Dive Brief:

• Postdoctoral fellowships are often underpaid and under-mentored, according to a new report.
• Postdocs who recently received Ph.D.s in science, engineering, and health received a median annual pay of $43,000 in 2010, compared to $76,000 for recent doctorate graduates not working as postdocs, Inside Higher Ed reported.
• One of the recommendations of the report from the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine is a substantial pay raise for postdocs conducting federally funded biomedical research.

Dive Insight:

Postdoc advocates and prominent scientists have indicated that the postdoc system cannot be sustained. Postdocs are facing greater workloads, more stress, smaller federal science budgets and a difficult market for landing tenure-track jobs. Postdoc researchers in science, engineering, and health fields increased 150% from 2000 and 2012, outpacing increases in graduate students and tenure and tenure-track positions by a significant margin. An estimated 60,000 to 100,000 postdoc researchers work in the U.S.