"How many Brukers were there at Hereford?" Credit: poodfoison.wordpress.com |
Within my little research niche, I've noticed a lot of "research assistant professor" positions popping up. The duties seem to be summarized as "chief post-doc with a more respectable title and no teaching responsibilities."
This might be good news: Slowing the Ph.D. production rate somewhat and providing jobs for those already out there. I was wondering if you or any of your readers has noticed these positions...and had any idea why they might be becoming more common.I haven't seen this very often in the ads, but there have been so many run-of-the-mill assistant professor ads recently, I can't really remember.
If they're becoming more common, it's probably because certain institutions have enough soft money to support the position for the short/medium-term, but not for the long term. (Also, could these be "holding pattern" positions for favored postdocs?) It's my guess that the problem with these positions is that they're "soft money"-related, so as soon as the funding runs out, you're in the wind.
Readers, you know so much more about this than I do. Please, feel free to tell me what's up.
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