The Postdoctoral Experience Revisited (2014) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
2 The Disconnect Between the Ideal and Reality
2 The Disconnect Between the Ideal and Reality
Pages 17-32
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From page 17... ...
3 A self-selected, motivated, recent doctoral degree recipient receives additional scientific training (to augment previous training during graduate school) for a limited time before transitioning to a full-time research position, often as a tenure-track faculty member.
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. However, the dramatic shift toward "big science" during and following World War II, which has only increased in the subsequent decades, has resulted in a system that often requires ever larger teams of graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and other
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However, indirect rates were increased rapidly, and soon salaries, including those for postdoctoral researchers, were included in research grants.c The Boom: The ranks of postdoctoral researchers grew even more steeply beginning in the 1970s, as did the average duration of postdoctoral appointments. The selection of postdoctoral researchers switched from the "cream of the crop" who won competitive fellowships to a period in which the majority of postdoctoral researchers were supported as research assistants.d The Maturity: By the end of the 20th century, the postdoctoral research position had become an established component of professional training in many fields of science and engineering, and was becoming more common in the social sciences and humanities.
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Many principal investigators, trained in the post–World War II system, had relatively little experience outside of academia and therefore lacked the direct knowledge of other sectors necessary to provide quality mentoring to the growing number of students and postdoctoral researchers who would end up in career paths other than independent, academic research. A BASIC DEFINITION By the mid-2000s, the need to formalize a definition of the postdoctoral researcher arose.
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From page 21... ...
and is engaged in a temporary and defined period of mentored advanced training to enhance the professional skills and research independence needed to pursue his or her chosen career path." National Postdoctoral Association (2007) : "A postdoctoral scholar (‘postdoc')
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6 For a detailed discussion regarding sources of data on the postdoctoral population, please see Chapter 1. 7 In the SED data life sciences include agricultural sciences, natural resources, biological and biomedical sciences, and health sciences; physical sciences include mathematics and computer and information sciences; social sciences include psychology.
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From page 23... ...
Type Funding for postdoctoral research positions at universities commonly falls into three main categories: fellowships, training grants, and research grants. Currently, the vast majority fall into the latter category.
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The most common type of funding mechanism is through the principal investigators, who recruit postdoctoral researchers directly to work on research grant awards they have been able to secure from federal or private sources. In this model, postdoctoral researchers work under the direct supervision of principal investigators in an area that is of interest to their host laboratories, and they have little mobility.
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recipients, the life and physical sciences have the highest percentage of postdoctoral researchers in the academic workforce -- both more than 10 percent of the total workforce -- and the correspondingly lowest percentage of tenure and tenuretrack faculty (see Figure 2-4)
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Postdoctoral researchers in some disciplines, at some institutions, and in some highly competitive fellowship positions earn salaries above $80,000 per year, 11 but median salaries are considerably lower. Beginning postdoctoral researchers in mathematics and computer science, business management, and economics reported median salaries above $56,000 a year in 2012, but the median for all postdoctoral researchers within five year of receiving their degree was only around $43,000 11 NSF, NIH, U.S.
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From page 27... ...
Other federal agencies providing postdoctoral funding include the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, NASA, and USDA. Nonfederal funding also plays a role in postdoctoral researcher support, with more than 36 percent of postdoctoral researchers for whom sources were known either self-supporting or receiving nonfederal funding.
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From page 28... ...
The GSS data include postdoctoral researchers with foreign Ph.D.'s, but does not collect data from some types of institutions that hire postdoctoral researchers. Additionally, international postdoctoral researchers may have funding from their home country and are, therefore, not included in the calculations of NIH, NSF, 12 Further discussion in Chapter 1.
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From page 29... ...
They are summarized below, in percentages that are not meant to be precise. International Postdoctoral Researchers The available data indicate that more than half and as many as two-thirds of all postdoctoral researchers working in the United States are on temporary visas, and this percentage has been increasing consistently for decades.
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However, it is clear that some ethnic groups, particularly African Americans and Hispanics, are not proportionately represented in the postdoctoral population, either when compared to the U.S. population or with their representation in the population of doctoral degree recipients.
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From page 31... ...
Among the results of this imbalance are that many individuals are staying as postdoctoral researchers for prolonged periods, and sometimes moving into a second or a third postdoctoral position; some attain research positions for which postdoctoral training was not necessary; and others are leaving their chosen research field or abandoning their research pursuits altogether. In summary, research training beyond the Ph.D.
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