Re:As professors struggle to recruit postdocs, calls for cha...
by InefficientRed on Wednesday June 15, 2022 @09:18AM
(#31752438)
> Too many professors think their research is so much more important than anything else they hire postdocs for peanuts.
Thanks. This is my point. If you want to manage a team of PhDs, especially in STEM, figure out a research agenda that allows you to do that in a fair and reasonable way.
If you want to do things that are uninteresting to anyone outside of one tiny (likely incestual) sphere of grant-committee-political-influence, then do those things with your own time. Don't drag others into it.
BTW: if no one wants to fund this work then what jobs are the post-docs being trained to do?! And if post-docs aren't being trained for useful jobs then why are we taxpayers funding these ostensibly trainee positions?
That's actually a really bad analysis and entirely misses the point.
Fundamentally (in the US) too many postdocs are being funded from a fixed grant pool NIH/NSF/etc. has to offer. Too many professors think their research is so much more important than anything else they hire postdocs for peanuts. Too few postdocs have a career path because so few faculty positions are available after completing their postdoc.
Yes, not all science is interesting to the private sector. But that doesn't mean that publicly-funded science has to proceed at its current rate with its unsustainable model of employing postdoctoral slaves.