EMBO conference - day three

Another report from Uli for the third day of the EMBO meeting and 'alternative' career paths for PostDocs.

Name: Uli Rockenbauch

Location: Vienna, Austria.

Date: 11th September 2011

Event: The EMBO meeting.

Standing in front of the "Life Science Job Market" billboard, I am amazed: There are about a dozen PhD positions advertised and about a dozen postdoc positions One single group leader position. And that's it. Nothing in the biotechnology sector (although it is very well represented in the EMBO exhibition hall), nothing in publishing or the pharmaceutical industry. Is this an unfortunate coincidence? Perhaps. Living in Basel, I positively know that at least the latter branch of the economy is thriving and constantly looking for talented scientists.

But one thing is certainly well-reflected on this board in front of me: the narrowing funnel of the academic career path. According to the Institute for Higher Education Research in Kassel, about 15% of German university graduates go on to do a PhD (around 20000 in total per year), and some stay in academia for a Postdoc. As we all know, these positions are widely available, highly advertised, and everyone is happy to accept you to their lab. But for only about 10% of those 20000 people there is actually a group leader position available somewhere at a university or associated research insitute. Whenever I talk to other PhD students and postdocs here at the conference, the issue of job uncertainty comes up at some point. A never-ending topic.

Now, so far, that's simply how it is. We can't all become professors, and there's no reason why we all should. Let's stop whining. But a prevailing discrepancy between economic reality and the world of science is the relative lack of advice on what our principal investigators like to call 'alternative career paths'. Please do no note that these actually make up 90% of our future careers! From this point of view one could even call the academic career the 'alternative' to the much more common way into industry and biotech. Of course we very much appreciate the efforts of almost every institute to advise us junior scientists on planning a career as an independent researcher. (Today I attended the mentoring session on 'How to obtain an appropriate postdoc position', which was both interesting and useful.) But I do think that the really important session actually happended during lunch on Saturday, called 'Expanding Career Options', with experts speaking about their work in NGOs, industry or the fields of science communication and intellectual property.

So the good news is: Things are improving. The media are increasingly recognising and addressing the problem. Career advice workshops are changing in focus, and EMBO is certainly making a great effort here in aiming for a better "balance" of career advice to young scientists. Universities are offering more career evenings and career lecture series, although, as in our case, this is often still up to the PhD students themselves. Like most people, I do know more that one group leader who calls scientific editors "failed postdocs" by default - but fortunately, this is an attitude which is slowly diminishing. The world needs scientists, not just in research: I am convinced there is no better path of education to teach you a technical, systematic and rigorous way of thinking. Being able to deal with any kind of data - and appreciating the value of quantitative evidence - is a universal qualification that is crucial for the success of politics, education, environmental management and almost every other aspect of society. And it did feel good yesterday when I was sitting in the cafeteria and overheard someone saying: "Oh, several of my postdocs have become school teachers - and I'm proud of it!"