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Carolyn Johnson reports in the Boston Globe that in recent years, the position of postdoctoral researcher has become less a stepping stone and more of a holding tank as postdocs are caught up in an all-but-invisible crisis, mired in a underclass as federal funding for research has leveled off, leaving the supply of well-trained scientists outstripping demand. “It’s sunk in that it’s by no means guaranteed — for anyone, really — that an academic position is possible,” says Gary McDowell, a 29-year old biologist doing his second postdoc. “There’s this huge labor force here to do the bench work, the grunt work of science. But then there’s nowhere for them to go; this massive pool of postdocs that accumulates and keeps growing.” The problem is that any researcher running a lab today is training far more people than there will ever be labs to run. Often these supremely well-educated trainees are simply cheap laborers, not learning skills for the careers where they are more likely to find jobs. This wasn’t such an issue decades ago, but universities have expanded the number of PhD students they train from about 30,000 biomedical graduate students in 1979 to 56,800 in 2009, flooding the system with trainees and drawing out the training period.
Possible solutions span a wide gamut, from halving the number of postdocs over time, to creating a new tier of staff scientists that would be better paid but one thing people seem to agree on is that simply adding more money to the pot will not by itself solve the oversupply. Facing these stark statistics, postdocs are taking matters into their own hands recently organizing a Future of Research conference in Boston that they hoped would give voice to their frustrations and hopes and help shape change. “How can we, as the next generation, run the system?” said Kristin Krukenberg, 34, a lead organizer of the conference and a biologist in her sixth year as a postdoc at Harvard Medical School after six years in graduate school. “Some of the models we see don’t seem tenable in the long run."
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 08 2014, @12:55AM
This is why I think we're at the end of the golden age of academic science. This is one of the symptoms. Lots of smart young people who thought they were becoming scientists are dumped into an untenable, desperate situation and wasting much of their lives in the process. Another is the long time habit of assigning authority only to established scientists (with a similar heavy bias in funding). In the past, dying was enough to free up space for new blood and allow new ideas to enter use. Now, there's so much competition, that it's not hard for a crusty elite to find eager replacements to perpetuate the misconceptions and ignorance of their elders.
I think we'll see in coming decades a profound stagnation of academia. That doesn't necessarily mean an end to scientific research, but rather that it transitions to other areas like private industry.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by kaszz on Wednesday October 08 2014, @01:57AM
Perhaps a societal retardation to smart people doing things in their basement?
In historic times. "Funding" was provided by private philanthropy, inheritance, your own business, corporate sponsorship, military, mundane job etc. Perhaps we are past the peak-government sponsorship curve ?
Otoh, it also makes me wonder if there's either a lowering of standards over many decades. And/or if one has based it too much on a model that more scientists the merrier without a slightest thought on the big picture. Where is the salary going to come from and what will they do?