What's Up, Postdoc?

Sometimes less is more. At the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, Domitilla Del Vecchio, assistant professor in electrical engineering and computer science, finds there is less pressure to churn out papers, because ”they put a lot of stress on quality of publications rather than on quantity.”

”A lot of publication occurs not because you have a great new idea but [because] you have an idea in your head that I need so many publications,” says Gill Pratt, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, in Needham, Mass. Olin is taking an entirely different approach to faculty development by eliminating the tenure process completely. Instead, the college gives faculty members five-year contracts that are renewed based on teaching and research performance. [For more on Olin’s new approach to engineering education, see ” The Olin Experiment,” IEEE Spectrum, May.]

Pratt, who was previously an associate professor at MIT, says that the key difference at Olin is that faculty, besides conducting traditional research, are encouraged to contribute to the field by participating in government service, consulting, and founding start-up companies. ”Olin is recognizing that different people don’t have to fit exactly the same mold,” Pratt says. ”We’re trying to show that entrepreneurship along with research can exist together.”

Apart from the entrepreneurship principle, Olin’s system is similar to that in the United Kingdom, where reforms in the 1980s abolished tenure. British academics hold fixed-term appointments and are reevaluated at the end of the term, which can lead to their losing their positions. Tenure also does not exist in Japan, India, China, and other Asian countries, but although there are no guarantees, a full-time academic job in these countries is usually a permanent position.

The system varies widely in Europe. In most countries, including France, Germany, and Italy, only senior academics are appointed professors, a venerable, tenured position. Junior faculty members, typically called lecturers, can have fixed-term or permanent contracts, but they usually do not move up the ranks at the same university.

A key difference is that European countries give preference to older, more experienced people, says the Italian-born Del Vecchio, who is familiar with the European academic system. After earning their Ph.D.s, people commonly get postdocs, temporary positions to gain additional teaching and research experience, instead of being hired as assistant professors, she adds. In the United States, postdocs are a norm in science disciplines such as biology and physics but are uncommon for engineers; the NSF survey shows that electrical engineers make up only 0.5 percent of all postdocs.

The U.S. tenure process is considered a way to judge a new academic’s potential and weed out weaker candidates. But Olin’s Pratt argues that it is not the only way. Contrary to what some believe, the absence of a tenure system only makes him work harder, he says, because of the freedom to be creative, develop new courses, think about fresh ways to teach the same concepts, and consult with the industry and develop new products. ”One of the fallacies of the tenure system is that if there weren’t hoops to jump through, faculty would sit around and have coffee all day long,” he says. ”[Here] folks create their own hoops to jump through.”

But others believe that tenure drives the bar up for quality. Radke says that the tenure clock pushes him to do more and makes him a better researcher. According to Michael Flynn, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan, ”The tenure process is one of the reasons that the U.S. has the best schools in the world.” Northwestern’s Joseph believes that the job security that comes with tenure gives academics freedom to voice their opinions and to perform high-risk, high-reward research as well as teaching.

Whether or not people spend their time as assistant professors stressing about getting tenure, Radke believes they clearly love what they are doing if they have chosen academic careers, especially in engineering. Unlike such other fields as liberal arts and social sciences, it is much easier to get a high-paying private-sector job in the technology field, he says. Like other academics, he chose the career for the freedom of pursuing research that interests him and for the rewards of teaching. ”There is nothing like the academic lifestyle for flexibility,” he says. ”No one is watching over my shoulder to see when I’m in the office.”