“No starting point” for many young researchers to look beyond academia, conference hears
Institutions must provide more career services for postdoctoral students to make them aware of positions outside academia, according to research leaders.
Despite broad acknowledgement that many early career researchers will not find permanent senior positions in academia, many still lack guidance from their universities, an 18 June conference hosted by the EU Life alliance of research centres in life sciences heard.
“Researchers, especially PhD students and postdocs, have no starting point,” said Mostafa Moonir Shawrav, chair of the executive board of the Marie Curie Alumni Association.
Moonir Shawrav said that while his organisation has tried to address this problem by providing some guidance to members, institutional support is scant and the MCAA is urging institutions to boost their career and management services.
Ioannis Legouras, vice head of the department of strategic cooperations and research funding at the Max Delbrück Centre for Molecular Medicine in Berlin, Germany, agreed that “it’s not very clear what other options” exist for young researchers besides academia.
He added that it would be helpful for these academics to be exposed to other positions, such as in science management, policy and communication. “It’s something we can promote more,” he said.
Apostolia Karamali, head of unit for research careers at the European Commission’s directorate general for research and innovation, said there is “a lack of clear career paths” for postdoctoral students and a mismatch of “expectations versus reality”.
But she said the Commission was working to address the issue alongside national governments in the Council of the EU.
“The Council conclusions just adopted on research careers actually set the scene for the ongoing work we need to do,” she said, adding that change “cannot be delivered alone—we need the cooperation with different stakeholders”.
She said getting EU member states onboard would be important, in particular on issues of labour law, an area where “we can act more”.