Like a lot of folks in the science biz, I’ve been wondering about the outcome of the science spending in the stimulus package. The econ crowd argues that an effective stimulus should be both fast acting and temporary. Common sense also dictates that the spending should be something that will eventually either reduce spending in the future, or grow the GDP.
There’s much speculation that some fraction of the NSF and NIH spending will go towards funding recent proposals that were very highly ranked, but fell just below the funding cutoff. Given how ridiculously oversubscribed the individual investigator grant programs are, there will be no lack of worthwhile projects to fund. On the other hand, these types of grants are not necessarily fast acting. Notifications take a while to process, and by the time the funding becomes secure, job “season” for academics would be well over, causing a significant delay before personnel could be hired and money spent.
However, I think there is a pretty obvious use for some of the money that better targets the goals of the stimulus package — fund postdocs directly. In astronomy, there are a number of high prestige fellowships that are awarded to postdocs through the NSF or NASA. These awards offer postdocs complete freedom to direct their own research programs, a high degree of flexibility as to where they go, and a modest budget to support their research. Thus, instead of spending 2-3 years performing labor for a senior PI, the postdocs can develop new lines of research.
I see a lot of benefit to this idea, and not too many drawbacks:
First, postdocs are typically at a very productive stage of their careers. They’ve learned tons of useful tricks in grad school, but are not yet bogged down by teaching, grant writing, and sitting on endless committees. Scientifically, postdocs are a lot of science bang for the buck.
Second, of all of us on the science track, postdocs are possibly getting slammed the hardest. Faculty searches are getting cancelled left and right, so we have an academic generation of highly trained scientists with nowhere to go. In the past, many of these people have successfully transitioned into industry (thus moving the benefits of past investment in their training back into the private sector), but these days that’s not much of an option either. Giving the most promising of these folks a way to tread water for a few years might keep more of them in the scientific pipeline long enough to transfer into a stable position which made use of their skills.
Third, independent postdoctoral fellowships allow one to develop skills that one needs to make a longer term scientific career work — namely, the ability to choose your own scientific questions and then plan and execute your approach. Instead, if the stimulus package gets funneled to postdocs solely through PI grants, then a significant fraction of postdocs are primarily going to learn additional skills in “doing what their advisor suggested”. (While ideally there’s mentoring to support grant-supported postdocs, that doesn’t always occur.) Moreover, the PI has a responsibility to the granting agency to deliver the products supported by the original grant, and cannot legally support the postdoc working on topics that are unrelated, no matter how cool and clever they are. Developing one’s scientific judgement, and prioritizing one’s effort are skills that transcend the particular needs of academic science — thus, even if these postdocs do not eventually wind up on an academic track, the skills they acquire during a truly independent phase would be of huge benefit in the private sector.
Finally, the postdoc applications are ready to go. Committees have met and made prioritized lists for this most recent round of awards, and my past experience suggests that they could probably double the number of awards before having any substantive concern that the money was going to someone who was not yet ready for full scientific independence. The money could then be out there stimulating those postdocs by the fall, but would be over in 3 years — fast acting and temporary, just like it’s supposed to be. If more stimulus is needed next year, they can just increase the number of awards a second time (preferably opening it up to people who are more than three years past their PhD, which is a current limitation on some of the programs).
The main drawbacks I can see are (1) that it takes money out of the hands of PI’s who have a proven track record of making smart scientific judgements and (2) that it adds to the overpopulation of postdocs compared to faculty positions. With regard to the first, there is nothing that says that PI’s can’t lure these independent postdocs to their project (especially if the agencies keep rules in place to keep all the postdocs from bunching up at one or two particularly attractive institutions). If you are doing interesting things, and have a good record for mentoring, some of these people will be more than happy to collaborate with you. Moreover, in many fields postdocs need access to infrastructure that only PIs have (lab space, big fancy science toys, large data sets, etc), in which case the postdocs would be likely to affiliate themselves closely with PIs anyways.
As for the second concern, I’m not quite sure where I come down on the issue. I’ve always thought it was a mistake for people to see a tenure-track faculty position as the only acceptable outcome of PhD level training, and by giving people scientific independence at an early stage of their career, you’re offering them a chance to develop skills they’d need for anything they’d do in the future. These people are stuck in a holding pattern anyways, and it makes more sense to me to let them do their best work while they’re looking for a place to land.
February 24th, 2009 at 7:00 am
Julianne,
what are other acceptable outcomes except for a tenure-track faculty position that would reward PhD level training?
February 24th, 2009 at 8:19 am
From your mouth to Barack’s ears!
February 24th, 2009 at 8:29 am
The “independent postdocs” model unfortunately would not be viable in experimental particle physics, or probably in any area where papers are written by large collaborations. As an experimental particle physicist I’m uncomfortable with a proposal that would exclude my field.
February 24th, 2009 at 8:49 am
“On the other hand, these types of grants are not necessarily fast acting. Notifications take a while to process, and by the time the funding becomes secure, job “season” for academics would be well over, causing a significant delay before personnel could be hired and money spent.”
I beg to differ. Any scientist who has written a very good proposal that was declined by a whisker will be ready to hit the ground running. The plan for spending the money will be right in the proposal. We scientists don’t write proposals, and sit on money if perchance an award is made. We are eager to spend and make scientific progress, and support our students.
The idea of supporting postdocs is great, but not for the purpose of quick funding. “Notifications take a while to process” will be even a greater problem for postdocs, because you will have to set up a brand new program to administer the projects. Presumably, there would be an application process, and a screening process. This is not ‘beaker ready’ science.
Full disclosure: I had a proposal ranked as “outstanding” in January, with 3 Excellents, 2 Very Goods, and 1 Good evaluation. I promise, if the proposal is reconsidered, that I will do my best to stimulate the economy as quickly as possible!
—Mike
February 24th, 2009 at 10:15 am
Why wouldn’t an independent postdocs program work for fields with large collaborations? You wouldn’t be funding postdocs in those fields to go sit by themselves — you’d be allowing them to join the collaborations they chose, at the institutions they chose. Aren’t there various fellowship programs that work pretty much this way?
February 24th, 2009 at 10:21 am
Be careful. This sounds like a really good idea this year, when there’s clearly a logjam happening at the postdoc level. But this stimulus money is a temporary injection of funds, not an increase to base science funding. It will disappear, and we all have to be prepared NOT to complain when it does. If scientists whine when their explicitly temporary funding goes away, it will seriously tick off people on Capitol Hill. (The NIH is a cautionary tale: they got their funding doubled over five years, and then complained when it flattened off as planned. This still rankles in Congress.) I fear that any new added postdoc spots will start to be viewed as entitlements–maybe not by everyone but by enough people to pose a problem.
If we can avoid this, I’m all for it–I’ve got friends who need jobs too!
February 24th, 2009 at 10:51 am
Julianne- Excellent arguments, and this seems like a very fine way to go about disbursing StimPak (TM – the energizing gum!) funds to me.
To Brian above: I assume if the money is immediately given for a 2-3 yr postdoc, it will indeed last that long — and that’s a perfect way to get this money out there, since no postdoc is guaranteed anything in the future anyway, where faculty implicitly are, in some way.
Also, though I agree that temporary funds are just that, speaking as one who has participated once in 2005 in the annual FNAL+SLAC HEP+Astro “lobbying” trip to Wash. DC (where btw I found a few leg aides that were *amazingly* adept and knowledgeable about the background science, which gave me back some faith in my govt — and those 2 did happen to be for Dem Reps, the other 4 my group met with were Repubs — make of that what you will) — I think it’s incumbent on the physics and astronomy communities (i.e. all of us individually organizing through e.g. the APS and AAS) to continue pushing for higher stable funding profiles for these communities for all future budgets.
And of course praises be that this Admin agrees at a fundamental level *with* our priorities and outlook, vs. against them. We begin with a much better ‘headstart’ in this case.
-M
(currently a cosmology postdoc)
February 24th, 2009 at 11:05 am
Mike — I agree you can spend quickly for a proposal that effectively continues an already established group. However, if you are ramping up, it takes time to go through the cycle of advertising a postdoc, finding an appropriate candidate, and getting them installed at your institution. If I were to suddenly get a bolus injection of cash, I wouldn’t have an effective way to spend it in the next 6 months — all that I could do short term would be shuffle the pots of money that are supporting my existing postdocs. For the independent postdoc proposal, I’m thinking about taking advantage of programs that are already in place. In astro, the Hubble Fellowship, Chandra Fellowship, and Sagan Fellowship committees have already produced ranked lists of postdocs, and it would take little time for NASA to just shift the funding line down another 10-15 slots. (I still wish you the best of luck with your proposal!!)
Brian — totally right about the NIH being a cautionary tale. That’s one of the reasons I like the independent postdoc model, since it is less likely to contribute to building up scientific infrastructure that can’t be sustained. My reading of the NIH situation (as heavily influenced by DrugMonkey) is that a lot of money went to new projects that built up large labs, but which then couldn’t be sustained once NIH funding dropped back down to more traditional levels.
Ilya — I know dozens of former grad students and postdocs working in interesting jobs in industry and teaching. On average, they seem happier than many who stayed behind on the tenure track.
February 24th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Mandeep- Funny, I’m going on that same trip this year, although we’re trying to avoid using the “L-word” to describe what we’re doing, for possibly obvious reasons. We are “advocating” for science funding.
I agree that it would be a reasonable use of stimulus money if, say, the NSF were just to give out a few more Astrophysics postdoc fellowships immediately, drawing from their existing waiting list of qualified candidates (NASA got bupkes for astrophysics, so there will be no extra Hubbles). I’m just worried that people will then expect the same increase next year and complain when it’s not there. As Julianne points out, though, this is not infrastructure that will have to be mothballed when the funding ends, so maybe I’m worrying too much.
February 24th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Isn’t this suggestion similar to what NIST did with increased bio funding a couple years ago – create lots of temporary post-doc positions?
Unless corresponding long-term permanent positions are created this will just result in these people getting screwed in a couple of years, instead of today. They’ll do lots of interesting science for 40k a year, and then be 40 with kids and no job… This will be a great buyer’s market for universities, allowing hyper-competitive faculty searches (as if they weren’t already), but terrible for post-docs.
If this suggestion is to increase post-doc funding to compensate for a decrease in post-doc positions caused by temporary financial conditions (thus not creating a glut of applicants) then it seems a valid option, but if the post-doc pool is increased without providing career options (other than to find a new economic niche) that it seems beneficial to the nation and harmful to individuals.
Is it illogical to suggest that if expanded research positions are so great over the short term then perhaps they would be beneficial over longer timescales…
I apologize if my tone is coarse…
February 24th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Excuse me, NIH, not NIST.
February 24th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
The acceptance deadline for astronomy has passed, so most of the fellowships have cascaded by now. Presumably a large fraction of the immediate backups for the Hubble/Einstein/Sagan fellowships have now accepted an NSF/NPP or a second-tier institutional fellowship, so you’ll unsettle all the other programs (plus soft money positions) if you swoop in and hand out another 8 Hubbles/5 Einsteins/3 Sagans. Handing out fellowships at the NSF level might cause less disruption, and encouraging more public outreach would be a nice side benefit.
February 24th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
Hi Julianne,
I think your concern #2 is worth serious thought. By having more funds to keep postdocs employed in this economic situations when there is *less* faculty positions above them to go to, it might end up widening the postdoc->faculty gap even more. I understand your point that “postdocs shouldn’t think faculty position is the only way up”, but I think this point will be lost on most postdocs. Postdocs get paid a lot less, and willingly so, because they get to do what they want to do (research) and *hope* to get that shot at the faculty job. The postdoc who thinks “hmmm i can get training here while getting paid pittance so I can think about leaving academia better prepared” is rare. Frankly speaking, as someone who has worked in the industry before coming into academia, there are plenty of places outside academia which pay much better, that you can get the same kind of training as a postdoc would, if not better.
My opinion is that the stimulus money should be used to fund large experiments instead of directly funding more postdocs. This way, large experiments will generate more jobs (some which may be postdocs experimentalists), generate more data (some of which may be of used to postdoc theorists), but more importantly : it stimulates the entire field in its entirety. And more experiments -> more science done -> more public excitement and eventually one hope that will generate more science jobs on the whole.
(disclaimer : i am a postdoc in the faculty market this year, and it’s a pretty bad year to be in the market.)
February 24th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
There seems to be some misunderstanding here about the disbursement timescale. We received an analysis of the final bill from some kind of legal counsel, which states that the money only has to be spent by Sep 2010. The one thing with a short deadline is the
spending *plan*. The NSF has 60 days from the signing of the bill to present its plan to congress. Of course, there is pressure to spend it fast, but one doesn’t have to be driven to reckless lengths – some measure of spreading it out over the next year or two is allowed and probably the most prudent course.
February 24th, 2009 at 6:39 pm
I agree that funding postdocs with stimulus money makes a lot of sense… They’re approaching their prime in terms of scientific productivity. They’re relatively cheap, so you put a lot of highly educated people to work. Yes, there are down sides… this will lead to an even bigger supply of highly educated scientists who are not all needed to fill the shrinking number of tenure track positions. From the perspective of government and industry, that can be good… some of these postdocs will eventually find their way to industry, when they get there they will be even better positioned to develop or apply technology to real world problems. Of course, this would tend to push down wages for highly educated scientists, but I suspect most of the postdocs on the job market this year and next would accept the long-term problems of oversupply of science Ph.D.s in return for more jobs to get them through until universities and industry start hiring again.
Certainly offering several more NSF fellowships (or NSF GRFs) this year would make sense. However, I’m not convinced that prize fellowships should absorb a significant fraction of the NSF or NIH stimulus money. I’ve worked with several postdocs, most of whom came from top universities, highly recommended, and either with a prize fellowships or to my group on grant money after being on the wait list for a prize fellowship. In my opinion, most of them still need help to learn how to ask the right questions. I think working with a good mentor on a specific project is more effective than telling them “go learn how to ask good questions by trial and error”. So I think NSF should also expand funding for PI grants that will indirectly support postdocs working on specific projects and closer interactions with the PI. (I totally support programs like NSF, Hubble, Sagan, etc., and I would like to see them expand, but I think they should do more to see that postdocs receive significant mentoring.)
While the deadline for the “first round” of postdocs has passed, I know there are still plenty of good people looking for an offer. I advertised for a postdoc this year. So I have a list of probably half a dozen good people who were on my shortlist and are still looking for a position.
Disclaimer: I recently had an “Excellent/Very good” NSF proposal declined that obviously I’d like to see funded. If that happens, I would be happy to offer a position starting as soon as a month after the putative funds arrive (or in a few cases as soon as their librarian signs off on their thesis, probably May-August).
February 25th, 2009 at 3:01 am
What do PhD level scientists do aside from academia?
We work in private industry to design and build the instrumentation that y’all use in your labs.
We find the raw material used to create those instruments.
We work as technical advisors in policy and finance organizations so that they can make informed decisions about up and coming technology.
We apply the science we discover in real world applications.
We float startups, sink investors, and navigate steering committees.
A PhD is not a custodial sentence. Recipients are not doomed to lecturing without the possibility of parole. Rather, it is an indication that the recipient has the demonstrated ability to discover things about the natural world which nobody has ever known, and evaluate the attempts of others to do the same.
February 26th, 2009 at 2:59 am
Well said Lab Lemming.
February 26th, 2009 at 7:16 am
Dear E – The NSF fellowship is hardly a backup to the Hubble/Einstein, etc. Its past fellows have a higher rate of obtaining faculty jobs than Hubble Fellows, and was once better paid, have rejected people who got Hubbles in the same year, etc. I fear that you associate having an outreach/teaching component with being inferior, and should reexamine this idea, since all NSF programs have a teaching component, including the CAREER program and the regular grants.
February 26th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
I feel supporting more postdocs is the worst thing that can be done. If there is no money to move these postdocs into eventual faculty positions, then you are just prolonging postdoc misery until you are forced to leave the field. There was to be money supply from the top down.
February 27th, 2009 at 2:24 am
I wonder what people in academia really think of the current postdoc system. It has become a very important stage in one’s scinence career, but it started as a sort of necessary evil, to keep people employed while they (quickly) move to the next step. Now, it’s assumed that you do like 3 – 6 years of postdoc before you luckily find a place to stay or get forced out.
Why is reducing the number of students going after PhDs not a better solution?
While it is true that PhDs going into nonacademic sectors with their ability and expertise can be beneficial for society, I feel it is still not very sincere for people to lure young people into PhD programs in basic research, unless it is made clear that they are much more likely to be doing something else in 10 – 15 years. Of course, part of all that schooling and training in science can end up making them employable one way or another, but the fact is that they can get there faster while accumulating more useful experiences elsewhere, without those years spent for getting a PhD.
March 2nd, 2009 at 4:20 pm
It’s interesting how quickly this discussion converged on the problem of postdoc overpopulation — that there’s a glut of PhD astronomers compared to faculty jobs. (Richard Reiss wrote about the glut’s origins in the book “Tomorrow’s Professor”.)
Today I got a rejection letter today for the Clay fellowship, which claimed 241 people had applied. As an overpopulated postdoc, I feel reasonably sanguine about my prospects in academia (and my ability to thrive in industry as a Plan B), but I can’t see how to avoid, with or without a stimulus, a large migration of postdocs to industry or under-employment.
Industry, in my opinion, is a great career for someone with an analytic mind and a technical background. Un- or under-employment is not. And with 10% unemployment in my county, it’s a terrible time for a young scientist to go looking for industry jobs.
March 2nd, 2009 at 9:21 pm
I agree about the overpopulation of postdocs. In my opinion, at least for “basic” sciences like astronomy, cosmology, and particle physics for which there are no industry jobs, there should be a *REDUCTION* in the number of graduate students accepted—>followed by a reduction in the number of postdocs—>followed by a much better faculty job market.
It may be better for science to have an over population of grad students and postdocs. But it really ruins the lives of so many grads/postdocs who endure high stress and low pay only to be eventually forced out into industry or finance. If they had just not been accepted into grad school in the first place they would have saved themselves 7 to 10 years of agony.
The system just seems to “use” people by giving them grad student and postdoc positions knowing full well that a majority will be forced out. Why not be honest from the start and make it much harder to get into grad school for basic sciences?
Note that overpopulation in grad school for other fields like biotech makes perfect sense because people have many more options in industry where they can do biotech research and are not confined to academia.
So, NO! please do not use the stimulus to enlist more grad students and postdocs…this is the worst thing that can be done!
March 2nd, 2009 at 9:25 pm
That’s great for the future, and I agree with the sentiment. But what about us postdocs who are pushing 6 yrs and are kinda worried about the soon-to-be 10% unemployment rate out there in the real world? Finance ain’t looking so hot anymore.