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A decade beyond the doctorate: the influence of a US postdoctoral appointment on faculty career, productivity, and salary

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Abstract

The number of postdoctoral researchers has increased dramatically in the past decade. Because of the limited number of academic staff openings and the general levels of salary, the role and value of the postdoctoral appointment are changing. Using a sample of respondents with continuous data in the 1999 through 2008 Survey of Doctoral Recipients, this study examined whether taking a postdoctoral position contributed to one’s faculty career and salary 10 years after doctorate completion. Results show that completing a postdoctoral position positively contributed to working in educational institutions and securing a tenure-track appointment. Taking one, but not two or more, postdoctoral positions increased one’s written scholarly productivity. However, the postdoctoral experience had no statistically significant impact on one’s salary a decade after degree completion. Implications are discussed for institutional and higher education policy.

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Notes

  1. To avoid possible selection bias of the two time points (1999 and 2008) and explore the influence of postdoctoral work on more recent doctorate graduates, we expanded the sample selection to another cohort: those who received doctorates in 1999 and 2000 and continuously participated in the SDRs from 2001 to 2008. Analyses of these more recent degree recipients revealed very similar results to the 1997–1998 cohort; therefore, results from the more recent cohort are not included herein.

  2. This variable is drawn from the 2006 SDR. Since the SDR was not administered in 2007, there is no indicator for postdoctoral appointment in 2007. Cross-tabulation results show that none of those non-postdocs by 2006 became a postdoc in 2008. Thus, it is very unlikely that our final sample (n = 1,070) was missing additional cases who took a postdoc only in 2007. Additionally, our study also estimated models that included time length of postdoctoral appointments as an independent variable. Since one postdoc appointment lasts 2–3 years on average and the total postdoctoral time length is highly correlated with the number of appointments (r = 0.74), our final models excluded the length of time variable.

  3. When we examined predictors of employment sector, the interaction between postdoc and life sciences was not significant. This indicates that there was no difference in choosing employment sector between postdocs in general and those postdocs in life sciences. We also completed a model to examine this interaction effect on tenure/tenure-track faculty appointment. As might be expected, we did find a significant negative interaction effect, which means that postdocs in life sciences are less likely to secure a tenure/tenure-track position than postdocs in other fields. This finding is consistent with the argument in the previous literature (Stephan 2012, 2013), which can be attributed to the high number of postdocs and the limited number of faculty appointments available.

  4. Our preliminary studies showed that, if the three postdoc interaction terms are excluded, neither of the two female interaction terms appeared statistically significant except in the salary model (Model 5). The significant but negative interaction effect between female and the number of children suggests that having more children may increase male doctorate recipients’ salary and decrease female doctorate recipients’ salary. However, the statistical significance disappeared after including the three postdoc interactions. Further exploration on this interaction is beyond the scope of this study, and future studies may be needed to examine it in more detail. The estimates of these preliminary results are available upon request.

  5. Although selection bias is a concern, there are several factors that may help minimize possible bias. First, approximately 15–20 % of SDR respondents over 1999–2008 said they took a postdoc because no other employment was available or for non-training purpose (e.g., family). Second, the decline in tenure-track positions and the higher salary levels in business and industry and government sectors have encouraged some postdocs to seek positions outside of the education sector (Dietz and Bozeman 2005). Third, among those who took one or more postdoc positions by 2006 were about 50 % in life sciences. Including the variable of life sciences field in regression may control for the self-selection bias for life sciences and other disciplines (e.g., physics) that require postdoc experience as mandatory for faculty positions. In addition, adding the interaction term of postdoc experience with life sciences did not reveal significant findings.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Counseling and Higher Education, Patton College of Education, Ohio University, McCracken Hall 105E, Athens, OH, 45701, USA

    Lijing Yang

  2. Institute of Higher Education, The University of Georgia, Athens, GA, 30602, USA

    Karen L. Webber

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  1. Lijing Yang
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  2. Karen L. Webber
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Correspondence to Lijing Yang.

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Yang, L., Webber, K.L. A decade beyond the doctorate: the influence of a US postdoctoral appointment on faculty career, productivity, and salary. High Educ 70, 667–687 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-015-9860-3

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