In practice, a superstar fellowship is not such a horrible thing (I think the CRC program is a good example of building research capacity at the top level for example) – but the problem is that so many postdocs are without proper funding/stability which makes the balance shift even more toward the lucky few who win such a fellowship. I’ve just had an article published in a Company of Biologists journal (Disease Models and Mechanisms) about the Banting awards – not sure if U Alberta subscribes, but have a glance!

Again, while equity is important and didn’t seem to figure much in the CERC selections, the emphasis on it with the Bantings will deflect attention from the greater difficulties for postdocs, more generally, and the lack of jobs, especially.

An interesting idea, but there’s a problem with it. The CRA only allows you to contribute $2000 more than your available deduction room (regardless of whether it is claimed on your taxes or not). This is because any interest/dividends/capital gains/etc. that your contributions make are not taxed (rather the money is taxed when you withdraw it from the RRSP), and some people would start using their RRSP as a tax shelter for their money (put a bunch in but not claim it while having it grow tax-free — this is the whole point of the new TFSA).

I now learn that I can contribute to an RRSP and carry forward the tax benefit. If you are frugal, and can do it, it may be worth contributing to an RRSP without the immediate tax benefits, with a view to claiming the tax break at a later time when you do have the “earned income” to claim it against.

I’m not an accountant, and I’m not the CCRA, so you should check the rules on this. But contributions you make in your 30′s make a lot of difference to the retirement income you have in your 60′s, so it’s worth doing if you can swing it.

I think change will be slow, but the key is sorting out exactly what a post doc is and what we should be doing with the majority of them after the training period.

Thanks again for your comments,
Dave

PS: Britain has tried to address this with a fleet of junior / senior fellowship programs that are more prestigious and more autonomous than a PDF fellowship. Mixed reviews on this as it means no permanent job for yet another chunk of time. It does allow you to have your own research money and typically involves working with a very senior PI though, both of which are good things when it comes to landing a final job.

Great points all around. I do agree that the nebulous “trainee” status that PDFs are assigned (at least here at U of T) makes no sense and benefits no one other than the University. And it’s true that it would be an additional burden on the supervisors to shoulder some of the costs involved in making PDFs a bona fide employee position. I can’t help but wonder if, should PDFs eventually move towards employee status, if it would help correct the bottleneck effect we have right now with too many trainees and not enough spots? It would be a tough situation for those of us who are trainees right now, but it might be better for the system as a whole if profs were a bit more selective in taking on new PDFs since they now were responsible for more than just their base salaries.

While I do agree that the system overall is underfunded, I think a bigger problem is that everything is so front-end loaded, with more and more new postdocs getting funding and those of us underachieving (in the funding agencies’ eyes) 3+ year PDFs being left to scavenge for crumbs off of our supervisors grants.

Ask your supervisor to hire you as an employee and he/she will say NO because the benefits are expensive. I already hear profs complaining in the hall about the high cost of grad students and postdocs. They obviously try to minimize their expenditures so they can afford reagents (and new powerbooks every 2 years).

This whole thing is symptomatic of an underfunded system, with too many trainees (grad students and postdocs), and not enough jobs at the end of the pipe. Something has to give.

Great comments and thanks for piping up with some very relevant points.

1) As I’ve professed on here a few times, I’m not a tax expert, so the RRSP room is something that I’m definitely not clear on (thanks to you too Mel!). The point is still relevant when considering if post docs should be paid on T4s vs. T4a’s, but thanks for the comments!

2) I also don’t know if post docs prior to 2006 were claiming the scholarship exemption – anybody out there have an answer (anecdotal or otherwise) on this? What I do know is that (rightly or wrongly) some professors promised post docs a “tax free” fellowship and indeed up until now these post docs were getting their fellowships tax free. For these PDFs (again, rightly or wrongly) there is most certainly a cut in take home pay. The clarity in the Budget 2010 proposal is an extremely good thing as before there was certainly a strong case for seeing post doctoral fellowships as possible for the scholarship exemption.

3) You’re right that many agencies do not cover the entire tenure of a post doc. The bigger issue I have with the 70K fellowships (in comparison to other two year awards) is the severity of pay cut that one would take as few other such lucrative fellowships exist. It is one thing to go from a 45K fellowship to being a grant funded 40K post doc and an entirely different beast to go from 70/year to 40. It seems to be counter productive to encouraging the best academics to stay in longer than two years (which is troubling when you see that most academic jobs require 3-6 years of post doc experience).

4) The CAPS group is submitting a formal petition to our Finance Minister which will get a written response in 45 days, so at least we’ll know where this all stands from his point of view. With this in hand, the debate you bring up becomes extremely relevant and CAPS should establish what it feels is in the best interest of the majority of post docs and push for that status. I’m sure this won’t be the last time the employee/trainee/student debate is brought up, and I’ll look forward to hearing more from you on it as you’ve clearly given it some excellent thinking time.

Thanks for the comments, keep it coming!

1. Scholarship/fellowship income is never considered “earned” income, and will not generate RRSP room. Unless the universities change from issuing T4As to T4s, no postdoc will earn RRSP room.

2. To say that postdocs (who aren’t receiving the new fellowships) are getting a pay-cut is a little misleading. I don’t think PDF fellowships were EVER tax exempt in the eyes of the government (except in Quebec, where they were more doing their own “Quebec Thing” than anything else). I wasn’t a PDF prior to 2006, but I don’t think postdocs back then were claiming the $3,000 exemption provided to students.

3. I do agree that it’s absurd to expect a postdoc to be complete in two years, but this is a problem that exists within lots of funding agencies. I had a two year external fellowship and now I’m struggling to find funding to continue my research, because in the eyes of most agencies, I should be done by now.

4. I’m beginning to think that a better approach is to lobby for employee status rather than tax-exempt status. Clearly we don’t have the Finance Minister on our side, and I worry that all this petitioning is going to be more akin to banging our collective heads against a brick wall. While the extra money we’d save by not paying taxes would be nice, at this point in my life (I’m 31), I’m starting to think that things like eligibility for paternity leave and being able to contribute into RRSPs might be more useful in the long-run. Not to mention that as employees we’d have access to things like real health benefits (the “plan” offered by U of T to postdocs is a joke) and possibly even guaranteed wage increases that would at least compete with inflation.

Just my 2 cents…

-Carl