Exodus of life scientists from academia reaches historic levels, new data show

New data released Thursday by the National Science Foundation show the exodus of young life scientists from the Ivory Tower to industry has reached the highest level in nearly three decades, deepening concerns about the future of academic science in the U.S.

Among newly minted life science Ph.D.s in 2022 who had firm next steps, roughly 53% planned to pursue postdoctoral research, a temporary period of additional training that is virtually a requirement for those hoping to land a faculty job. That’s a sizable step down from the nearly 58% of graduates who went on to do a postdoc in 2021. Ph.D. graduates are now pursuing postdocs at the lowest rate since at least 1995, based on STAT’s review of NSF data available online.

Conversely, 47% of 2022 life science graduates had a job lined up, which was a record high. About 54% of these jobs are in industry, up from 49% in 2021, while 27% were in academia, down from 30.5% in 2021.

The latest results from the Survey of Earned Doctorates, an annual census of Ph.D. graduates, paint a clear picture of a trend that is jeopardizing efforts to diversify academia and increasingly putting pressure on universities and other research institutes, which rely on graduate students and postdocs to do the painstaking work that powers biomedical breakthroughs.

STAT has reported extensively on this trend over the past year, relying on NSF data and extensive interviews with postdocs, Ph.D. students, economists, biopharma executives, and officials with the National Institutes of Health.

It’s an issue with deep roots. For decades, the number of postdocs and graduate students has ballooned and outpaced the number of faculty positions. That meant faculty had an ample supply of ambitious scientists willing to work hard for relatively low salaries. But it created a broken labor market, labor economists have pointed out, one based on the flawed promise that research trainees could one day run their own labs — just like their faculty mentors.

The underlying trend had been clear for decades. About 60% of life scientists who earned a Ph.D. in 1963-64 secured tenure within 10 years. By the mid ‘80s, only 38% were tenured within a decade.

But the current exodus didn’t truly start until about 2012, coinciding with a rapid rise in the growth of the biotech industry. These companies have been able to entice newly minted Ph.D.s with the promise of turning basic scientific discoveries into new drugs and cutting-edge diagnostics — at significantly higher pay.

Biomedical Ph.D. graduates bound for an industry job reported an expected starting salary of $110,000 in 2022, more than twice the $54,000 salary for postdoc-bound grads, according to the latest NSF survey.

While Ph.D.s have been steadily leaving academia over the past decade, there was no guarantee that 2022 would follow trend. That’s because the biotech industry is in the midst of an ongoing slowdown, with many companies struggling to raise cash from wary investors.

Some companies have announced layoffs and plans to slow, stop, or reorganize their research programs, all of which could mean fewer openings for graduates looking to enter the industry. But a recent report by Jones Lang LaSalle, a commercial real estate services company, notes that biopharma hiring overall is actually rising. Companies posted around 28,700 openings in June compared to nearly 22,500 in January, based on numbers JLL pulled from the labor market analytics firm Lightcast.