Timeline for Are unpaid postdoc positions common?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
25 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| S Feb 13 at 4:11 | history | suggested | CommunityBot | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
minor typo fixes
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| Feb 12 at 22:38 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Feb 13 at 4:11 | |||||
| Feb 22, 2016 at 13:52 | comment | added | Marianne013 | I'm in physics in the UK and I have never ever seen an unpaid postdoc. | |
| Feb 22, 2016 at 9:01 | comment | added | Tobias Kildetoft | Indeed, I think a part of the discrepancy between this answer and some of the others is in the definition of "postdoc" (which is not a very well-defined term to start with). The situation described in this answer is not one I would have called a postdoc, but as always, this is something that will vary a lot between fields. To me, these sound essentially like a "visiting scholar" who just happens to not really be visiting from anywhere else (as weird as that may sound, but it fits quite well with the description by @PeteL.Clark as well as my own experience as such, though tat was during my PhD) | |
| Feb 22, 2016 at 0:49 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | @StrongBad: Your response is much appreciated. I now find your answer quite helpful. einpoklum: by that logic, I am promoting every math department's goals. I actually do list this visiting position on my CV; it would be highly misleading to call it a postdoc. Though "unpaid postdoc" may be a thing in other fields (not a great thing, but a thing...), it would sound like doubletalk in mine. | |
| Feb 22, 2016 at 0:20 | comment | added | einpoklum | @PeteL.Clark: I still think your case is borderline. I mean, you were busy promoting the math department's goals by doing research. | |
| Feb 21, 2016 at 23:51 | comment | added | StrongBad | @PeteL.Clark add the info. | |
| Feb 21, 2016 at 23:50 | history | edited | StrongBad | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Add info about my field
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| Feb 21, 2016 at 22:46 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | By the way: I've answered your question. Would you care to answer mine? | |
| Feb 21, 2016 at 22:41 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | Ah, also the fact that it only took place during the summer seems relevant. Sorry for not mentioning that sooner. While I was there, my institutional affiliation was described as Harvard/McGill. Here the word "visiting" is not in the sense of "Visiting Assistant Professor" at a liberal arts college (a kind of postdoc); it literally means visiting from somewhere else. | |
| Feb 21, 2016 at 22:38 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | @StrongBad: How is Philadelphia not in Georgia? These things can be hard to answer, but I'll try: (i) I had no faculty advisor, nor did I collaborate with or work for any Penn faculty member. (ii) In fact I did not do any work for Penn in any way: I taught no classes, worked with no students, did no laboratory work... (iii) I signed no employment contract...And so forth. I mean, whenever I visit a math department for a few days they give me a key to an office. If I stay more than a week I'll get library access and some privileges with the facilities. Does that make me an unpaid postdoc? | |
| Feb 21, 2016 at 22:02 | comment | added | StrongBad | @PeteL.Clark how was your experience at Penn not an unpaid postdoc? | |
| Feb 21, 2016 at 17:53 | comment | added | Wetlab Walter | This is not uncommon on academia.stackexchange. Unpopular truths are downvoted, whilst popular myths are upvoted. People use the voting system like they would a Facebook post with both a like and a dislike button. | |
| Feb 20, 2016 at 21:20 | comment | added | aag | It seems to me that the downvoters live in some kind of fantasyland where salary is independent of performance. No worries though: the wake-up call will come, sooner or later in life. | |
| Feb 20, 2016 at 20:33 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | Moreover, the Harvard SEAS link describes this kind of postdoc as "Includes postdoctoral fellows with fellowships that are paid directly to the fellow and postdoctoral fellows on the payroll of another institution." So what they mean is that the salary does not come from Harvard. That's not the same thing at all as being "unpaid"! I also agree with other commenters that saying "in my field" rather than listing the field makes a potentially useful answer of very little use to anyone. | |
| Feb 20, 2016 at 20:31 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | I think the links are a bit misleading. First of all the link to Penn is to one program within Penn (one center within the Annenberg School of Communication), for a class of visiting scholars that also includes graduate students and allows them to take class for credit. As it happens, I was a Visiting Scholar in the math department at UPenn (immediately after getting my PhD): there was no pay but also no work whatsoever. | |
| Feb 20, 2016 at 4:16 | history | edited | StrongBad | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Add example policies
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| Feb 19, 2016 at 22:10 | comment | added | Bill Barth | @StrongBad, please state your field and country. | |
| Feb 19, 2016 at 21:09 | comment | added | StrongBad | I am surprised by the down votes. While unpaid post docs may not be ethical, they are used extensively (maybe 5% of total post docs) in my field. | |
| Feb 19, 2016 at 20:58 | comment | added | einpoklum | @StrongBad: If they weren't working the post-doc, they would find another job and get a salary. It could well be an engineering or a teaching position somewhere - which may not be much less rewarding experience-wise, but would pay a decent salary. Hopefully anyway. | |
| Feb 19, 2016 at 20:11 | comment | added | Bill Barth | @StrongBad, of course I meant, how do they fund their eating and sleeping? | |
| Feb 19, 2016 at 20:03 | comment | added | Dmitry Savostyanov | The question of legality is not field-dependent, but probably country-dependent. | |
| Feb 19, 2016 at 19:36 | comment | added | StrongBad | @BillBarth presumably they eat the same thing and sleep in the same place as they would if they were not volunteering. | |
| Feb 19, 2016 at 18:38 | comment | added | Bill Barth | How do these people eat and where do they sleep? | |
| Feb 19, 2016 at 18:15 | history | answered | StrongBad | CC BY-SA 3.0 |