tag:blog.phds.org,2008:/2006/12/19/watching-a-train-wreck-part-2/comments Mephisto Noh-Varr 2006-12-20T21:36:42Z Geoff Davis tag:blog.phds.org,2006-12-19:85:88 2006-12-20T21:36:41Z 2006-12-20T21:36:41Z <p>Hi Flygal--</p> <p>The graph uses data from the NSF's Survey of Graduate Students and Postdoctorates in Science and Engineering (catchy name, that!) which does not suffer from the limitation you describe. The SGSPSE does miss people who are not in academic institutions (e.g. the 3000+ postdocs at NIH and maybe a few thousand others scattered around national labs plus a handful in industry), and it's only a headcount. I suspect you may be confusing this survey with the Survey of Doctorate Recipients which does miss out on postdocs who earned their PhDs outside the US.</p> <p>I'm glad you found it interesting!</p> <p>Geoff</p> Ginny tag:blog.phds.org,2006-12-19:85:87 2006-12-20T21:00:02Z 2006-12-20T21:00:02Z <p>Geoff,</p> <p>Nice analysis! I have never looked at the postdoc population divided that way before. The only limitation of the analysis is that the NSF data used to estimate postdoc numbers is based on surveys that have various drawbacks (i.e. not counting postdocs who earned their PhD's overseas, not counting postdocs at national labs etc.). It is unclear at this point whether NSF really has a good handle on how many postdocs there are. The Sigma Xi survey was the most comprehensive (as you well know) but only offers a snapshot.</p> <p>All that notwithstanding, I agree with your conclusion... that based sheerly on the numbers, life for postdocs is about to get worse, not better. Hopefully awareness raising being done by the NPA and various PDOs and PDAs will counteract this trend.</p>