Over at Geomblog, Suresh Venkatasubramanian argues strongly against making post-doc experience a requirement for an academic job in Computer Science:
I think that this is a dangerous trend, for the following reasons:
Quickly, doing a postdoc will become the norm, rather than an option, when looking for academic jobs. I think this is unnecessary from a training perspective for everyone (though it might be appropriate for some).
One of the things that has kept CS viable academically is that people can leave after a Ph.D, go to industry, and still make it back into academia. This no longer seems to be true in places like the natural sciences, with long postdocs. I wouldn't want their career path.
Postdocs are glorified free labor for PIs. Salaries are miniscule, and competition is fierce. And again, it's not entirely clear that fresh Ph.Ds are so incompetent that they need 5 year postdocs to be ready for a faculty job.
Ph.D training suffers, because "you can fix it in the postdoc". I don't think that's healthy either.
3 Comments:
I agree with the above points and wonder whether the problem comes from producing too many Ph.D's. I some US universities, there are the so called prestigious assistant professorships of 3 years extendable to six years which seem to serve the same purpose.
@Swarup: Yes, those positions (and also the research assistant professorships) are not a bad deal at all; the name indicates that the position comes with some freedom and a decent pay.
I think much of the anguish about post-docs will go away if they get a decent salary -- say, 70-80 percent of what an assistant professor makes. Right now, the salaries are abysmal; "Postdocs are glorified free labor for PIs, " as Suresh puts it.
As a Computer Scientist and a Director responsible for hiring, I look at someone who is doing a post doc in CS as someone not good enough to get a faculty position directly after a PhD. If I had my way, the same norm will apply in all disciplines. Alas, the experts who come for selections are "tuned" otherwise. Most of the time I have observed that the post doc work is not connected to the candidate's PhD work and he / she is unlikely to work in the area after the post doc is over.
Gautam Barua, IIT Guwahati
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