Staying Afloat

Staying Afloat

The demands of the postdoc life were already a struggle for some, but then the pandemic hit.

By Glenn Cook

Meli’sa Crawford, PhD, was “confident, anxious and excited” when she moved to Riverside, California, in February 2020 to start her postdoctoral studies. As she would be working with three senior postdocs, three graduate students and a lab manager at the University of California-Riverside, she felt she would get thorough training in new techniques.

A month later, as the pandemic reached its first peak worldwide, her trajectory—and that of other postdoctoral researchers—was altered dramatically.

“My training and research project were temporarily postponed, the senior members of my lab were moving on to new opportunities, and I was facing the uncomfortable reality that I was going to be the only PhD in my lab,” says Crawford, a gut microbiome researcher. “This meant that not only did I have to learn how to be a postdoc from reading blogs, but I also had to deal with the unexpected and seemingly unobtainable expectations of those around me.”

Completing a postdoctoral fellowship is a rite of passage in research careers, allowing early-career researchers to hone their skills and prepare for becoming an independent researcher while under the direction of more experienced scientists. However, the grind of postdoc life, combined with the aftereffects of a pandemic still being felt throughout academia and the workplace, has left many in the field feeling uneasy about their future prospects.

“A lot of postdocs feel they’re more an afterthought, that they’re doing a lot of work for very little credit. They don’t get the appreciation they deserve. They are spending far more than 40 hours a week in the labs. Many times they’re very isolated.”

Stephanie Eberle, MEd

Some universities are taking steps to improve workplace conditions and further define ill-defined roles, but postdocs as a rule continue to feel “rather invisible,” says Stephanie Eberle, MEd, executive director of BioSci Careers at Stanford University in California and chair of the National Postdoctoral Association.

“A lot of postdocs feel they’re more an afterthought, that they’re doing a lot of work for very little credit,” Eberle says. “They don’t get the appreciation they deserve. They are spending far more than 40 hours a week in the labs. Many times they’re very isolated, very often doing a lot of the mentoring of graduate students and undergrads as well as their own work. They’re often not getting the support and feedback and mentorship they feel they deserve and that they certainly need.”

The stress Crawford has been feeling has been amplified by the pandemic, but it is not new in the postdoc world. According to a December 2020 survey by Nature Portfolio, postdoctoral researchers have long had widespread concerns about an unrelenting workload, poor compensation and the culture where they work. More than half, at 56%, said they view their career outlook negatively, while fewer than half said they would pursue a scientific career if they could have a do-over.

“We have people who do feel that they’re spending an inordinate number of hours at work, spending time on weekends and feeling like, ‘I can’t even take a break. I can’t take maternity leave,’” Eberle says. “Then, to top it off, they don’t feel like they’re getting paid equally to make up for this.”

Crawford says finding mentors “who are willing to devote their time and expertise to another trainee” has been one of her biggest challenges. “I believe proper mentorship is lacking once new PhDs reach the postdoc phase of their careers,” she says. “Early-level postdocs are still in a critical training period. We are not only acquiring new laboratory techniques but are also learning how to mentor students, run a lab and work on committees. Not all of that much-needed training happens in graduate school.”

The importance of mentors

Navigating the postdoc world during the pandemic came with “an enormous amount of pressure,” says C. Brooks Mobley, PhD, CSCS. But, he had a strong support system at the University of Kentucky that included a principal investigator and peer mentors. His success earned him a position in the fall of 2021 in the School of Kinesiology at Auburn University in Alabama. Also critical to his success, Mobley says, was finding the right work-life balance and understanding the amount of time that would be required.

“While all areas of research are competitive by their own nature, I find physiology overwhelmingly frustrating, yet surprisingly rewarding, when it comes to the execution of projects and acquiring data for publication,” says Mobley, now the director of the TigerFit Health and Fitness Laboratory at Auburn and associate director of the university’s Molecular and Applied Sciences Laboratory.

“When the pandemic hit, the grind came to a minor halt for most, if not all, postdocs,” he says. “But for some, it continued outside the laboratory with getting data analyzed and written up for manuscript submission. Once restrictions began being lifted, it came back in full force.”

When it comes to her postdoc experience at Simon Fraser University in Canada, Vicki Komisar, PhD, MSc, feels lucky. Her supervisor was supportive and encouraged her to write grants. Early in the third year of her postdoc, she received an offer for her current role.

“My adviser was 100% supportive of my application, and I started getting ready to transition into my position during the pandemic,” says Komisar, now an assistant professor in the School of Engineering at the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus. “After the offer came I had eight months to get ready for my new role. My supervisor helped me use part of my postdoc time to apply for grants and set up my lab for my faculty position, so he showed his support not just in principle but in actual terms.”

Two decades ago, the average postdoc experience was around three years. Today, the average is closer to five and in some cases is up to seven, according to the Nature Portfolio survey. Fear about post-pandemic job prospects is adding to what Eberle describes as “a bottleneck problem.”

“You take a job market that is already saturated, or becoming close to it, and then you add in the effect of a one-year, maybe two-year, delay due to the pandemic, and that really puts a lot of fear into our postdocs,” Eberle says. “They are really more worried than ever about whether or not they’ll get jobs, can they get jobs and where the jobs will be.”

“Early-level postdocs are still in a critical training period. We are not only acquiring new laboratory techniques but are also learning how to mentor students, run a lab and work on committees. Not all of that much-needed training happens in graduate school.”

Meli’sa Crawford, PhD

Wide disparities in postdoc compensation continue to exist, according to a 2019 peer-reviewed report by the Future of Research, a science-advocacy group based in Boston. The report, which looked at the salaries of nearly 14,000 postdoc researchers working at 52 U.S. institutions, says the average pay is about $47,500. While that number is close to the starting figure set by the National Institutes of Health for those who receive National Research Service Awards, figures ranged from as low as $23,600 to well over $100,000.

Eberle says postdocs already make a large sacrifice by delaying the start of their careers for several years. Most are not able to start saving for retirement until they are 25 or 26, and many are just then starting to pay off student loans.

“Everything is delayed,” Eberle says. “Think of an undergrad leaving school at the average age of 21. Maybe I get my first job, and I start contributing to a 401(k) or 403(b) right away, but most postdocs don’t have a 401(k) or 403(b) option. They are trying to figure out what they want to do and how they want to do it, whether it’s academic jobs or with a research company or consulting. If they want to have a family, even that is impacted.”

Komisar says postdocs should receive the same benefits as university staff regardless of their funding source or classification, noting that their qualifications—the minimum is a PhD—should be recognized. She notes housing costs, especially in smaller cities like the one where she lives—Okanagan Valley is about four hours from Vancouver—have exponentially increased.

“Postdocs are key to making labs and science function, and engaged postdocs demonstrably improve the outcomes for graduate students,” Komisar says. “At the same time, research funding has not increased to support the postdoc salary. You want to treat your team humanely, but instead of recruiting several postdocs, I can only recruit two students because they need to have enough money to eat.”

Instituting changes

Workplace culture is being discussed and, in some cases, redefined in all aspects of society. The same is true in the postdoc world. Some universities, such as University of California-Riverside, have labor unions organized specifically for postdocs, and a push for broader unionization is gaining traction on social media.

Meanwhile, other institutions are experimenting with different compensation models and packages, but responses in the postdoc community have been mixed. George Washington University in Washington, D.C., for example, recently announced that postdoctoral researchers will be reclassified into a new trainee category in January 2022. The university says a competitive salary and benefits package will be available for those who qualify.

As long as it addresses equal pay and benefits, Eberle says creating a new classification can help solve “a problem we’ve been grappling with probably since the postdoc was created.” While the National Postdoctoral Association does not take a stance on unions, Eberle is not surprised the topic has been resurrected.

“There’s so much activism in the workplace right now in general and rethinking in the workplace about what needs to be done and what should be done,” Eberle says. “We do need to find that balance of equal pay, of support for career interests, for personal interests, and provide that academic mentorship so they can get through the program and their training successfully.”

Another critical component is finding a way for traditionally marginalized groups to be recognized and heard at predominantly white cisgender institutions.

“There is a lot of talk about what it means to be a person of color or about gender in the lab and in the workforce, as well as how they’re supported and how they’re seen,” Eberle says. “We know that the people who get left out of the story nine times out of 10 are minorities, LGBTQ people and first-gen postdocs and students. Money, time, space and resources should definitely be going to those areas so people have a community to go to.”

As the only Black postdoc at her university’s medical school, Crawford says it “can be incredibly isolating and very hard to make connections when you feel like an outsider.” She says more institutions need to hire and support more Black and African American faculty.

“Even though I have the amazing support of the few Black and African American faculty on campus, having other Black and African American postdocs to collaborate with, vent to and learn from would have made transitioning into this position easier,” Crawford says. “Not only would the community benefit from inclusion, having better representation would create an environment in which Black postdocs would feel more welcome.”

Despite the stress that all postdocs are under these days, Eberle says it’s important for them to remember that there are a lot of career options. “Your independence, understanding of your craft, knowing and being able to research and study a topic to its deepest level is very useful in a lot of fields, in consulting and teaching, in finance, in policy, etc.,” Eberle says. “You might not be able to see that because of the immense amount of work that you’re putting into both research as well as that practical component of the work, but the opportunities are there.”  

This article was originally published in the January 2022 issue of The Physiologist Magazine.