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Published online 13 May 2009 | Nature 459, 152 (2009) | doi:10.1038/459152e
News in Brief
Japan to pay firms to relieve postdoc glut
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Please note this is News in Brief, and so will be a short article.
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Great, this will provide incentive of US$230 per postdoc to create a job market for all the unemployed postdocs in Japan! Either that or pay US$50,000 per hired postdoc to reduce the number of unemployed postdocs from 17,827 to 17,727.
The elephant in the room (and certainly not just in Japan) is that universities are graduating far, far too many PhD students, resulting in far too many postdocs chasing the same positions. Part of the reason is no doubt that students are cheaper than technicians and other staff, and lack the rights employees have. Frankly, I don't think anything short of a no-exceptions cap on the number of students staff is allowed to take (something like five perhaps) would really solve the problem.