In October 2023, the journal Nature shared the results of its second global survey of postdoctoral researchers [1]. These are early-career scientists who work on short, fixed-term research contracts after their PhD. The survey ran in June and July 2023. It drew 3,838 people from 93 countries who chose to take part.
The headline was good news. The share who felt hopeful about their future careers rose from 28% in 2020 to 41% in 2023. That is a jump from about 1 in 4 to about 2 in 5.
That hope sat next to real pressures, and the same survey found plenty of them. Still, one thread in the reporting stood out to me. Part of the new confidence seemed to come from people realizing that academia is one place to do science among several.
In my view, this is a healthy change. I think people who leave the university for other science jobs are still doing science, and we should treat their move that way.
What did the 2023 survey find?
The survey had other good news too. Only 8% of those who answered named the economic effects of COVID-19 as their biggest worry [1]. In 2020, that figure was 40%. More people said they had a good balance between work and life. More also said they skipped overtime altogether.
The survey also showed clear pressures. The reporting says the data paint postdocs as “overworked, underpaid, appointed on precarious short-term contracts and lacking recognition for their efforts”. Satisfaction with the current job slipped from 60% in 2020 to 55%.
More than half, 52%, said they had thought about leaving their scientific field because of mental health concerns. Pay was another problem. In North and Central America, 62% were unhappy with their salary. That is more than 3 in 5.
I think the good news and the pressures should be read together. The survey does not describe a group in despair. It also does not describe a group whose problems are solved. It describes people who are under strain, yet feel they have more options than they did three years earlier.
Where does the new hope come from?
For the first time, the survey included postdocs working in industry. They made up only 7% of those who answered [1]. The article says that group was too small for a fair direct comparison. Still, their answers were more positive. In industry, 65% were satisfied, compared with 54% in academia.
They were also better paid. Among industry postdocs, 23% earned between US$80,000 and $110,000 a year. Only 5% of academic postdocs earned in that range.
One microbiologist quoted in the piece would like to stay in academia herself. In her words, “I think people are happier because they know that they can move out of academia, and it’s not a failure”. An ecologist left a university postdoc for one at a private environmental group. She told Nature she was much happier in her new job.
Imagine a young researcher who has spent five years learning to design experiments, clean messy data and explain results to a tough audience. She takes a job testing medical devices for a company. Her lab bench has changed, but the questions she asks every morning are still scientific ones.
An executive at a private research funder also spoke to Nature. She suggested that simply knowing another path exists can make people feel better. “It is the sense that they are not trapped,” she said.
I think that is true. A career feels very different when people know they have a good option if they leave.
Science happens in many places
Data on people with PhDs show the same trend. The 2021 Survey of Earned Doctorates looked at new doctorate graduates from US universities [2]. It focused on graduates who had already accepted a US job that was not a postdoc. Only 36% of them said their main job would be in academia. In 2001, that figure was 48%.
In engineering and the physical sciences, the figure was just 12%, about 1 in 8. The same report looked at expected pay. In every field, the typical (median) expected salary was higher in industry and other jobs outside academia than in postdocs or academic jobs. That outside group includes government.
Those numbers describe where trained scientists already go. In my view, many of those jobs are real science jobs. Think of a scientist at a government agency who checks the evidence for a new drug. That person is doing science.
So is someone who runs trials in a hospital. So is someone who builds the software and data systems that other researchers rely on. So is someone who explains research to the public clearly and honestly. People take the methods, the healthy doubt and the habit of checking their own work with them into each of these jobs.
I was trained in medical physics and biomedical engineering. In my opinion, science skills move well across settings, from imaging to data to clinical questions.
What does academia lose?
There is a fair other side, and I do not want to dismiss it. When trained people leave, universities lose years of investment. They also lose the people who would have taught and guided the next generation.
The same funding executive said a hiring crisis had taken hold in academia [1]. Labs were struggling to fill postdoc jobs. One neuroscientist worried about “a downward spiral where there are not enough postdocs, so not enough research gets done”.
It is also true that some who leave wanted to stay. In the survey, 65% said they wanted to build their careers in academia. A university director at Queensland University of Technology called that “very concerning”. She added: “It is extremely unlikely that 65% will end up in tenured or in long-term academic positions in their fields”. She said most data suggest the real figure is more like 20%, about 1 in 5.
Comparing those two numbers, it is clear that many people will leave a career path they hoped to follow. For them, a good industry job can still feel like a loss, and that feeling is real.
So I would not describe every departure as a happy choice. Part of the blame for this loss lies with the academic system, which offers too few stable jobs and pays too little. Still, the person who moves on has not stopped being a scientist.
How can we treat every path as a science career?
If this view is right, there are a few things we could do. Graduate programs could show students the full range of careers from the start. Other careers should not come up only as a quiet backup plan in the final year.
Supervisors could treat a student’s interest in industry, government or public outreach as a normal goal. And universities that want to keep people could compete by improving what the survey says matters to postdocs. That means pay, job security and a reasonable workload.
In my view, leaving the academic track is a change of workplace, and the person takes their science with them. People interviewed alongside the 2023 survey suggested that seeing this clearly is part of why optimism rose. I think we should tell every early-career researcher this clearly.
For anyone weighing that choice now, the survey offers a mixed but hopeful picture. The pressures are real, the academic jobs are few, and the loss to universities matters. But the skills built during a PhD are valued in many places. In my view, a career spent answering hard questions carefully is a science career, wherever it happens.
References
[1] L. Nordling, “Postdoc career optimism rebounds after COVID in global Nature survey,” Nature, vol. 622, no. 7982, pp. 419-422, Oct. 2023, doi: 10.1038/d41586-023-03163-7.
[2] National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, “Doctorate Recipients from U.S. Universities: 2021,” NSF 23-300, National Science Foundation, Alexandria, VA, USA, Oct. 2022. [Online]. Available: https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf23300/report/postgraduation-trends
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