A prediction: many postdocs will face higher taxes in the years to come. Why? A recent supreme court ruling on the tax status of a similar group: medical residents. Some postdocs are not required pay social security taxes because their fellowships are not classified as compensation (it's an issue I don't preten... read more

Cue the Billy Bragg. The University of California's postdocs have unionized. The unionization of the University of Connecticut's postdocs seems to have gone smoothly. I'll be curious to hear what the ultimate contract will look like for the University of California. There's more about the union here. read more

I have been paying a fair amount of attention to the NIH meltdown because of the time I spent up at NBER, but not a whole lot to current goings on in the physical sciences. This interesting graph from the AIP tells me that there are some problems there, too. The percentage of new physics PhDs going into potentiall... read more

I've just taken a look at the Senate's hefty bill to reauthorize the NSF, S 761. Like the House equivalent, there are some good and interesting things in the bill. * There is a lot of new money for graduate fellowships: **IGERT** - Increased funding to the IGERT program, like in the House bill. This would fu... read more