Feedback Sought on Implementing Recommendations to Re-envision the Postdoctoral Experience

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photo of Ericka Boone
Ericka Boone, PhD, Director of the Division of Biomedical Research Workforce, NIH

NIH is dedicated to improving the postdoctoral experience to ensure the biomedical research enterprise can retain and attract our nation’s brightest scientific minds and remain globally competitive.

A December 2023 report from the Advisory Committee to the NIH Director (ACD) is informing our efforts to help re-envision the postdoctoral experience. We have thought about what can be implemented and how to do so within our authorities since the ACD report came out and after considering the thoughtful and deliberate conversations with the Working Group, public listening sessions, and thousands of comments in response to a 2023 Request for Information (RFI). We announced earlier this year an increase in stipend levels for pre- and postdoctoral scholars at grantee institutions. Further increases are planned over the next five years pending the availability of funds.

Today, we seek your input via a new RFI to help us implement specific ACD recommendations:

  • Limiting the amount of time a postdoctoral scholar can be supported by NIH funds to five years as a means to promote greater structure to the postdoctoral training process and help facilitate timely transition to independent careers: What are your thoughts on capping NIH-supported postdoctoral support or participation in particular programs for a set period of time to accelerate transition into biomedical careers? Would any institutional policies hinder or help with that?
  • Revising the K99/R00 mechanism to focus on potential and ideas, and shortening the eligibility window and refocusing review criteria to facilitate more rapid transition of postdoctoral scholars and allow for more early career researchers from varying experiences to participate: How can this NIH program be restructured to focus more on ideas and creativity, and less on productivity? What metrics would be needed to assess this?
  • Promote training and professional development opportunities for postdoctoral scholars and their mentors: Mentoring and professional development are integral and defining elements for postdoctoral experiences. How can NIH and extramural institutions ensure that career and professional development training becomes an integrated and measured component of the postdoctoral experience?  What skills and competencies are needed to strengthen professional development for mentors? Are there ways to better integrate professional development training into the postdoctoral experience?

Your additional specific suggestions, evidence-based strategies, and relevant data or related experiences will help inform our potential strategies to implement the ACD recommendations. Feedback will be accepted electronically until October 23, 2024.

We wholeheartedly agree with ACD WG’s sentiment that “to enact positive change for postdoctoral scholars, an overall cultural shift is needed to make substantial and sustained progress.” And that such changes will, when working together, “result in large steps forward in ensuring U.S. postdoctoral positions become increasingly desirable, competitive, sustainable, and inclusive and that they better recognize and reward the value and wellbeing of postdoctoral scholars.”

25 Comments

  1. We can train as well as we possibly can and offer whatever salary one could imagine, but the prospect of taking on the position of academic research-focused faculty, to which many would aspire, is so daunting and miserable a proposition that no sane person would want to do this job. The competitive grant funding mechanism of the US does indeed drive innovation and excellence, but also sleepless nights and anxiety wondering how one is going to maintain the salaries of their (single mother, underpaid) employees, the research endeavors of their trainees, and (last but not least) their own salaries. This is not the case elsewhere and, as faculty myself, I would not wish this existence on any future trainee despite its intellectual perks. Improve overall funding and you improve US academia as a potentially desirable career.

    1. Yet NIH/NSF are compelled to recruit more and more people into STEM from K-12 so they can be drawn into this insane nonsense, where they won’t be funded! Or at least with any regularity. Maybe if federal funding agencies spent money on funding science instead of social engineering? (e.g. only R35-eligible MD/PhD applicants need apply that have been approved by NIH for academia with a K99/R00, provide they are of Tralmafadorian descent, work at medium-sized institutions in Bozeman, Maine on translational herbal extract to treat pernicious toe fungus in pre-clinical phase 8 studies, while pipetting on one leg and whistling Mahler. And of course the applicants must have Scorpio with Jupiter rising in their eighth house!). But it’s all good because only the best science gets funded!

    2. Agreed. I mentor many PhD students and most if not all are not interested in an academic career because they see first hand what their PIs are going through.

  2. There was a perception by some people that a 5 year limit postdoc policy was already in place. I think it is really difficult to develop an across-the-board policy that makes sense for all disciplines because some science takes longer than other science to mature. The best idea above, but the hardest to implement or enforce, is better integration of career and professional development training during the postdoc. As it stands, in most places this is very limited. But if this is indeed emphasized and incorporated then the time for those activities would also now need to be factored into the timeline of the postdoc.

  3. Based on our own experiences, those of our colleagues, and data reported in Science in March, there are many fewer postdoctoral researchers whose experiences can be re-envisioned. One significant fix would be to allow T32 grants to support non-resident/citizen post-doctoral scientists. That could go a long way to alleviating the post-doctoral shortage itself.

    1. I am happy to read this suggestion. I found myself blocked from certain opportunities as a temporary visa holder during my student and training years, and I still think 20 years later that it contributed to permanently stunting my career trajectory.

  4. This is a misguided effort. All these timelines like the 5 year postdoc limit, 4 year K99/R00 limit and the 10 year ESI limit. These timelines put enormous pressure on postdocs and junior faculty and the result is an increase in cases of research misconduct. NIH should advocate the other way around. Acknowledging that doing good and solid science takes time. A new investigator should get a helping hand when they are applying for their first grant but what difference does it make if the junior faculty is 10 or 15 years post-PhD?

    Similarly, a postdoc who is doing solid and honest science should be rewarded with a K99/R00 to help them transition to a faculty position but what difference does it make if they graduated their PhD 4, 6 or 8 years?

    A better NIH effort should be to help institutions establish curricula and workshops to familiarize trainees (grad students and postdocs) with different career paths and let them choose what path do they want to pursue. If someone wants to go to industry after a 2-3 year postdoc that’s fine. If a postdoc wants academia, then do not put timelines. Leave him/her do their science with integrity and without rushing and when they are ready for independence, support them by not putting eligibility timelines for their K99 or first R01 grant.

    1. I definitely agree with this comment. The timelines are superficial and dos nothing to support the career progression. All of what is said is true and I want to add that can throw curve balls emotionally, physically, and/or financially that may put some very qualified scientists on a different or extended timeline.

    2. Josh Alan nailed it.

      Only things I would add:
      For dual career couples, sometimes two postdocs are necessary for one half is needed, which makes the 5 year limit challenging.

      The cost of postdocs vs the allowed costs of smaller research awards makes it challenging to support them via those mechanisms. Increasing award budgets is overdue.

    3. I wholeheartedly agree with this perspective. I believe that adding more time-anxiety to the process of moving from postdoctoral to faculty (or other possible jobs relevant to a PhD level research scientist) adds burdent without benefit to the individual. Further, moving from postdoctoral training to a faculty position often simply cannot be achieved in 5 years. I further agree that this barrage of concern over how long it takes to complete a training phase – regardless of what phase that might be – is misguided and often harmful to the very people you are trying to help.

    4. Yes–this exactly! I say this as a current postdoctoral scientist who earned my PhD in March of 2020, in the early stages of the pandemic. The K99/R00 eligibility limits have felt extremely restrictive to me and have really discouraged me from further pursuing an academic career, particularly as many universities (including my own) all but require this sort of funding to be considered for a faculty position. Time restrictions like the 4 year K99/R00 eligibility window–and the proposed 5 year limit for postdoctoral funding from NIH–can be counterproductive for those who want to push themselves to acquire new skills and/or attempt very difficult, rigorous experiments that are not guaranteed to succeed quickly. Ensuring postdocs are paid a decent wage that is in line with their experience and highly specialized skills (and requiring universities to contribute financially toward this effort, rather than exclusively straining PI grant funds) would do a lot more to make this career more sustainable. Quality work takes time, and not everyone is ready for an independent career after a 4 or 5 year postdoc. Some people may wish to switch labs after a year or two but be discouraged from doing so because of the short K99/R00 eligibility window. Why should NIH make it more difficult for those people to continue being productive in another person’s lab?

    5. Exactly my thoughts. Implementing arbitrary time limits is a one size fits all solution and does nothing to accomodate or acknowledge the various career paths taken by many highly successful researchers. Science is messy and doesn’t always proceed in nice bite-size periods. By limiting support to 5 years, you are penalizing those who tackle tough problems and have the perseverance and drive to achieve their goal.

  5. I agree with Josh Alan. The other issue here is most fellowships/K awards require US Citizenship or Permanent Resident status. Tighter restrictions on these timelines add to the ever-increasing number of deterrents for a career in academia, pushing more US Citizens toward alternate career paths.

    Otherwise, here are my other thoughts on each of these suggestions:
    “What are your thoughts on capping NIH-supported postdoctoral support or participation in particular programs for a set period of time to accelerate transition into biomedical careers? Would any institutional policies hinder or help with that?”
    -Most institutions already cap the number of years that an individual can be considered a “postdoctoral trainee” (either a “fellow”/”scholar” or “scientist”). In fact, institutions have *increased* this number, particularly for those in neuroscience, biomedical sciences, and evolutionary/developmental biology to a max of 7 years.

    “Revising the K99/R00 mechanism to focus on potential and ideas, and shortening the eligibility window and refocusing review criteria to facilitate more rapid transition of postdoctoral scholars and allow for more early career researchers from varying experiences to participate: How can this NIH program be restructured to focus more on ideas and creativity, and less on productivity? What metrics would be needed to assess this?”
    -Unless you are in a field where most of the research is done in the library and the direct ratio of “time put in = product put out,” applies (like bioinformatics, statistics, epidemiology, etc…) the eligibility window is short enough for those of us doing bench experiments/science. Refocusing on “potential and ideas…” and “refocusing review criteria” is vague, particularly in light of the intended outcome, and lack of emphasis on productivity (!?). Perhaps reviewers should stop looking at impact factor as a measure of an individual’s productivity, and actually review the work and papers (or even the dissertation itself) that a potential trainee has produced. Any review where the focus is on ideas & creativity must also focus on feasibility; the only way to assess feasibility is by reviewing the candidate’s work, ability to acquire new skills & knowledge, and mentorship.

    “Promote training and professional development opportunities for postdoctoral scholars and their mentors: Mentoring and professional development are integral and defining elements for postdoctoral experiences. How can NIH and extramural institutions ensure that career and professional development training becomes an integrated and measured component of the postdoctoral experience? What skills and competencies are needed to strengthen professional development for mentors? Are there ways to better integrate professional development training into the postdoctoral experience?”
    -Provide avenues for funding and protected time for workshops (like courses at CSHL or MBL) and conference attendance. Clinically-trained mentors (MDs) involved in running labs and training PhD candidates or postdocs, should be required to work hand-in-hand with fellow basic science faculty in order to ensure integrity of the work, focus, and productivity. For NIH Fellowship or K-award holders, letters from each of these mentors should be provided along with each progress report. As for professional development training, all of the sub-institutes of the NIH should sponsor annual or semi-annual Career Weeks in order to introduce and expose trainees to the variety of career opportunities/paths available to PhD-level scientists. This could also serve as a central point of recruitment for various industries that are in need of STEM PhDs.

    These suggestions may not work for all Institutes, but may be a positive step for those that fund biomedical research and/or experiment-based research.

  6. Why should our taxes support those who are not US residents or resident aliens? Let their governments support them while they are obtaining valuable experiences in the US. K awards are and should stay limited to US residents. What is more important, many of these post-docs or early career faculty go back to their countries. Why should we develop workforce in some other area of the globe?

    Post-docs are frequently abused – while I did a post-doc because I wanted to stay in academia, I feel that the NIH should impose limits not for how long people do post-docs but rather how long the NIH pays for these post-docs. If someone has additional funding to support a post-doc or the post-doc brings funding from outside then it should not matter how long their post-doc is. I do not know if 2 or 3 or 4 years of NIH support are sufficient or appropriate but there should be a limit to the NIH support.

  7. In the behavioral sciences, the K99/R01 is not useful because post doc fellowships are 2 year positions so by the time the fellow submits their application, they are one year in and if they need a resubmission (which most do) then they are in year 2 and almost done with the post doc—and the vast majority have no interest in doing more than 2 years of post doc (can’t blame them). So outside of a T32, there is no good way to pay post docs—it ends up coming out of the PI’s R grant funds but a PI would need a few R01s to cover both their staff and post docs. A single R01 these days has way too tight of a budget to even cover adequate staff. There’s been zero change in R01 budget limits since I began my career but salaries go up each year so it has only gotten increasingly difficult to carry out a project with adequate funding. So all this is to say, I rarely hire post-docs anymore which is a shame. They are just too expensive for my budget and there is no mechanism by which i can get them swiftly on their own funding. One might ask why don’t I apply for a T32 but every professor I know who has had one said it’s a lot of work for little to no salary coverage and then you have to fill positions even if you don’t have strong candidates which they say is a recipe for disaster—and I have seen that first hand. Candidates who are a terrible fit get hired out of desperation and it creates a bad situation for both the post doc and the mentor. I have yet to meet a professor with a T32 who hasn’t warned me against applying for one. I’m not sure these recommendations really get at the heart of the issue.

    1. 100% agree that R01 budget limits need to be raised to support decent science. Every PI I know feels underfunded to do the work they need to do, needs to constantly be writing grants to support their labs, and thus mentorship of postdocs suffers. Senior PI mentorship is what postdocs need, but most senior PIs have little time or energy to spend on mentorship. Administrative support to help postdocs with things like understanding their benefits, how to sign up for healthcare, whether or not they need to pay their own taxes is lacking. Postdocs are left feeling unsupported and disillusioned.

  8. One of the main problems with mentoring, however that is defined, is the quality of the mentors, and the extra effort effective mentoring/training needs, when the only thing that counts now is grant funding. Nevertheless, a greatly increased emphasis on rigor of thinking and depth of scientific comprehension is urgently needed for both mentors and (ugly word) mentees, especially in the biomedical research arena. Many (most?) universities and medical schools provide all manner of training modules and classes, primarily to ensure that the maximum number of boxes are checked. Creating valuable content is very time consuming and needs considerable creative effort, all of which is at odds with the primary goal (viz bring in extramural funds).

  9. 1. Increasing salaries is a great start. I found this the most limiting aspect of postdoc training in my academic medicine career.
    2. Limiting support to 5 years I oppose. Some excellent students take longer than that to bloom into an RO1 independent researcher for various reasons. 6 years I might support, and I understand the wish to lower the age of people supported on R grants from NIH, but for many the route is complex, especially if they take maternity/paternity leave (more than once, often) or have illness or can’t get into a course they really need for a certain aspect of the work. I understand the problem with open-ended funding periods, but I think reviewers could be instructed to detect abuse-type prolongations of student life.
    3. The second most important limitation for graduate students is difficulty and expense of child care. Universities should provide day care at a reasonable rate; it is good to have elementary schools also that are close to campus. I have suggested these ad nauseum for the past 30 years and my university has had both, both prime programs, but it is very difficult to get a spot for your child/children – took me two years to get a baby in the last time I tried for a trainee I really wanted in my program.
    4. For faculty I suggest the PI of the training grant must report annually 1) patents that have been submitted in which the trainee had some role – let’s say over the past 2 years, 2) publications in the last year on which the trainee played a role, what that role was and whether it was acknowledged in the manuscripts.
    5. It may be that the NIH should required at least monthly sessions between mentor and student and those should be reported to NIH. I think in the large labs some students who are very good get overlooked because they are not noisy.
    6. Students should be required to report results of these meetings with mentors.

    Bevra Hahn, MD, Distinguished Prof Med, emeritus, UCLA

  10. The lack of availability of T32 training for non-resident/citizen post-doctoral scientists indeed reduces the prospective pool of qualified applicants. Given that NIH funds from a Principal Investigator grant can be used to pay non-resident aliens, this appears to be an administrative incongruity well worth fixing.

  11. Hello
    I think the post doc opportunity should also go to people in the community with PhDs and not be restricted to 5 years past doctorate. There are many outstanding people in the community doing great work to improve the health and quality of life of the community. And reducing health disparities.
    They should be able to apply for the post doc opportunities even the retired scientists and other professionals.
    The ideas of the new scientists cannot compare to the knowledge, skills and abilities of the seniors who have already walked in their shoes many times.

    Of course there need to be a cut off point (maybe 20 years) but 5 years is too early to determine qualifications. Besides pairings them with the seniors might actually help them and the project. Thanks about it.

  12. I think that the post doc eligibility should not be 5 years past PhD. I think it should be extended to about 20_25 years. Also people working in the community and retired persons should also be eligible for these opportunities. There are many retired professionals contributing to promote the health and quality of life of the community. Older diverse citizens have much to offer the younger scientists and the NIH. Their many diverse life eperiences, knowledge, skills and abilities are valuable to the scientific community. They should also be allow to be on the working groups and boards of this wonderful organization. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, health equity and elimination of health disparities requires us to work together on the pressing issues facing the global community and represent as a group globally. We must work together to accomplish the mission, goals, objectives of the NIH.
    We should also be able to work from home because some of us are caring for a family member. Thank you for listening…

  13. I would simply say, whatever a new policy is, fund it!

    A key example is the recent hike in post-doc stipends. I’m in the 3rd year of an R01, so the budget was drafted in early 2021. A LOT has changed since then, and effectively I’m stuck with an outdated budget, which could not possibly have anticipated all the recent changes. Increased stipends are essentially an un-funded mandate when they surpass what was drafted into budgets 3, 4, or 5 years ago.

    By all means, pay post-docs more, but pay for it up-front with grant supplements, rather than expecting PIs to cut from other areas of the grant budget to cover the gap.

  14. Capping years for postdocs at 5 completely ignores the facts of current biomedical research. High impact manuscripts in the past used to require 4-6 figures with few to no subfigures, no supplemental figures, and a single publishable unit. Now high impact manuscripts require >100 figures, including dozens of subfigures and supplemental figures, and expansive 3-5 publishable units. (Our last Cancer Discovery paper had 206 figures.) It takes so much more time and more people to produce one high impact paper now than ever before, which is required for postdocs who want to stay in academia. A postdoctoral fellowship before 2008 used to take 3-4 years and now it takes 6-7 to produce the high impact papers required to get an interview for a tenure-track faculty job. Therefore, it is totally ILLOGICAL to shorten the time for a postdoctoral fellowship. The same reasoning can be used for NOT shortening the eligibility window for K99/R00.
    Currently, every institution that accepts NIH funding, particularly T32s and F grants, has to have career development programs and opportunities for trainees, including postdocs, so forcing more of this without funds to support it will only benefit the richest institutions that have an office of full time people focused only on supporting trainees within their institution. Also, most institutions have some sort of training of mentors, but the big problem is the lack of time for the training since the demands of faculty time are worse than ever, particularly in cancer research. With the chronic low rate of funding at the NCI requiring more and more grant writing, the ever expanding regulatory and administrative requirements mandated by the NIH and those within institutions, but the a lack of NIIH mandated requirements for institutions to have sufficient support staff to help NIH funded grantees with this mountain of administrative work dumped onto them, the teaching/education requirements as a faulty member at an academic medical center, all the committee work needed for promotion and tenure, and the huge manuscripts now required there is no time for mentor training. All trainees see this, so few postdocs want to work 12 hrs day and every weekend anymore just to have a NIH funded lab. Forcing institutions to have staff to do all the administrative work and regulatory paperwork for the research labs would free up much needed faulty time to focus more on the trainees and the research in their labs. This is the problem that needs to be solved and not more mentor training.

  15. I suggest NIH cancel the DEI consideration and use blind review process for K99/R00 or other training grant study section. Since these training grants are not only a critical point to the trainee themselves, but also are perfect opportunities to provide new blood to the scientific research community. With the current trend, it is becoming increasingly clear that more and more trainees intentionally chose big labs just for easier publication and grant application pressure. It won’t take long that we will see the majority academic faculty in the U.S. all come from just a few giant labs. That will be consistently devastating to scientific innovation.
    Also I am against NIH funded researcher’s comment. The tax payer’s money comes from immigrant postdoc workers’ payroll as well. NIH should lift the eligibility restriction of the most training grant and enforce requirements for the awardee to transit to permanent workers during the first year of the funding support. I believe the letter of award from NIH would be a super strong evidence on the awardee’s USCIS petition.

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