The newly proposed salary increase for NIH-funded postdocs would not make the positions competitive with what the industry offers, experts said.
Pictured: Illustration of computer and other work-related objects on one side, and coins falling into a jar along with work-related objects on the other side/iStock, Best Content Production Group
Last month, a National Institutes of Health working group published its recommendations to resolve financial and career development challenges facing the country’s postdoctoral students in STEM. Low compensation and benefits, job insecurity and insufficient support for professional development are some problems that plague the postdoc community, the group noted.
Even though experts welcomed the new suggestions, they said the changes, if implemented, would be unlikely to appreciably increase the number of doctoral students who go on to pursue academic postdoctoral opportunities. “This is undoubtedly a move in the right direction, but it’s not enough to make academia lucrative,” Nimi Vashi, a senior scientist at drug discovery company Deep Origin and a former postdoc at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, told BioSpace.
Show Me the Money
A survey by the National Science Foundation, cited in the working group’s report, found that a growing number of life sciences doctorate holders with definite postgraduate commitments planned to skip postdoctoral training. A total of 46.9% of Ph.D. scholars chose a career in the industry in fiscal year 2021 compared to 37.3% in 1992, the survey found.
In Vashi’s view, the main reason behind the declining popularity of postdoc positions is low salaries. While the NIH committee proposed raising the minimum postdoctoral salary to $70,000 this year, a 20% hike from the current minimum, it is simply not enough and is not on par with the cost of living in big cities, where many of the top-tier labs are located, Vashi added. “People living in mega-cities cannot live on seventy thousand dollars. They at least need an annual salary of hundred thousand dollars or upward to survive.”
Some postdocs have revolted over current salaries and other issues. In June 2023, nearly 2,400 postdocs and staff researchers at the University of Washington (UW) went on strike, saying that the university’s proposed contract terms don’t amount to a fair wage. They suspended their strike a week later after the unions reached tentative agreements with the university.
More recently, postdocs at Mount Sinai went on strike demanding pay increases, wage adjustments for inflation and improved visa and financial support for international postdoc employees. They too eventually reached a tentative agreement with the hospital.
Many institutions and states have implemented policies to increase postdoc pay, but lab leaders are unsure where the funding would come from, Science reported, adding that federal research grants haven’t kept up with inflation and necessities such as lab supplies are also becoming pricier.
Michael Pietrack, managing director of Kaye/Bassman International, a Texas-based biotech and pharma recruiting firm, agreed with Vashi that poor salaries are the main reason why Ph.D.s are shying away from postdoc positions in academia. “Postdocs have accumulated so much debt; they can barely make their payments,” he said.
Pietrack said that industry research jobs usually offer salaries upward of $100,000, pushing Ph.D.s to opt out of academia. “Money is a huge factor when people consider jobs in the industry.”
However, Joe Peters, who heads the New Jersey-based biotech and pharma recruiting firm Scientific Search, said he believes that salary isn’t a primary considerations for Ph.D.s in their decision whether to pursue a postdoc; instead, it is whether the position fits the research topic they want to pursue.
Vashi noted that innovations in biotechnology are happening at lightning speed and said that this is yet another reason why people are saying goodbye to academia. “Gone are the days when groundbreaking research happened only in academic institutions,” she said. As a result, more and more Ph.D.s are looking to get industrial experience on their resume early on in their careers or are donning the entrepreneur cap, she added.
Additional Recommendations
Postdocs roles are traditionally seen as training positions, and therefore don’t always carry the benefits of full-time roles. The committee, however, suggested adding benefits such as a retirement plan and health, dental and vision insurance to NIH-supported postdocs positions.
Additionally, it proposed that postdocs spend a fraction of their time on professional development. Vashi said that this would significantly benefit international students, who often don’t spend much time researching careers and job options beyond their laboratories. However, both Vashi and Pietrack asserted that the only way to make NIH-funded postdoc positions sufficiently attractive is by matching industry salaries. “If not,” Vashi said, “postdocs as an institution will not survive beyond a decade.”
Aayushi Pratap is a New York-based health and science journalist and an alum of Columbia Journalism School. Reach her at app2151@columbia.edu.
