She was eager to have someone on board by April or May since she was looking for someone to work on recent funded projects. It took two months to get a single application. Two more came in since then. Money is sitting there that isn't being used and there are projects that aren't moving anywhere as a result
She isn't the only one Many U.S. academics are pointing to challenges in recruiting postdocs More than 100 U.S. based researchers were contacted because they advertised for positions this year on scientific society job boards, and of the 37 who responded with information about their hiring experiences, three-quarters reported challenges recruiting. One wrote, "This year is hard for me to wrestle with." The number of applications is less than a year ago.
The fields that are experiencing challenges include biomedicine, chemistry, environmental science, anthropology, physics, and computer science. There was a drop in the number of applications and in the quality of applications. One researcher wrote in an email that it took two rounds of advertising to find a good candidate for his current position. In the past I could have predicted that I would have received 28 applications by the first announcement. According to many respondents, the number of applicants from U.S. institutions has fallen.
Donna Zhang, a professor of pharmacology and toxicology at the University of Arizona, says that her type of job is more frustrating than rewarding. It is more difficult to find qualified people these days.
Junior faculty members such as Mason, who is going up for tenure next year, are more frustrated than ever. Lab shutdowns and supply chain disruptions affected her research. When she got two grants last year, she was excited, but now she is worried about recruiting. It's a big stress to slow down hiring people.
The current situation is not as bad as people thought it would be two years ago when faculty job openings dried up. The fear at the time was that there wouldn't be many openings for new graduate students. Today, that doesn't seem to be a problem. The faculty job market rebounded in the year 2021. There have been dramatic changes in the labor market.
Donna Ginther is an economics professor at the University of Kansas who studies the scientific workforce. Higher paying jobs outside of academia have become more available as a result of the current labor shortage. She says that PHD's are looking at the labor market to find opportunities. The skills that our students are taught are in demand.
Cynthia Fuhrmann is an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School who is a principal investigator for the Professional Development Hub. She sees it as a positive development that graduate students are finding ways to contribute outside the ivory tower. She attributes the rise in career development services to the fact that there are exciting career opportunities out there. It is exciting for a lot of PhDs to be able to enter the workforce after many years of training.
Postdoc's have become more vocal about the precarious nature of their positions and the challenges of getting by in high cost of living areas as graduate students listen. She says that it's an investment to do a post-doc. There is no guarantee of a tenure-track position at the end of it if you take that risk. She is concerned about the possible departure of early-career researchers who aren't rich. She says that the economic hardship of a post-doc position determines whether or not you can stick it out. That shouldn't be the case.
Academics are in a situation where they should be paid more. They said that in a lot of cases, they feel like their hands are tied. According to Daniel Wolf Savin, a physicist and senior research scientist at Columbia University who is currently struggling to fill five positions, postdoc salaries are often based on what the U.S. National Institute of Health sets as its standard. He is competing with national labs that give up to $20,000 more per year in salary. The program office will look at the grant and say, 'Look, I can't give you this much money.' He says it is out of line with what other people are asking for.
Some point to the growing disgruntlement with academia during the Pandemic as a possible reason for the decrease in the number of post-doc applications. Gary McDowell is the CEO and founder of Lightoller consultancy and an advocate for early-career researchers. He says that some universities forced academics to work on campus even though they were exposed to COVID-19. Challenges with work-life balance, low pay, and the scarcity of permanent jobs were just some of the problems that were added to the existing ones.
If talented early-career researchers are leaving academia at higher rates today, it will serve as a wake up call for universities. He believes that the only way that academia will change is by addressing the problems.
Fuhrmann concurs. She says that this could be a great chance to see the pressures on the system and think about changing it. Academic administrators and policymakers may want to ask how to make the positions more attractive. How can we increase the number of research scientist positions as well as the number of post-doc positions?
Science Careers reached out to some of the faculty members who said they were looking into other ways to get their work done, such as offering permanent staff researcher positions. Grant budget constraints make such positions unrealistic for other people.
I feel bad for the PIs because they can't solve the problem on their own. She says that funding agencies and universities set many of the policies that determine working conditions for postdocs. It will need an all-stakeholder effort to turn things around.
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