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Association of American Universities

Association of American Universities

Committee on Postdoctoral Education: Report and Recommendations

Postdoctoral education plays an important role in the research enterprise of the United States. Postdoctoral appointments provide recent Ph.D.s with an opportunity to further develop 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 grown rapidly: in just seven years, from 1988 to 1995, the number of science and engineering postdoctoral appointees in doctorate-granting institutions increased by 32%, from 19,700 to 26,000. Moreover, the percentage of Ph.D.s taking postdocs has increased from 9% in 1960 to 30% in 1995.

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 a Committee on Postdoctoral Education in 1994. The committee was charged to examine postdoctoral education and develop recommendations for the future management of this activity.

Committee Members

Committee Surveys

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 in the surveys:

Definition of a Postdoctoral Appointment

The committee surveys solicited information and views from university administrations; university departments in four disciplinesœbiochemistry , mathematics, physics, and psychology; an 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.

Survey Results

Among the key findings were the following:

  1. Most institutions make little or no attempt to control the number or the quality of postdoctoral appointees on campus.
  2. As was the case with Ph.D. students in the 1890s, most postdocs today are identified are recruited principally through professional contacts of faculty members.
  3. It is common for institutions either to have no time limits on the length of postdoctoral appointments or to regularly ignore or waive established limits.
  4. Few institutions reported having campus-wide compensation policies for postdoctoral appointees, and few reported making any serious efforts 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 non-existent.
  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 had postdoctoral experience; in two fields-biochemistry and physicsœmore than 80% of the departments surveyed said they wouldn't 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 went on to postdoctoral appointments; in biochemistry, 80% went on to postdoctoral positions.
  10. Upon completion of their appointments, most postdocs in major research universities continue employment in a research university in some capacity. Roughly 60% of recent postdocs in surveyed departments went on to employment in research universities; of this group, about one-fourth went into another postdoc position, and about one-fourth went into 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 identified 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 said 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, juxtaposed 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 academy.

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 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

Research universities should act properly to develop policies and practices for systematically incorporating postdoctoral education into the university community. To accomplish this systematization of postdoctoral education, the committee makes the following recommendations.
  1. The postdoctoral appointment should remain a temporary appointment with a primary purpose of providing additional research or scholarly training for an academic or research career.
  2. A central administrative officer should be assigned formal responsibility for monitoring postdoctoral policies to assure consistent and uniform application of those policies across the institution.
  3. Universities should establish and enforce core policies applicable to all postdoctoral appointments. These policies should cover employment category; realistic institutional minimum stipends and benefits; fractional appointments; workers compensation; publication rights; faculty responsibilities for mentoring and performance evaluation; career advising and job placement; misconduct; grievance procedures; and education 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. Institutions should establish explicit guidelines for recruitment and appointment of postdoc 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 postdoc. As a general rule, the total time spent in postdoctoral appointments by a given individual should not exceed six years. Exceptions to such institutional guidelines should be granted only after careful review by the department and an appropriate central administrative officer.
  5. Departments should assure that all postdoctoral appointees 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. Each 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. Departments should provide incentives for effectives for effective faculty mentoring. Faculty mentors should monitor the work of postdocs and provide periodic evaluation and advice.
  7. Departments and faculty mentors, as well as the institution itself, should provide career advising and job placement assistance appropriate to postdocs.
  8. Institutions should provide a certificate or letter of completion of a postdoctoral appointment. Such a document, in conjunction with other recommendations for standardizing postdoctoral appointments, would certify the training provided by the institution in a postdoctoral appointment and could assist postdocs in their subsequent career steps.
  9. Disciplines should define the role of postdoctoral appointments in professional development and, in so doing, give careful attention to the extent to which postdoctoral appointments should be viewed as elective or obligatory.

October 10, 1997