"...there are far more post-docs working at universities than there are permanent jobs for them to move into, so a lot of people get stuck in limbo." The autho

"...there are far more post-docs working at universities than there are permanent jobs for them to move into, so a lot of people get stuck in limbo." The author answers her own question. Since the era of expansion in higher education and private research labs driven by the baby boom and cold war came to an end in the 1980's, the scientific job market hasn't been matched to the number of qualified applicants. If anything, there should be fewer grad students. For all the rhetoric about higher education as a bastion of left-wing politics, academics put up with an employment system that would make Ayn Rand smile. Aside from an ever-shrinking pool of tenured professors, most academics have low salaries, high workloads, little-to-no job security, and few employment prospects outside academia.