UC postdoc protest, from prouaw.org

On Friday we told you that the 6,500 postdocs of the University of California just ratified their first union contract, after 18 months of negotiation.  The five-year contract requires that all postdocs be paid at least $37,740/yr, which is $340 above the current minimum at UC.  (Postdocs with 5 yr experience must make at least $48K.)  These salaries are floors; one-third of UC postdocs are already paid more than $47K/yr.  1.5–3% pay raises are built in, as are ceilings on health insurance premium increases.  In return, the postdocs agreed not to strike.

This is a big deal because the ten UC campuses employ 10% of all postdocs in the United States. The 6,500 postdocs, spanning ten University of California campuses, unionized in 2008 as the Postdoctoral Researchers Organize, affiliated with the United Auto Workers (UAW).  UC grad students are also unionized. Any UC astronomers want to share their perspectives from over there?

Now, context. As Kelle pointed out, astronomy postdocs…

Median salaries, from "Doctors without Orders" from Sigma Xi.

get higher salaries than biology and chemistry postdocs.  That’s true, though it’s a dubious distinction to be less badly underpaid than ridiculously underpaid colleagues.  The US median salary for postdocs, in 2004 dollars, is $34,700.  At their reported 51 hr/week, that’s $14.90 per hour — about what Harvard janitors make.  (Reference: the report Doctors without Orders from Sigma Xi.)

I find the low bio/chem postdoc salaries particularly curious, because those fields have a direct connection to industry, where Ph.D. chemists 6–9 yrs from their B.S. degree have a median salary of $90K/yr in 2008 dollars.

I got interested in the subject of low postdoc pay because of an embarrassing experience at Caltech.  At a mentoring event, a grad student asked a room of postdocs and grad students, “So, how much do postdocs make?”  After an awkward silence, I tried to get the discussion started by volunteering a stipend of $45-50K for grants postdocs, and $56K for Hubble/Spitzer/Chandra fellows.*  There was an audible gasp in the room.  Then came a chorus of numbers in the 30-40K range.  At an institute with a $1.4B endowment, $270M/yr in grants, and $106K/yr average salary for assistant professors.

A recent article, “The Real Science Gap” (Miller-McCune, via The AstroDyke) posits a root cause for these low salaries:  that there are far too many junior science PhDs relative to the number of permanent jobs in science.  The article suggests the “scientist shortage” is a myth that keeps the supply of young scientists high, and wages low.  Definitely worth a read.

While I’m impressed that the Decadal Survey acknowledged the reality of this overproduction, I’m dismayed that it suggests we not worry because “training in astronomical research appears to be well matched in practice to much broader career opportunities.”  This proposition seems highly dubious to me, especially presented without evidence or a control sample.  I suspect that a selection effect is at work:  people who go to astro gradschool are smart, so they’ll probably succeed in industry.  It’s not at all clear to me that ~6–8 yrs in grad school gives any advantage, especially not compared to, say, a 2 yr MS program plus on the job experience.  (Cosmic Variance and commenters suggest that 2 yr of grad school is a sweet spot that maximizes subsequent salary in industry.)  The Decadal Survey’s assertion strikes me as well-intentioned but self-serving wishful thinking.  While grad school teaches valuable problem solving and other analytic skills, so do a range of other industry experiences and (shorter) professional degrees.

So.  Are there too many postdocs for the number of jobs?  Is there a way to increase funding for STEM without creating a “lost generation” of junior researchers with poor job prospects in academia?  Did the UC postdocs’ unionizing really achieve much?  Is such organizing repeatable at other institutions?  Why are chemistry postdocs paid poorly, while new PhD chemists in industry are highly paid?  Do the NIH funding guidelines make sense?  Why don’t fellowships come with cost-of-living allowances?

*  Those were the numbers a few years ago.  2011 Hubble fellowship stipends will be $63K/yr.

It is that time of year again. Hundreds of astronomy graduate students and postdocs are entering the mysterious and stressful world of job hunting. Listings for postdocs are starting to hit the Job Register now while the faculty position listings will start to heat up later in the Fall. To help take the edge off, we’ve started a Job Hunting Wiki page with useful links and resources including LaTeX CV templates, books about job hunting, and links back to posts that discussed aspects of the job hunt. We’ve also set up an Amazon store with the most relevant books.

Please share with us your favorite job hunting resources, advice as an experienced job hunter. Go ahead and update the wiki, or comment either here or on the wiki.

Last week, we talked about personal finance for underpaid junior scientists.  We discussed how the astronomy career path dramatically under-pays junior astronomers during the first 10–12 years (graduate school + postdoc) of their career.  That they are often ineligible for retirement accounts during the grad school and postdoc years (or at least do not vest), which puts them a decade behind in the goal of saving for retirement—a decade of lost compounded interest.  (As scientists we understand the power of compounded interest—to quote my calculus prof Dr. Passmore, “Never underestimate exponential growth.”)  We got a discussion going about the financial realities of a profession that over-produces PhDs, gives million-buck Cosmology prizes to its most successful few, and pays most of its practitioners only $25k/yr.  And we started brainstorming institutional solutions.

I’d like to continue that discussion in that thread, while here switching focus to the steps each junior astronomer can take to manage her own finances, so that she can get out of debt and afford the non-work things she really wants (a house; a kid; a Harley.)

Last week, Ben reiterated a standard piece of financial advice:  you need to start saving for retirement before your mid-30s.  Exponential growth.  I’ll add that many need to start assembling a 10–20% mortgage down payment. Kurtis pointed out that it’s hard to save this much, especially given that 30±5 is when lots of people start trying to have kids, and eying houses for sale.  I agree that it’s hard, but I believe it’s possible.

I’d like to recommend a book, “Smart and Simple Financial Strategies for Busy People“, by Jane Bryant Quinn.  This short, highly readable book is extremely helpful to a person following the the junior scientist career path—it can help you pay off your debts, establish a Roth IRA retirement account and set up automatic monthly investment, get renters’ insurance, set up auto billpay, and save up for a house down payment.

For 30 years, Ms. Quinn was a personal finance columnist for Newsweek.  She is a skeptic and a pragmatist, who mistrusts complicated schemes, trusting compound interest, diversification, and investing in the entire stock market (index investing).  She writes very clearly, and understands that her reader is a smart person who has specialized in something other than finance.

For me, Quinn’s most useful suggestion was to “put my finances on auto-pilot.”  I followed her advice by starting a Roth IRA with Vanguard, investing in an indexed “target date fund”, which is a fund that starts out heavily in stocks (higher risk, higher growth potential), and will gradually evolve toward a higher bond fraction (safe, but slower growth) as I near retirement.  Two days after my monthly stipend check arrives, my account automatically moves 15%  to my retirement fund.  (Much better than contributing yearly, when I remember, but only if I feel flush.)  Quinn argues that if you never see the money, you won’t miss it. For me, the auto-investment forces a financial discipline that I needed.

Quinn also suggests that you set up auto-pay for all bills.  (The electric company is surprisingly unsympathetic when you explain that you meant to pay the electric bill, but there was a bug in the cluster-finding algorithm which took you weeks to find, and then there were all the simulations to re-analyze, so of course your mail has piled up and you didn’t see the final notice of disconnection.) And that you make a spreadsheet to keep track of financial goals (“Harley-Davidson Forty-Eight in Vivid Black with 1200cc Engine”), your small (but growing) savings toward those goals, and how far you’ve come toward reaching those goals.

My situation has been easier because my fellowship salary is on the high end of the astro-postdoc range.  However, I also live in one of the most expensive cities in the US, and my spouse took several months to find a job after we relocated.  We’ve had some financial hard times.  Still, on my postdoc salary, I’ve managed to save half of a mortgage down payment, while investing for retirement at the level Quinn recommends.  My wife (we keep separate finances) has paid off her student loans, belatedly started a retirement account, and also saved for a house.

My final advice echoes Ben:  when you get your PhD and the concomitant postdoc salary bump, try not to notice.  Rent a crummy little house.  I’m not kidding.  The single best financial decision we made in LA was to rent a tiny 1.5 bed, 1 bath bungalow.  It’s smaller than the 3 bedroom we had in grad school, but we are saving toward our long-term goals.

We don’t live completely like grad students—our ramen intake is down, and I’ve developed a taste for beer made by monks.

To recap: buy Quinn’s Book, follow her advice, and keep living like a grad student once you’re a postdoc.  If you do that, I hope you can compensate for the crummy pay in graduate school, catch up on saving for retirement, and meet your long-term financial goals.

PS – I like Quinn’s longer book too, “Making the Most of Your Money Now”.  It shares the same philosophy as “Smart and Simple”, but covers more topics, and is more of a reference book than a how-to manual.

Disclosure: If you buy either of Quinn’s books, or make any purchase from Amazon by following our links, we get a small kickback. See the title of this post.

While astronomers as a rule handle grant money responsibly, they’re often terrible with their own finances.  The gamut ranges from reckless experimentation, to willful obliviousness, to resigned acceptance of lifetime poverty.  In part, our attitudes toward money are reflections of our career choices — toward “pure science”, away from commercial pressure.*

In practice, many of us follow something like this financial path:

• Pay for college by working and going into debt (unless we have rich parents or a scholarship).
• Go to graduate school, funded by a research assistantship (RA) or teaching assistantship, which waives tuition and pays a modest stipend.  (Is $23-30K/yr the ballpark stipend now?**).  If the city has a low cost of living, grad students may buy a house.  (California grad students, ignore these rumors — they will only depress you.)
• Spend ~6  yrs as a post-doc at $50-60K/yr.  Grant–supported postdocs generally get a retirement account, but don’t stay long enough to vest.  Fellowship postdocs are often excluded from the retirement plan.  Pay off  student loans.  Buy a house if the cost-of-living is low and the postdoc duration long.
• (Hopefully) find a more permanent position, earning a range of salaries.  A plot from the 2006 AAS meeting shows starting assistant professor 9-month salaries at $51K to >75K; that’s $68K to $100+K for full-year salaries (in 2006 dollars.)  Get a retirement account and a mortgage, if none already.

As a result of this career path, the average astronomer is spending their early 20s and 30s dramatically underpaid compared to equivalent salaries in industry, and establishes a retirement account only in their mid-to-late 30s.  Thus, we have a profession in which some of the hardest–working practitioners are earning only $25K/yr, while some of our famous senior peers win million-buck Cosmology prizes (often for work done as under-paid junior scientists.)  What do y’all think about this?

I think we need to change that system — raise graduate student stipends, especially on the low end; pay postdocs more; mandate retirement accounts for all postdocs including fellows.  A barrier to doing that is that there’s no shortage of bright junior people eager to be paid poorly to do astronomy.  AstroBetter readers, do you have bright ideas on this topic?  Can you brainstorm some institutional solutions?  If so, let’s get a discussion going in the comments.

(In the next post, I’ll talk about how underpaid junior astronomers can take charge of their own personal finance).

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*To quote the greatest lab report ever written, “Going into physics was the biggest mistake of my life. I should’ve declared CS. I still wouldn’t have any women, but at least I’d be rolling in cash.”

**That’s the range of 2009 stipends published on the astronomy department websites of U Michigan, Rutgers, UCSC, and Vanderbilt.)

There’s been lots of shenanigans on the Astrophysics Job Rumor Mill recently. The comments on the revisions are beginning to sound like an existentialist debate. The curfuffle of the moment is whether or not there should be a section for non-academic jobs; the section has been appearing, disappearing, and modified all evening. After attending (parts of) the panel discussion on Employment in Astronomy: Present and Future [PDF] at the AAS in DC (organized by Anil Seth), I think this issue is worthy of more attention. The take home message I got from that session was that there will always be overproduction of both grad students and postdocs and we just need to accept it and learn how to deal with it. So, without further ado, I give you AstroBetter’s first poll (please excuse the non-pretty-ness). And, of course, let’s hear your thoughts in the comments.