But it might be because most people will already be dead by then and not because we take our mitogen-activated kinase pills every day and nanobots repair our DNA while we sleep (I realize you never asserted any such techno-miracles as the reason but I had to include at least some sort of half-assed segue to the topic at hand). I doubt our species is immune to the natural consequence endured by any organism whose population expands unchecked exponentially beyond its habitat’s carrying capacity (it gets checked). I also think we’re about at the point when parsing these kinds of statistics into the nearly-obsolete concept of national borders won’t tell us anything useful about the future, and may even encourage disastrously misguided policies. Most people alive right now are are children, for example.

Oh, please, tell me how in the world you figure that. Even IF someone somehow found a way to extend our lifespans significantly, do you think most people could afford it? And would we see the end of starvation, infectious disease, fatal accidents, war, genocide, murder, suicide, the death penalty? I’m not counting on it in my lifetime.

In fact, I’ve heard much more buzz that my own generation in the U.S. may be the first (or one of the few, at least) to have a SHORTER average lifespan than previous generations. How sad! And it’s mostly diet and lifestyle. All these advances in medicine and people will still find ways to send themselves to an early grave.

Wow, that’s a good school. My university pays postdocs 20K, though the adjunct pay is about the same.

Yes, it is, but not because our administration loves us. We have a VERY well-organized graduate student union, which translates to significant benefits for the graduate student and postdoc populations that otherwise would not exist. My annual stipend as a graduate student last year comes really close to the annual pay of one of your adjuncts, and the cost of graduate labor basically dictates the cost of a full time position, such as a postdoc or adjunct.

This hurts profit a lot, and the university frequently tries to smear our other economic problems as the fault of graduate labor, but when I look at the situation at other schools, I’ve got to say that we’ve done a lot of good for most of the employees of our system.

So take that as you will.

Except that I haven’t even said anything about hiring practices. Basiorana said postdocs were “on a small stipend not enough to support a single person” and “Everyone else makes shit pay except the top few.” That certainly didn’t level with the info I had on postdoc stipends or other positions, but it’s not something I know that much in detail, and least of all in biology. I wanted to have a better idea of what figures you and her/him were talking about. What do you think would be a correct salary for a 30 yr old postdoc? 60K, 80K, 100K?

You’re asking the wrong question. The problem is not necessarily the amount a postdoc is paid. The problem is the manner in which the postdoc employment position functions. Postdocs were initially set up as one-year internships for recent PhDs to get a little diversity in their experience while applying for permanent positions. That’s why they have poor pay and poor benefits; you’re not supposed to have a career as a postdoc; it’s supposed to be a temporary position.

The problem is that, given the shrinking job market and the increasingly competitive funding situation; more labs are training more PhDs, but there are fewer and fewer faculty positions. So, people are easily spending five to six years hopping from postdoc position to postdoc position. Postdocs are on stipend rather than salary and thus do not have access to most employment benefits that a university will grant faculty members and are extremely vulnerable to advisor abuse. Postdocs frequently end up doing their advisor’s job for them, including grant writing, paper writing, teaching, etc., because the few things the postdoc wants out of their position (authorships on papers, training, letters of reference) are all things that the advisor can withhold on a whim.

The reason why we’re concerned about postdoc and adjunct (i.e. postdoc without an advisor, basically) positions is that they’re becoming the standard method of generating research and funding at major research institutions, and there are fewer and fewer permanent employment positions for these people. What higher ed is turning into is four years of college debt, 6-8 years of graduate school labor where you make below poverty income while working 12-14 hours a day, culminating in a three to five year paid position (with extremely long and irregular hours) that doesn’t even pay well enough to pay off the debt you accrued getting the undergraduate degree. By the end of that postdoctoral position, you might get hired into a career-track position (maybe), but chances are you’re going to end up looking for alternate employment outside of your field and leave 15 years of specialized education behind.

This also misrepresents ethnic diversity and gender diversity in the workforce, because the postdoc and adjunct faculty are generally much more diverse than the permanent tenured faculty (who are generally white and male). So, no matter how much we reform higher education to increase graduation rates of women and minorities, that doesn’t affect the ethnic diversity of university faculties if universities simply are not hiring for permanent positions anymore.

Wow, that’s a good school. My university pays postdocs 20K, though the adjunct pay is about the same.

Of course, when you consider that they can have a couple hundred thousand dollars of loans due from 8-10 years of school, plus families to support, that seems like a lot less money.

For most of academia, yeah, it is, but the trend is towards the biology model, not the engineering model. I’m worried about current biology students, but about future physics, chemistry, etc students.

Except that I haven’t even said anything about hiring practices. Basiorana said postdocs were “on a small stipend not enough to support a single person” and “Everyone else makes shit pay except the top few.” That certainly didn’t level with the info I had on postdoc stipends or other positions, but it’s not something I know that much in detail, and least of all in biology. I wanted to have a better idea of what figures you and her/him were talking about. What do you think would be a correct salary for a 30 yr old postdoc? 60K, 80K, 100K?

I’m not sure though, as I’m no statistician. Any thoughts?

You seem to have a problem discerning the difference between “complaining” and “stating significant problems with current hiring practices.” The current hiring and training practices of these public universities are bad for everyone.