Academic careers recommended by just one in six postdocs: survey

Academics with exclusive research responsibilities are more liable to quit, while those with teaching duties are more burned out, an Australian study suggests.

A survey of 660 early and mid-career health academics has captured a bleak view of their profession, with 46 per cent considering chucking it in and only 17 per cent prepared to recommend it as a career choice.

Disillusionment was particularly pronounced among the 375-odd participants with research-focused roles. Fifty per cent were contemplating leaving and just 12 per cent said they would advise others to become researchers or academics.

Yet respondents with teaching roles seemed to be having the worst time of it, with 63 per cent reporting “professional burnout” – work-induced physical and emotional exhaustion – compared with 47 per cent of the participants without teaching obligations.

Thirty-three per cent of teaching academics suffered moderate to severe depression, compared with 27 per cent across the entire survey. Twenty-eight per cent of teachers reported moderate or severe anxiety, compared with an overall rate of 24 per cent.

The survey, the second of its kind, highlights different pain points for different types of academics. Teachers seem most worried about their workloads while researchers are preoccupied with job security.

Co-author Darshini Ayton, a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) emerging leader fellow at Monash University, said research-only academics tended to have less secure employment than colleagues with teaching responsibilities.

“You have no guarantee – or if you’re working on someone else’s project, they have no guarantee – that your contract is going to be renewed. It does cause a lot of distress,” she said.

The survey of staff at 14 universities was conducted over three months in late 2023, with support from representative body Research Australia. The respondents were mostly in their thirties and forties and within the first five years of their postdoctoral careers.

Their rates of anxiety and depression matched those found in the general adult population during the Covid-19 lockdowns. Despite this, they had a generally upbeat view of their employers, with more than half expressing satisfaction with the workplace culture.

Most reported workplace support for collegiality, professional development and diversity, with more than three-quarters saying their employers were dedicated to research integrity and quality.

Co-author George Taiaroa, an infectious diseases researcher at the University of Melbourne, said staff recognised the funding constraints that universities operated under. “The workplace itself is trying to manage that environment reasonably well,” he said.

“But it’s clear that not everyone can...progress. It doesn’t necessarily matter how much work you do. It’s almost luck of the draw. Your current environment might be great, but your ability to stay in that environment long-term isn’t really there.”

Dr Taiaroa said the findings spelled trouble in the coming decades. “We’re going to need…a more developed academic workforce. If we are not thinking about that now, we’re going to get caught out down the track. At the moment, only 16.8 per cent of academics would recommend it as a profession. We’re going in the wrong direction.”

Dr Ayton said there were more professional Australian rules footballers than NHMRC fellows. “It is a rare sport we are in. The government invests a lot of money in training PhD students [and] fostering a STEM workforce, yet not providing enough money to keep us in the workforce. That doesn’t make sense.”

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com