WASHINGTON, DC—The needs of the 52,000 science and engineering postdocs in the United States are better served today than they were 4 years ago, according to participants at a meeting focused on postdocs sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) here last week (April 15). But improvements are urgently needed to help new generations of postdocs become successful academics and researchers.

“The situation with postdocs does not reflect well on our community of scientists and engineers,” said Shirley Malcom, director of the education and human resources programs at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “Long periods of training are not rewarded with jobs that have compensation significant to overcome the opportunity costs,” she said at the meeting.

Most of the 250 postdocs and faculty attending the NAS Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy (COSEPUP) Second Convocation on Enhancing the Postdoctoral Experience agreed that universities and research institutes have done better in addressing the needs of postdocs. But significant problems remain in mentoring, career guidance, compensation, and benefits. For international postdocs in the United States, visa restrictions and language weaknesses are additional concerns.

The meeting was convened to review progress made since 2000, when COSEPUP held its first postdoc meeting and issued 10 action items. These recommendations for research institutions included setting an approximate 5-year time limit on the total time as a postdoc, offering postdocs “substantive” career guidance, and improving communications among postdocs and their advisers, institutions, disciplinary societies, and funding organizations.

Much of last week's discussions revolved around whether postdocs should be considered salaried employees or researchers under grant or stipend, whether they should be offered the same career counseling services and benefits given to graduate students, and whether they are valued researchers or merely “cheap labor” for the principal investigator (PI).

But Herbert Geller, associate director for intramural education at the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, denied that postdocs are treated differently from other intramural researchers. “There is no discrimination,” Geller said. “We are not hiring cheap labor.”

Still, postdocs at many universities complain about pay inequity and poor working conditions. In March, postdocs at the University of Connecticut voted to join a union, forcing the university to boost starting salaries to match the NIH benchmark. “This should serve as a wakeup call for mentors,” said Maxine Singer, COSEPUP chair and senior scientific adviser to the Carnegie Academy for Science Education.

A major, ongoing concern is the inability of many PIs and mentors to help postdocs make the transition to a regular career. Complicating matters, postdocs at many US universities can't use the career guidance facilities available to grad students because they don't pay student services fees. The various disciplinary societies should help fill this role by offering targeted seminars, some attendees suggested.

While COSEPUP recommends a 5-year limit on postdoc employment, an increasing number of postdocs are staying on longer. This is due, in part, to the “holding pattern” caused by delays in grant decisions and a challenging employment market. Of those that do move on, more than half end up working in industry, not academia. “These so-called 'alternative careers' are now the rule rather than the exception,” Malcom said.

Some attendees suggested that PIs could be encouraged to better help their postdocs if funding agencies tied their research grants or renewals to how well their postdocs did after leaving their labs. But Lynn Bretscher, a biochemistry postdoc at the Medical College of Wisconsin, cautioned against it. “The PIs are already overburdened, and they may decide to eliminate postdocs and just hire research scientists.”