anecdotal, but the STEM postdocs I know regret it. They went into industry, not academics. Sure they make $200k/yr plus, but they also spent ~10 years burning themselves out. Some of them are still expected to work 50-60/hrs a week. One is developing anxiety problems. One bailed on her gig (physics) and took a office job sucking up to high rollers. The other two are happy with their situation in general, but don't feel the extra pay makes up for the work they put in.
Shit, I didn't even graduate high school. Have taken some college classes here and there, not much over the 200 level. Mostly math and programming.
Including salary and some old side projects that still generate a couple grand each year (subscription based web services), I'm projecting to clear $90k this year. Now that I have my first kid though, I've been considering some offers I've had recently to bump that up over $100k/yr.
The down side is it would mean actually working most days.
If you're driven enough to reach a point where a postdoc is even an option, you can do fine without it. Unless you just HAVE to know more about nano carbon structures or whatever you study, then sure. Enjoy. If you're just planning to get a job and be a grunt, skip it.
I suppose it depends partly on your definition of science.
Take for example this post: a method for electroless copper plating which is easily in the realm of the home experimenter.
The video was not published in a journal, didn't have a write-up, and wasn't an accredited researcher - just some kid who thought things through, tried it, and it worked. I admire the presentation format - the video gives complete details of the process without a standard writeup (abstract/background/procedure/results/discussion). I think that's pretty neat. And there's no paywall. It doesn't need peer review, either.
Is it useful? I dunno. Even if this particular process is already discovered (it's not in Henley's, at least not my copy), it probably wasn't known by the kid doing it. Couple with inkjet deposition of conductive ink with poor conductivity, it might lead to a system for direct-deposit circuit boards.
Is it science? That depends on your definition.
Do that many people pay for their PhDs? I'm not paying for mine; I wouldn't do it if I had to (racked up enough debt from law school).
Well, not that many pay FULL-PRICE. According to the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS), about 86% of doctoral students received some form of financial aid, grant, assistantship, stipend, etc. in 2007-08. If we restrict this to Ph.D. students only (and exclude the field of education), that number rises to 91%.
I'm sure buried in all the statistics on that website, you might be able to find numbers that tell what percentage of tuition, etc. students actually ended up paying. But at least 9% of Ph.D. students in the U.S. apparently are paying for their degrees without ANY financial assistance whatsoever.
I don't know how many students have to pay at least some tuition, or don't get adequate stipends or pay from assistanceships to live on. I imagine it must be at least double that figure, and maybe a lot more.
So, it's not the majority of Ph.D. students, but there is a not insignificant number of such people out there. And among other graduate students (especially master's degrees), the numbers are much higher.
8-9 years after high school to get a PhD? Oh please. Try 12.
Damn! I wish slashdot had a way to contact other users.
Drop me a note. If and when the experiment is finished (several months of data gathering) I'll let you know the results.
reolh at beddly dot com
(That's a temporary E-mail - I'll respond from a permanent address.)
$60k/year postdocs do not exist. Even HHMI postdocs make less. The reality is you're lucky to make $40k a year, and dropping. Most universities have university minimums of around about $35k. Of course there are ways around that, you make a deal with the prof to be a 60% FTE postdoc, then they get insanely (insanelier) angry about you not being there 60 hours a week.
People make fun of academia as being some sort of sugar coated dream world, but of course none of those people could find their own ass with both hands and a map as far as academia is concerned. The truth is, after a PhD and seven years of postdocs, I can safely say that the very worst day in private industry is so far ahead of the best day in academia I can't even put it to words. That's even before taking into account the tripling of salary.
and where is the benefit of even that? not much really unless you do it for yourself, that is because you like that sort of thing enough. generally i feel it rather limits the opportunities later to something really sad such a postdoc slaving for meager pay for years and years.. or go back to the industry competing with the 10+ years younger lot, what fun. course there is the odd chance to end up doing something really cool. but not too often i would say.. and btw many of them postdocs are not that hot as someone up there was thinking of 'doing' one.. :)
$60k/year postdocs do not exist.
They sure do in some of the physical sciences and engineering. I've seen it go as high as $72k for a close friend, and have heard they can push higher than that in rare cases. I've gotten $55k at university in physics, along with a pitch trying to apologize that it was on the low side but that the cost of living was low enough I shouldn't be tempted by slightly higher ones at other universities.
I'm not sure how many crappy schools even have a graduate program in STEM. It seems easier to find a school that despite doing research just doesn't bother with a graduate program. Having worked at a couple different state universities though, they've all offered guaranteed support for two years for incoming graduate students in the physics department at least (as long as you do your TA job). And part of the reason it cuts off there, is they really want you to try for an RA position by then, with usually TA positions still left over for some of the fields that struggle to pay for RAs.
At least in physics, the only people I've seen go into debt, are those that are trying to raise a family at the same time with the stipend being their only income, and a couple that did not get into the graduate program, paid for classes out of their pocket the first year, then were essentially guaranteed acceptance the second year into the program and got stipends too at that point.
I got my MS, and I worked in "Industry" for about 12 years getting raises up to just under the $100K mark, then the company tanked.
We worked with a research lab, they hired a revolving door of post-docs doing crazy technical stuff that I could probably pull off if I put some effort into it - I enquired about possibly taking over when the current one left - I had no concept that you could get your PhD and continue your "education" for years afterwards and still command the princely sum of just $30K/year...
Next place I went in industry (same salary, better benefits, lower cost of living...) had some more relationships with postdocs, these were guys who got around on bicycles - in Ohio, doing very similar work to the industry side for less than 30% of the pay... you've gotta ask yourself why?
Ok, you've reinforced my point.
Really? Then how do I know several that make well over 60k? How did I know postdocs 10 years ago that made 60k?
With the right skills in the right area, yes, you can make that at a good research university. One in the midwest with decent cost of living even.
Heck, NIH funded postdocs start at over $39K, with 0 years of experience. Work in a competitive area and your boss will throw in money above that.
http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/funding/policies/nrsa.htm
I've always viewed academia as an "inside/outside" proposition, you're on the outside until you've got tenure, which usually requires a PhD, political connections, and a death in the current "inside" population. As long as you're outside, you're dirt, to be used to support others as they take their great strides toward, well, whatever it is they do, as long as they keep the grant money flowing.
The "inside" never held enough allure for me to pursue it seriously, it's much more fun to sit on the industry side of things and laugh at the absurdity.
I worked for a little company, we ran on Federal grant money. We spent 90% of this money getting the product cleared for marketing by the FDA, basically using our Federal grant money to fill out Federal paperwork. It's a grand scheme.
Everyone I know in STEM that paid is a foreigner. I'm in the Bio field. All U.S. born grad students in the universities I'm familiar with had their tuition paid and received a stipend from the university or a training grant they were on. They didn't make a lot, but none paid for classes at all.
So many of the generation before me never went to university, they might have picked up some experience in the military or other practical OTJ training, and just worked up their reputation in the field.
Good luck pulling that off in post 1990s North America.
Postdocs, in any field, are fine if you don't have another job and want to work in academia. Just don't expect too much and keep the CVs going out. Publish.
Then you stand a pretty good chance of getting a decent job. It can apply to the humanities - my field - as well as science, engineering and math.
I did a postdoc way back when, last century, and it led to a pretty lucrative career. Good enough for me to retire at an age young enough that I still can enjoy playing Need for Speed Rivals and Batman Arkham Oranges when other people my age are kissing someone's ass just to make a living at 9am on a Monday morning.
Of course, the big difference today is the mountain of debt you'll be carrying. But when you think about the length of your working life, it doesn't have to be that bad (unless you made some very bad decisions and overdid the debt). There are still ways to do it without taking every loan offered to you. My daughter is in grad school for Math, so this is something I have to think about every day. Academic life can be a pretty good deal. Also, don't confine yourself to working in the US. It's a big world.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Possible news for you, many of us in academia have started small businesses on the side. Additionally, many of us have also become investors, considering those with math backgrounds are drawn to it almost like kids to video games.
While it is great that you've done exceptionally well with your skills and career, the median pay for plumbing is closer to $40-50k, about half to a third of the median pay for academia. And if you are going to talk about tail end of the distribution, you wouldn't be comparing yourself against the median, but those with PhDs and also with businesses and investing. Quite a few, although still a minority, or academics pull in over $200k if you include their side interests (or just from their day job if they get into university management).
Interesting; I wonder if that includes Psy.D. and Ed.D. students of whom there are a large number and who frequently pay their own way I believe. I did almost went to a program where I wouldn't get funding though I could teach a few courses a semester to pay my way, but it was a relatively inexpensive program anyway (like 5k a semester full-time, and I would be coming in with enough credits that I wouldn't have to pay more after that) and I was under the impression it was incredibly rare.
Like I said, dating would be a lot easier if it was me. Unfortunately, I am straight.
As a former government oversight scientist, I can also say that the minimum recommended salary for a scientist with a PhD is significantly higher than the average postdoc salary. The government has tried many methods to increase postdoc pay, but the established professors and academic administrators push the salary down. I used to work with a few guys to convince their universities to allow them (allow!) to pay the higher standard government rate for grad students and postdocs, but there is tremendous and extraordinarily depressing pressure from academia to keep those salaries low.
This isn't true. There are too many PhDs in a multitude of areas. I work with lasers, and I am trying to get out. If the NIH sets a minimum, you're getting paid exactly that. Minus taxes, healthcare (frequently out-of-pocket), and slave-like conditions. Don't do it.
In which field? If you can stick to a 4 year degree program for your B.A., which isn't that hard for typical circumstances, you would be suggesting 8 years for the PhD. In physics, 30% of graduate students get their PhD in 5 years or less, and another 30% get it in the 5-6 year range (remembering from APS statistics). There is a large bias in which field of physics you go into, as ones with less money take longer as you have to wait longer to get an RA position, spend more time doing half TA, half RA, and/or spend more time at the end of the program holding out until you get a job to move onto after graduating. But even then, it is really difficult to spend 8 years, because at that point you are up against common time limits various universities and graduate programs place. It takes rather special circumstances to be stuck there that long, and be allowed to continue the program.
Many degrees, at least in the US, are no longer to benefit the students or society. The primary function of many degrees has become making a few people a whole lot of money, and those people are not the students.
College is better than K-12 mind you, but not much better. Dig into all of the various rackets involved in the systems. University of California has tons of administrative positions that pay extremely well, many of which have redundant job descriptions. A journalist did an article about a year ago in the SF area, and could not find out what most of these 200K/yr positions actually did. Book deals go to select peoples companies, not to what's best for students or for education. Granted, writing a text book is not easy. Not allowing e-books and making kids pay 200 bucks a book is simply asinine. College sports is another racket. Students may get free tuition for being an athlete but the University makes millions in Televised game deals, and receives free marketing to book.
I don't want to discount education mind you. I have read or studied something almost every day since I left college and think a well rounded education is essential. I don't have a PHD or even a Masters. Sometimes I consider going back and getting further degrees. Then I look at the costs and say "maybe after my kid gets done with College".
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
So, you say you want to be more the Rock Hudson/George Michael type? Assuming you were to come out of the closet, would you classify yourself as the receiver or the other one? Do you reside where sodomy is legal? Your home page tells most but I think you own us for the whole shebang. Sorry, hebang.
Nothing's worth it. You're just gonna die eventually.
Post docs are holding positions until you get a faculty position. If you need/want to build a better research history because your PhD resulted in publication delays or issues (mine is facing issues with being able to publish when I'd like because it's a collaboration, so my publication list with the PhD is shorter than normal and a post doc would be a chance to publish the stuff from my PhD that was delayed and do some more).
But in many cases computer scientists don't need to do post docs, nor do engineers. You can get an entry level faculty position at a smaller school. If you're in physics though, you're not getting a faculty unless you've done a couple of years as a post doc because everyone else has done a post doc.
Where I am graduates about 15-20 PhD's a year, about 1-2 a year will do a post doc, the remainder end up splitting between industry-academia about 75%-25% ish, but that's comp sci. The physics programme (program, take your pick), is about 70/30 academia/industry basically all the academia ones have to do post docs.
An insightful comic: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php
I couldn't remember for the longest time, or I would have put it in the original post. It's just now come to me.
It was "Disciplined Minds" by Jeff Schmidt. Reading it is 'kinda like slogging through wet cement - get it on audio tape instead.
Among the interesting bits is the story of Theodore Streleski, a mathematics grad-student who bludgeoned his faculty adviser to death with a hammer.
From the wikipedia article:
...claiming he [Streleski] felt the murder was justifiable homicide because de Leeuw had withheld departmental awards from him, demeaned Streleski in front of his peers, and refused his requests for financial support. Streleski was in his 16th year pursuing his doctorate in the mathematics department, alternating with low-paying jobs to support himself.
Sixteenth year pursuing a doctorate indeed...
Oh, most certainly you can do a postdoc. And you don't even have to be a postdoc for it :D
Anyway, on the serious side, postdoc jobs mean one thing: working for food. But, there are much worse places to do that than at some university's research lab, so at least you might be at a nice place to be exploited while you figure out a). where to go to actually make some money and then leave, or b). that you can't actually get a job where you could make money so you get stuck. Problem is when one gets to be a postdoc at 27-28 years of age - calculating with 5 years university and 3-5 years until the phd degree, which is pretty normal -, and realizing you're just starting to - eventually - earn some real money, with some friends having got to well-paying positions during those 3-5 years you've spent for that degree.
Especially since there are now companies who actually don't want to hire phd's based on some weird philosophies. Go figure.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Nobody wants a postdoc, but we all need one to further our career. You won't get hired without one.
The answer is easy
If you care about money, it is not worth it. But you probably should not have done a PhD either.
If you care about science, a postdoc is ABSOLUTELY GREAT! You will never in your scientific carreer have the opportunity to do so much work by yourself. As soon as you become a lecturer/professor/whatever equivalent your country has you will have to write grant proposals, go to conferences, teach, etc. all getting in the way of science. Given the choice (read: if I can afford it) I take a postdoc position any day above any other academic place.
I thought it was common knowledge! For the entirety of my academic career, industry groups have been saying that there's a shortage of graduates, and of PhDs, and of postdocs; as a result more are created via government and university incentives. That increases the labour pool and - supply and demand - drives down the wages they have to pay. A look at the applicant-to-position ratios would make it abundantly clear that there is no shortage.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
The first is that you get a lot more freedom than as a PhD student (or a junior employee in a corporate R&D lab). You start to be able to set your own research agenda. This depends a lot on institutions, but where I work there are a couple of projects with multi million dollar funding that are led by postdocs (a tenured faculty member has to be the name on the grant, but it's purely nominal). You may be able to supervise PhD students.
The second is the flexible working hours. I have a few hours a week when I actually need to be in the lab. The rest of the time, as long as I'm not blocking anyone else from getting things done, no one cares where I am (or what I'm doing, as long as some papers come out periodically).
The third is that I get to play with some very shiny toys. I'm typing this from a latest-generation MacBook Pro with all of the upgrades (2.6GHz CPU, 1TB SSD), which the lab bought for me yesterday, but that isn't too unusual for corporate side. Slightly more unusual is that when I started working here the only thing thing on my desk was an $8,000 FPGA board, which is just about to be replaced by a better one, and there's a big box of them if I need more than one (we're starting to play with boxes with 4 of the newer boards). The same thing extends to travel budgets. I've had a few months over the last year where I've claimed more in expenses than salary (which is less impressive when you remember the postdoc salary), and every time I go on a trip it's fairly common to tack some vacation time on. I don't really have to justify travel much beyond saying 'I'd like to visit this conference / university, it's probably sensible,' although part of that is the combination of funding rules that make it difficult to spend grant money on things that are not travel.
The fourth is that you are not limited to the working for the university. Most companies that want you to work full time expect you to work entirely for them. When I asked about consulting in my interview here, the reply was that of course they expected me to consult, how else would I stay up to date with trends in industry? You can add quite a lot (100% isn't too unusual) to your postdoc salary by consulting, and the flexible working hours make this very easy.
I interviewed at Google at the same time as I interviewed here. Google offered me quite a bit more money, but I don't regret making the choice I did. If you're thinking of a postdoc as a way of becoming more employable, then you're probably doing it wrong (unless you're aiming for a lectureship or a senior post in industrial R&D), but if you're looking on it as a way of being paid to have fun then it's a good deal. I'm basically doing now the things that I was doing in my spare time before, but now I have a lot more resources and I get paid for it. It sure beats working for a living...
Oh, and the $50K number you quote is close to the base salary for a postdoc here. It goes up to around $75K. I just checked a salary comparison site and apparently the postdoc salary is about the same as a software engineer would expect to be paid here, and about double the median salary.
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I'm at a specialized university research centre in Canada, in physics/engineering. $60k is our standard postdoc pay. I've heard though the Canada average is below $35k. Depends on the field, I guess.
To try and put this in perspective: adjusted for cost of living (OECD comparative price levels), the salary for a post doc position in Norway equals $48k a year in the US. For the UK, which also pays well for postdocs, it's $47k. Other European countries have lower postdoc salaries, e.g in Italy a post doc at IIT (which is a well funded national laboratory) pays the equivalent of $37k.
Ergo, at $50k, US postdocs are on par with the best paying countries in Europe.
for i in `facebook friends "=bday" 2>/dev/null | cut -d " " -f 3-`; do facebook wallpost $i "Happy birthday!"; done
I am a postdoctoral research fellow at a naval research lab attached to a university. I make 70k not including retirement marching and health insurance, just FYI. It's not a conventional postdoc for sure. I mean, I'm only expected to work 40 hours ( though I work closer to 50 because I enjoy my work ).
So, yes. They do exist.
If it's taken you 12 continuous years, you're either doing something you really love with no strong desire to move on, or you've done something very, very wrong.
Geology - it's not rocket science; it's rock science
I have a doctorate in English from a better state university (University of State_name). I worked with people well-known in my field. I have teaching awards, research awards, and publications. I'm willing to work anywhere in the US except places I can't afford (where I couldn't get hired anyway): San Francisco, NYC, etc. After searching for a job for four years, I ended up at a school in the deep South that's ranked near the bottom. I work with people who have doctorates from Brown, Purdue, Penn State, and the like. We earn, at the start $44-49k/yr. During the job search, I got quite a few interviews and would be enthusiastically supported by a few members of the committee, but would get beat out by someone a little better, or a little younger. I was lucky, though, and have always been a scholarship boy, so I don't have a crushing student loan debt, "only" $50k. But that debt is a significant burden for my family, and, without it, we would have been able to buy a house much earlier. (Also: I left out the part where I taught at a major research school for four years off the tenure track with 100-135 students a semester, half of them composition students, for $32k/yr, with only annual contracts. I worked between 55 and 60 hours a week during the semester. 40 in the summers, trying to get out publications and doing extra teaching so that we could afford to live in a f*cking shack.) So, yes, when anyone tells you "Be careful. Yes, do it for love, but for god's sake, consider the consequences!" You'd be wise to quit being a callow little Holden Snotfield and listen to what we're trying to tell you. Better yet, go look at the job market figures over at the MLA and AAUP websites. Don't be a chump.
If grad school has at best a questionable return, how could a postdoc - indentured servitude, slavery - be any better an idea?
In plain English, it's cheap labor. As I understand it, once upon a time in America, somebody reasonably good who got their Ph.D. could move to a faculty position fairly quickly. Not tenured at first of course, but likely tenure track. When we started getting more Ph.D.'s than we needed, they invented the post-doc. String 'em along, get lots of cheap labor, and every once in a while give somebody a faculty position so the rest could dream. But hey, everybody knows we've got a STEM shortage, right?
Back in the 80's the NSF pushed for a big increase in student visas. They noted that it would probably push down the salaries of Ph.D.'s, though I'm sure that wasn't a motivation.
Speaking from my experience in the physical sciences:
Postdocs are not cheap labor, at least by academic standards. Funding schemes vary, but grad students are often free, meaning you only have to dig up money for consumables/materials/etc. Those that aren't free are relatively cheap, again, depending on the system, some can have their salaries (and tuition) paid by being teaching assistants. If you want them to spend more time in the lab, you can pay their (paltry) salaries. They also have scholarships available.
Hiring a postdoc means hiring a "real" employee on a temporary contract. Most universities have fixed pay scales or guidelines, but that is the gross salary for the postdoc. The overhead for a postdoc is comparatively enormous because you have to pay for insurance, pensions, employer tax contributions, etc. In exchange you get someone with a PhD devoting 100% of their effort to your research. They aren't making six figures because their goal is to publish papers, which is best done in an academic lab. Also, the low pay acts as an incentive for them to move on... at least, in theory. Usually, though, if they stay on long enough they become "senior research assistants" or whatever, and move up the pay scale.
Also, it's not like academic pay scales are that great for anyone. Assistant professors make considerably less than their industry counterparts and work considerably more. The traditional ways to make money in academia are to be famous enough that other universities want to poach you and companies will pay you for consulting or to found a spinoff. The rest are stuck with standard pay scales. It's the coaches and administrators that pull down the big bucks. If you're curious, the state of California publishes the salaries of all UC professors.
Keep in mind that most/all of the costs for hiring postdocs are funded from an increasingly small pool of grant money. We're not talking about private companies, we're talking about a professor trying to keep cash flowing into the lab by competing for grants, which means publishing papers, which is best accomplished by postdocs, and so on.
I think--but I'm not at all sure--that the modern postdoc is closer to what we used to call an assistant professor. In the "old" system (which is still in place in much of Europe) assistant professors were literally assistants to a full professor. They would work in a lab for years until the full professor retired, at which point one would be promoted (via associate professor). An assistant professor in that capacity functions just like a modern postdoc. We now use the term assistant professor to mean "tenure-track professor," which is basically a postdoc that has five years to prove themselves capable or be fired (and of course takes on much more responsibility).
BTW I think the entire system is broken, but taking a principled stand will destroy your career. A professor who pays their postdocs 100k a year is at a competitive disadvantage and is likely to miss out on funding as a result. A postdoc who holds out for 100k a year will never be hired. What disturbs/saddens me is the seemingly endless supply of postdocs willing to work
Actually, I wrote my thesis on life experience.
When I was in grad school, I had teaching and research assistantships that covered my tuition and gave me a stipend. Unfortunately, it was only possible to pay for (choose one: health insurance (mandatory), textbooks/supplies)). Clearly you need both in order to be a grad student (at least in the early years), so the debt burden increased each year. And that doesn't include computing resources - only one of the three computers I needed as a grad student was covered by university funding, and none of the software was covered. It is entirely possible to have your tuition paid in full and receive a stipend and still leave grad school with significant debt.
My TA paid $440 a month - the union-mandated minimum. My big earning year was when I got a research assistantship and made a whole $16k!
Easy, you need lots of visas to get people working in a position for lower wages than the natives accept.
They cry wolf, not only to drive wages down, but to import even cheaper labour from abroad...
It boils down to specifics in every situation. Everyone's experience is likely different because many factors come into play when it comes to evaluating a postdoc outcome (i.e. - specific discipline / employer / demographic, economies, etc.).
you're either doing something you really love with no strong desire to move on,
It isn't just about doing something you love, but some sort of attachment or fundamental issue with moving on. In many fields, taking too long for your thesis looks bad, and can make it difficult to impossible to find a job afterwards doing similar research. Even with a really kick-ass thesis, many won't look at the thesis and just see how long you took on the CV, and if it is more than 6 years of graduate school, they will start asking questions. At some point you need to move on, especially if it is something you love, otherwise you are sacrificing the chance at a career with such work to hold on to another year or two of grad school
I see a lot of comments here pointing out that uncertainty is the most demanding parameter when doing a postdoc. Well, I'm not in a position to comment on that, because despite being a few decades old, I haven't really started my acamedic career yet - allthough I'm inching my way into it, should nothing notably better come up. Mind you, this is Germany, where there's no tuition to pay and they accept you at university if you've got the grades and the track record to prove you really mean it.
However, there is one thing that I've been noticing ever since the last decade started with the first internet bubble:
Today uncertainty is everywhere, no matter what you do.
It's a simple fact, and I'm sure most of you would agree, that we are moving head on into a cyberpunk world the likes described in William Gibson and Neal Stephenson novels. Move to post-scarcity economy, peak capitalism, permantent environmental damage, constant economic and currency votality, work & travel throughout your career, constant precarious personal life, etc. It's happening all around. Regular lives of people falling apart left, right and center and those stuggling to maintain a modestly secure life feeling more and more miserable by the day in doing so, because they have to cut so many throats and compromise in to many places to even be able to. I've had 3 jobs this year, the current one with a web programming hovel with no versioning or deployment, a passive-agressive boss, 5 different main admins in 5 years and a higher turnover rate of programmers than McD's has with burger-flippers, accompanied by the according codebase. The last gig was 60+ hrs of unpaid overtime in 7 weeks, working on a project that consilidates Germanys online travel booking market by orders of magnitude and will put quite a few people out of work when the rush is over.
I'm certain we're moving into a world where acamedic rank will count less and less and even universities will be consolidated, because their cruel selection mechanisms don't guarantee a solid career anymore. And do we need them? I can get more education off Khan Academy today than I could of half of the universities in Germany 3 decades ago. For free, without moving anywhere. Those are the upsides of a cyberpunk society.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Hmmmmm.... Well, I just sent out two post-doc job offers today. We pay ~$85k/yr. On the other hand, we aren't a university.
I just thought I'd share my post-doc story. Not at all bad.
Finished PhD in a STEM field. Applied for many jobs, ended up getting a visiting professorship at a military school in the US. Paid pretty decent for the time (early 2000's), probably since it was only open to US citizens. Friends were making in the $40k's, I was paid in the upper the $50k's (though it was year round teaching).
During that time, my wife and I started our family. I gradually realized during this job that research was not for me (long hours, questionable chances of good results, and...I hate to say, but in some fields it is indeed a bit of a "racket", publish or perish and all that). We wanted more than anything to move back to near our families so our children would grow up knowing their grandparents, which neither my wife nor I really did.
Maybe I was incredibly lucky, but from day one the people I worked with were very kind. They understood us post-docs were just getting our feet wet, and no one gave us negative pressure to get things done, and no one strung me along about possibilities of permanent jobs. The chair of my department was realistic that we'd be applying for other jobs all the time and (partly acknowleding the uncertainty of things at any federal institution) was amicable to helping in any way he could.
A few months before my contract was up, I was able to get a community college teaching job near my home town. Just so happens my current boss went to school at the institution I taught at (that couldn't have hurt, right?). Sure, it could pay more, but the wage is decent enough and I have a job that allows me to spend plenty of time with my family, get time off of work exactly when my kids are off school, and keep in good health. We're very happy, no regrets.
And now, because there are so many aspiring faculty, I suspect more schools are refusing to give tenure to Assistant Professors, predicated on the basis that they aren't bringing in enough grants (in a grant funding climate that's never in living memory been worse). On top of establishing their research program by submitting dozens of grant applications as well as publishing any meager scraps of results they can drum up, they have to teach classes, mentor graduates, undergrads and postdocs, and often do significant "service" to the University (extensive time-sucking nonsense on various committees). When an Assistant Prof can't hack the minimally 80h work week, there are plenty more people ready to come in and try. Source: I recently left my position well before a tenure decision for a well-paying awesome industry job, and don't regret it a bit.
That's actually the maximum salary. Salaries paid to postdocs with NIH funds are capped to prevent wealthy labs from poaching the best postdocs. It's supposed to even out the playing field so money doesn't effect where the best talent goes.
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
I'm not sure where you got your information, but this is NOT the case. Those numbers are basically a recommendation.
5 years is an average PhD in my field. I finished in 4+, so it took me 8+. I think you are off by 50% or so.
Post-post-post...
And soon we'll all be over educated unemployed idiots in debt up to our eyeballs and fighting cage matches for McJobs to buy white bread and cans of Chef-boy-ar-dee.
There never has, nor will be, a shortage of mathematically and scientifically minded individuals. They drive the economy, and can do it mostly single-handedly.
Hardly. Capital drives the economy. Capital sometimes attracts matematically minded individuals (e.g., hedge funds, analytics), and other times mathematical or scientific minds attract capital investment (e.g, pharma, agri, semiconductors, internet).
Historically, capital came from old-money. More recently, capital came from serial entrepreneurs (who got their initial capital from old money). Now you can get some capital direct from the market (e.g., stuff like kickstarter). In any case, that's not mostly single-handedly.
Getting a PsyD is more like paying for getting an accreditation to work clinically than getting a masters, and both are extremely different from getting a doctorate. I won't be surprised if there are some scholarships to get PsyD, but the cost and commitment is not like getting a masters let alone PhD. Most of the discussion of "grad school" education that exists in this thread is referring to PhDs, and the use of the term grad school is a misnomer. There are places that will take money to accredit a masters degree, and this isn't even always a poor investment.
PhD and masters students, in STEM fields or otherwise, should not be grouped together as you have done here repeatedly.
PhD and masters students, in STEM fields or otherwise, should not be grouped together as you have done here repeatedly.
Huh? Please re-read this thread. It originally started about arguments concerning "graduate students." I'm reasonably certain that everyone in the U.S. higher-ed "biz" understands the word "graduate student" to mean: someone in the process of getting a degree past a bachelor's degree. That includes master's, Ph.D., various professional degrees, etc.
From my very first post in this thread I have made clear that place where it is most common for graduate students to pay for degrees is in master's programs, instead of a Ph.D. The very post you were replying to said EXACTLY the same thing.
If the various people in this thread want to talk exclusively about doctoral students, by all means, let them. But I was responding to claims made about "graduate" students and "graduate" school, which, by definition, happens to "group together" the very students you describe into a single category (for better or for worse).
Interesting; I wonder if that includes Psy.D. and Ed.D. students of whom there are a large number and who frequently pay their own way I believe.
As the post you replied to said:
If we restrict this to Ph.D. students only (and exclude the field of education), that number rises to 91%.
Yes, Ed.D. students, Ph.D. students in education, and a few other fields tend to have lower rates of funding. For the rest of Ph.D. degree programs, it is rather rare (9%) to have to pay the full rate.
In some science fields at least, there are almost no people who start graduate school with the intention of getting a master's. You only get a master's degree when you bail and stop before getting your doctorate. So assuming everyone in such graduate school programs is a doctoral program will be more than 95% right (my department had ~200 graduate students and less then 10 leaving with a masters a year, all of which were doctoral students at the start of the year).
You are just wrong. NIH sets a minimum, and I've gotten more than that. So have a lot of other folks I know. You just don't know what you are talking about, as should be expected from a coward.
No, it's not. It's the maximum the NIH will directly pay the PI for the postdoc position. PIs discretionary funds, departmental, or institutional funds are often added to boost the salary of folks in competitive areas. I know many folks paying their post docs well above that. Just because you don't know any, doesn't mean it doesn't happen, or isn't common.
If you aren't a university then they aren't postdocs. You can call them that, I guess, but you're really giving out a fixed term position at a company.
Yep, I paid for my masters, and it got me into a well-funded PhD program, so that was definitely worth the $20k or so it took.