more on the plight of postdocs

In a recent issue of Science, an article appeared highlighting recent announcements of funding opportunities for tenure-track faculty (from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute) and junior graduate students (from the National Science Foundation). While this funding is great news for those just starting out on the academic road and those already established, the article points out that, "For the tens of thousands of young researchers caught in the middle--those who have finished their graduate work but find themselves trapped in other people's labs, unable to escape to establish their own--the current plans offer nothing. The new initiatives neither increase the number of tenure-track or comparable jobs for which postdocs can compete nor offer any alternate framework in which frustrated scientists could pursue careers."

When will the community wake up to these problems?

The article ends by saying, "But the fact that these efforts completely ignore postdocs--and the big-picture dysfunction in the current science-career landscape--ought to serve as a sign of a different kind: that those academic careers will be open to only a small, select minority. The rest would be well advised to seek opportunities elsewhere. And policymakers need to give serious thought to the danger that the increasingly brutal--and for the overwhelming majority, futile--competition to join the tenured, funded elite is very likely persuading our most talented young people to seek careers in fields that offer a better shot at success than science does, to the detriment of the nation's scientific enterprise."

The question remains: how will all these talented postdocs, who see no future for themselves in academia, go about finding jobs in markets they are wholly unfamiliar with?