Tag Archives: tenure track

Reshaping the research landscape

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A 12 April report from the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine offers ideas for reshaping the landscape of life-science research across all career levels in the US biomedical research pipeline.

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The proposal from the advisory body in Washington DC calls for more career counselling at the graduate and postdoctoral levels, better data on career outcomes at those levels, three-year caps on postdocs under principal investigators and new non-tenure track academic research positions, among other changes. To implement all the proposals would require a US$2 billion increase to the US National Institutes of Health (NIH)’s budget, as well as subsequent budget raises to prevent future funding bottlenecks.

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Postdoctoral training in Sweden: too short to grow

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hourglassMembers of the Karolinska Institute’s Postdoc Association fear an amendment to Sweden’s Research Bill could create career instability.

In November 2016 the Swedish government announced plans to introduce a tenure track system to make academic careers more secure, to improve mobility and to make research more competitive.

But in July last year an amendment to the Research Bill stipulated that PhD graduates had a maximum of five years (two years less than now) to get an Assistant Professorship (Biträdande Lektor in Swedish). Universities must comply by 1 April 2018.

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Know the odds

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The odds of landing a tenure-track position in the life sciences are low while the chances of being stuck in multiple postdocs are high. So the leaders of nine top US universities and one research institution this month announced a plan to communicate those probabilities in an effort to grapple with a clogged biomedical research pipeline.

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Broken dreams

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By Paul Smaglik

US postdocs are less satisfied with their lives than are the general public and people in some developing countries, according to a recent survey. Of the survey’s 190 participants, 30% said that they would not recommend postdoctoral training for their peers, and 20% said that they changed their career goals during their postdoc.

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{credit}Keron Greene{/credit}

The survey, published this month in F1000Research, an open-publishing platform, reflects a deep disenchantment with the US postdoctoral programme, perhaps because so many postdocs initially hope that their training will result in tenure-track positions that don’t materialise. While the number of postdoc positions has tripled since 1979, the number of available tenure-track positions has not increased to accommodate them. In the United States, 65% of all PhD holders pursue postdocs, but only 15-20% of those attain a tenure-track position (Nature, 2015; 528 (7580): 22–25). Continue reading →