If you want to be a biology professor, twelve years of college aren’t enough any more.
Connie Peng is a 32-year-old life-sciences academic with a Ph.D, whose goal is to secure a tenure-track professorship. She is a postdoctoral researcher — a postdoc — and like all of her kind, she must complete several years of research after getting her Ph.D before she can even apply to be a professor. It’s paid work, but it doesn’t pay a lot.
Postdoctoral researcher Hector Aldaz. Credits: Jamie Soja Professor David Drubin’s lab employs twelve postdocs, nine of whom are foreign-born. Credits: Photo by Jamie Soja Sam Castañeda, director of Cal’s Visiting Scholar and Postdoc Affairs Program, says the conditions on campus have improved. Credits: Photo by Jamie Soja
While most any postdoc would be excited to be accepted to an elite school like UC Berkeley, few would brag about the salary. Peng, a native of China, underwent sticker-shock when she arrived in the San Francisco Bay Area and compared her salary to the cost of living. With her Ph.D in biochemistry she earns about $10.58 per hour for her sixty-hour work week, less than the city of Berkeley has set as a minimum living wage for its employees. Shelling out $900 per month for a one-bedroom apartment in El Cerrito, Peng pays more than twice the rent she paid while attending the University of Iowa, but earns just $200 more a month after taxes.
She has no debts from college or graduate school, but she’s not saving at all. “I am spending my savings,” she said. “I don’t feel good about that, but I need a car. … I still think this is the right thing to do, but if I could change this situation, it would be good.”
Still, Peng is luckier than many of her postdoc peers. According to a 2006 study conducted by the National Science Foundation, roughly half of life-science doctorates had debt after graduate school, and a quarter left owing $20,000 or more.
Peng has no regrets about choosing Berkeley or the lab in which she works, but is nevertheless worried about emergency costs, such as trips home to visit her aging parents. “What if I need a root canal?” she asked recently, only partly joking. “Sometimes I think I should change my lifestyle,” she added. “I’ve been in school forever. I’ve never had a real job.”
A look at the lifestyles of Peng and her peers highlights the changing nature of postdoctoral research. Few places offer a better look at this shifting academic culture than the University of California system, which is second only to the National Institutes of Health in the number of postdocs it hires. The Berkeley campus alone hosts about 1,000, with foreign postdocs such as Peng at the bottom of the wage scale.
Postdocs have long been a cheap source of labor for US universities, said Sam Castañeda, director of Cal’s Visiting Scholar and Postdoc Affairs Program. Until recently many of them had no rights to benefits, counseling, time off, or a grievance procedure. Not quite employees and not quite students, they worked without the privileges of either. Many universities aren’t doing better today, but Berkeley has been a forerunner in giving postdocs rights, and Castañeda said he is upbeat about the future.
Ever since World War II, the assumption underlying American higher education has been that an advanced degree was the ticket to a better life. But as the cost of a Ph.D has risen dramatically across the country, the short-term earnings potential of many graduates has decreased. Many are spending much more time — four years is the new standard — in the nether region between their own studies and long-term employment.
Meanwhile, the likelihood of winning that much-desired tenure-track position are getting slimmer.
When Peng and her bench-mates step off the elevator at the sixth floor of UC Berkeley’s Barker Hall, they are greeted by radioactive materials warnings, a stunning view of the San Francisco Bay, and a lifestyle that has metamorphosed over the last twenty years. The academics in this building operate in a different world, one with its own set of expectations, archetypes, even language. Visitors encounter posters for an upcoming talk, “Olfactory Processing of the Drosophila Brain,” and a notice reminds everyone to leave their gloves in the labs.
Peng works in the Barnes-Drubin lab, which is run by two professors who are married to one another, Georjana Barnes and David Drubin. Aside from having two bosses, the lab is not particularly unusual, and the postdocs interviewed here say they feel lucky to be a part of it and seem as happy or happier than postdocs in other labs at Berkeley.
Like her colleagues, Peng is glad to have a spot in the lab, soaking up the fluorescent lights as she participates in some of the world’s most cutting-edge research. Stacks of colorful boxes of sterile pipette tips and plastic tubes distract from the fact that the systems studied here can’t be seen with the naked eye. Neon tape identifies bottles of yellow broth and is stuck to nearly everything in sight: petri dishes, centrifuges, and otherwise indistinguishable bottles of clear, hand-crafted buffer and salt solutions.
The lab explores cellular systems like endocytosis, the processes by which cells absorb or engulf external entities like nutrients. It also looks at structural aspects of mitosis, the stage at which a cell duplicates its nuclear DNA before splitting into two cells. Most experiments are performed on yeast and have no direct application to medicine, though other scientists may ultimately apply these discoveries to fighting human disease.
Peng’s postdoctoral research will be considered successful if she gets at least one significant publication in a well-respected scientific journal like Cell, Nature, or Science. The paper should be a “first-author paper,” meaning that Peng’s name will appear first, implying hers is the major contribution. Since life science is a collaborative endeavor, papers often have several authors, and the last author on the list is the supervising principle investigator. In Peng’s case that’s Professor Drubin.
Getting a paper published isn’t easy and depends on various factors: years in the lab, scientific skill, guidance from a supervising professor, and just plain luck. The standards for publishing have risen over the last twenty years, in part from the impressive jump in human understanding of biological systems and in part because of increased competition. “You have more information,” Peng said, “the sequences are all known.” Reading old articles from 1992, she estimated that they required less than a tenth the volume of supporting data required today.
In academic life-science, professors like Barnes and Drubin — technically called “principle investigators” — start their own research labs. Most of their lab workers tend to be graduate students getting their Ph.Ds. But labs also include visiting scholars, salaried technicians, and the occasional master’s student — although only getting your master’s degree is generally frowned upon. To supplement this mix, professors hire seasoned researchers. By and large they are postdocs, impermanent workers who benefit the lab by spending the majority of their time doing pure research.
Principle investigators pay for instruments, chemicals, lab supplies, and salaries, through grants from sources like the National Institutes of Health and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. However, postdocs often win grants, essentially providing their own salaries instead of having them paid by their professors. These grants, or “fellowships,” almost always pay salaries higher than what a professor would pay.
Drubin doesn’t think his postdocs have a bad deal. “We got paid really poorly and we never complained about it,” he recalled of his own postdoc work, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology between 1985 and 1988. “I actually thought I was really lucky. … It used to be a time where you just really threw yourself at your work. You kind of sacrificed other parts of your life.”
Then again, Drubin finished his postdoc work and was hired by Cal as an assistant professor at the age of 29, years earlier than any of the postdocs in his lab will get professorships. Scientists these days typically don’t even earn their doctorates until after they turned 31, a time when their peers have been out of college for years and are thinking about starting a family or buying a house. And Peng and her fellow Ph.D recipients are still years away from being settled.
The Barnes-Drubin lab employs 24 researchers. Half are postdocs, only three of whom are US citizens. The high number of foreign postdocs with whom Peng rubs shoulders puts this lab at the forefront of another nationwide trend. Since 1995, according to the National Science Foundation, the number of foreign postdocs has grown by more than 50 percent. Slightly more than half of Berkeley’s current life-science postdocs are temporary visa holders. Since the United States continues to lead the world in science training — although our prominence is slipping — this trend prevails.
Most foreign postdocs have J1 visas, which are relatively simple to apply for but require a return home for two full years after research is completed. Moreover, J1 holders aren’t guaranteed a return visa if they temporarily leave the United States, which makes attending international conferences or visiting home risky. Since September 11, many postdocs have been delayed abroad because of visa troubles, which can be particularly frustrating if their research is in a position to be “scooped” by another lab.
Peng said she could have negotiated her salary, but “I decided to save the chance to bargain for my visa status.” When she received her doctorate from the University of Iowa, she stayed on to finish research before coming to Berkeley, and her boss helped her to secure an H1-B visa, which she valued over a higher salary. Peng’s H1-B visa allows her to travel abroad to visit her parents and reduces the possibility that she’ll be delayed by visa complications.
American postdocs definitely have an advantage at securing outside funding, since fellowships typically tend to be linked to citizenship. Sometimes foreigners can get fellowships from their respective countries, depending on the country, but many, like Peng, have almost no chance of getting outside funding. Some professors don’t have enough grant money to pay for postdocs and will hire these researchers only if the postdocs secure their own grants. “I was turned down by a few labs because of fellowships,” Peng said. Drubin is willing to pay for her and a few of his other postdocs, but he said “usually, I tell people I’ll support you for one year.”
Still, foreign postdocs recognize that the chance to work at UC Berkeley outweighs the drawbacks, and they don’t necessarily want to rock the boat. It’s unclear if the delicate visa status of foreign postdocs affects the overall postdoc salary, but it may contribute. Peng isn’t afraid to disparage her salary, but she said “sometimes I feel I don’t have the right to complain.” She’s conflicted. “I made a choice to come here; I just don’t feel ambitious people should be punished.”
Researcher Yidi Sun sits across the hall from the bench where Peng works. A native of China who completed her studies at a top university in Japan, she prefers UC Berkeley because it has “smart, cool people from all over the world.”
Last year, with Drubin’s help, she overcame the slew of required fees and letters to get an H1-B visa, and she’s been hired on as a staff scientist, jumping to a $50,000 per year salary. Not only can she travel more easily, but the new title means that she’s also put aside her plans to pursue a professorship.
That decision was hard, she said, as many didn’t understand why she wouldn’t try to be a professor, particularly because she’s published four first-author papers and would be a strong candidate.
Yet Sun loves the lab lifestyle, particularly being in control of her schedule and her research. Her favorite part of being in a university lab? Walking home after a big discovery and thinking that among all the people in the world, “this secret, only I know that.”
But not everyone here shares Sun’s confidence that research is their future. Across the aisle from Sun, German postdoc Barbara Pauly doesn’t think she’ll be a top contender for professorship.
“You work long hours, and you work for a year, and nothing works, and no one cares,” said the 31-year-old Pauly. “I mean, what does anyone care that actin polymerizes?” Such rhetorical negativity isn’t unusual for postdocs, who don’t get a lot of positive feedback. But despite her question, she adds wholeheartedly, “I’d be happy to be a postdoc for the rest of my life.”
Pauly makes a tax-free salary of $45,000 per year from a German fellowship. She used to earn the University of California minimum, which she said “kind of sucked.” She too enjoys the flexibility of lab work as a postdoc and can handle the long hours. But unlike with a professorship, she said, “the downside is you don’t have security.” Success in academia, she added, takes a strong sense of self-worth to counterbalance the uncertainty. Researchers can get overwhelmed by the mentality of “publish or perish.” Since Pauly believes her research won’t guarantee her a professorship, she’s considering other options, like working for a scientific publication.
“If you want to be a professor, you almost have to be a superstar,” she said.
“I don’t think it’s something super, super special to have a Ph.D.”
In fact, the number of life-science Ph.D students in the United States increased by 20 percent between 1998 and 2005, although a Ph.D is still uncommon in the general population. The number of postdocs in life sciences also swelled by more than 20 percent during the same period, according to the National Science Foundation. Meanwhile, openings for professorships have stagnated.
Universities have been shifting emphasis away from teaching toward research. In 1975, 87 percent of Ph.D-holders working at research universities were full-time faculty; by 2003 that decreased to 70 percent, according to the National Science Foundation. Over that same time period, universities started employing more non-professorial staff: lecturers, instructors, and researchers. The lecturers and instructors, who already were unlikely to get tenure-tracked, became even less likely to be permanent, and the researchers became less likely to spend any time teaching. While half of Ph.Ds employed at research universities taught in 1975, only about a quarter were teaching in 2003.
But even as academic funding from the US government tightens up and the biotech industry has opened new opportunities, many Ph.D recipients still prefer research in academia, which is seen as more prestigious and autonomous than better-paid jobs in industry. Professor Drubin understands that sentiment. In fact, postdocs and Ph.D students say they still feel a lot of pressure from their mentors to try for professorship rather than choosing what academics disdainfully refer to as the industry or government “alternatives.”
“The impression is that you do that, you don’t love science 100 percent,” said Helen Stimpson, whose bench is one over from Sun’s. “You’re a bad scientist.”
Like Peng, Stimpson is a foreigner with no fellowship who makes around $33,000 a year. Stimpson failed to win a US fellowship and is now applying for European ones. She’s from England, 28, and unusually young for a postdoc here, giggly behind long bangs and a pixie haircut. She came to the Bay Area with her boyfriend, who is a postdoc in biophysics. Getting two postdoc positions geographically and chronologically together was “really hard work,” she said. “I didn’t have a job for a bit; we got out of sync.”
Stimpson wasn’t getting paid at the tail end of her Ph.D at Cambridge. Since she “kind of had to eat,” she worked as a receptionist for that university’s Architecture and Art History Department. The department told her, “you’re the best receptionist we’ve ever had.”
“It was highly amusing,” Stimpson said. “Basically I just sat there.”
Like Stimpson, Peng’s bench mate Hector Aldaz is in a relationship with a researcher. His wife Gladys worked in a lab too — as a research associate — but then she decided to become a stay-at-home mom when their first son Gabriel was born.
“We’d rather be poor and know our son, and that’s a personal choice,” said the 34-year-old Aldaz, who is in his fourth year in the Barnes-Drubin lab and is one of its more-established postdocs. As a US citizen with a fellowship, he supports his family of five on $45,000 a year. He doesn’t complain about his salary and hopes to stay in academia even though median salaries for new life-science professors in 2003 were $50,000, according to the National Science Foundation. UC Berkeley will pay its life-science assistant professors roughly $55,000 to $70,000 this academic year, while salaries for tenured professors range from $77,800 to $142,000.
The first-generation American was cautiously upbeat about applying for professorships. “It’s kind of a black box,” he said, referring to the process in which he’ll apply to roughly twenty schools, mostly at the top level. He’s already published two first-author papers while working in other labs, and he wants to finish one in the Barnes-Drubin lab, but he has to wait for the right results.
Yet if Aldaz gets a job at a top university, he’ll be one of the lucky ones.
Andrew Green, a career counselor at Berkeley, estimates that about 30 percent of life-sciences postdocs at the university will go on to top-tier professorships. But because Cal’s researchers went undocumented until recently, nobody really knows this number.
It wasn’t too long ago that UC Berkeley’s postdocs went basically undocumented. “No one could find how to count them,” said Castañeda of the Postdoc Affairs Program.
Improvements in the status of postdoctoral researchers were spearheaded nearly eight years ago by Joseph Cerny, then UC Berkeley’s vice chancellor for research and dean of the graduate division. Cerny, a chemistry professor, was on a panel of experts with the Association of American Universities. “They checked the pulse of postdocs nationally and found they were in dire straits,” said Castañeda, pointing out health insurance as one example of the inequity. “The department could pay [for insurance] if they wanted, or not.” Cerny worked with staff at UC San Francisco to establish standards for postdocs at UC Berkeley and beyond. “Our two northern campuses moved action through the UC system,” said Castañeda.
Berkeley created one of the nation’s first postdoc offices — a cubicle for four people in 1988 — and now gives postdocs their own room in Barrows Hall, albeit a stuffy one. More significantly, in 2005 all UC postdocs were granted access to benefits, regardless of whether they were considered university employees, fellows, or something else. In October, UC increased its minimum salary requirement from $32,304 to $33,000 a year — still well below the $36,996 minimum recommended by the National Institutes of Health and the $38,000 at Harvard.
“Things are getting really better in the UC system,” Castañeda said. “There wasn’t even a national postdoctoral association until five years ago.”
Alyson Reed is a postdoc advocate and executive director of the newly formed National Postdoctoral Association in Washington, DC. Postdocs and their supporters started the organization precisely because of the increasing competition for professorships and the lengthening number of years of work without rights and standards. Reed thinks that the time is up for the market to be “predicated on the assumption that all these folks are going to be going into the tenure-track professorship.”
As Reed points out, the rate of unemployment for doctorates is very low. Postdocs are not likely to be found asking for spare change even if they fail to get hired in academics. Though many postdocs may be hoping for such jobs, the reality is that there are a wide range of opportunities, whether or not the universities prepare postdocs for them. There is always the option of industry jobs, both in consulting and research. “When I started school there was no biotech industry at all,” Professor Drubin noted.
Pamela Tsuruda received her Ph.D in life sciences from the University of California, San Francisco. She didn’t want to risk spending six or seven years doing academic research so she works at what she calls a “discovery pharmacy” company. In her area, salaries run in the high $80,000 for new Ph.D recipients.
“So much of science is luck,” she said, adding that in industry if a project fails “it’s not all on me.” She said that, while certain personality types may pursue academia, “I don’t need to be the one who found that gene.”
Researchers like Connie Peng do. “Probably scientifically I would feel more accomplished to be a principle investigator,” Peng said. “That’s more satisfying. You carry out your own idea.” However, she’s trying to be realistic about her chances and is open to other options if her research doesn’t go the right way.
Of course, she still has plenty of time to work it out. “At least I have to give myself three years,” she said.
