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Recruiting a postdoc at a new institute without a track record of advancing people is a very tough sell. That would be an extremely risky career move. The best

Recruiting a postdoc at a new institute without a track record of advancing people is a very tough sell. That would be an extremely risky career move. The best bet for a new research institute is to have a large endowment and recruit two or three large names in a field. People who already have a good reputation. The large endowment is necessary to prove that you will ongoing resources to keep the research funded into the future.

barry-cotter 5y ago
> Recruiting a postdoc at a new institute without a track record of advancing people is a very tough sell. That would be an extremely risky career move. Doing a postdoc is itself a large bet that usually fails to pay off, retrospectively making both the PhD and the postdoc look like extremely poor choices by any monetary calculus. The supply of people who want to stay in Science/Research/Academia is a lot greater than the demand outside perhaps ML/AI. Even fields with great outside options for PhDs, like Economics, Computer Science or Engineering have enormous competition for academic jobs, or para-academic ones, like adjuncting.
- goodcanadian 5y ago
  Off topic, but I always do a bit of a double-take at how Americans use "Adjunct Professor." In Canada, that would be called "Contract Academic" or similar. I'll bet it is different again in Europe, so for clarity, that is basically a low paid teaching position. In Canada, an Adjunct Professor is unpaid, but actually somewhat prestigious. It is a recognition of your abilities in a field and might be given to someone in industry who collaborates with a researcher at the university (for example).
  - Fomite 5y ago
    "In Canada, an Adjunct Professor is unpaid, but actually somewhat prestigious. It is a recognition of your abilities in a field and might be given to someone in industry who collaborates with a researcher at the university (for example)." That was originally how it was used in the U.S. too. "Someone who needs a non-permanent affiliation with the University to teach some classes" - usually someone from industry or the community, etc. whose expertise was valuable to the educational mission. The modern version is...sort of depressing.
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    > Off topic, but I always do a bit of a double-take at how Americans use "Adjunct Professor." I think in the US, almost anyone with a job at a college is a 'professor'. You see 'professors' in their late 20s or early 30s.

barry-cotter 5y ago

> Recruiting a postdoc at a new institute without a track record of advancing people is a very tough sell. That would be an extremely risky career move. Doing a postdoc is itself a large bet that usually fails to pay off, retrospectively making both the PhD and the postdoc look like extremely poor choices by any monetary calculus. The supply of people who want to stay in Science/Research/Academia is a lot greater than the demand outside perhaps ML/AI. Even fields with great outside options for PhDs, like Economics, Computer Science or Engineering have enormous competition for academic jobs, or para-academic ones, like adjuncting.

goodcanadian 5y ago
Off topic, but I always do a bit of a double-take at how Americans use "Adjunct Professor." In Canada, that would be called "Contract Academic" or similar. I'll bet it is different again in Europe, so for clarity, that is basically a low paid teaching position. In Canada, an Adjunct Professor is unpaid, but actually somewhat prestigious. It is a recognition of your abilities in a field and might be given to someone in industry who collaborates with a researcher at the university (for example).
- Fomite 5y ago
  "In Canada, an Adjunct Professor is unpaid, but actually somewhat prestigious. It is a recognition of your abilities in a field and might be given to someone in industry who collaborates with a researcher at the university (for example)." That was originally how it was used in the U.S. too. "Someone who needs a non-permanent affiliation with the University to teach some classes" - usually someone from industry or the community, etc. whose expertise was valuable to the educational mission. The modern version is...sort of depressing.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  > Off topic, but I always do a bit of a double-take at how Americans use "Adjunct Professor." I think in the US, almost anyone with a job at a college is a 'professor'. You see 'professors' in their late 20s or early 30s.