Postdoc Required? Check the Job Ads!

Both the New York Times and C&EN have written pithy pieces today referencing the recent Science survey about factors influencing postdoctoral study. 

The tone of all three comes across as confused, painting Ph.D. students as ill-informed, directionless lambs who take on postdoctoral appointments as, in the words of the Science authors, "default...holding patterns" because they "...don't know what they want to do with their lives." (NYT).

Well, for those of us, like me, who postdoc'd with the intention of going into industry, why did I "waste my time in a post-doc" (Science) for seemingly no reason? Here's some telling quotes, highlighting from me:

From Science: "...career goals are quite diverse even among these postdoc-planning students...[t]his may be surprising, given that the postdoc is not typically considered a stepping-stone toward nonacademic careers"

From C&EN: "Many students don’t have a sense of how many jobs are available or what background they require, Doyle says. Chemistry students think they need a postdoc for some high-level industry jobs in the pharmaceutical industry, for example."

From NYT: "[in 2013]...the most common reason students gave for doing a postdoc was that they thought it would increase the chances of getting the job they wanted."

These sound bites sound aloof at best, slightly pandering at worst. Here's my question: Did anyone quoted for this story, or the authors of the Science study themselves, actually read the job ads for the industrial positions in question? Maybe students' fears are well-justified, because the ads I'm seeing from multiple companies read like this:

GSK, API Chemistry Automation Team Member

Pfizer, Sr. Scientist - Obesity + Eating Disorders

Amgen, Scientist, Immuno-Oncology

Genentech, Sr Scientific Researcher, Discovery Ophthamology

In case you missed it, all recommend postdoctoral research. I didn't have to go digging for these, either - simply typing "chemistry" along with "postdoctoral" or "post-doc" into the Career search engine on any corporate site will reveal roles like these. I find it rather ironic that the last quote from the Science lead author reads: "We don’t know enough about the industry labor market” (C&EN write-up). That seems to be the only part of this whole situation I completely agree with. 

OK, grumpiness aside, how can this situation be fixed? I actually appreciate the incentive strategy advanced in the paper, which neither news outlet captured well. Here's most of the penultimate paragraph from Science, highlighting again mine:

"Whereas the recent National Academies report recommends that students make career plans early in the Ph.D. program, we argue that they should consider labor market conditions and career options before starting a Ph.D. program. Doing so may avoid escalating commitment to a research career and may prevent individuals from entering a postdoc holding pattern. Graduate schools could encourage career planning by requiring that applicants analyze different career options and justify why a Ph.D. is the most promising path forward. Funding agencies could implement similar requirements, especially in conjunction with moving a larger share of funding from research grants to training grants and individual fellowships."

Amen. One thing I believe saved me from five years of postdoc purgatory was walking in "eyes open," understanding exactly what jobs I'd qualify for and where I needed to end up to pay back all my student loans. I also realized it would be no cakewalk: I began applying for jobs in my second year of study, and never looked back. 

Grad students: If you're confused about your options, feel free to drop me an email at seearroh_AT_gmail. Confidentiality guaranteed.

How Long are Postdoctoral Fellowships? - Part 2

Following some interesting interactions with readers on Twitter and in the comments, it seems my initial post could have improved with 1) more data, and 2) break-down by gender. So, I spent some time this weekend digging through my last two Bumper Cars posts (2014-2015, 2015-2016) in order to provide a clearer picture.

How did we get here? Read the original post.

2015 - Random Trillium from a recent weekend hike

For starters, raw numbers - as of this writing, there are 194 confirmed new hires between the two lists. Of these, I was able to track down information about postdoctoral appointments for 132 (68%). Unfortunately, there's no consistent format for how candidates track their experience; I found myself cobbling it together from LinkedIn, university websites, ACS member profiles, and digital thesis repositories.

To keep myself honest, I'm pasting my assumptions below* this post, as before.

Now, to the numbers: First, the aggregate statistics - of the 132, here's the new mean/median/mode:

MEAN:	3.49 years
MODE:	3 years
MEDIAN	3 years

MIN:             0 year (no postdoc!)
MAX:            9 years

(n = 132)

So, roughly in line with what I had before. But what about the gender gap? Do men spend significantly less time as postdoctoral scholars?

First, it helps to clarify what the real split looks like: Of 132 candidates, 39 (29.5%) are female. This may be an admittedly small data set, but I see only a slight difference** in overall time: 

3.47 years for men (n = 93), 3.54 years for women (n = 39).

Edit (6/21): A good spot to insert a quote from a 2013 Beth Halford piece in C&EN:

"For one, although there are no hard numbers to point to, some say people are spending more time in postdoctoral positions. In chemistry, one to two years used to be the norm, but that time frame may be creeping up. Some chemists tell C&EN that they are spending five or more years doing postdoctoral studies."

Seems to be the case, at least to me.

Of course, the best way to make this data set relevant is to send in even more new names! Once I can figure out a good mechanism to capture pharma / gov't hires, I'll try to expand the analysis. Who knows? Maybe we'll get a real live database set up...

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*These postdocs reflect faculty appointments; I'm clearly not counting those who went into government, pharmaceutical, industry, or left chemistry entirely. If someone has a good idea for how to capture that data, I'm all ears.

Counting time: If someone gave a graduation year - "Ph.D. 2009"-  I assumed a postdoctoral stint until their faculty start date. For example, 2015 start = 6 years a postdoc. If, however, they provided a range - "postdoc 2012-2014" - I assumed that they postdoc'd the difference of that time, or 2 years, despite the fact that, depending on start and end dates, that could reasonably be interpreted as any length of time between 13 months (Dec 2012-Jan 2014) and 36 months (Jan 2012-Dec 2014).

Of the 77 new faculty starting in 2015 or 2016 (as of June 2015), I was only able to find bio-sketch information for half. The following people from my list are represented in the above statistics: Li, Engle, Hyster, Matson, Menard, Personick, Thoi, Tsui, Wasa, Blakemore, Browne, Devery, Gahlmann, Kempa, Limmer, Nelson, Sing, Thompson, Bantz, Hubbard, Garcia-Bosch, Huo, Wei Li, Mirica, Rossini, Seiple, Wu, Anand, Boudreau, Genereux, Jiang, Sletten, Theberge, Fu, Ke, Conley, Raston.

**One additional complicating factor? It's tough to tell who's a postdoc anymore. This study only includes candidates who list their experience as "postdoc", "postdoctoral fellow", "research associate", or something of that ilk. Senior researcher? NSF Fellow? Visiting researcher? Lab assistant? Are these postdoctoral positions, or not? Tough to tell, so I excluded them. Thus, I may be artificially shortening certain candidates' timelines.

Additionally, certain candidates had "gaps" of 1-2 years in their experience, and I could find no information for what they did. Took time off? Worked somewhere that didn't pan out? Had a child? I simply don't know.

How Long are Postdoctoral Fellowships?

For a better analysis with more data, click here.

OK, apologies, chemblogosphere: today is apparently write-guest-posts-for-Chemjobber day.

He poses an interesting question in his "Ivory Filter Flask" post from earlier today:

" What is the median length of a postdoc these days, anyways?"

Well, I may have some answers to that question. Looking through the New Hires, I put together a list, and ran some basic statistics*:

MEAN:	3.7 years
MODE:	3 years
MEDIAN	4 years

MIN:             1 year
MAX:            8 years
(n = 38)

It's tough to make general statements about such a small cohort, but I noticed two trends:

1) Disciplines such as chemical biology, nanomaterials, P-chem, and computational chemistry tended to stay in longer postdocs.

2) About 20% of the faculty profiles were in more than one postdoc or other fellowship program prior to their faculty appointment.

Thoughts? Sound right, or wrong? Please let me know in the comments!

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*Caveats:

These postdocs reflect pending faculty appointments; I'm clearly not counting those who went into government, pharmaceutical, industry, or left chemistry entirely. If someone has a good idea for how to capture that data, I'm all ears.

Counting time: If someone gave a graduation year - "Ph.D. 2009"-  I assumed a postdoctoral stint until their faculty start date. For example, 2015 start = 6 years a postdoc. If, however, they provided a range - "postdoc 2012-2014" - I assumed that they postdoc'd the difference of that time, or 2 years, despite the fact that, depending on start and end dates, that could reasonably be interpreted as any length of time between 13 months (Dec 2012-Jan 2014) and 36 months (Jan 2012-Dec 2014).

Of the 73 new faculty starting in 2015 or 2016 (as of June 2015), I was only able to find bio-sketch information for half. The following people from my list are represented in the above statistics: Li, Engle, Hyster, Matson, Menard, Personick, Thoi, Tsui, Wasa, Blakemore, Browne, Devery, Gahlmann, Kempa, Limmer, Nelson, Sing, Thompson, Bantz, Hubbard, Garcia-Bosch, Huo, Wei Li, Miller, Rossini, Seiple, Wu, Anand, Boudreau, Genereux, Jiang, Sletten, Theberge, Fu, Ke, Conley, Raston.

An Observation

Looking back through ChemBark's and my own surveys for new chemistry faculty, I'm a bit gobsmacked.

Sunlight through leaves, 2014

Unless I'm miscounting, 86 faculty were hired in the general chemistry space over the past year, and 86 again for last season. Now, I'm willing to admit that we haven't caught everyone hired over the past 2 years; heck, I'm even willing to suggest that the actual figure might double.

So, let's say that, according to our bloggy survey, 172 new faculty start every year in Chemistry-themed fields. Is that a lot? No, not according to the 2012 NSF Survey of Earned Doctorates. This study claims that U.S. schools graduated 2,418 Chemistry doctorates. Of those, only about half knew what they were going to do after graduation - their "definite commitment."

According to some more NSF numbers, almost a third of all physical science students go on to careers in "Academe." Perhaps this category catches new professors, adjuncts, non-tenure-track, and postdocs alike? (Leigh did this analysis much better than I!). For chemistry, NSF heard only 113 definite commitments in 2012 for non-postdoctoral academic employment. Even if we (generously) assume that they're all professors, that's only 5%!

Sadly, this number jives well with what our bloggy "New Hires" survey* captures. I'm seeing 7%, which is still a far cry from the 20% Ethan Perlstein suggests for the life sciences, or the NSF's 26% for chemistry.

Compare that against the 800 or so folks (33%) reporting postdoc landing spots. Or the 712 (29%) reporting that they're "seeking employment or study."
I guess professorships truly are the new alternative career.

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*I'm fully willing to admit that NSF has statisticians, education specialists, and a tried-and-true method, whilst we have folks chiming in over the Internets. Still, I'd be typing a lot more if I'd've received 600 names instead of just under 100.