By David Kent. Lack of data makes it difficult to craft good policy to meet postdocs’ needs, say organizers. In 2009, the newly created Canadian Association of Postdoctoral Scholars undertook its first survey of postdoctoral fellows, or PDFs. The results revealed that the average fellow in Canada was between 30 and 35 years of age, earned under $40,000 and had limited access to extended health coverage or other benefits.
This workplace snapshot was taken at a time of great unrest for PDFs, as the federal government had recently changed its taxation policy to make student scholarships – but not postdoctoral fellowships – tax-exempt. As a result, a substantial cohort of PhD graduates who continued in academic research as PDFs now earned less pay than they received during their graduate student years. In an effort to see if the situation has changed, CAPS has launched a new survey of PDFs and is encouraging all postdoctoral fellows in Canada to take part. Jeremy Mitchell, former chair of CAPS and leader of the current survey, said there is a pressing need for more complete and up-to-date data. Read more...

This is a guest post by Adrianne Wadewitz, a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Digital Learning + Research at Occidental College. In previous posts in this series, I have discussed a day in the life of a digital humanities postdoc, digital scholarship at a liberal arts college, and the invisibility of digital work. In this last post, I would like to discuss the time management and life choices involved in a postdoc. One of the real joys of my position is that I have time to learn new skills, such as coding. I can take time out of every day to work on projects that flesh out my skills. For example, I can take real time to develop this website on the New England Primer that I have been working on only sporadically for the past few years or I can experiment with 18thconnect’s TypeWright project. However, I have to rein in my desire to start lots of new projects and focus on developing my dissertation project into a book. Read more...

By David Kent. There has been a lot of rumbling over the last few years about how poorly compensated postdoctoral fellows are and how the system churns out too many doctoral students. Many have suggested that the best solution is to trim the number of positions and increase the salaries of those remaining. However, I suspect that many of the people arguing for better pay and fewer postdoc positions do not consider that they might be part of the cohort who would lose their jobs if such a measure were undertaken. I imagine that just about everyone would like to have more money and more job security, so I always find the “pay me more” arguments tough to swallow unless they are backed up with some good reasons and a clear plan for how things will be paid for. There are certainly good examples of exploited and underpaid postdoctoral fellows – I know this is especially prevalent in Canada and would love to remedy it. Read more...

By David Kent. Further underscoring the acute strain on human resources in academic circles, Elsevier has just announced a unique program to help out researchers who find themselves in between positions (thanks for the heads up C!). While many parents are no doubt crying about how their clever child with a PhD bounces from one short-term contract to the next, this is actually good news for those who find themselves trapped by funny employment rules, grants that have expired, or other circumstances that prohibit their normally institutionally supplied access to scientific papers. The announcement can be found here, but note the deadline: December  15, so get moving! You’ll need a letter from your previous employer too, so that makes it a little tougher. Read more...

Qui sont les étudiants qui préparent une thèse de doctorat en Île-de-France? Quelle trajectoire professionnelle poursuivent-ils? La Région, qui attribue des allocations de recherche à certains d’entre eux, a réalisé une étude afin de mieux connaître ses « apprentis chercheurs ».
Les doctorants sont des étudiants qui préparent une thèse de doctorat. Le doctorat est le plus haut titre universitaire. Il s’obtient après au moins 8 années d'études supérieures et se prépare durant 3 années minimum après le master.
On dénombre environ 70 000 doctorants en France, dont 40% vit, étudie et travaille en Ile-de-France.
L’étude, la première du genre menée, a été réalisée par la Région auprès des bénéficiaires de ses bourses. Elle permet de dresser un portrait-robot des doctorants franciliens.
Le doctorant est en majorité un homme âgé de moins de 28 ans (67%). Une grande partie des doctorants (60%) fait ses recherches dans le domaine des sciences dites « dures »: 39% sont spécialisés en biologie, médecine et santé, et 21% en maths, physique et chimie. Ce domaine des sciences dures est d’ailleurs très masculin, puisque les hommes y sont 78%. Pour en savoir plus, reportez-vous au site de la Région: http://www.iledefrance.fr/. Suite de l'article.