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My experience in the U.S. academic market has been that postdoc positions vary widely based on your field of study. In areas with relatively good job markets,
by laGrenouille 7y ago
My experience in the U.S. academic market has been that postdoc positions vary widely based on your field of study.
In areas with relatively good job markets, such as CS/Stats/Economics/Finance, Postdocs are often quite prestigious and are marketed by top schools as a way to attract promising young scholars and give them time to research without the pressures of teaching/service. In areas with very bad job markets, such as the humanities, they are also seen as prestigious because any academic position after the Ph.D. is extremely difficult to come by.
For the lab sciences, my understanding is that a postdoc actually is more similiar to doing a doctorate in another domain. Experiments are too expensive and time consuming to let a Ph.D. student design and develop a line of research on their own. Instead, that's what the postdocs do. Also, it is not an option. You must do a postdoc (often a long one, and often multiple) in order to have the experience needed for a TT job.
For mathematics and much of the social sciences postdocs are awkardly in-between all of these. They are increasingly common and almost required and increasingly long. Yet, there's no good place for them in the current system, where they are technically fully-credentially academics but treated like overgrown students.
- kevinventullo 7y agoIn my experience with pure mathematics, it was much closer to your description of CS/Stats. The standard path is to spend 4-7 years doing the PhD, then another 4-6 or so doing postdocs under various guises ("research fellow", "visiting researcher", "<non-TT identifier> assistant professor"). Most American mathematicians I've met followed this path, including profs at teaching-focused institutions as well as Fields medalists.
- laGrenouille 7y agoYes, that’s actually my understanding as well of pure mathematics. What I was trying to say is that in Stats (my field) and CS its quite common to go straight into a TT job, and a postdoc is often a sign of particular prestige. In mathematics a postdoc is the standard post-Ph.D. route; of course some positions are very well regarded and others less so, but having a postdoc itself is just the status-quo for an aspiring academic at that point.
- PaulHoule 7y agoEd Fitchen, department head of Physics told me that there was a big difference between a good postdoctoral that can set up to produce and get a professorship and some other postdocs that are a dead end. There is nothing wrong with the good postdocs, it's the bad ones that are the problem.
- cpitman 7y agoIs it the position or the person that is good or bad?
- PaulHoule 7y agothe position!
- cowsandmilk 7y agoHere’s the difference I saw: 1) a postdoctoral that doesn’t lead to a professorship is one where they are looking for someone to do work independently without being trained. Basically, a very senior grad student. You largely follow the law ultimes of grants written by the PI. 2) a postdoc leading to a position is one where you are trained in developing a research program, writing grants, giving career talks, etc. The easiest way to make sure your postdoc falls in the latter category is to find an advisor with a track record of past postdoc a getting professor positions. If someone has been a professor for two-four decades and has few former postdocs who became professors, you are unlikely to get training to become a professor.