Nature BT: dottorato e precariato

The missing piece to changing the university culture

Maximiliaan Schillebeeckx, Brett Maricque & Cory Lewis

Nature Biotechnology 31, 938–941 (2013) doi:10.1038/nbt.2706

Published online 08 October 2013

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A new type of initiative is empowering graduate students and postdocs to reshape their academic training, providing another avenue to express their passion for research.

Introduction

As graduate students, we have become disillusioned with our academic training. We began graduate school full of ambition, drive and optimism but have long since come to realize that we have joined a system that does not meet our diverse interests. We yearn for a community that supports creativity and the expression of future career goals instead of one with a narrow, focused interest.

Current PhD training programs are focused primarily on the academic career track despite its disheartening outlook: the number of awarded PhDs is significantly outpacing the available positions^1, 2, fiscal pressures have slowed the growth of available independent research jobs³ and the time it takes to earn a PhD has not improved over the past two decades⁴
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