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Career Choice, Gender, and Mentor Impact: Results of the U.S. National Postdoc Survey

Sean C. McConnell, Erica L. Westerman, Joseph F. Pierre, Erin J. Heckler, Nancy B. Schwartz
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/355511
Sean C. McConnell
1University of Chicago
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Erica L. Westerman
2University of Arkansas
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  • For correspondence: ewesterm@uark.edu
Joseph F. Pierre
3University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center
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Erin J. Heckler
4Washington University in St. Louis
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Nancy B. Schwartz
1University of Chicago
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Abstract

The postdoctoral community is an essential component of the academic and scientific workforce. As economic and political pressures impacting these enterprises continue to change, the postdoc experience has evolved from short, focused periods of training into often multidisciplinary, extended positions with less clear outcomes. As efforts are underway to amend U.S. federally funded research policies, the paucity of postdoc data has made evaluating the impact of policy recommendations challenging. Here we present comprehensive survey results from over 7,600 postdocs based at 351 academic and non-academic U.S. institutions in 2016. In addition to demographic and salary information, we present multivariate analyses on the factors that influence postdoc career plans and mentorship satisfaction in this population. We further analyze gender dynamics and expose wage disparities and career choice differences. Academic research positions remain the predominant career choice of postdocs in the U.S., although unequally between postdocs based on gender and residency status. Receiving mentorship training during the postdoctoral period has a large, positive effect on postdoc mentorship satisfaction. Strikingly, the quality of and satisfaction with postdoc mentorship appears to also heavily influence career choice. The data presented here are the most comprehensive data on the U.S. postdoc population to date. These results provide an evidence basis for informing government and institutional policies, and establish a critical cornerstone for quantifying the effects of future legislation aimed at the academic and scientific workforce.

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The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted June 26, 2018.
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Career Choice, Gender, and Mentor Impact: Results of the U.S. National Postdoc Survey
Sean C. McConnell, Erica L. Westerman, Joseph F. Pierre, Erin J. Heckler, Nancy B. Schwartz
bioRxiv 355511; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/355511
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Career Choice, Gender, and Mentor Impact: Results of the U.S. National Postdoc Survey
Sean C. McConnell, Erica L. Westerman, Joseph F. Pierre, Erin J. Heckler, Nancy B. Schwartz
bioRxiv 355511; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/355511

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