Why did I bother with this PhD journey?

[energyresearch]

Originally posted by energyresearch at Why did I bother with this PhD journey?

Whilst there were no illusions of a research career equating to limitless wealth, it is profoundly depressing to read further confirmation that the market value of research skills is less than £ 30k, with the added luxury of a fixed term duration of barely a year:

BioenNW Interreg IVB

Comments

[max_ambiguity]

Mmmmm. And just how loudly did you protest when it was humanities and arts positions offering this type of job and salary?

[biascut]

Academic salary scales in the UK are nationally negotiated, so most postdoc positions will have been offered on the same scale regardless of what subject they are in. The difference tends to be that part-time or less-than-twelve month teaching contracts are used more in the humanities and social sciences, whereas science postdocs are more likely to be 1-4 year fixed-term full-time. On the other hand, humanities academics who do get teaching and research jobs seem to move through the payscales a lot faster than science researchers, who can spend 5-10 years on the postdoc pay scale where humanities academics will have moved up to Lecturer or even Senior Lecturer.

[max_ambiguity]

That's good. Are all recent PhD grads expecting salaries of about $50,000 USD too?

[biascut]

Differs widely. The majority of those who manage to get academic jobs (whether research, teaching or both) will be on a salary of around £30k pa, but it might be reduced pro rata. The kind of admin job that I got after my PhD was on the grade below the typical starting academic salary, which was around £24k in 2008 and is around £26k now (which is a significant drop in real terms, because the salary scales haven't kept up with inflation.) However, the last time I knew the figures well only around 30-50% of PhD graduates were staying in the higher education system, and obviously it'll vary much more for people leaving HE.

[i_strannik]

We are the victims of our own success. We can solve all problems in a year.

[i_strannik]

Ah, let me finish my coffee... ;)

[i_strannik]

Most of us are, otherwise we'd be pouring drinks. Perhaps one way to look at it is that this is not about the money. This is about the way society looks at science, technology, education, and creativity.

[saciel]

even your professors and advisers think it's not about the money.

Because they get theirs and expect 100% dedication, motivation, results and profit while you may actually be starving and then they are totally _shocked_, SHOCKED, they'll say, that you consider doing a part-time job (at university, even! In something related to your subject!) because of such nonsense as paying rent and having to eat.

[i_strannik]

Aren't you suppose to TA during your PhD? That's basically a part time job.

Yea, professors are evil. We've forgotten what it's like to be starving grad students.

[tellezara]

That looks like one of those job descriptions where they titled it as a research associate to attract people with PhDs but in actuality this is an entry level project management position/technician/product promoter post. I see posts like this a lot. If it was a position with a grant attached to it, the salary would probably be better. I suspect the post in actuality would be pretty research light, hence the lower salary. Why pay for specialist skills you don't plan to make use of?

[biascut]

What salary scale would you expect to see a postdoc on? I'd not be surprised to see a salary range that goes up higher than that for people who are on their second postdoc, but £28k - £32k would be pretty normal for a starting salary, I'd have thought?

[tellezara]

I've seen 22-26k for humanities/arts, and 28-35 for sciences. Depends so much on the grant behind it. My first post doc I'm starting in October is 33k because of the grant it's attached to. But I work in health research so I can only comment on that area. I've seen "research" posts offered by private hospitals that are lower in salary and have a strong teaching or clinical component - they're not really wanting a researcher, they actually just want someone with a PhD qualification. But I could earn just as much by going back to my Band 6 NHS work (for which a PhD is completely irrelevant) so to me it doesn't seem an appropriate level of pay for the skill level they're asking for, further emphasising the point I made above about not paying for skills they don't plan to use. So in the job description OP posted, I can only identify one small, initial aspect that requires some research (development work) and the rest seems to be a generic project management, advisory and sales technician job that anyone could do with the requisite

[the_physicist]

If you want to make money you should become a builder in the UK.

There's been this problem where the generation before us found that by getting a degree (any degree) they could move up from working class to middle class, so that's what they told us to do. But the situation changed in the meantime and no one paid attention.

This salary seems on par for the UK when it comes to academic post-doc salaries in the sciences. You might expect more from industry, but it really does vary depending on the company.

You'll have to go to Germany if you want a massive starting salary in industry with a science degree. They will pay you a huge amount and then later you can return to the UK once you're in a managerial position. Although by then the UK may have absolutely no industrial left where research is done and just be running on banking jobs and fracked oil and shale gas.