Post-docs are the weird, easily forgotten positions in academia, neither fish nor fowl. They’re something more than a student — they’ve got Ph.D.s! — but definitely far less than faculty. On the plus side, it’s often the one position where you get to do nothing but research, research, research…but on the negative side, you’ve got minimal official status within your institution, have no say in governance or administration, and are at the mercy of your academic overlords. It’s also a low-paying position (although it has gotten somewhat better and more realistic since my post-doctoral days, when it was a poverty-level salary), with budgets basically frozen for the last few years. Remember, post-docs are highly trained professionals with degrees and publications and skills, and they are still treated like apprentices as far as the administration goes.
The good news is that Obama has proposed a small, 6% increase in the standard NIH post-doctoral stipend — not everyone is paid by NIH, of course, but it does provide a benchmark for what the typical post-doc salary should be.
Don’t start celebrating just yet, though. This is only the proposal, and it needs to be approved by congress, which generally treats that book-learnin’ infrastructure of the country as something expendable, and much less important than subsidizing corn, which has the virtue of being non-uppity and usually voting Republican. What you need to do right now is write to your representative and tell them that it sure would be nice if scientists could be paid a living wage commensurate with the investment in their education. Support your local post-docs, and especially if you are your local post-doc, write in!
Haha! Just wait till the Republicans hear about this Commie, liberal anti-American crap.
It’s a little sad but the difference between postdoc salary and what I could earn in the commercial world was one of the reasons I left academia.
I support Professor Myers’ view on this.
One of the areas where I diverge from mainstream libertarianism is that I strongly support government funding for scientific research. Science is immensely important to the progress of civilisation. Indeed, a part of me wishes I’d become a scientist (though I don’t think I have the right kind of mind for it).
It’s ‘postdoc’, short for postdoctoral. Not post-doc. (For when you write in.)
A 6% increase in a piddly salary is still piddly, and this proposed increase only applies to NIH stipends, as pointed out. Academia is an atavistic bastion of indentured servitude. Grad students, post-docs, adjunct faculty alike need to be treated decently, with a say in decision making, pay commensurate with ability, and full benefits. Instead of this token increase I say do away with post-doc positions altogether and hire those with new degrees as full faculty, with say in departmental decisions, on short-term contracts with options to renew. The system as currently formulated only serves to drive talent away from research careers.
This is one of the reasons that those claims that ‘all climate researchers are doing it for the money, being obviously paid by the extremely profitable alternative energy industry’ is laughable. If you’re doing research, you do it for the research, not money. Anyone with the ability and dreams of becoming rich has long gone to an industry position or started his/her own company.
Darwinsdog (#5) I agree with you, although I have no hope for it happening. Right now we’re in a giant Ponzi scheme: we get grad students and postdocs to do the research work practically for free, in return for which they get a lottery ticket for continuing on in academia (and become less employable in the private sector*).
The biggest problem with being a postdoc, of course, is something most “civilians” don’t understand: you have no control over where you live. You WILL lose your job in 2-4 years, no matter how good you are at your job. My wife and I got to live in some interesting places.. but we don’t know many people there. We didn’t bother to make friends, because we were (a) killing ourselves at our jobs to stay competitive and (b) knew we were going to move to some new place soon.
The reason, of course, is to get a shot at the magic tenure-track ticket, something nearly everyone wants but almost no one gets. The full craziness is obvious when you realize that we burned our candle at both ends to become better researchers… and then were hired to teach. Crazy, but there it is.
A professional class of _permanent_ researchers at universities (much like at national labs) would be a far better way of doing things, but it’s just way more expensive than the current model, where we strip off the unlucky ones to the private sector.
* Yes, LESS employable. Imagine you see a CV at your workplace: pure research, more pure research, a little teaching on the side, a year of adjunct teaching, then suddenly wanting to work in the private sector. Looks like a failed academic that doesn’t want a private sector job.. because that’s exactly what it is.
Just wrote my senator per suggestion from the linked site. I did the math and after my friggin’ Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, I should be making minimum $40,000 a year to cover life expenses and have a modest savings for medical emergencies and the like. Of course, I’m nowhere near that. And PhD scientists don’t have a $45k low end stipend? That’s some crazy-ass shit.
I used a more professional-sounding e-mail and no profanity in the letter to the senator, btw. Satan’s mama didn’t raise no fool!
Well, heck why doesn’t the govt just print money for everyone? It’s not that I don’t think these people probably are far more qualified and deserving than what they are paid. I don’t even mind if it’s my tax money that is paying them. IF there were any of it actually there. It’s just that spending more and more money that doesn’t exist is not a very good solution to anything. By this thinking, would the president have been a much greater guy if he quadrupled their pay? Why 6%? Just raise EVERYBODY’s pay 1000%. recession over. happy days for all.
Once again it feels kinda lonely around here.?
rrpostal – This isn’t about generosity. It’s about bare minimums for what people should rightly have. $45,000 in a major urban center like Seattle isn’t much, certainly when you have an onerous student loan debt and even a modest amount of additional expenses. But 45k could possibly stave off worry long enough to keep American academia from becoming even more of a ghost town than it already is.
I agree about making hard decisions in budgets. I voted against a local school levy for computers. That’s a bullshitty thing to do, but I did it. The kids all have computers at home anyhow and can wait a few years until this shitty economy THAT LIBERTARIAN PHILOSOPHY CREATED picks up a bit.
I agree. That’s why we need to cut military spending at least in half. Then we’ll easily be able to afford many things that are infinitely more important than having the world’s biggest swinging dick.
The idea behind a postdoc is that you’re in training for something that will later (in theory) make you lots of money. While it’s true that they make little money, they still make more than when they were PhD students (and so had a lower standard of living.) MD Doctors have a similar program, whereby they make no money in med school, followed by little in residency, followed by more once their done with that. While there are few positions in academia for all the PhD students and postdocs, this isn’t really a reason to pay them more. If you’re planning on spending years of your life on your degree, you should have some idea of what you’ll be reasonably able to do with it afterwards. If PhD students didn’t realize that there are many more students than professors, they didn’t do their research all to well.
Having done both the post-doc thing and the professor thing, I’d say the first two items on your list are definitely perks. You are not invited to boring administrative shit, and you aren’t required to attend boring meetings regarding alumni fund drives and the like. Being at the mercy of your academic overlord can be tremendously rewarding if your academic overlord isn’t micro-managing pains-in-the-ass and gives a huge damn about your professional development, like mine wasn’t/did.
I loved being a post-doc…but its nice to see any increased funding for science, I guess.
rrpostal (#9) – It’s a good idea for governments to spend money on science. Science is done by people. End of story. “Money it doesn’t have” is a ridiculous way of talking – it has a whole lot of money.
thatjoeguy (#12) – Postdoc positions are usually NOT good preparation for private sector jobs. And academic jobs, contrary to what you might believe, do not pay.
For example, here is what doctors make:
http://www.allied-physicians.com/salary_surveys/physician-salaries.htm
Here is what tenure-track physicists make:
http://www.aps.org/careers/guidance/guide/images/table1.gif
What I make – about 50k. Still working off that student loan, yessir.
Let me add – I’m perfectly happy with this salary. I’m well aware that this is much better than many people, and consider myself lucky to have the job. But I don’t make so much that it made economical sense for me to suffer for 8 years while looking for a job.
Notice that second link – they couldn’t find any full professors less than 10 years from their PhD. Assistant professors make this: http://www.aps.org/careers/guidance/guide/images/table4.gif
Dude…
The US military budget is almost as big as those of the rest of the world together, and several orders of magnitude bigger than the science budget.
I bet the waste in the US military budget, like decisions to buy stuff that is built in some persuasive senator’s home state, is bigger than the science budget by an order of magnitude or two.
Do you have any clue of proportions?
That’s not the waste, that’s the entire procurement budget…
I’m not a scientist, but I know and love a few, some of whom recently finished stints as postdocs at abysmal pay before (reluctantly) going to industry for the slightly less terrible pay. Apparently they want to start a family and be able to raise their kids, both time and money wise! Such cheek.
Anyway, just wanted to say thanks to all the researchers who do brain-busting hard work for peanuts that has made life so great for everyone else, and thanks for pointing this out – I just finished sending in my support for this proposal.
Snowclone: I’m grateful to make a good salary doing something that I would do for free. Many scientists I know would be able to integrate easily into the ermmm….”real”…world, but I am not one of them.
In other words, I’m a clown with no social graces, no sense of moderation in speech or attitude, and I can’t think for more than a few minutes about financial issues without getting a goddamned migraine. I’m clearly poor at time-management (look how I’m spending now), hate grooming, can’t pack a suitcase for a trip without forgetting some essential item, and seem to be only interested in thinking about things that I find challenging or confusing. Here’s the twist…I’m significantly less intelligent than most of my colleagues. I find it just short of miraculous that I am gainfully employed at all. As such, I’m happy to work for peanuts. Hell. I like peanuts.
So thank you, Joe Public!
Maybe salaries would be better if industry positions were considered equal to academic positions.
In my field, roughly 50% of PhDs go to industry positions. And professor positions pay close to the same as PhD industry positions. They have to to be competitive. And few people do academic postdocs, since they’re generally better off in every way going to industry. There’s no stigma about returning to academia from industry if you want to (interestingly, not that many seem to).
The problem as I see it is that by putting academic positions up on a pedestal, you end up with a lot of people willing to work for less in exchange for the prestige among their peers.
I concede that there could be a lack of demand in industry in other fields. Demand for PhDs in my field is very high, but I’m not sure what physicists would do in industry.
*snort*
You’re kidding, right? Postdocs are fairly tightly confined to the scientific realm, and as a tenured science faculty I make literally 2/3 of the salary of new incoming business and computer science faculty at my institution. And they treat their faculty job (with their salary already 30-40% higher than mine) as a part-time gig in comparison to their private consulting, which is where they make their real money.
No, postdocs are nothing about money. They’re ideally about gaining more experience working with different projects and different colleagues than you did during your graduate work, and in reality are the holding pattern until people can find a job.
Carlie said it.
I thoroughly enjoyed my postdoc years; nothing but cool science all the time. But then I never cared about money. Just ask my ex-wives.
#21 Carlie’s argument shows its own weaknesses, in that she “snorts” at the idea of postdoc work being “training for something that will make you lots of money”, then follows up by complaining how some of her fellow faculty are making lots of money.
The computer/business faculty are presumably recruited from a small pool of people, with lots of geographical options. Other science faculties recruit from large pools of people, also with lots of geographical options.
Supply and demand, etc: universities really want these guys, the guys themselves have lots of options, hence the larger rewards for geek faculty.
So, perhaps the US Government could scale postdoc salaries according to the importance of their research. Those who are researching diabetes, CVD, cancer, etc get paid a lot.
Those who are researching how to make a fruit fly grow twenty sets of wings get paid a bit less.
And those who are sucking up funding by researching how some little mollusc which lives only in one tidal pool on the coast of North Carolina get paid in Skittles and Haloperidol.
I still see postdoc wages as a foil for indentured servitude. I don’t see why people seem shocked when they ask me to perform highly specialized tasks and I start screaming and cursing when they tell me how much they’re willing to pay. “We have enough to pay you as a postdoc.” I have better things to do with my time; even flipping burgers for a clown is more appealing in many cases.
Carlie’s argument shows its own weaknesses, in that she “snorts” at the idea of postdoc work being “training for something that will make you lots of money”, then follows up by complaining how some of her fellow faculty are making lots of money.
different field.
did you miss that part? here, let me repeat it for you:
…salary of new incoming business and computer science faculty
note that comparing salaries is field relevant, not post-doc relevant.
many computer science and business faculty never went through the post-doc process.
so, no, her logic is not flawed, and her argument does not contradict itself.
Those who are researching how to make a fruit fly grow twenty sets of wings get paid a bit less.
you might try looking up how basic research in genetics has lead to Nobel-prize worthy results in medical research over the last 30 years.
then rethink your argument.
All I have to say is fuck you, slantedscience.
Research is important, and maybe fucking idiots shouldn’t be the ones to decide what is valuable.
As for your response to Carlie’s argument, ever heard of a business postdoc? I haven’t. The fields that have postdocs don’t pay very high salaries. Other fields pay better, but the faculty there were never research slaves before they got their higher paying jobs.
A low salary for a post-doc position while gaining “experience” before moving into a “high-paying” job would be fine if that’s what actually happened. However, for some of us, it takes more than one post-doc before we move into “the big time”. It took me four post-docs before I was able to get a permanent job, and that was a long time to live without health care and without job security. I had to take anti-depressants for the stress. When I finally got a real job, my salary *doubled* and I was able to buy a car and do normal things like go visit my parents. Was it worth it? My own post-doc, hearing what I went through to get my job, said he’d never do what I did. He gave up.
I once read a bitter satire on the web about the graduate school system. Candidates and their money are ingested into graduate school, as raw fuel. They are turned into low-paid, overworked graduate assistants, serving to power the institution’s metabolism. They are then excreted as unemployable PhDs.
Ichthyic, #25, replied to me:
“different field.
did you miss that part? here, let me repeat it for you…”
Err, no, please don’t because I didn’t. If you have another look, the thesis of my post is that postdocs in different fields should be paid different salaries, dependant upon their worth to mankind.
If you have another look, the thesis of my post is that postdocs in different fields should be paid different salaries, dependant upon their worth to mankind.
then you are abandoning your critique of Carlies post.
good.
an apology would be in order then.
also, your thesis is inane.
who judges “worth to mankind”?
yeah.
@Haley, #27, who said:
“The fields that have postdocs don’t pay very high salaries.”
What a ridiculuous, and naive, statement.
Pre-clincal pharmacology is a “field”, I would suggest. There are postdocs working in pre-clinical pharmacology. There are some very well paying jobs in pre-clinical pharmacology. Ergo, there ARE fields that have postdocs that DO pay very high salaries.
So, take your PhD in “Symbiotic Relationships In A Tidal Pool On A North-Eastern North Carolina Beach: Interactions between Northern Red-Backed Sea Beetles And The Larvae Of Atlantic Tritomic Shrimp”, and put it to ggod use: throw it into the paper recycling bin.
Ichthyic,
BiasedAssclownSlantedScience is a troll who showed up in the endless thread a while ago and attempted to insult us all. It was an incredibly lame attempt. It’s worth dropping in the killfile, nothing more.If you have another look, the thesis of my post is that postdocs in different fields should be paid different salaries, dependent upon their worth to mankind.
Forgive me for butting in, but doesn’t the labor market set that value? You may well have poured a considerable amount of blood, toil, tears, sweat and student loans into your chosen field. But if the market doesn’t value your degree, then…??
— The Sanity Inspector
SS:
take your inane tripe and yourself and throw both into the nearest sewer.
on second thought, take ye hence to the nearest landfill; I’m afraid you might clog the sewer.
or, hey, you could actually learn why those of us who aren’t entirely ignorant of science, history, and economics know the value of basic research.
But if the market doesn’t value your degree, then…??
ignorance exists as much in “the market” as within the general populace (obviously).
fixing ignorance within the general population would fix ignorance in the marketplace, but then ignorance in the general populace is the reason this blog, and many like it, continue to exist.
might be wishful thinking that an ignorant populace is a fixable thing.
I mean, look at “Slanted Science”. obviously completely ignorant of the value of basic research, but more than happy to let the “market” decide.
*sigh*
Symbiotic Relationships In A Tidal Pool On A North-Eastern North Carolina Beach: Interactions between Northern Red-Backed Sea Beetles And The Larvae Of Atlantic Tritomic Shrimp
obviously you just made that up, but having actually read many papers dealing with species interactions in intertidal environments…
just off the top of my head, I can think of several reasons why such basic research is valuable, and even could have economic implications down the road:
knowing the basic ecology of any habitat leads to understanding how any change within a given environment (biological or physical) will lead to changes in species demographics.
Knowing how species demographics change with various influences allows us to predict the impacts of things like species removals (like from fishing, say), or species introductions (like if someone wanted to aquaculture mussels or oysers in this environment).
perhaps a specific change might lead to the population explosion of a species of parasite that would end up having disastrous consequences for the very aquaculture project proposed.
so, then, without that basic research in hand, we would have that much less information available to help us understand what the impacts of any particular change to that habitat might be, and thus if we were the unfortunate aquaculturist whose business was ruined because of exactly that lack of information…
see, it takes even less imagination than it took for you to make up the title of your fictional paper you so easily dismiss to see the value of basic research.
my conclusion can only be that you are either entirely ignorant, or actually have very little imagination, intelligence, or both, to not see the value of “research on how many wings fruit flies can have” = basic genetic research or why interactions between species have potential huge economic implications.
to cut it short, I’ll just assume you’re dimwitted.
It’s worth dropping in the killfile, nothing more.
no fair, i had to get my licks in first.
OK, done now.
*killfile*
@Icthyic-
Hey, good point about economic implications in marine biology. What causes massive fishkills? Why are sea urchin population explosions devastating areas off the coast of California? What are the implications of vast tracts of water going dead for no apparent reason?
The oceans are ten kinds of fucked up. We need more well-funded research, and not the kind fucking Japanese whalers do…
–
Oh no, not the *killfile*.
Consider me killed, if you wish. Whatever floats your marine science boat.
Just in case this message survives the horrors of your *killfile*, Ichthyic, I’d like to point out that you have defended academic research into the struggle of an aquatic organism, within a tiny habitat, based upon the usefulness of such knowledge to aquaculture.
That is, you’d like the taxpayer to fund your crappy little Postdoc so that Big Aquabusiness can use your localized data to assist in their acquisition/breeding strategies.
As I said: in my world, you’d earn about thirty bucks a week for this.
I’m not hip to the ways of compu-tors, and don’t know much about these “killfiles” of which you folks speak. How do they work? I could use less troll antagonism in my life.
And in my world, you would earn zero as a total fuckwited fool. Why are you really posting here? You appear to be only trolling. Are you another liberturd?
Slantedscience…are you Sarah Palin? No, no, no…let me guess. Don McLeroy, right?
I don’t come to the place where you work and show you how to hold the toilet plunger, do I? Maybe you could refrain from kibitzing about how scientists should be paid. Also, your break is over, and there is another clog up in 315 you should probably see to.
Slanted Science is once again showing how much of a moron he is. The importance of one’s work doesn’t reflect the fiscal compensation on offer. And especially when one moves away from direct relation between expertise and income generated from it.
@G.A.S:
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/4107
killfile scripts allow you to hide users whose input you deem not worth wading through (replaces their comments with a marker).
Meanwhile Sarah Palin earned something like $12,000,000 in the last year.
Hello Caine, Fleur Du Mal”, #33. You said:
“SlantedScience is a troll who showed up in the endless thread a while ago and attempted to insult us all.”
I will now, as I did then, try to get it into your understanding what I do and why.
I agree with PZ Myers’s aims of acceptance of atheism, a reduction to zero of religious influence, and a deeper understanding of science by the world’s masses.
What I have objected to in my appearances below the line/plughole is the inability of posters to just ignore me, and get on with their posting.
More clearly: Pharyngula often – almost daily – requires that its followers hop on a link to some underpowered website in order to – specifically – disrupt its normal running. Yet, when somebody comes to the masturbatory lovefield that is the Pharyngula comments section with an attitude that isn’t full of self-congratulation, the Pharyngulatomatics jump upon them and declare that they have no right to comment.
That they are TROLLS.
Do you not see the disconnect? Do you not see that when you follow the leader and tell AIG what mindwastes they, then return here and abuse people for doing the same thing you just have, that you are hypocrites?
You don’t.
You really don’t.
Meanwhile Sarah Palin earned something like $12,000,000 in the last year.
well, she is, after all, keeping an eye on the Russkies for us from her front doorstep.
Right on, Icthyic! Thanks for the hookup!
slantedscience wrote:
It’s lucky – for you – he doesn’t want to compete for the high-status position of jizz-mopper in the local whack-parlour.
[fap fap fap]
You’d better run; it sounds like you’re needed.
SIWOTI.
You are wrong. We will demonstrate that to you. If you don’t like it, go elsewhere troll.
Holy crap. THe troll is defending AiG now, and I can’t seem to make greasemonkey work yet… I must bail. Have a nice day y’all!
Wowbagger, #50: I haven’t touched the semen of any man other than myself. And it’s probably best that you keep to yourself any knowledge you have of the cleaning practices within adult movie theaters.
Nerd of redhead, OM, #51: I am humbled by your web acronym. Its engorged upper case letters are truly a fine riposte to my carefuly worded argument. I am reduced to replying: WDYGFYWAH? Oh, and a quick question : who are the “we” you mention?
If you object to it, why don’t you just STFU? That would make it easy to ignore you.
A thought on the “Troll” moniker:
1) I love what PZ Myers is shooting for: disappearance of religion as an influence on our lives.
2) I think it’s a bit ridiculous that he urges his many followers to attack small-number websites who stick up polls with questions like “Is Satan going to claim the souls of queers and blacks? VOTE NOW!!!!!!!!!!”, when he should be devoting all of his wrath towards the rich and organized religious entities.
3) Given 2), I find it to be laughable – truly, pathetic – that the site’s committed followers work themselves into a frenzy of “TROLL!!!!!!!!” self-righteousness when they are faced with a poster who isn’t willing to stroke their penis and tell them everything is going to be okay.
In summary: get over me, and start asking the heroic PZM to hit the real targets hard.
slantedscience, a pissant, wrote:
In summary: fuck off.
Wait, isn’t this the guy who claimed that if you taught classes you weren’t a scientist? Nary a clue.
Still nothing cogent from SS. Thinks he’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. We think he is very moldy bread that has fallen apart and is shunned by rats and mice.
Sven DiMilo:
That’s the one. It’s also the one who claimed one/or all of us were overweight, 35 year old virgins. Or something like that.
#56, Wowbagger: How do I respond to such a delicate argument? Its multiple, carefully nuanced declaratives leave me no room to wriggle out of the assumption that you are gay, and enjoy the taste of men’s cocks.
Why don’t you want to stroke my penis?? Something wrong with it? I’m deeply offended by this.
#57, Nerd Of redhead, OM, said “We think he [me] is very moldy bread that has fallen apart and is shunned by rats and mice.”
Yet still pounced upon by the inhabitants of this webspace. By admission: lower than rats and mice.
We never do what fuckwitted losers like you tell us to do. You will be challenged for your stupidity, and you appear to have an endless supply of it. Time to find greener pastures elsewhere.
slanty troll just likes abuse, because it’s a form of attention.
Pretty typical, really.
Must not be getting enough from his boy-toy.
Rorschach:
Not only that, Rorshach, many of us here don’t carry that particular piece of equipment. So, the troll keeps on proving its idiocy. Now, I’m sure, we’ll hear that ‘penis’ was metaphorical and all that.
John Morales, #64, posted this: “slanty troll just likes abuse, because it’s a form of attention.”
Which seems to mean that John Morales enjoys abusing people in order to get their attention. Is there a different definition of “sociopath”?
Slanty troll, that was not abuse; that was an observation.
You’re not even close to the more pathetic specimens we’ve seen around here. Or particularly interesting.
Just an average troll.
John Morales wrote:
Well, let’s rate slantedscience from his contributions and see.
Clueless? Check
Inability to engage? Check.
Dishonest? Check
Pissant? Check.
Homophobe? Check.
Fucking clown shoe? Check, check, check.
Pretty standard troll behaviour.
@WowbaggerOM, #69: Nice. Get the “homophobe” in there quick, because – true or not – it trumps all other labels. Well done!
To all others: why do you engage “The Troll”? Wouldn’t it be best to just ignore it? The only reasons I can see for taking it on are self-aggrandizement within a very small population (the BTL Pharyngulatatoes), and a desire to communicate with someone – anyone – who will respond to your words puked onto the internet.
They’re both pretty sad.
Meh.
Boring troll trolls.
Troll, troll, troll for our amusement. :)
Carlie’s a professor? God dammit, I had her envisioned as an eloquent version of the cleric from Seiken Dentetsu 3 (Also called Carlie). Damnation.*
*I know this is irrelevant to the topic, but no sense in feeding a moron.
Slantedscience wrote:
Hmm, let’s see – in post #60 you wrote: ‘How do I respond to such a delicate argument? Its multiple, carefully nuanced declaratives leave me no room to wriggle out of the assumption that you are gay, and enjoy the taste of men’s cocks.‘
You’re calling me gay in the hope that I’m insulted by it – meaning that you consider being gay to be somehow less than not being gay, and therefore something I would find demeaning.
That’s homophobia 101, you clueless bigoted fucking dumbass.
The postdoc thing along with the dearth of faculty positions is one of the reasons I’m leaving academia.
A PhD in a liberal art (like, say, anthropology) has little value in the private sector and may even be detrimental to finding a job, and you still have the same student loans to pay. Who knows if I’ll ever pay mine off.
loris- What’s your monthly payment? I’m at $205 for a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.
:-P
My wife and I have more than 40 large in loans for two BAs. Best money we have ever spent (and continue to spend*).
I will say that we were incredibly lucky to get faculty positions, because as PL says, there are not many out there. I have lots of friends that are post-docs with NSF money in their pockets, but can’t get a job. I applied for almost 60 positions, before getting one.
*Worst money spent: Medical procedures two weeks ago that were inconclusive regarding gut problems.
Second worst: I bought a suit once for a wedding. Jesus I hate wearing a suit.
My education took a lot of weird twists and turns; far too many to elaborate on here, but the part that’s relevant to this discussion was the two semesters I spent in a postdoc position – before I even had a bachelors degree.
It was just luck – I happened to have done some work on some stuff that this particular research group (studying energy transfer in crystals, but at a different university in a different state) really needed. The only position they had available was a postdoc, so… they offered, I took a leave of absence and lo and behold I was post-without-doc, having a great time working in a lab with all sorts of really cool equipment. The PI was an awesome guy who didn’t micromanage and saw to it that the lab had ample resources.
The salary was, in hindsight, a pittance, but hey, I was single 19 year old and it was all I needed.
The first thing I noticed, though, was how hard everyone had to work. 12 hour days were the norm for me, with weekends spent analyzing the data collected during the week. And I was far from the hardest worker – one guy was working on a four-wave mixing experiment that was so sensitive it could only be done late at night when the air conditioning was shut off. He ended up with a paper in Phys Rev D but nearly wrecked his marriage in the process.
I ended up with some decent publications in journals like J Chem Phys. I had published a couple of papers previously, but these were my first in refereed journals.
But in hindsight, one of the reasons the whole experience was such fun was that I got to do something really interesting but without committing to it as a career. I ended up getting a degree in engineering, not physics.
My postdoc experience is, I suspect, fairly unique. A good friend had what I suspect is a much more typical run: After four successive postdoc positions (in biochemistry) he had had his fill of slave wages and being treated like crap. So he said “fuck it” and went back to school, got an MBA, and now works as a risk assessment quant for a major Wall Street firm. A real shame – he’s exceptionally smart, and could easily have made some significant contribution in biochemistry. But instead he figures out how to take things right to the edge of the law but not break it.
BoxNDox – That is a hugely depressing last paragraph. Antiochus – Oh yeah, I’ve spent thousands of uninsured guy dollars on not successfully diagnosing an abdominal pain nearly as bad as appendicitis. Awesome!
Ah, the guy who knows nothing about science but likes to pretend he does showed up again. I see I missed the takedowns, but yeah. My point was that a postdoc has nothing to do with getting a higher salary, because fields that don’t have postdocs pay better than fields that do, and that’s even in a “closed” environment where one might expect more parity of pay since everyone is doing a similar job (all being faculty at the same university).
As for the snipes about research, oy, where to start? Ichthyic covered it well.
Aw, and he’s a homophobe, too! Don’t worry SlantedScience, we won’t tell anyone how you secretly fantasize about gay sexual encounters.
Rutee – it’s just my day job. ;)
Plonk SS. He is annoying. He’s not even good troll. Where’s Pilty when you need him? Now that was a good troll. Or Caladonian. He was funny.
A long-time lurker here, delurking to make a comment about postdocs (having been one once).
I work for the National Science Foundation and I’m happy to say that NSF has been paying postdocs $45K/yr for a number of years now. Obviously, if NIH is going to bring their pay rate up to that mark it’s time for NSF to increase our stipend.
I know some of the members of the NSF postdoc working group and I’ll bring this up with them.
sadly, i earned more money to walk people’s dogs than i did as a postdoc at one of the finest research institutions in the world — a good thing since that’s what i was forced to do to remain housed and fed after my funding ended.
Man, was I born too soon.
This talk of student loans reminds me of how good it felt to pay that thing off. The day I got it was a good day, the day it was paid off was a great one. I only needed to take a loan the last few semesters of undergrad. My roommate borrowed the whole time and then through law school. He needed that big money by the end of all that.
For the effort, sacrifice and intelligence needed to pursue science in the United States, the pay is abysmal. Should people with >10 yrs of training and schooling really only get $30-45K? Geez, that is very little for a person of that background in their thirties. Especially if they have to work in an area of high C.O.L.
Real wages have actually fallen for scientists in relation to other profession. Despite all those increases, together, they fall behind inflation. Their job prospects are getting worse as we speak. Why should Americans really be competing for jobs that are best left to foreigners? Intelligent americans have so little to gain in relation to their peers by pursuing science.
Science will keep progressing regardless if Americans pursue it. As long as there is a little cash in it, some poor sucker will do it.