On Postdoctoral Fellowships

This morning I saw a post shared on LinkedIn that is advertising a postdoctoral fellowship (PDF) at a top Canadian university. The salary being offered starts from $40,000 CAD/year. It's not a surprising number to me, but it is disappointing.

Even though I am not looking for a postdoctoral position, I feel for those who may be seeking post PhD employment as a PDF. Sure, to go from a salary of approximately $25,000 CAD/year as a PhD student to that salary seems great in comparison...

This is not a new issue, but it's exacerbated by inflation and the ever-rising cost of living. The data tells us that people who pursue PDFs following their PhD are losing out on income and have higher rates of unemployment than those graduates who don't go down the PDF path. Postdoctoral fellowships are not advantageous (financially), unless you are seriously pursuing a tenure track position - which seekers have less than a 20% chance of getting.

Obviously there is more to a PDF than just financial compensation but this is still an avenue that we need to address. There are also issues of underpayment for PhD students, but that argument usually doesn't go far with academics. PDFs have completed their degrees and are no longer considered students, so let's pay them more than $20 an hour.

*As an aside, we don't do a very good job at talking money when advertising work in Canada, but that's discussion for another day.

#postdocjobs #canadianeducation #postdoctoralfellowship #canadianjobs

The link to this original post on my LinkedIn page can be found here.