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  • Careers and Recruitment
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The impact of postdoctoral training on early careers in biomedicine

Nature Biotechnology volume 35, pages 90–94 (2017)Cite this article

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While postdocs are necessary for entry into tenure-track jobs, they do not enhance salaries in other job sectors over time.

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Figure 1: Trends in PhDs and postdoc training.
Figure 2: Estimated associations between 17 factors and the likelihood of starting one's career in a postdoc (within 3 years of PhD) with 95% confidence intervals, using probit model.
Figure 3: Percent of biomedical PhDs who started their careers with a postdoc, and those who did not, shown for each of five employment sectors, 10 years after degree awarded.
Figure 4: Time trends in the percentage of all working biomedical PhDs employed in each of five sectors, 10 years after degree awarded.
Figure 5: Predicted inflation-adjusted salary (2013 dollars) 1–15 years after PhD completion.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge financial support from NIH Grant R01-AG036820. The use of NSF data does not imply NSF endorsement of the research, research methods, or conclusions contained in this report. We thank H. Garrison, W. Schaffer, P. Stephan, and D. Zuk for helpful comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Public Policy and Law Department, Shulamit Kahn is in the Markets, Questrom School of Business, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.,

    Shulamit Kahn

  2. Donna K. Ginther is in the Department of Economics and Center for Science, Technology & Economic Policy, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, USA, and National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.,

    Donna K Ginther

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  1. Shulamit Kahn
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Correspondence to Shulamit Kahn.

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Kahn, S., Ginther, D. The impact of postdoctoral training on early careers in biomedicine. Nat Biotechnol 35, 90–94 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.3766

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