[HN Gopher] More than 40% of postdocs leave academia, study reveals
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More than 40% of postdocs leave academia, study reveals
Author : ipster_io
Score : 114 points
Date : 2025-01-21 06:28 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Logic checks out. Not everyone should be a professor. The
| question is: should they have done a PhD and postdoc?
| OldGuyInTheClub wrote:
| Sample of one: No regrets. It was a tough regimen and I got
| filtered out of academia. But, I grew immensely throughout the
| path and got to be around some exceptional minds. I
| shoulda/coulda have worked harder and been more daring.
| bigbacaloa wrote:
| It's like being a professional athlete. Until you get to the
| first division you don't know if you have what it takes and no
| one else does either.
| OldGuyInTheClub wrote:
| I think that's generally true but I've noticed that there are
| a couple of people in every cohort who have the right stuff.
| They're good and everyone knows it, including themselves.
|
| Glad this post was revived after being dead for some reason.
| OldGuyInTheClub wrote:
| I would have expected a higher percentage. Few openings and a
| high bar for whatever there is. It was tough to get an assistant
| professor job 30 years ago and I can't imagine what it must be
| like now.
| motorest wrote:
| > I would have expected a higher percentage.
|
| This. A 60% stay rate evokes scenarios of academic inbreeding
| and a total disconnect between the real world and the small
| bubble where research groups operate.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _A 60% stay rate evokes scenarios of academic inbreeding
| and a total disconnect between the real world and the small
| bubble where research groups operate_
|
| Why?
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Academia's current structure rewards behaviors that don't
| necessarily create value. The "publish or perish" mentality
| encourages quantity over quality, leading to the
| replication crisis where many published findings can't be
| reproduced. The system tends to reward those who conform to
| existing academic paradigms while marginalizing innovative
| outsider perspectives that might bring valuable real-world
| insights.
|
| When academics move directly from being students to faculty
| without external experience, it creates an echo chamber.
| This isolation from practical applications and market
| forces risks turning academic pursuit into a self-
| referential game - where success is measured by metrics
| like publication count and citation numbers rather than
| actual contribution to human knowledge or societal
| progress.
|
| This separation from real-world feedback mechanisms means
| we may be investing significant human capital into
| activities that optimize for academic metrics rather than
| meaningful outcomes. The challenge isn't just about
| individual careers, but about ensuring our research
| institutions remain connected to the practical problems
| they're meant to help solve.
| FranzFerdiNaN wrote:
| Ah yes, the real world of corporations and all their made-up
| bullshit. Much more real than a university.
| vkou wrote:
| Figuring out new and better ways to make the owners richer
| is both a real-world and chronically underfunded problem.
| segfaltnh wrote:
| No one ever thinks of the poor owners.
| llm_trw wrote:
| 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 paper on image classification I've
| ever seen was posted on a private discord and was about
| better labeling the parts of a vagina as part of a stable
| diffusion training pipeline.
|
| I used the methods without change and got better than state
| of the art for document segmentation.
| rscho wrote:
| 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.
| motorest wrote:
| > 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.
| rscho wrote:
| I fail to see why universities should align on their
| country's strategic interests. Universities are not
| political nor military entities. Additionally, pie in the
| sky projects is what's needed to advance science, which
| is very distinct from advancing technology (industry).
| notahacker wrote:
| Yeah. Practical working implementations of the latest in
| ML image classification technologies are a rapidly
| changing incremental improvement problem that industry is
| already all over, so not really surprising that this
| isn't a major focus for US university research: if PhDs
| or even potential PhDs want to do that they can get a
| much higher rate of pay at a private company.
| kleiba wrote:
| All the foundational work that has lead up to the current
| practices in ML was done at universities. It's not like
| Google invented the transformer from scratch completely
| over night.
| motorest wrote:
| > Ah yes, the real world of corporations and all their
| made-up bullshit.
|
| You're posting that sort of message in a startup-oriented
| online forum.
|
| There was a point in time where Google was lauded by it's
| success story as progress originating in investments in
| academia.
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| Ditto, I would have thought it would be somewhere in the mid to
| high nineties.
| OldGuyInTheClub wrote:
| I couldn't read the whole article due to the paywall. I
| wonder (now that my knee has stopped jerking) whether they
| consider non-tenure-ladder professorial positions at
| universities as 'academia'. e.g. adjuncts, lecturers, staff
| or contract researchers, lab administrators, ...
| rscho wrote:
| For sure they do. I can't see it being only 40% otherwise.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Keep in mind that this is a postdoc. The thing you do after you
| complete a PhD, and for most of history, something you only did
| after you started working as a professor.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I am surprised it is that low really, given what I hear about the
| competition for professor roles.
| astahlx wrote:
| The question is: How many decide against doing a post doc, while
| considering it for some time during the PhD time. When you commit
| becoming a postdoc, you know how the game is played, you have a
| good network, you have a good topic to work on.
| postdoc74 wrote:
| Not necessarily. A three or four year PhD in Europe is a short
| time to acquire a solid network (a lot of time is spent in
| training, unless the student is very proactive) and not all
| PhDs broaden their horizon to have a well differentiated topic
| to pursue after the degree. I would argue that true
| independence is actually acquired in the early postdoc years,
| but it requires a lot of work and a lot of luck.
|
| TBH, 40% attrition rate is less I expected. Since each academic
| can train more than one PhD and postdoc every few years, which
| is the case, some attrition is required because the system
| cannot grow exponentially. The desired outcome in this context
| is that this talent incorporates to industry or other sectors
| where this expertise or problem solving skills are not wasted.
| bowsamic wrote:
| > When you commit becoming a postdoc, you know how the game is
| played, you have a good network
|
| I wouldn't agree to those. I was perhaps overly supported
| during my PhD, not preparing me for the reality of being
| abandoned/expected to be totally independent in the postdoc
| CaptainFever wrote:
| Does anyone have a link to the actual study? The linked DOI is a
| 404, and I'm confused by the phrasing of "more than 40%". Does
| the study not have a more exact number (with error)?
| optionalsquid wrote:
| I wonder if they published that article too early, because the
| paper itself does not seem to be public yet. But I think this
| is the pre-print:
|
| https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.03938
| vv_ wrote:
| I'm not sure about the situation elsewhere, but in Lithuania, it
| feels like professors produce articles or tackle topics solely to
| check a box. Most of the content generated by universities here
| seems completely irrelevant and ends up being discarded after
| completion. The courses are very bland and uninformative too.
| vkazanov wrote:
| Oh don't you worry, most of them are like that almost
| everywhere.
| friendzis wrote:
| There is a box to tick to keep tenure. Academics tick that box.
|
| System behaves as designed. Situation normal: all fucked up.
| pca006132 wrote:
| 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, depend on both the teaching quality and "IQ" of
| their students before admission, which is mostly a feedback
| loop because universities with good reputation get the best
| students... Optimizing for teaching quality also means that
| professors spend more time on teaching and less on research,
| which may reduce their research output and reduce the ranking,
| which has a more immediate effect on the reputation than
| teaching quality.
| krallistic wrote:
| 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... (Western
| Europe, maybe somewhere else it's different).
| pca006132 wrote:
| 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.
| xxpor wrote:
| Managers in tech get judged by how much HC they
| accumulate. Same thing.
| wink wrote:
| I think it doesn't really enter the equation. The single
| worst lecturer I've had at university is now a professor. I
| don't enough about tenure tracks and we also call them
| differently (not adjunct, associate, etc) - but he's still
| there, 20y later, teaching (I think he just had gotten his
| PhD back then). I can only hope he has improved from "open
| script, read one page at a time, close script, dismiss".
| 2cynykyl wrote:
| At least he showed up! That is what we call an A for
| effort.
| pca006132 wrote:
| Meh, not actively messing up the course is already better
| than some of the other professors...
| vv_ wrote:
| > spend more time on teaching and less on research, which may
| reduce their research output
|
| It's ironic that universities are primarily judged by their
| research output rather than their teaching, even though their
| original purpose was to share and preserve knowledge.
|
| But the academic paper printer goes brrrr!
| kurthr wrote:
| I'm shocked it's that low. I suppose, it's limited by the number
| and motivations of people who apply for postdocs, but the amount
| of soul crushing disappointment and borderline abuse of postdocs
| is legendary.
| Davidbrcz wrote:
| Can't read the article, but it's about _postdoc_.
|
| - Many people who did a PhD and didn't want to do research don't
| do a postdoc
|
| - I would say, "40% have left so far'. Following the same cohort
| for a few years might yield even higher numbers (because as long
| you haven't made your mind about quitting research, you are still
| a postdoc and not accounted for leaving, even it's your 10th
| year...).
| laurent_du wrote:
| Hard to believe that there is 6 available seats in academia for
| every 10 postdoc.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Lot of seats are basic researchers. Chasing after grant after
| grand or doing some work for someone else.
| levocardia wrote:
| There are always plenty of adjuncting positions and contract-
| lecturer gigs to go around.
| qrsjutsu wrote:
| Had a friend once who wanted to do research in an urgently
| necessary direction. Didn't get the money or academic support.
|
| Couple years later she told me that happens a lot but one is so
| focused on their work and the illusion that "once I'm there ..."
| so strong, that one ignores the hard evidence and much debated
| proof, despite, well, one's own training.
| numpy-thagoras wrote:
| "Once I'm there..." captures it so well. That attitude and
| reasoning is the mechanism for this entire self-perpetuating
| pyramid scheme.
| mjfl wrote:
| how many transfer into a tenure track position? There must be a
| large contribution from people becoming 'research scientists' who
| are not tenure track professors but remaining in academia, at a
| subservient position, permanently.
| noobermin wrote:
| 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 pecularities of academia, you
| instead get extreme competition and little to no innovation
| really. You do get a lot of following and hyping trends for grant
| money. I'm not sure what the solution is.
| wordpad25 wrote:
| isn't competition good for innovation?
| noobermin wrote:
| No, only if you have a narrow definition of innovation.
| Producing something actually new and actionable isn't always
| aligned with doing something that gets citations.
| purplethinking wrote:
| Too much competition is bad for innovation since it leaves no
| room for exploration.
| pca006132 wrote:
| 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
| for established researchers, they have to do something
| similar, so their students can have enough results. And they
| need to try really hard to get funding, because institutions
| want researchers that can get lots of funding, so
| institutions can get money from that.
|
| This is probably not the complete story, and probably a bit
| too pessimistic, but I think this is true...
| Ekaros wrote:
| 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...
| pca006132 wrote:
| Or maybe try not to judge researchers based on the amount
| of grants that they can get...
| iancmceachern wrote:
| It has to be a combination of competition and opportunity. If
| you take away the opportunity then it's just a middle school
| field day all day, nobody making it to play college ball let
| alone the pros.
| clarionbell wrote:
| It all depends on the metric you are optimizing for. In
| academia, the metric would be grant money, directly
| influenced by number of published articles and citations.
|
| From that perspective, the system works. We are making more
| articles, in more journals, there is also plenty of money
| thrown around. Unfortunately, there is no incentive for
| correctness, novelty or usefulness in this system.
|
| Falsification of results, especially in the soft sciences, is
| relatively easy. Verification of results, doesn't give you
| any credit. So you can have people producing articles with
| blatantly misleading or false results for decades, all
| without any repercussion.
|
| And it's not much better in the hard sciences either. Because
| verification of results there, is even more difficult and
| costly. And again, we are not incentivizing verification.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Up to certain point. Beyond that there is lot of waste.
|
| Say you have 20 competing products that want to get noticed
| or know to sell. Obvious solution for them is to pour more
| and more resources in advertising. Eventually this
| advertising takes away from actual product as more time and
| money is spend on it instead on the product.
|
| Advertising in academia is publications but also applications
| for funding.
| dawnchorus wrote:
| As a former postdoc in the physical sciences (who is now out
| of academia mostly for family reasons), I don't like the
| constant argument I hear about whether competition is good or
| bad in research and especially academic research. I think it
| is the wrong question. Competition is inherently good in that
| whatever researchers are competing over will be optimized in
| the long run.
|
| We wish that we were optimizing for new/great ideas, but we
| aren't. In our current academic system, we are optimizing for
| number of papers and number of quick citations on papers
| (where quick = within 2-5 years). The reason these incentives
| are present is because they are largely deterministic in the
| outcomes of academic hiring, tenure decisions, and funding
| proposals. It seems to me that everyone discusses academic
| hiring and tenure ad infinitum, but less so for the details
| of the academic research funding system.
|
| For most academic research, when a professor submits a
| proposal for funding, it is tied very closely to work on one
| particular idea or group of ideas. The funding cannot be used
| for research outside of the proposal area. Furthermore one
| must achieve results within the confines and time period (a
| few years) of that grant if one hopes to receive more funding
| in the future. So when a new idea comes along during the
| process of working on a grant, you either a) do your best to
| spin the new idea as related to the current grant in some
| unnatural way and proceed or b) wait until you can get
| funding for the new idea explicitly. This is the system
| within which the professors must work. They are laser-focused
| on achieving results within the constraints of their existing
| grant proposals. And some of these are great research ideas.
| But after a while, most people tend to stick with the same
| old ideas and pursue smaller and smaller ideas within the
| same area. This is why old professors are still pursuing the
| same overdone research they did when they were younger. You
| need new, young people to give an influx of new/bold/crazy
| ideas to pursue.
|
| Now, the graduate student or postdoc must also work within
| this system, except that they have no say over the research
| directions. They must work on the professor's research ideas,
| not their own. There's fundamentally nothing wrong with that
| because it is the classic master/apprentice relationship
| which is generally a good thing. (After all, you can't have
| well-formed ideas until you know what you're doing, and that
| takes time. Without this type of system, you get outlandish
| crackpot ideas that are worse than wrong - they are useless.)
| But over the years of training, the grad student/post doc
| probably has a few good ideas. But what do they do with those
| ideas? Generally...statistically...the answer is nothing.
| These good ideas die with the grad student/post doc's
| unrealized academic career, since by far most have to leave
| academia before they can work on their own ideas (and there's
| simply no place outside of academia to work on your own
| ideas).
|
| You would hope that there would be an outlet for good new
| ideas from grad students and post docs, but there isn't.
| People learn from mistakes quickly that graduate school and
| postdoc is no time to be putting your ideas out there. You
| won't get to work on them yourself and they will be taken
| from you, period. Let's say you, as a grad student, propose
| something new and great to your professor, and ask if you can
| work on it. Chances are that the prof will say no because it
| isn't funded, or because you're already busy with their
| currently funded ideas that they must execute on quickly in
| order to get more funding, or the worst one (which I have
| seen many many times) is when the professor says "well that's
| more of this other postdoc's specialty - I'll let them work
| on it." Sometimes you could propose something and the prof
| says no, but then 5 years later they are now funded for it.
| And none if this is caused by malicious intentions: the
| professor probably forgot that idea even came from you -
| after all, how many conversations do you remember precisely
| from 5-10 years ago? - its just an idea that came from the
| ether somewhere. But other students and postdocs see these
| occurrences, even if not caused by maliciousness, and just
| choose to never share their best ideas because they know they
| won't get any attribution or recognition for them.
|
| As a result, the system is not optimized for new and good
| ideas, which is the lifeblood of research. If anyone came
| along on this journey with me that I originally intended to
| be only a few sentences, I'm sorry I have no solutions. If
| anything, I feel lucky because 15 years later, at least
| someone else did one of my big ideas and it made an impact,
| so at least I get to know that "back in my day," I had some
| good impactful ideas in my research field.
| disqard wrote:
| I read your entire comment, and it echoed much of my
| experience in academia.
|
| Thank you for taking the time to write this!
| freetonik wrote:
| Competition leads to innovation when the definition of
| success and its metrics are set correctly. A big chunk of
| "success" in academia is the number of publications, and
| funding often depends on that exact metric. As a result,
| competition in academia is very good for innovation in the
| field of producing papers and winning grants. I'm not saying
| the respective scientific research is wrong or doesn't exist,
| I'm just saying the system is skewed towards this one metric
| in an unhealthy way.
|
| It's similar to competition in tech products not leading to
| innovation. The important metric there is financial growth
| and stock value, and there are ways to increase those metrics
| without really focusing on true innovation in the core
| domain.
| salmatek wrote:
| I would guess that if there are economies of scale,
| concentrating production lowers the average unit cost and
| thus lead to more profits and thus more capacity for
| investment into R&D.
|
| If, say, all steel production was done by 1-employee
| companies competing against each other, I don't think any one
| would be able to afford any serious investement.
| jjk166 wrote:
| 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.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| I think maybe it suffers from the same problem of the video
| game industry, that being that there's a never ending supply of
| people trying to get into the industry that has only the
| slightest relationship to the demand for such roles.
|
| In the videogame industry, this mostly led to a bunch of low
| paying, long hour, lousy jobs with high turnover. Why pay more
| for a low level employee if you can get a new hire for cheaper?
| In academia, money is a little less hierarchical, so it led to
| a madcap fight for grants with all of the related downsides.
| benrutter wrote:
| > I'm not sure what the solution is.
|
| Really interesting to think about what an ideal academia would
| look like. I think a lot of us have an idea of 'pure science'
| which has never really existed (by which I mean, since the
| industrial revolution science and academia has been tied to
| industry).
|
| In terms of conditions, I think this issue is solved elsewhere
| by unions (there are always people wanting to be hollywood
| script writers, but the writers guild of America does a good
| job of maintaining decent conditions despite this). I don't
| know how that could even come close to applying in something
| like academia though.
| zaik wrote:
| 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.
| jjk166 wrote:
| 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?
| zaik wrote:
| Well if there is a more efficient way, the big companies
| haven't found it yet. Guess where they hire their research
| people?
| crocowhile wrote:
| As someone who has worked in academia for more than 20 years,
| in four countries, (and now is a professor in a top 3 world
| institution) I can tell you that it very much depends on where
| you work. Working conditions depend on the larger and smaller
| culture. It is a mistake to assume that everyone is living the
| same experience.
| ikrenji wrote:
| more experts would be a good thing, if there was money for
| them. no point in producing phds if they don't get the
| resources to do research (including a respectable salary)... as
| it stands now academia is almost a scam (phd+ level)
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Not surprising. I quit after about a year. I could have stayed on
| but I realized that it just wasn't right for me. By then I had
| figured out that most research is done by post docs and phd
| students and it doesn't pay very well. Not that I cared about the
| money but I started thinking about what is next and did not like
| the perspective.
|
| Professors are basically there to manage the process and haggle
| for funding. They tend to not be very hands-on with research for
| the simple reason that that's not their main job. They mostly
| delegate that to people in their team.
|
| And you can only become a professor by doing post docs, landing
| some tenured position and then maybe they'll make you a professor
| somewhere. It's a long, uncertain process and the failure modes
| are basically ending up with a teaching position or being
| otherwise stuck in some faculty mostly not doing research.
| Nothing wrong with that. But not what I was after. And a lot of
| teachers in university are basically people that dropped out of
| the process somehow.
|
| Anyway, the whole management thing had no appeal to me: I did not
| want to be a manager managing other people doing all the fun
| stuff (research) while basically dealing with a lot of
| bureaucratic shit. Not my idea of fun, at least.
|
| So, I left. It was the only logical thing to do. I worked for
| Nokia Research for a while after that. But the career paths there
| weren't a whole lot different there. And the whole thing started
| imploding a bit after the iphone launch.
|
| These days I do startups and a bit of consulting. Mostly as a
| CTO, and I'm very hands on which is just how I like it.
| Inevitably, there's a bit of management involved as well. But I
| like what I do.
| gunian wrote:
| sometimes I read posts like this and am awed. it feels like
| something out of a book to me
|
| never had a chance to go to college, no family, no friends, no
| social skills, mostly dumb except for basic computer skills
|
| my life except for like 1-2 years has been fighting to survive
| in horribly abusive situations currently unable to work with my
| own SSN being messed with by a bunch of human traffickers
|
| but I love computers my dream in life is to learn about them
| and built an integrated app kind of like the M1 but for
| software and I probably will die or be killed way before that
| happens but its cool to see there are people way smarter that
| care about building as much out there and computers will get
| better
| universa1 wrote:
| Hmm this doesn't sound like what I experienced a professor
| doing... But this probably depends on the location and the
| discipline... Or well at least here in Germany you can more or
| less pick what you want to do: more being a people / project
| manager or more own research, or a mix of that... The
| uncertainty/low chances of getting a tenured position are not
| different though... And though it might suck, this is something
| you know, at the latest, after your PhD.
| tombert wrote:
| Postdocs always seemed like a scam to me.
|
| Almost by definition, if you're doing a Postdoc in a STEM
| field, you're probably qualified for a relatively well-paying
| job in industry [1].
|
| And it's not like universities don't know this, people have
| been complaining about it for forever. They know if they were
| to just _hire_ a person with a relevant PhD to do work, they 'd
| ask for a _good_ wage, so instead they dangle this "maybe
| you'll qualify for a tenured professor job _eventually_ if you
| do underpaid labor for us for N years... "
|
| ------
|
| My relationship with academia is...complicated. I dropped out
| of college in 2012, worked as an engineer for awhile, did a
| brief stint as a researchey-person at NYU, got laid-off from
| there, worked in industry for another several years, tried
| school again in 2018 and dropped out again in 2019, finally
| finished my degree in 2021, and started a PhD in 2022, and did
| an adjunct lecturer thing from second-half of 2022 to first-
| half 2023.
|
| Since I was working full time (and couldn't pay my mortgage on
| academic wages), I was doing a PhD at University of York part-
| time remotely. It was fun, but I wasn't just paid poorly, _I_
| had to pay _them_! About $15,000-$16,000 /year American [2]!
| Even though I was doing work for the school, writing code for
| them that's not categorically different than the code I got
| paid yuppie engineer salary for, I was _losing_ money in this
| prospect (and not just the normal opportunity cost kind).
|
| I did it for two years, but I dropped it in November of last
| year because it was an expensive thing that I wasn't convinced
| was actually going to pay off for me. The PhD was already
| pretty self-guided, I could still research the topics I was
| interested in for free, academia's pace is glacial-at-best, and
| I didn't burn any bridges so I could go back later if I really
| wanted.
|
| I might still publish a paper with my advisor in this next year
| (that's still pending), but of course since I'm not enrolled-in
| and paying-money-to the school, it won't count towards any
| credential. I think I'm ok with that.
|
| [1] There might be exception to this but I can't think of many.
|
| [2] depending on the dollar->pound exchange rate.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > Almost by definition, if you're doing a Postdoc in a STEM
| field, you're probably qualified for a relatively well-paying
| job in industry
|
| Be careful: many people who are great postdocs are rather
| overqualified (and thus rather not suitable) for many jobs in
| industry.
|
| Getting well-payed in industry requires in my opinion skills
| that are opposite to those that make you a great postdoc:
|
| In industry you must not be a truth-seeker who can deeply
| absorb himself in problems. Being a truth-seeker makes you an
| insanely fit in the brutal office politics.
|
| Also, while I _do_ insist that in graduate school you
| actually learn a lot about leadership (in the sense of being
| able to push people to do great things), the abrasive and
| highly demanding leadership style in graduate school and
| academia is commonly very undesired in industry (but in my
| opinion not bad: a very particular kind of people (who will
| love graduate school) flourishes in such an environment).
| michaelt wrote:
| 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.
| jojobas wrote:
| Many of them never wanted to be in academia in the first place,
| or at least shouldn't have wanted it. If you're in a class full
| of people who want to teach this same class, you might be
| questioning why you're there.
| red_admiral wrote:
| Yes, I expected the 40% to be much higher too. I guess once you
| go from PhD to postdoc it changes a bit, but again just looking
| at the numbers the pipeline gets a lot narrower at each
| transition.
| mold_aid wrote:
| 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.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| 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%.
| geysersam wrote:
| Sounds like a lot more than I'd expect, especially considering
| ~50% of those 57000 doctorates probably don't even want to
| continue in academia. It's starting to look like the odds of
| landing a tenured position are quite good.
| buyucu wrote:
| I expected this number to be higher.
|
| I guess more leave between postdoc and phd.
| euroderf wrote:
| Elite overproduction is a thing, you know. It might be a feature
| but it's also a bug.
| rednafi wrote:
| My spouse is a molecular biologist pursuing her PhD in RNA
| therapy. She works ~2x longer and 10x harder than I do, with only
| a third of the yield. You can only sustain that for so long.
| She's in academia solely because she's good at it. However, there
| are a few things I've observed from the sidelines:
|
| - PIs can make your life absolutely miserable for no reason, and
| it's difficult to switch labs if you're otherwise making good
| progress.
|
| - The pay is poor, and professors often joke about how cheap PhD
| students and postdocs are.
|
| - A significant amount of time is wasted on internal politics,
| such as deciding whose name appears on a paper and in what order.
|
| - Pursuing irrelevant papers just to secure tenure is common.
|
| - Bullying from other academics happens more often than most are
| willing to admit.
|
| - PIs often treat their subordinates like high school students,
| expecting them to work weekends for "research" and forgo
| vacations.
|
| - It's true that many join academia because they didn't know what
| else they could do.
|
| It's exhausting, and there are better ways to make a living. She
| plans to leave academia as soon as possible.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| With the exception of poor pay, I experienced all of those
| things while working as a software dev for a major company. And
| with the exception of irrelevant papers, a friend of mine went
| through all of those at a startup she joined after her PhD.
|
| I am doing a postdoc now - the pay sucks (still good compared
| to non-tech salaries) but I like what I do, I can choose my own
| tools, and I'm not longer contractually obligated to put my
| name in papers I don't like.
|
| The instability of the postdoc life sucks if and when you want
| to have a family, but it can also be very rewarding.
| rednafi wrote:
| > With the exception of poor pay, I experienced all of those
| things while working as a software dev for a major company.
|
| Same here. I've worked at grindy startups that made me want
| to leave the profession altogether--everything from
| gaslighting by small shop CEOs to firing threats, and even
| firing a colleague just to show "who's in charge."
|
| But switching companies is always an option, as is switching
| domains. I did that multiple times without much trouble.
|
| > The instability of the postdoc life sucks if and when you
| want to have a family.
|
| I thought stability was one of the reasons people choose
| academia. By stability, I mean a supervisor or program that
| guarantees a steady influx of cash for a certain period of
| time.
|
| Yeah, but it comes down to what gives you fulfillment. For
| me, I need challenging work with a reward in pay that matches
| the effort and academia doesn't seem to fit that curve.
| goosedragons wrote:
| Is short term stability, really stability? I think it's
| pretty rare to get post-doc contracts longer than 3 years,
| renewal after that is unlikely especially for a long period
| of time. You can't really be a post-doc long term and it
| can easily have you bouncing across the country/countries
| following funding. It's more stable than freelancing
| perhaps or maybe a startup.
|
| There's stability in academia as tenured professor but
| outside that, there really isn't.
| kleiba wrote:
| I've worked in academia for almost all of my adult life,
| although in CS/LangSci not in molecular biology. Either I got
| lucky or it is some other reason, but I have not had the same
| experience.
|
| _> She works ~2x longer and 10x harder than I do_
|
| Now, I don't know how long you work but most academics I've met
| do it because they love it. Mind you, it's not like there is no
| pressure to stay on top of your game, and endless
| administration tasks do eat up a lot of your time that you
| would like to spend otherwise. But I know a lot of people who
| work at the weekends not to make up for lost time, but because
| their work _is_ their passion.
|
| _> - PIs can make your life absolutely miserable for no
| reason, and it 's difficult to switch labs if you're otherwise
| making good progress._
|
| That is true, although you can also have awful superiors in a
| regular job. And it's not easy to just switch jobs for a lot of
| people when that happens. Also, I've personally never had any
| issues whatsoever with my PIs, so the opposite can also be
| true: PIs can be very supportive and interested.
|
| _> - The pay is poor, and professors often joke about how
| cheap PhD students and postdocs are._
|
| Not true in my experience, the pay in academia has always been
| more than acceptable. But again, I was in CS/LangSci, and I
| know that for instance in the humanities, pay is lower for
| similar jobs.
|
| _> - A significant amount of time is wasted on internal
| politics, such as deciding whose name appears on a paper and in
| what order._
|
| In all my many years, there was never any case where the author
| issue has ever come up. Also, perhaps I was lucky (again), but
| I've almost only experienced collegiality across groups in the
| places I worked. I wouldn't say that "internal politics" is a
| bigger issue in academia than in industry.
|
| _> - Pursuing irrelevant papers just to secure tenure is
| common._
|
| The pressure to publish is real, but irrelevant papers do not
| really help you a lot. Your time is better spent doing work
| that can make an impact. That said, not all ideas that you
| pursue lead to amazing output, and you cannot afford to let
| half a year of work go to complete waste. So, yeah, if worst
| comes to worst, you might opt for a lower-tier conference and
| squeeze at least _some_ insight out of your failed work, but it
| is not common to specifically try to create irrelevant papers.
|
| Also, over the years, the acceptance rate for main conferences
| has become increasingly hard to get over, as competetion is
| ever increasing. So, you _do_ want your work to be relevant, or
| else it 's not much you'll get out of it.
|
| _> - Bullying from other academics happens more often than
| most are willing to admit._
|
| I've read about this on the internet to the point where I
| believe it's real. However, I cannot personally attest this, as
| my work places have always been different.
|
| _> - PIs often treat their subordinates like high school
| students, expecting them to work weekends for "research" and
| forgo vacations._
|
| Not true in my experience, I and my colleagues, including PI,
| have always tried treating students and other group members
| respectfully. There is, of course, a certain expectation
| regarding your work ethics, but for the most part, I've never
| heard of anyone demanding from subordinates to forego
| vacations.
|
| The only thing I can think of is when the deadline for an
| important conference comes up and everyone's really trying to
| get some final experiments done in time. Then it could happen
| that you're asking someone if they could do it, but I've also
| been in situation where the answer was "no" and that was, of
| course, accepted.
|
| _> - It 's true that many join academia because they didn't
| know what else they could do._
|
| Probably true.
|
| _> It 's exhausting, and there are better ways to make a
| living._
|
| "Better" is completely subjective. I loved working in academia
| but that doesn't mean that there were plenty of situations
| where I didn't like something and loudly complained.
|
| The one thing that's missing on your list and which for me was
| the deal breaker in the end was that, depending on where you
| are, the prospect of getting tenure is very vague and insecure.
| When I was young and independent, I didn't care if I only had a
| two-year contract. But as you mature and eventually start a
| family and/or buy a house, your responsibilities and priorities
| shift.
|
| So, in the end, I am one of the 40% or whatever that left
| academia, but it was not the work itself that I minded, it was
| the lack of a secure future. I mean, as secure as any future
| could ever be...
| rednafi wrote:
| > Not true in my experience, the pay in academia has always
| been more than acceptable. But again, I was in CS/LangSci,
| and I know that for instance in the humanities, pay is lower
| for similar jobs.
|
| This could also depend on location, but from what I've seen,
| postdoc CS pay in most places is less than what you can earn
| as an entry-level frontend engineer at a medium-sized scale-
| up.
| varjag wrote:
| > - It's true that many join academia because they didn't know
| what else they could do.
|
| This is really the root of most other problems mentioned.
| whatever1 wrote:
| Poor pay is an understatement. Back in 2010's when I graduated,
| I was making USD$21K per year! If you calculate the hourly rate
| it is probably close to $3/hour given that PhDs work every day,
| and specially in the holidays that the advisor has more free
| time.
|
| We were jokingly say that they don't dare to call it a salary,
| that is why they call it a stipend.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > - It's true that many join academia because they didn't know
| what else they could do.
|
| Rather: because they deeply love doing research.
| oefrha wrote:
| I'm surprised the number is as low as 40%. You can't help but
| question your existence when you, always the top of your class
| growing up and graduated college with distinctions, are making
| $50k a year (that was the postdoc salary at my very prestigious
| department at Princeton less than a decade ago) at a ripe old age
| of almost 30 and eyeing yet another term of postdoc.
| nurettin wrote:
| > More than 40% of postdoctoral researchers leave academia
|
| Why is that construed as a negative? Isn't it great that they are
| finding jobs and applying their disciplines in the industry?
| puppycodes wrote:
| what does it mean to "leave" acadamia? Like it somehow goes away
| if your not part of an institution?
| TypingOutBugs wrote:
| Hard work, poor pay, known perverse incentives, and awareness of
| the probably replication crisis in your field == burnout and
| tears.
|
| Half my friends are postdocs or associate professors (including
| my wife) at top universities and _none_ of them are happy with
| how it's going. Most apply for jobs every now and then to imagine
| escaping. And they're the ones doing well in the system!
| ninalanyon wrote:
| Is this actually a problem for society as a whole? Surely a lot
| of such people would be valuable in industry.
| verzali wrote:
| 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...
| voxl wrote:
| 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.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Glad to see self awareness is instilled by the academic
| process.
| verzali wrote:
| 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.
| GuestFAUniverse wrote:
| Where? Fintech?
|
| Sorry Sarcasm aside: considering the never ending list of
| unsolved problems, it should. Sadly, more money seems to get
| spend on games, ads and stupid juice presses than anything
| really helpful.
| dotdi wrote:
| More anecdotal evidence: while writing my Master's thesis it
| became clear that my advisor (the dept. head) was quite
| interested in the subject matter, and repeatedly asked me to
| shelve it, do a quick-and-dirty thesis to graduate and return to
| working on my original draft during a PhD. I was very open to the
| idea, since I was in love with research ever since childhood.
|
| We sat down and talked about what this meant in particular, the
| workload, compensation, options after graduating from the PhD
| program.
|
| It broke my heart, but I had to turn him down. It felt like
| everybody who wanted to have a shot at having a career in
| academia needed to put an insane (read: literally destructive)
| amount of effort into it, all while accepting that it was
| extremely easy to get stuck for good. There is extreme pressure
| on postdocs to produce results, with institutions and labs
| becoming very cautious about working with people in their 2nd or
| 3rd postdocs if they hadn't published in high-impact journals
| until then. Also, good luck finding any sort of tenured
| positions, with more and more universities switching to freelance
| "collaborators".
|
| I was not going to spend 80 hours a week investing in something
| where all odds are stacked against me. I was not going to put
| years of my life into a thing that can go 'poof' just because
| your stars didn't align, or because the faculty decided instead
| of hiring you on a professorship track, they would rather extort
| some more money and "let the contracts expire" when it was no
| longer convenient to have you there.
| nothacking_ wrote:
| 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.
| raincom wrote:
| That's why it is called "postdoctoral treadmill" by an old
| physics professor:
| https://yangxiao.cs.ua.edu/Don't%20Become%20a%20Scientist!.h...
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.ph/E5aqe
| karaterobot wrote:
| This is only surprising if you expect that every postdoc _should_
| stay in academia, or would want to. Being in academia is not the
| only way to do research, and is not a prerequisite to using your
| degree. The private sector is a thing, and postdocs leaving
| academia can do perfectly good work in their field while actually
| making a grown up salary.
| absolutelastone wrote:
| These are good arguments about phd's not going into academia.
| But a postdoc at a university is an underpaid training position
| for the most part. Not a worthwhile sacrifice if you want to
| work in the private sector in my field. Maybe it's more
| important for industry jobs in biology or something.
|
| Personally I think it's a warped system that takes advantage of
| cheap labor from developing countries. And it feeds itself. The
| more temporary research staff professors can hire, the less
| permanent research staff universities need.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| That's mostly reasonable. But for some people at least, the
| PhD doesn't give them all the skills they are looking for, so
| they might do another post-doc (2-3 years at slightly better
| than PhD lifestyle), before jumping ship.
| s0rce wrote:
| I think that all postdocs should stay in academia, why else
| would you do a postdoc? I assume (maybe wrong?) that most of
| the postdocs had intended to stay when starting the postdoc.
| burnte wrote:
| Right? I'm surprised 60% stay.
| wisty wrote:
| Sunk cost? Selection bias? I don't think you can get a PhD by
| accident, you have to really want to work in academia (or a
| specific industry). And I doubt getting a second post doc
| position is all that hard (as long as you're willing to
| travel), given they're capable of getting the first one. My
| understanding is that universities quite like being able to
| hire cheap, hard working, disposable researchers.
|
| People who go into academia are probably willing to live the
| life of an underpaid researcher. The fact that they have the
| post-doc title instead of the professor title probably is
| _that_ big a deal, nor is the salary going to change their
| decision. The lack of autonomy is probably annoying, as is
| the lack of stability. Having to worry that they might change
| labs and maybe cities every 3 years, and not knowing for sure
| if they 'll get a job is probably the only thing actually
| making them quit.
| NotAnOtter wrote:
| I theory the incentive is to 1) eventually become a professor
| and 2) have more say over what projects you get to work on.
|
| Both of these aren't real incentives for the bottom 80% of
| postdocs.
| hyperbovine wrote:
| You should absolutely only do a postdoc on the supposition that
| you will get a tenure track faculty position afterwards. It
| makes no sense financially or emotionally to do one if your
| goal is to go into industry.
| hinkley wrote:
| I don't think I ever remember a time when the walls of the
| pyramid were shallow enough that the base could support all of
| the people at the top.
|
| 2 out of 5 people getting all the way to the end and
| discovering that research or teaching are not them living their
| best life sounds either very sad or pretty good depending on
| your perspective.
|
| A lot of people convince themselves that what they aren't
| feeling now will finally come to them after one more milestone,
| and as long as there enough milestones ahead of them they can
| play for time until it happens. Or they hit Sunk Cost and feel
| like they can't tap out now because they'll look like idiots,
| ignoring how much bigger an idiot you look like for wasting X
| more years of your youth and saddling yourself with even more
| debt. Or existential crisis with much the same outcomes. "Who
| am I even if I'm not..."
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| The whole empire of academia is broken, and although I have went
| through the whole things, and now in an assistant professor type
| position, it 1) took too long, 2) paid too little as a post-doc,
| and still pays too little for my level of expertise, 3) the grant
| process is a burden that doesn't enhance productivity; it doesn't
| leverage my expertise; it bogs me down and keeps me from using
| the scientific skills I've built in order to play grantsmanship
| to beg for money. Multiple tedious submissions and revisions. 4)
| professors increasingly just become managers, the least valuable
| activity of their training set.
| azhenley wrote:
| How many come back?
|
| I stayed in my tenure-track position for 3.5 years, left for
| industry for 2.5 years, and am now back in academia :)
| pknomad wrote:
| Did you ever get asked why you came back to the academic world
| in the interviews? I'm curious how PhDs who've been in the
| industry are viewed from academia.
| azhenley wrote:
| Oh yes. But given that I am in a software engineering
| department, they really value industry experience. I actually
| published way more in industry than I did in academia!
| chollida1 wrote:
| Isn't this a good thing?
|
| We want to train highly skilled people and then unleash them in
| the private sector to create new companies or help push existing
| companies forward.
|
| I'm not sure what the right percentage would be for postdocs
| leaving academia, but i would have assumed it was around 90% if
| you made me guess.
|
| That just seems healthy.
| openrisk wrote:
| > We want to train highly skilled people
|
| After how many postdocs is one "highly skilled"?
|
| Postdocs are foremost a failure of the academic job market
| (supply of eager researchers much larger than available
| academic positions) that over time has become some sort of
| ingrained filtering mechanism.
| jltsiren wrote:
| There are different kinds of postdoc positions.
|
| Fellowships are generally the good ones. You get to explore
| research directions under the guidance of a more experienced
| researcher. Because you have independent funding, your mentor
| is not your boss, and you are relatively free to choose what
| to work on and how.
|
| On the other end of the spectrum, some postdocs are just
| people a PI has hired to work on a well-defined project.
| Either because the institute does not have more appropriate
| job titles or because postdocs are cheaper than professional
| researchers. These are fundamentally ordinary jobs, and like
| any job, they can be good or bad.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > We want to train highly skilled people and then unleash them
| in the private sector to create new companies or help push
| existing companies forward.
|
| Many of these people will become very frustrated in the private
| sector because they will very commonly talk to a brick wall
| with their ideas in the private sector. The private sector is
| commonly not the kind of environment where highly intelligent,
| novel, bright ideas are rewarded.
| dekhn wrote:
| my postdoc advisor (a tenured professor at berkeley) made us
| clean the air vents in the office by standing on a tall ladder
| with a vacuum as well as clean the floors.
|
| I didn't leave academia, but I did leave that lab. That's some
| sort of power-play I have no time for.
| dcreater wrote:
| Please name and shame. This is atrocious. Considering the fact
| that most graduate students/postdocs are immigrants on specific
| visas, this is tantamount to fraud.
| hammock wrote:
| Does the 40% include parents leaving the workforce to raise their
| children?
| NotAnOtter wrote:
| There is no longer any incentive to stay in academia.
| Professorships are rare and not as lucrative as they once were.
| Staying in academia means living like a 19 yearold student well
| into your 40's.
| adamc wrote:
| Yep. I left without even really trying to make it work. Academia
| has its good points, but the path to success is very grind-y.
| moffkalast wrote:
| I think it might be still easier to get to assistant professor
| than down a single tech tree in War Thunder.
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