So excited to tell you all about our most recent guest post at Naturejobs blog. Here we weigh up the pros and cons of doing postdoctoral training for your long-term career progression. Let us know your opinion on this perspective…
http://blogs.nature.com/naturejobs/2018/04/03/the-cost-of-your-biomedical-research-career/
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I remember nearly twenty years ago attending an interview at a lab in San Francisco. The post docs there told me that in the USA, PhD stipends varied and were supplemented by supervising undergraduate practicals and by taking out loans. The former reduces their actual time at the bench so what would take three years in the UK could take four or five years in the USA.
The loans by the end of their PhD, could result in tens of thousands of dollars of debt so they are obliged to take the higher paying jobs (e.g. industry) and the lower paying postdoc vacancies in academia are filled by candidates from overseas. I subsequently did some fact checking and found this article in the Atlantic from 2014 where they state 37% of PhD students had debts with 18% having more than $30,000.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/phd-programs-have-a-dirty-secret-student-debt/283126/
Great insight – thanks for the comment!