Necessity of tenure for lifetime academic research

Question

For context, I've been a postdoc in computer science for about 3 years. I recently wrote a grant and was awarded a fellowship for 2 years.

I've heard from multiple sources that if I don't get a tenure-track position in the next two years it will become very difficult for me to have an academic research career. But I don't need the kind of job security that allows me to get paid if I stop working—I just need some kind of agreement that I can keep my job while I'm productive. This is pretty common in other jobs, so why in this case am I being told that it's basically tenure or nothing?

Answer 1

The reason is simply that possessing a tenure-track faculty position (and then obtaining tenure) is the primary performance indicator for long-term careers at most institutes where research is the primary responsibility.

There are some exceptions - some universities offer a research professor position: you pay your salary from grants you secure, and as long as you do that you can continue working there.

You can also work as a lab manager/research scientist in a university, which is a term contract that is extended based on merit.

Some private research institutes (Google/Facebook/Amazon etc.) offer research positions (that are highly competitive and well-paid), but there are also many other private research laboratories that offer a similar deal to what you describe (though in that case your research needs to be focused on what these institutes care about, and is not entirely up to you).

I'd also mention that tenured professors are still expected to be productive and get grants. Though it is more difficult to fire them, becoming completely inactive for no reason is probably not going to be good for your long-term career. In other words, to some extent tenure track faculty face the same agreement, especially when they're not tenured yet.

Answer 2

In the United States, at least, there are a lot more non-tenure research positions than is often perceived.

Even if we ignore the (vast) number of positions in which one can do fundamental scientific research outside of universities, there are lots of non-tenure-track research positions at universities as well. Sometimes these positions are associated with individual grants ("soft money" positions), but the longer term ones are more often with various "centers" and "institutes", all of which tend to exist outside of traditional departments. Some examples I'm personally familiar with include Harvard's Wyss Institute, BU's Hariri Institute, the MIT Broad Institute, and the Texas Advanced Computing Center. These all involve complex mixes of faculty and non-faculty researchers in various complex arrangements, and can readily support long-term academic research careers past the "post-doc" phase.

For people at smaller institutions or stuck in a department-centric mindset, however, it's easy to overlook or discount these "non-traditional" careers. Likewise, once people choose one path or the other, it's relatively rare to switch, though by no means unheard of.

This may be why you are being told "now or never" by various people. You don't say what country you are from, so it also might be that things are different in your country. To the best of my knowledge, however, most other developed countries are much the same as the USA in having a large academic research "demi-monde", though the particular mechanisms and and organizations differ greatly.

Answer 3

Strictly speaking, there are no limitations on the number of postdocs that you work in. The limitations tend to be external and implied in the contracts or regulations around the issue of postdocs.

In France, there is a law against ongoing contracts if there is evidence of continuous employment and work for five years. So this would impact postdocs in France. I am not sure about other states.

Another example is the limitations of the short-term US visa or J-1s being limited to 5 years - Quora article

The other possible relevant angle is the granting institution of your postdocs have a 5 year limitation as well. Some institutions that grant post-docs nationally or states have time-limits. It might be worthwhile emailing or checking your current and previous post-docs to see whether there is a time limitation if you do decide to keep going with post-docs.

Answer 4

Funding and institutional policies are the major barriers to your plan.

There are a fairly large number of fellowships available for newly-minted PhDs looking to start a postdoc. These are often only open to people who graduated within the last 1-2 years. A number of other fellowships have slightly longer cut-offs: the Burrows-Wellcome Fund CASI award cuts off at 60 months post-PhD, and the NIH's K99 program is also limited to people within 4-5 years of their degree, and all training grants cut off at ~7 years. At the same time, many places also prevent non-"permanent" staff from applying for pure research grants, on the grounds that you're a) committing the university to do years of work but b) might not have a funded position then. (Yes, this seems to apply even when the grant contains funding for that very position. No, they don't seem to see the Catch-22).

At the same time, you're also getting more expensive. My institution has a 5 year "term limit" for postdocs, after which you have to become a "Research Associate" or "Research Assistant." This title change requires a slightly higher (though still objectively low) salary and more benefits (retirement, etc). The interaction between you a) costing more and b) definitely requiring money from a research grant, leads many lab heads to prefer younger applicants who cost less and could get their own money soon. To be clear, I think this is a totally ridiculous, wasteful, and possibly discriminatory—situation, and these policies ought to be reworked to avoid it. Nevertheless, it's going to be tough until they are.

The solution is to make sure that you're a good value for the money. Along with producing solid research on your own, take an active role in helping out with other projects in the group. Look for money where you can. Some foundations don't care much about career stage. You can also look for funding opportunities where you'll have a major role, even if you're not the formal PI. There are a very few staff scientist funding programs too. The NIH has an R50 "Research Specialist" grant that supports similar jobs (though with some restrictions on the person and environment), as does the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

Finally, you can lobby funders and agencies to reconsider their time-based eligibility limits. The NIH recently extended some K99 windows from 4 to 5 years for under-represented applicants, and I think the Wellcome Trust is removing all time considerations from some programs (though not CASI, which is probably the most relevant to a computer scientist).

Answer 5

If I understand your question, it seems that you ask whether you can secure postdoc jobs that will allow you to continue your research, as long as you are productive, forever. That is, without getting a tenure-track position or a permanent position.

The answer is most probably: "No" (for CS in North America). If you are not on a tenure track/permanent post after about five years of PhD, then even if you are productive you will find it very hard to find postdoc positions. Until you will get none, hence ending your research career in approximately less than 10 years after PhD completion, regardless of your productivity.

There are few rare exceptions: there are never-ending postdocs (research assistants of some sort) that go with their postdoc host for decades. But this is rare, and this is not a good position to be in (money wise, and independent research wise). On the other hand, if you find these positions good for you (no admin, no teaching though low salary and no ability to form your own group), you may like such deals.

Answer 6

Large employers typically have some degree of standardization of compensation across hires. Most large employers offer health care coverage as part of the standard compensation package, most large employers offer standard retirement packages as part of their standard compensation package. You can't just tell Microsoft that you don't want a 401k or you want to opt out of the possibility of ever using their health care coverage. Most large employers have rules about the salary ranges for employees based on type of position and level of experience. You can't just tell Google "I want a job running a large team, but I want the job to be at T3 instead T6." Bonuses are part of the standard package at many finance companies, and you can't just say when you're hired "I want to opt out of the bonus system." At many law firms in order to do a certain level of work you need to be a partner in the firm, and many firms will not allow you to stay as an associate beyond a certain point.

Of course in all of these situations you could argue that if an employee wants to be compensated less than other employees in the same role, why shouldn't the company just take them up on that? But again and again most professions don't decide to work this way. It's bad for company morale. It's expensive for HR to keep track of weird bespoke contracts. Compensation well below the median is bad for retaining employees, since if the employee is valuable another company will hire them away with the standard package.

In academia in the United States, tenure is part of the standard package of compensation. Positions without tenure for mid-career academics are unusual. If a school wanted to start offering positions without tenure, they would either have to significantly increase compensation in some other way, or they would end up in a situation where all their good employees left. If they hired some people with tenure and some without tenure to do the same job it would be difficult to maintain a conducive working environment.

Answer 7

Define “productive”.

Getting some form of job security is quite desirable so normally qualified candidates will eventually get offered tenure so that professors can enter longer term projects such as supervising students, and can tackle longer term problems without the fear of loosing your position because of decreased productivity over the short term.

Possibly the best example of such a long term endeavour was Andrew Wiles’ proof of Fermat’s last theorem, which took 6 years to complete, something unthinkable to attack unless you have tenure. Of course while the research of most tenured professors is not conducted over so many years in such quasi-secret as Wiles, it would be wrong to suggest most stop tenured faculty working/being productive once they are tenured.

Tenure also plays an important role in protecting academic freedom: tenured professors can undertake (and publish) research on or discuss controversial issues without fear of retribution (in principle), and can likewise criticize others (including administrators) usually with no consequence on their employment (provided some limits of civility is maintained).

Overall, I venture to say that good tenured professors are the backbone of most academic systems, and universities know this. Granting them tenure is a mark of confidence which reflects the commitment of the institution to the candidate: if you are not tenured after many years, people (read: students and funding agencies) will suspect something’s not right with the professor.

One can not deny that some abuse the system and the privilege of tenure, but thankfully these are not the majority.

Answer 8

I don't need the kind of job security that allows me to get paid if I stop working—I just need some kind of agreement that I can keep my job while I'm productive.

You're misunderstanding tenure. Tenure is much closer to what you said you want. Professors don't actually keep their jobs if they just sit around and do nothing - and their employment agreements don't say that they have this entitlement.** Tenure is about not getting fired without good cause**. Effectively, it's about not getting fired when you are (at least moderately) productive; and not being in a continual rat-race of having to please and impress people to maintain your position.

Also, post-doc employment conditions are terrible, but in a sense that's a different problem; i.e. I believe academic staff unions should make temporary and fixed-term positions at least as expensive per hour to institutions than permanent positions, if not more, to discourage them from artificially preferring temporaries.