So today, I FaceTimed my mom, who's back home in Vietnam, after a while. We were just chatting away about the general things—how's everyone, how's life, that kind of thing. Then one thing led to another, and we talked about how the economy was not the best, how the war has been affecting the UK, and how everything in the UK is so expensive now. Then she asked when I would be able to have a stable job because she was worried that with my postdoc salary and the short-term contract, I would not be able to sustain myself. I was caught off guard because people who know me know that I rarely talk about work at home. I rarely mention what I do in the lab or the nature of my work to anyone at home, including my parents. Yet, somehow, my mom knew and understood exactly the problem that the kind of work I'm doing poses to my life, or more specifically, my living. She worried that I would not be able to settle down somewhere, have a stable job, own a house or a flat, and just have somewhere fixed to go back to. A slash of concern went across her face when she asked whether I would have to keep hopping from place to place, from city to city, renting one room after another, doing one job after another perpetually, never settling down, never having enough savings. I was surprised that she knew that much about my job with that much understanding, and at the same time, that didn't fail to make me question my choice yet again.
You know, people often tell me that you will always settle somewhere eventually, but is that always true? I mean, forget about being able to find a job in a different sector. If someone is to stick with academia and is not lucky enough to get one of those glamorous journals, will they eventually settle somewhere? Or is it more likely the case that they become too tired of this never-ending cycle, eventually either dropping out or relying on the goodwill of some successful PI or institute to get a "permanent" position in their lab until that PI retires or moves somewhere?
It makes me question so much why so many of us, who have done years and even decades of training, from Bachelor to Master to PhD to postdoc, with such specialized skills that many others won't have, still end up jobless or begging others for a chance to work. All of that knowledge and training just to end up like that? One can ask, why not just move to industry or other sectors? I mean, you get to do cool science and get paid a lot more. Indeed, it can be, but also I have heard from many who worked in industry, it can be repetitive, it can be boring, and you can lose your freedom of exploration that we scientists have been ingrained with since the very first time we picked up a book and asked a question. But I also think one of the biggest hurdles for why people are resistant to move on is what I call "the one-way ticket" problem. It is relatively easier to leave academia than to come back to academia from somewhere else. I have to stress that I'm not saying it is easy to go from academia to industry because I know it takes a lot of skills to do so, but relatively and historically speaking, coming back to academia has always been notoriously difficult. I don't know why it is such a problem, but at least I have heard this same story from almost everyone I spoke to. I will not dive too much into this as this deserves its own blog, but the bottom line is, for someone who loves the freedom of academic research and was (you can say it) indoctrinated with the idea of curiosity-driven science like most of us academic researchers, it can be a difficult decision to leave the only thing we ever know behind.
Going back to why academia is such a brutal space, I think it has to be boiled down to money. The way most academic funding works is that there are a few pots of money scattered around. These can be governmental or charitable, and everyone in the scientific community competes for at least one or more pots of money to either establish their new lab or sustain their lab. And that's essentially the only income for the lab, to pay for the salary of everyone in that lab, and to buy any equipment and chemicals and reagents for their experiments. This might come as shocking to many (and to be frank, I'm still shocked as well), but no, we don't get paid or receive bonuses when we get our paper published. We actually have to PAY the journal to publish OUR work! For an article in a decent journal, it can cost somewhere from £2000 to £5000 per article. For an article in a Nature publishing group with Open access (meaning you can read without a subscription), it is around £11,000. Yeah, I'm not making this up. Excluding smaller grants, these major pots of money can be for as short as 1 year up to 8 years with the new Wellcome Trust scheme, at least this is in the UK and what I'm aware of. And I guess you can see the problem here, right? These pots of money are not infinite; there's a time limit; there are so many expenses that come out of these grants, and just because you got one this time does not guarantee you will get another one next time. So, when the money runs out, the researchers who work in the lab will not get paid and will have to leave for somewhere else. And if they are not lucky enough to work on a project that will get them some decent publications, their chance of having their own lab and a more or less stable job is near zero. A study done a few years ago showed that out of 200 PhD graduates, only 7 made it to permanent academic positions. So, of course, they will have to get another postdoc position if they still want to stay in academia, but the problem now becomes overqualification. As years go by, these people become more and more expensive to hire. So why would a lab hire someone more expensive to do something someone else cheaper can do with a bit of training involved? It is also difficult or almost impossible for academic research to generate any income other than grants. Most academic research, particularly in the Life Sciences, doesn't translate immediately into commercial products that can be sold and used by people. They aren't songs that can be quickly distributed on Spotify for billions to listen to and generate revenue. They aren't apps that can be sold to Apple for millions to use. They aren't tech that can immediately give you a return. Drug discovery can take decades; basic discoveries that help advance our knowledge and set the direction for future drug targeting or exploiting disease's vulnerability can take even longer. So academic research is, in a way, a long-term investment that most of us right now may not even fully understand its value. And this is by no means to say academic research is not important, but to convince someone to give us millions for something that is so far ahead is, of course, risky and incredibly difficult, yet it remains extremely essential to doing so, as it has been proven time and time again (mRNA research, CRISPR, immune checkpoint, to name a few). So, this creates a problem of not having enough resources to support the ever-increasing number of PhD graduates and postdocs, who are all incredibly intelligent and driven but are also the ones who suffer the most in this brutal space. This doesn't include the other problem of a few big labs that get the majority of the funding to do yet another expensive transcriptomic and single-cell sequencing analysis while smaller labs are left fighting for the crumbs. It gives me that same vibe of the "Golden triangle problem" that we have in the UK, where most of the funding goes towards the three cities of London, Oxford, and Cambridge, but this deserves its own post. All of these problems create an unsustainable and often hostile environment to provide a long-term stable career for junior scientists like myself.
So, what can we do about it? This is, of course, a very difficult question to answer and even more difficult to put into action because the same model of funding has been around for decades, and we are just so used to it, and of course, those who are benefiting from the current scheme will not welcome the change. But for the majority of us, if academia is to become a more sustainable career, change must be done. I don't consider myself to be experienced or credentialed enough to shout my voice into a room of nobles, but because this is my blog, I can do whatever I want here. I can think of a few things to maybe improve the problem:
1. Reduce the Number of PhD Programs: I do think this is possibly the most important point. PhD students have long been considered cheap labour. They get paid pennies for the amount of work that they have to do. And because it's cheap to have PhD students, they get exploited just to then be dumped at the end to figure out "what's next?". It puts a lot of pressure down the line when there are way too many PhDs for the number of available positions.
2. Promote Careers Outside Academia: and most importantly, it should NOT be a "one-way ticket," which I think is something that makes people hesitate the most. There should be flexibility and choices for people to choose, not a permanent waving goodbye.
3. Opt for Smaller Research Groups: I think it is better for labs to have a limit on how many people can be in them. 2-3 people can be a good start. Smaller labs also require less maintenance and diversify the topics that can be explored, and this goes with the next point.
4. Revise Grant Structures: External grants should be divided into smaller chunks. The salary of the staff should be covered directly by institutions or governments. And because grants are smaller, they can spread more evenly so more people will have the opportunity to get one, so more postdocs can get the opportunity to have a permanent position. Employers should have more centralised facilities with dedicated teams to maintain and take care of and where different labs can share equipment. This would make managing grant money simpler and more effective for both the institutions and the funding bodies. I realize this would require coordination between all parties involved, namely the government, the funding bodies, and the working institutions, and of course, would also require an increase in endowment and commitment from the government to provide a stable stream of salary for the researchers and expand the infrastructure to host more people, but if we are to pick the fruits in the future, we have to start putting effort in growing the tree now.
5. Permanent postdoc should be a thing: If someone doesn't have the desire to become a PI or maybe cannot become one, they should be allowed to stay as a research scientist. Sure, by all means, cap their salary, but I doubt people would mind if they get a stable job with a liveable salary. It's a small compromise I believe people would understand.
These are only a few things I can think of off the top of my head right now. I understand it may not solve all the problems, nor it is the best solution because these are all just instantaneous thoughts, but I think it can improve the current condition that junior researchers like myself are experiencing. Bold changes, a complete overhaul of the system and of course an open mind are needed if we ever hope to break this perpetual cycle. I also hope that those who are not familiar with how academia works can now see the problem that we scientists are facing and why it is such a cruel place. As of right now, sometimes, I feel like I’m just a mosquito flying towards the light just to end up getting burnt.
Until next time.