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Career choice or dead end? One long-term research scientist's view of the postdoctoral life
06 November 2009
By Andy Humphrey
In one month, my contract as a senior researcher in a lively Medicinal Chemistry department will end. I like to think I’ve made a success of my three years. I’ve contributed to publications, grant applications and seminars. I’ve managed a lab and trained a string of placement students; and I’ve put in plenty of time at the bench. Will I be missed when I finish?
Oh yes. Once I depart, our academic staff will have to get into the labs themselves to look after the imminent influx of new students. How will they find time, in between meetings, grant applications, and teaching?
Academic staff need us, the researchers. We get the thin end of the wedge when it comes to job security, career advancement, or the respect of our colleagues. But there’s a reason I’ve been a researcher for the last 12 years. The science fascinates me. The interaction with people of all cultures and temperaments is something I can’t imagine getting from any other job. The chance to be part of something bigger – whether it be finding cures for cancer or pursuing solutions to world hunger (I’ve had the chance to try both) – does more than anything to compensate for the insecure lifestyle.
Finally: I believe I’m actually quite good at it. So do my referees.
Here’s the challenge. Is it possible to make research into a career, not just a sequence of short-term placements?
Well, I’m trying it. I’ll have Honorary status after this contract ends, to keep my career ticking over so I don’t become yet another statistic of the recession. The rest is still to come. Applications, interviews, research proposals, making a good impression ... It’s going to be a challenge. But it’ll be exciting.
Right now, I don’t want to be doing anything else.
Andy Humphrey 24.9.2009
Tennie Videler06 November 2009 at 10:40 PM
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Keep us posted, Andy on how you get on with your applications, interviews etc. I'm also quite interested in what your honorary status entails- are you still going to be lab active? (will you have a consumables budget?) Good luck and all the best for the future! Tennie
George Whale08 November 2009 at 05:25 PM
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I suspect that there are big differences between research in science and research in arts & humanities. (For one thing, scientific research is generally more useful!) And I am pleased to see that after 12 years you have reached the level of senior researcher. But in answer to your question: career choice, yes (I can't blame anybody else for that), but emphatically a dead-end.
Nick Pearce09 November 2009 at 09:04 AM
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i'm suprised and disheartened that even after 12 years and rising to the rank of senior researcher you are still facing this! i've been on short term contracts (in the social sciences i guess, my lack of disciplinary home is another issue) for three years now and i had hoped that an end would be in sight! in between my last contract and this one i asked for and got an honorary fellowship for similiar reasons to you (i think!). it meant i kept my email account, and actually my office and access to computing facitlities. it definitely helped, i think it should be more widely promoted/ adopted. anyway best of luck with your job search!
Sarah Davies09 November 2009 at 09:37 AM
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Thanks Andy. I think you're entirely right that academic staff need researchers - as you say, we're the ones that tend to keep things ticking over. So surely the answer to your question is that research *should* be a viable long term career. The reason's that it's not - and that generally you still need a lectureship if you want a permanent position - are to do with the way that universities have traditionally been structured and are therefore purely historical. I don't quite know what to do about this - other than point out that it seems a little weird to take an experienced researcher and reward them by giving them a job doing something really quite different to research...
Nick Dickens09 November 2009 at 02:11 PM
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I am not sure that I understand your point of view, research is definitely a career - but if you are going to follow it as a career then would you not want to be a team leader or have a fellowship, which would give you the freedom to pursue your own interests rather than those of your academic staff bosses. Those with tenure are still researchers. But maybe I don't understand what a senior researcher is, compared with a post-doc post or faculty post. A 'post-doc' post is not a career position, it is a training position. Research as a career is not a dead end, but I think with current funding the days of career post-docs are numbered.
Andy Humphrey09 November 2009 at 03:00 PM
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Nick, you make a couple of interesting points. First of all, I agree that to make research a career as such it is good to aspire to team leadership, or to securing research fellowship funding. This is exactly what I'm aiming for. But it's not as if research funding grows on trees! Competition for these scarce fellowships is fierce, and the reality is that not all of us will manage to get one. An application can take months to get together (especially if you're trying to put in a full quota of hours in the lab at the same time), then there's a delay of months before you hear the results, and if you HAVEN'T been successful you then have to start the whole process again. Your research career doesn't cease to be a career in the meantime. You're still working (funding permitting...), gaining experience, and hopefully getting publishable results that will strengthen your application next time around. On the negative side, most research fellowships are intrinsically ageist. More than 90% of them have a clause in them that states you have to be within a fixed number of years of completing your Ph.D., or you can't apply. So all the while you may be accumulating the results you may need for your fellowship application, the number of fellowships actually open to you is dwindling. I also take issue with your claim that "a post-doc... is a training position". Training for what, exactly? 30 years or more ago it may have been seen as a training position for entering academia, but 30 years ago there were far fewer funded postdoc positions available, and far more academic positions. So it was reasonable to assume that most post-docs who wanted to could make the transition into academia. That's no longer the case. Post-docs are no longer just recently qualified Ph.D.s looking for a bit of career development. These days, especially in sciences, it's far more common to find researchers with a diverse mix of skills and experience. Many now are ex-industry, in the wake of mergers and redundancy programmes. Many are skilled overseas workers who haven't been able to find employment in their own countries. In my case, I left behind a permanent job at a government research institute after relocating for family reasons, and found that there were no permanent jobs available for a scientist at my level within commuting distance. My only option, if I wanted the chance to continue and actually develop my career in research, was to take a post-doctoral position. As I stated above, the 3 years in my last post were fascinating, stimulating and inspiring, and have given me hope that I CAN go on to build up my career, and perhaps secure one of those much-vaunted fellowships. I wouldn't have had the chance if my employers had also taken the view that a post-doctoral position was a "training position" and thus should only be offered to a recently qualified Ph.D. graduate.
George Whale09 November 2009 at 09:42 PM
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It seems to me that (in my field at least) researchers unable or unwilling to take the academic route are presented with a stark choice: i. continue for years as a contract researcher, with little likelihood of progression beyond the most junior levels, even if you prove yourself to be very good at what you do; ii. cut your losses, get out early, and do something completely different. The first option, though humiliating for most, might suit those who love the work but have little ambition. However, with the benefit of hindsight, I would strongly recommend the second option.
Matthew Salois10 November 2009 at 06:16 PM
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I am inclined to believe that the post-doc is a means to an end, as some blog posts have iterated ("In Praise of Transition" by Tristram Hooley). Though my perspective may be confined to the social sciences, a post-doc, nor any fixed-term position, is meant to be a life-long career. This is evidenced by the fact that many positions specify the researcher must be within so many years of receiving their PhD in order to be eligible, as noted by Andy. While I believe that research in general can be, and is, a life-long career, permanency is found not in being a perpetual post-doc, but in transitioning into being a lecturer or an assistant professor.
George Whale10 November 2009 at 07:33 PM
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"... permanency is found not in being a perpetual post-doc, but in transitioning into being a lecturer or an assistant professor." If that's true, then maybe institutions should be helping researchers to gain lecturing experience, rather than excluding them from the lecture halls.
Rachel Talbot11 November 2009 at 04:57 PM
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These comments seem to have come full circle: from taking research posts because you are interested in a research career to the point of a research post being as a stepping stone (opportunity for experience) in order to become a lecturer or equivalent, which brings me back to George’s post suggesting that if you want to stay in research as your main job role, you either have to accept limited opportunities for career progression or go and do something completely different. But then again maybe it’s the setting you have to 'get out' of. It is not only Universities that employ researchers to do research jobs. So do we have to accept that in a University, the career structure is to get research experience and then a lectureship (after all they are teaching institutions!) and if you don't want to do this you have to go elsewhere? OR is there room for 'career researchers' within Universities?
George Whale12 November 2009 at 07:44 PM
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"So do we have to accept that in a University, the career structure is to get research experience and then a lectureship (after all they are teaching institutions!) and if you don't want to do this you have to go elsewhere? OR is there room for 'career researchers' within Universities?" Rachel, this is perhaps the central question for those of us who have no desire (or talent) to be lecturers. Many universities now describe themselves as teaching AND research institutions (with neither taking precedence), so it would seem a logical progression to employ lecturers, and researchers, and those who can do both. In my last UK institution, I was struck by how many lecturers were being pressured into doing research that they had no interest in doing. This seems a bit ridiculous when there are researchers looking for work.
John Philip12 August 2010 at 10:54 AM
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It seems to me that (in my business at slightest) researchers unable or loth to undergo the pedagogue line are presented with a stark selection: i. sustain for age as a undertake scientist, with short likeliness of procession beyond the most son levels, steady if you evidence yourself to be very secure at what you do; ii. cut your losses, get out archaic, and do something completely various. --------------------------------- Careers