Leaders in Pharmaceutical Business Intelligence (LPBI) Group

A P(hD)aradox

Author: Ziv Raviv, PhD

The educative and manpower training method in natural sciences faculties in their essence are unique among the other academics units. The fundamental differences lie in the fact that research in natural science is extremely expensive, extensive, time consuming, and requires a team effort within the research group and cooperation between research laboratories. The reasons for natural science research being so expensive start from high costly equipment, tremendous expensive costs of research materials (particularly in life science and medical research but not restricted to these fields), and as a direct derivative from the very nature of such research, the costs of training personal. As a research student, all along the way, one is usually being paid by a stipend that should be sufficient to cover the costs of living, giving the research student the “industrial peace” needed to be focused on his/her laboratory studies efforts. Some of the money for scholarship comes from institutional built-in funding mechanisms while other could come from training-directed governmental or privet funds, or directly from PI research grants. This money is very supportive to the research student; however, it is given usually without any social benefits. This way, a PhD student that is rolling in the system, going on further with post-doc studies, could found himself losing about 10 years of social benefits rights that he could have accumulate otherwise. Moreover, upon termination of training period as a PhD or post-doc, one has no guarantee for getting a job. That is since the different universities and research institutes are recruiting only a very limited amount of new PIs, and positions such as research associates and lab managers are not so common and usually are only partially funded by the research institute/university while the rest is funded by PIs own research grants which are not a stable source for salary (at least in the EU and Israel, where the author of these lines comes from). Those facts leave PhD scientists with very limited choices working in the academy.  On the other hand, given the restricted academic-directed training that had been given to the PhD student, one has limited tools and chances to be integrated in the industry. This creates a tremendous crisis for the PhD researcher’s career that found himself in an advanced stage of his life without a real dissent career choice and with no social benefits, forcing him to make decisions of alternate careers pathways and directions that not always fit and justify the tremendous efforts and investments he and the system had made thus far. Yes, life sometimes is not fair, however, a systematic drastic changed should arise in order to recompense an average PhD researcher on his unlimited effort he made. The current situation is very cynical. One is working very hard trying the best to publish well and go on further in the academic scale, but if not succeeds (and to be honest, how many of post-docs are really successive?), many PhD scientists find themselves without any further actual career choice, discovering that they are overqualified to the few jobs around.  So, the academic system that relies on the manpower of PhD students and post-docs, where there is no doubt regarding to their crucial role in carrying the scientific research efforts on their back, is not supporting a PhD scientist beyond his training period. I am not getting into the point of young PIs difficulty of recruiting money, although it is part of the problem. For this matter please see the article by Lawrence PA [1].

Thus, what are the optional solutions for this unfortunate condition? No easy resolutions and no guaranties that the following suggestions will actually work. The first one would be more governmental funding for research combined with restricting the amount of research laboratories in each university and research institute. The rational is that most of the laboratories are competing on the same pool of grants available, therefore increasing funding in on hand while decreasing the number of research labs on the other hand will be resulted in a grater probability for a single laboratory to obtain grants and to be able to fund its research students.  In addition, the research institutes and universities must include at least a minimal built-in social benefits package to research students, and that is without affecting the salary value i.e., because a scholarship in this avenue is similar to a salary and IRS rules would be applied, as a consequence that could decrease the net sum being finally reaching the student pocket. Therefore, there is a need to increase the gross being paid. However, this is costly, thus a governmental intervention and assistance is needed in this case as well. In order it to succeed, for every laboratory there will be a limited and restricted number of master, PhD, and post-doc researchers to be allowed. A laboratory that has an excess funding from privet funds would be allowed to hire more students yet will have to follow the rules mentioned above. All of the above should give result to stopping the current absurd condition of training too many PhDs and consequently will prevent many of them from being facing a severe situation upon graduation and post-doc training termination.

The second point would be increasing the amount of research associate/lab manager positions in the laboratories within the academy, maybe even as a mandatory policy. This position should be funded by the institute and by governmental money. The advantage of hiring a PhD level research associate is priceless. Such personal comes with excess of experience and knowledge in conducting scientific research with all that entails, giving a strong contribution to the research lab and a close assistance to the lab PI. Such stable position of a research associate together with that of a lab technician would establish a firm core for the laboratory existence and operation.

The third issue would be increasing the portion of industry-directed academic research. This would be achieved by developing specific educative programs directed to the privet market needs. There are too many occasions where a PhD scientist encountered the almost sealed wall of “experience in the industry”. Industrial R&D is different from academic in some very core issues yet at the same time relays on solid scientific basic academic research and manpower. Educative programs in universities for shifting from pure academic/scientific research toward industrial directed research should be developed. These programs should include courses in economics, business and market regulations. This definitely will allow the opening of new avenues for PhD researchers. The realization of such programs could be achieved for example by doing a post-doc training at the industry, however, to date only few companies are having such programs pointing that the industry should be involved directly in such means. As for all of the above solutions, here as well, a governmental support for such programs should be taken in consideration.

The governmental interest of supporting these three solutions is evident. A government that invests so much money in one’s education should perform a tremendous effort to keep this individual under its mandatory; otherwise, the “brain drain” outside of a certain country would not be stopped. It should be an interest of governmental establishment to keep and preserve such talented personal. Surly academic and industry are not alike and the very essence of science is international cooperation, nevertheless, a nation should invest more in “excellence centers” to try and keep its human recourses within its arms.

Reference

1. Lawrence PA (2009) Real lives and white lies in the funding of scientific research: the granting system turns young scientists into bureaucrats and then betrays them. PLoS Biol 7 (9):e1000197