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I don't quite see what's obvious about declining MIT for 6k unless there's a significant decrease in prestige of the PIs you worked with. MIT in general is wor

I don't quite see what's obvious about declining MIT for 6k unless there's a significant decrease in prestige of the PIs you worked with. MIT in general is worth more than the 6k more you're getting from Scripps. Lab techs are offered higher pay because the prospects for promotion are limited at best, they compensate for that with slightly higher pay. As a post-doc you aren't expected to keep that job forever, whereas lab techs do so for decades. You seem really disgruntled about the current system. Academia isn't easy, considering the limited funding available, it is in national interest to only have the best doing research and your CV isn't exactly super competitive. Edit: The vast majority of younger faculty I've worked with (i.e. Assistant Professors with < 5 years of experience at the University of Toronto only did post docs for 4-6 years in total. Not the 8-12 you seem to imply, and this is in biological and medical sciences.

dnautics 13y ago
I think you're wrong. As much as I despise rankings, Scripps was ranked number 1 among chemistry departments my year (my degree is in chemistry). I didn't have to do any TAing. Among my classmates and the class after me (whom I hung out with the most, classes of 20 students tend to do that and at scripps we're really close), there is: A professor at Scripps, A professor at Berkeley, A professor at Stanford, A professor at UCSD. I am in contact with them and will possibly launch a collaboration with the one in Stanford. Finally, at 24k I barely broke even on my expenses. I'm sure I could have survived on 18k, but I'd have more grey hairs. And "The vast majority of younger faculty I've worked with". Sounds like selection bias. Talk to the postdocs and see how long they've been around.