|
Association of American Universities Committee on Postdoctoral Education Report and Recommendations March 31, 1998
Committee Members
Committee Staff
Association of American Universities
Postdoctoral education plays an important role in the research enterprise of the United States. Postdoctoral appointments provide recent Ph.D. recipients with an opportunity to develop further the research skills acquired in their doctoral programs or to learn new research techniques. In the process of developing their own research skills, postdoctoral appointees perform a significant portion of the nation's research and augment the role of graduate faculty in providing research instruction to graduate students. Postdoctoral education has been a part of American higher education for over 100 years. The Johns Hopkins University began to support postdoctoral fellows shortly after the institution was founded in 1876. In the 1920s the Rockefeller Foundation established a formal program of postdoctoral fellowships for recent Ph.D. graduates in the physical sciences. The Foundation recognized the fact that physics had become so complex that training through the doctorate was not sufficient preparation for a research career. Recipients of these awards were known as "postdoctoral fellows," or simply "postdocs." Postdoctoral education grew only modestly during the first half of the twentieth century. But the advent of the Cold War brought with it a boom in postdoctoral appointments. More recently, postdoctoral education has grown rapidly. From 1975 to 1995, the number of postdoctoral appointees in science, engineering, and health-related disciplines more than doubled, from 16,829 to 35,379. Moreover, the proportion of Ph.D.s accepting or seeking postdoctoral appointments in these disciplines increased from 25 percent in 1975 to over 37 percent in 1995. Although postdoctoral education has grown rapidly, it remains a highly concentrated enterprise: as shown in the Appendix attached, more than two-thirds of 1995 postdoctoral appointees were studying in just 50 institutions out of the nearly 350 doctorate-granting institutions surveyed. Despite the increasingly prominent role played by postdoctoral education in the national research enterprise, there is reason to question how well this particular form of education has been incorporated into the overall academic enterprise. In many respects, postdoctoral education at the end of the twentieth century appears to resemble Ph.D. education at the end of the nineteenth century. In 1890, Ph.D. programs were a relatively new form of education in this country, lacking a consistent set of standards and expectations. Today there is cause for concern over the similarly ad hoc evolution of postdoctoral education. Some specific points of concern are:
To address these concerns, the Association of American Universities formed the Committee on Postdoctoral Education in 1994. The Committee was charged to examine postdoctoral education and develop recommendations for the future management of this activity. The Committee conducted three informal surveys of selected major research universities to gain insight into campus policies and practices governing postdoctoral education and to sample the views of postdocs. Given the varying conceptions of postdoctoral education, the Committee recognized the need to establish a working definition of a postdoctoral appointment for its surveys. After a great deal of discussion among committee members, graduate deans, provosts, and presidents and chancellors of research universities, the Committee developed the following definition of a postdoctoral appointment, which was used consistently in the surveys. DEFINITION OF A DOCTORAL APPOINTMENT
The committee surveys solicited information and views from university administrations; university departments in four disciplines-biochemistry, mathematics, physics, and psychology; and postdocs in each of those departments. The surveys were not intended to provide comprehensive quantitative descriptions, but rather to provide insights through sampling of campus policies and practices and the views of postdocs. Among the key findings of the surveys were the following:
2) As was the case with Ph.D. students in the 1890s, most postdocs today are identified and recruited principally through professional contacts with faculty members. 3) It is common for institutions either to have no time limits on the length of postdoctoral appointments or regularly to ignore or waive established limits. 4) Few institutions report having campuswide compensation policies for postdoctoral appointees, and few report making any serious efforts to ensure that foreign and domestic postdocs receive equal compensation (as is required by federal law). 5) Most institutions report that they classify postdoctoral appointees as employees with attendant employment benefits; postdocs themselves, however, list benefits as one of their top areas of needed improvement. 6) Few institutions have policies established specifically for postdoctoral appointees: most institutions report that conflict-of-interest policies for faculty and staff apply to postdocs, but few institutions have policies governing outside business interests, consulting, or teaching activities by postdocs. Moreover, procedures for resolving postdoc misconduct or grievances vary widely and are often nonexistent. 7) Virtually no institutions have formal job placement procedures for postdocs. 8) In roughly two-thirds of surveyed departments, all assistant professors hired in the last five years have had postdoctoral experience; in two fields-biochemistry and physics-more than 80 percent of the departments surveyed said they would not even consider hiring someone without postdoctoral experience. Thus, in these fields, a postdoctoral appointment has become the de facto terminal academic credential. 9) Nearly half of the Ph.D.s who graduated from the surveyed departments in the last two years have gone on to postdoctoral appointments; in biochemistry, 80 percent have gone on to postdoctoral positions. 10) Upon completion of their appointments, roughly 60 percent of recent postdocs in surveyed departments have gone on to employment in research universities in some capacity. About one-fourth of postdocs in surveyed departments have gone into another postdoc position, about one-fourth into tenure-track faculty positions, and about 10 percent into non-tenure-track faculty positions. 11) A substantial majority of departmental officials and postdocs themselves view a postdoctoral appointment as a necessary step in an academic career, as opposed to being simply a holding pattern for Ph.D.s who cannot find a tenure-leading appointment or other appropriate employment. 12) Postdocs identify stipends, benefits, and career advising and job placement assistance as the aspects of postdoctoral education in most need of improvement. 13) Two-thirds of postdocs say that obtaining a tenure-track faculty position at a research university is their expected career path. DISCUSSION Although the Committee's surveys were small and informal and were focused exclusively on leading research universities, several findings stand out. Most fundamentally, the lack of institutional oversight of postdoctoral appointments, coupled with the evolution of postdoctoral education in a number of disciplines into a virtual requirement for a tenure-track faculty appointment, creates an unacceptable degree of variability and instability in this aspect of the academic enterprise. As with the Ph.D. at the end of the nineteenth century, postdoctoral education is evolving as a series of ad hoc and unsystematic responses to varied and often competing interests and pressures. Most universities lack the kind of central administrative oversight of postdoctoral appointments that they maintain for undergraduate and graduate students. Moreover, most institutions appear to have few policies designed for postdocs specifically; such policies appear often to be an amalgam of policies designed for students, faculty, and staff. The lack of clear central oversight of postdoctoral education raises serious questions about how successfully institutions are meeting their obligations to postdocs as trainees and professional colleagues. Upon completion of their appointments, most postdocs appear to find employment in research positions in their field of training. However, although the preponderance of postdocs expect to end up in a tenure track position, only one-fourth of recent postdocs in the surveyed departments actually entered such a position. Given this disparity between expectations and outcomes, it is not surprising that postdocs rank better career advising and job placement high on their list of recommended improvements; currently, institutions give little or no attention to these activities. RECOMMENDATIONS The Committee strongly recommends that the following definition of a postdoctoral appointment be universally adopted and consistently applied by all universities, government agencies, and private foundations involved in postdoctoral education:
Definition of a Postdoctoral Appointment
2) A central administrative officer should be assigned responsibility for monitoring postdoctoral policies to assure consistent application of those policies across the institution. 3) The university should establish core policies applicable to postdoctoral appointments. These policies should cover such matters as employment or student category; realistic institutional minimum stipends and benefits; fractional appointments; workers' compensation; publication rights; faculty responsibilities for mentoring and evaluation of postdoctoral appointees; career advising and job placement; misconduct; grievance procedures; and education in research protocol issues such as ethics, conflicts of interest, and outside consulting. In particular, all postdoctoral appointees should have access to a comprehensive health care plan for themselves and their families. 4) The university should establish explicit guidelines for recruitment and appointment of postdocs and for the duration of their appointments; such guidelines should take into account time spent in prior postdoctoral appointments at other institutions. Initial postdoctoral appointments should be no longer than two to three years in duration, and should be renewed only on the basis of career advancement and achievement by the postdoctoral appointee. As a general rule, the total time spent in postdoctoral appointments by a given individual should not exceed six years. Exceptions to such guidelines should be granted only after careful review by the department and an appropriate central administrative officer. 5) All postdoctoral appointees should receive a letter of appointment jointly signed by the faculty mentor and the department chair or other responsible university official; a statement of goals, policies, and responsibilities applicable to postdoctoral education should accompany the letter. 6) The university should periodically evaluate the balance of interests among postdoctoral appointees, their faculty mentors, their home departments, and the institution as a whole, in order to assure that the legitimate educational needs and career interests of postdocs are being fully met. 7) Departments and faculty mentors should provide career advising and job placement assistance appropriate to their postdoctoral appointees. 8) The university should provide a certificate or letter of completion for postdoctoral appointments to assist postdocs in securing subsequent employment. In addition to the foregoing suggestions for consideration by individual institutions, the Committee recommends that each academic discipline consider the role of postdoctoral education in professional development in that discipline, and give careful attention to the extent to which postdoctoral education should be viewed as elective or obligatory by students for whom entry into that discipline is their primary professional goal.
Appendix
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||