the postdoc exodus
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 20 ก.ค. 2022
- Are postdocs a scam? I am just one physicist, standing in front of a 'job' offer and asking: what is this?
Moving across the country for a short term work contract for low pay and no guarantee of post contract employment? Sounds like a scam...
#postdoc #WorkReform #antiwork #AntiworkAcademia #AbolishThePostdoc
It's so heartening to see young PhDs figuring out that academia is a scam before they invest 25 years into it, like I did. The other point to make is that the reward for doing one or more postdocs is a chance at a crappy academic position with continued low pay (relative to your skill set) more work, insane expectations and colleagues, etc. This is coming from a tenured full professor at an R1 university who resigned his position after twenty years.
When I proposed doing what I called a "postdoc tour" to get experience in multiple fields, my advisor said immediately "I hope you like poverty". That says it all.
Average salary of a tenured professor in the US: $145,000.00
A word from an ex postdoc: Get a government job as was already stated. I gave all my twenties and thirties to my academic career just to notice I have to get out of here and get a real stable job before 40. If I would have done this 5-10 years earlier I would even earn more money. As I realized: Those people with the high salary do not nearly have, if any at all, as many academic achievements as I do: research money, patents, publications, students. So what can you do? Built your own niche, challenge yourself academically, rebuilt your network and try to avoid being the donkey for others. And remember always: If you come from a non academic family background and did a PhD you are already the 1% compared to other non academic children. Postdoc even more unlikelier. So do not be bitter if you cannot achieve the further 1% of postdocs making it to prof. If you now have a stable decent paying job try not to be bitter or envious. Enjoy life and built your career from where you are now.
I feel like the clown meme fits well with this video like:
The most depressing thing about this video, is that it is actually an understatement for how bad it really is for a lot of postdocs. You make all of these great points about how exploitative postdoc positions are, assuming that they make around between 50-60k. That salary is absolutely far too low given the level of expertise and training a postdoc has under their belt. But here I am, on my 3rd postdoc at my 3rd university and my salary is 38k, at one of the largest universities in the US. I had to get an apartment 45 miles away from campus just to afford a roof over my head, as the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in the city of my university is 80% of my monthly take home salary.
Legend has it that Angela is still deleting lloans and re-typing lloans to this day.
Yep about the last point. When I tell professors that I don't intend to be a professor, they are shocked: "Why on earth would anyone not want an amazing job like ours?!?". I reply, "Because ruthlessly exploiting others is mandatory for a professor, while I have no taste for that." These professors just gasp, screech and panic. Hilarious every time. One of these times it was on my presentation for a panel of world-class academics that evaluated my research center. They got so mad that they devoted an entire paragraph of their evaluation report to me, like: "Your researchers are delusional about the academic environment worldwide". That's how deep in denial these profs are.
Your hypothesis about classes being taught by a dead man online happened in my city. Back in 2021 it was revealed that students in a class at a local university were watching recorded lectures and notes from a teacher who had died in 2019 without knowing he had died. They just... didn't inform the students... or take his name off the course... so the students only found out he was dead a few weeks into the semester after one of them tried to look up his email and found his obituary.
I was a postdoc in physics at Harvard from 1986 to 1990. When I adjusted my salary to 2023, I got $82K. It sure looks like salaries have not kept up. I did really enjoy my postdoc, but I might not if I was paid 25% less.
The daycare cost is so real. When one of my parents was a postdoc and the other in residency, daycare put my dad in the red, needed my mom’s salary to help even it out. Eventually it got too much, they sent me back to live with my grandparents in China for a year. That certainly saved money, ha
To those of us still in academia: unionize, and unionize across job categories! Worker-led unions in partnership with their surrounding communites (including students, in the case of academia) are the only way any sort of effective and positive systemic change will happen.
I’m a physicist and while working on my PhD dissertation I realized I was making the highest earning research student at $22K annually, mandatory health insurance had to be budgeted out of that, school was in DC so I needed a car to commute from the more affordable suburbs, and I finally looked at the post doc in my group at 3 am asked him his salary he said $36K and I left the school a week later and got a federal job for $75K starting. I’m at $150K ten years later with benefits. The post doc is now an adjunct professor.
As an employment law attorney serving STEM employees, I love that you’re bringing light to these issues. Helps me and my paralegals understand our clients’ challenges a lot better so we can better represent them. ❤
I left uni after an MSc in physics and started in applied research in underwater acoustics for the Canadian navy. Not only did I enter the work force 3 years earlier (by not doing PhD), I was making real money, and three years later I was well established in my field, writing journal papers, and attending conferences. I received several professional distinctions during my career, and was able to retire at age 55 with a decent pension. That was 15 years ago, and I have enjoyed myself in amateur astronomy since then (my first love).
Great video! I'm from Argentina and did my physics PhD in Manhattan Kansas! I saw many of my postdoc friends leave and fly to some other country just to do another postdoc. Great minds and awesome people with kids in charge and no prospects. When getting into my PhD, I thought that postdocs were the only path worth following, I realized I was so wrong. I finished my degree and changed career path
Yes! "Talk about money with your friends, it's important." The social taboo against this needs to go. I find your videos amazing. Thank you!
Advice from an "old guy": If you aren't in the top 5% of the graduate students in your field (and can "prove" it with papers that are already becoming heavily cited) then you should forget about academia. Get a postdoc position with the (USA) federal government. You'll have to put up with way more bureaucracy than in academia or private industry, but the pay is twice academia's and the academic freedom is way more than private industry. And the federal S&E workforce is older than the general population, so there's a decent chance of a permanent job at the end of the postdoc, instead of an entire career as a postdoc. AND, you are generally expected to work 40 hours per week, like a normal human being. (US citizenship helps with your long-term prospects.)
Hearing her describe post doc and describe how brutal and exploitative it is really made me shook as a resident doing pretty much the same thing lol. I guess we have the bonus of a more certain job market afterwards but still 4 years of this treatment is brutal.
I just discovered your channel. After listening to your string theory video, I landed here. You are the first person I saw on YT discussing this. You presented the great frustration every single one of us has giving it full justice, congratulations! Most academics I speak to just look at me as if I was crazy when I vent about this like you did in the video. I graduated last year from my PhD and stayed to work as a postdoc with my PhD avdisor while I was trying to convince myself to do the scary jump and quit. I recently resigned from the postdoc even though I have been told by many that, given my talent, I belong to academia. My last paper was published in Nature last month and this month I have been awarded three important prizes for my PhD research. Even though it hurts leaving, the academic job marlet is a joke and will hurt my private life too much on the long run. Next month I'll start my new job in the real world....