Attracting and retaining talented researchers

By Jonathan Thon. The best way to attract and retain talented researchers in Canada is to offer them jobs. While Canadian postsecondary education is recognized worldwide for its excellence, Canada produces significantly more PhDs than it can gainfully employ (The research bottleneck, flying blind; Playing the devil’s advocate on low salaries). Declining academic positions (universities presently employ 87% of Canadian PhDs), limited pathways for advancement as decision makers in government (the second major employer of Canadian PhDs, 9%), and a limited high technology sector which presently employs only 4% of PhDs as compared to the 42% hired by industry in the United States (In Canada you can get a PhD, but maybe not a job) suggests that retention of PhD researchers following their postdoctoral fellowships is where Canada is falling short. Emphasis should be placed in funding faculty appointments for Canadian investigators first, and attracting top-tier international researchers second. More...