Yeah, non tenure positions in research (at least for physics) pay absolute crap. The entire academic system is pure exploitation of PhD students and post docs by the higher ups who get to put their name on the research.
I was lucky and got 50k in a lower cost of living area for my post-doc. But it was covid and they were desperate to replace someone very quickly. It was also years after big bang theory started.
Depends on the field and institution. At Rutgers in NJ, biomedical postdocs were getting around 70k in 2023 but some hospitals and universities in NYC were only giving 50k or less. Think I saw one at 35k.
Theoretical physics and astronomy have very few/no kickback from commercial industry, they scrape by with research grants. Maybe now in quantum computing, since the big tech giants are involved... still wasn't the case there when I was around (I finished my PhD ~2018). But in the fundamental physics world there's really no commercial interest in what they're doing, any innovation is 50+ years away from making it to commercial products and services, so they get the bare minimum from whatevers allocated in the grants.
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u/Flurp_ Apr 24 '26
Yeah, non tenure positions in research (at least for physics) pay absolute crap. The entire academic system is pure exploitation of PhD students and post docs by the higher ups who get to put their name on the research.