Quarterly Summary: Guest bloggers and the road to solutions

Posted July 4th 2010 at 3:59 pm by Dave

Over the first six months of this site’s existence, a lot of virtual ink has been dedicated to highlighting the major concerns about the way we train scientists and how scientific information is communicated to the public and government. The next six months will continue to present this type of information, but will also focus on how to move forward while embracing the current trends within the system.

Importantly, we’ve now started our guest blogger section with two excellent entries from Carl Wonders and Marianne Stanford. We are certainly keen to expand this section as we go forward, using it to represent the diverse views in an attempt to build consensus and devise solutions moving forward – if you are interested email us here.

These two entries commented on the Canada Revenue Agency’s response to the CAPS letter of January 2009 and engage the major issue of Post Docs: Trainees or Employees? – this is a critical issue moving forward and the work of CAPS is beginning to gain clarity of how the post doctoral fellow is (and should be) classified. If Canada wishes to recruit and retain this class of researchers, major changes have to take place as the international reputation of Canada as a place to do a post doc is faltering and this uncertain status is a major contributor to such feelings. A personal take on it – Nobody in my current Institute complains about salary or vacation days… this might be because they are employees with standard incremental pay raises based on experience, have access to staff pension plans, and have 31 days of vacation.

While we’ve been very lucky to have such stellar guest bloggers, Beth and I have also continued writing on a multitude of issues:

Beth started the quarter with an entry on communicating science to non-scientists alerting readers to the metric of the “fog index” which approximates how difficult your writing is to understand. Many scientists would be shocked to know how difficult their writing is to interpret and should take note when trying to write for, or communicate to, a non-academic audience.

She also pulled on the heart strings of many PhDs and post doc prospective and current parents with her musings on having a family while undertaking academic science careers. A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation showed that childcare at UBC would cost 38% of a post doc’s salary if they were being paid $35,000 (which is the situation of nearly 20% of post docs in Canada according to the November 2009 CAPS survey). The comment box was very active – Post Docs are often not paying into EI (and can’t get parental leave), contract working post docs often have to take a break in their contract and/or risk not getting it renewed, and my personal favourite:

My university’s policy on the matter is: “We don’t have a policy, talk to your supervisor.” What is this, the 1950s?

Most recently, Beth has taken a Q/A type approach, posing very open ended questions that have attracted a good deal of attention from our readers:
• Why does anyone think science is a good job?
• Why Do Scientists Blog?
• What Does A Graduate Degree Mean?

I started to spill over into the stuff that Beth normally writes about, starting off this quarter wondering: “If 80% of PhD holders do not become tenure track academics, what do they become and are universities helping them get there?” Looking at the Canadian numbers, we graduated nearly 5000 doctoral students in 2007 and 4000 of them will not become tenure track professors. Assuming we continue this trend (in fact it’s likely to increase as it has been doing), this equates to 40,000 workers over a ten year period who will have PhDs but will not be tenure track professors. The entry basically asked what resources were available to this large sector of workers to find this job while they were being trained and the answer was highly variable depending on the university you attended? Some great resources do exist though and I tried to highlight them in that entry.

Next, I touched on one of the things that I find most challenging about new groups with great ideas and mission statements. The Council of Canadian Academies has much to uplift one’s spirits in this way, but I am really concerned that this effort will not retain the support of the Government when its 10 year funding expires and has yet to convince me that they can sustain themselves on a cost recovery basis, so the hunt for new funds must begin. Why is it that such necessary programs (like an arms length scientific advisory panel) find it so difficult to cultivate support in Canada?

Finally, I wrote three entries that underscore some major themes of this site and the issues that are most pressing for science trainees in Canada:

1. Facilitating career mobility for senior lab based scientists – to become advisers, politicians, entrepreneurs, etc without being severely detrimental to the trainees?
2. Addressing the gap between policy makers and scientists
3. Focusing the training of PhDs on thinking and innovating rather than generating requisite amounts of information or data.

That’s it for this summary, stay tuned for a summer filled with ramblings from Beth and I as we try to bring new and exciting developments to the front page of the Black Hole site. Thanks, as always, for reading and spreading the word.

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Dave, July 4th 2010 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in General

Devils of Details: Getting Scientists to Understand How Policy Making Works

Posted June 16th 2010 at 5:15 am by Dave

Yesterday I attended a panel discussion at Cambridge run by a group called the Centre for Science and Policy. It is part of a series of events designed to engage and unite those at the University who have an interest in the role of scientific information in government policy. This particular session was entitled Working on the inside and highlighted the roles of Cambridge academics that have pursued these sorts of roles in Government.

The panelists all had some role in bringing a scientific perspective to the parliamentarians at Whitehall. These roles, however, were distinct and spanned multiple career stages, areas of focus, and included different sets of responsibilities. The panelists were:

Dr Rob Doubleday (ESRC Policy Placement Fellow, Government Office for Science)
Professor Michael Kelly (former Chief Scientific Adviser (CSA), Dept. for Communities and Local Government)
Professor Frank Kelly (former CSA, Dept. for Transport)
Dr Eoin O’Sullivan (Senior Policy Fellow, Institute for Manufacturing)

It lasted just 2.5 hours and involved just 50 people – many of whom also had (or have) a major role in science and policy in the UK. Needless to say, I felt critically undereducated, overwhelmed, and had virtually nothing to contribute. But, there was much to learn from this meeting. Sadly, it was run under the Chatham House Rule which means I cannot thoroughly discuss the ideas presented or the information given, but a few things that I think Canadian universities, granting agencies, and the civil service would be foolish not to consider are:

Test Driving: Programs to engage, inform and train early career researchers

The ESRC Government Placement Fellowship scheme
 sounded like the realization of an idea I first heard pitched by then National Science Adviser Art Carty – sabbaticals in Parliament – which I’ve written about before in another entry on getting science to Government. It seems that the UK has created a 3-12 month program for researchers to take leave from their university and become a pseudo-member of the civil service.

This is a real win-win as the researcher gets insight into how things work in “the real world” while also offering a fresh perspective to the civil service in terms of thinking as well as the actual information delivered. Importantly, bureaucrats involved in the program appeared to have no sense of performing an advanced form of babysitting. Furthermore, it helps researchers learn a little bit about how to manage people – principal investigators are often on their own when it comes to managing human resources, this type of experience can only help.

It’s already built, I don’t care anymore: Learning how the other team thinks
Scientists are a focused bunch – we specialize (to our detriment sometimes) and are often left very unsatisfied with loose ends. Politicians make big decisions daily and a scientist’s life’s work can be discussed and adopted (or dismissed) over an afternoon tea break. The loose ends are often plentiful, but there’s no time to tie them and other critically important items need to be discussed and decided. This distinction seems so straightforward, but can be the root of so many problems. If a scientist is going to step into the policy realm, they had best take a crash course in how to get their ideas into simple practical messages with real consequences on one side or the other.

Grade A for America: Learning from Washington and the AAAS
A lot of the funding and organizations that support improving the presence and role of science in Government comes from the National Science Foundation and the AAAS – organizations for which Canada has no equivalent. The programs and progress achieved by these groups are vast and something Canada should aspire toward.

This does, however, beg the question of who could support or design such a program in Canada? Perhaps this is a role that granting agencies, centres of excellence, the CFI, universities or the Royal Society could fill by inventing (read: copying from elsewhere) a program that would encourage scientists to undertake such roles.

University centric approaches: Knowing who’s who and what they are doing
Oftentimes, the way an individual gets involved with science and policy is the result of a friend or colleague who either recommends or encourages them to partake. This leads to a general lack of awareness from the rest of the institution about these people and their positions. One of the action items that was agreed upon informally at the panel discussion was to establish a mechanism for members of Cambridge University to know who was involved at Whitehall and what they were doing, so these similarly engaged academics could learn from each other and pool resources. The CSaP events were agreed to be a great start to this and the overall feeling was that the university could contribute far more to the country’s policy than it was currently doing. Perhaps Canadian universities could run with this idea as well and ensure that they have a central resource for facilitating these types of interactions between their researchers and the government.

Overall, it appears that Canada suffers similarly to the UK and the gap between academic scientists and civil servants is not insignificant – probably more pronounced in Canada. The solution is not necessarily an increased science focused bureaucracy, but instead to simply have more cross-fertilization between universities and governments – put them in the same room at the same time and let them learn from each other. This can be achieved by fellowship/sabbatical type arrangements, by encouraging science trainees (and university professors) to pursue careers in the civil service, and by breaking down the barriers between styles of thinking.

There is a lot of lip service paid to the idea that Canada needs a knowledge-based, innovation economy. While an enormous portion of the personnel training takes place at universities, trainees appear to be given less and less freedom or encouragement to “innovate” and are producing more and more cookie cutter PhDs. The innovation culture line of thinking is not an inherently bad one (academics would agree that innovation is important and the bedrock of research), but the politicization of that message result in programs like business related SSHRCs and extreme skewing toward translational medicine which are not necessarily the academic’s version of innovation.

Getting more academics in the same room with policymakers will clear the muddy waters – which organization will step up to the challenge in Canada?

3 Comments

Dave, June 16th 2010 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in General, Science Communcation

Let the Discussions Begin!

Posted May 12th 2010 at 11:38 am by Marianne

—
Quick Hit:
A big welcome to our second guest blogger Marianne Stanford, current chair of the CAPS group. As a follow up to Carl’s excellent article on the CRA’s response to the CAPS letter on Post Doc status. This is exactly the type of discussion that needs to be had and The Black Hole site is happy to be able to give it some e-presence. Please weigh in and let us know what you think and look forward to summaries each quarter that will synthesize the ideas in these articles and your comments!
—

Firstly, I would like to commend Carl Wonders on a thoughtful and valid assessment of the potential implications of the CRA ‘clarification’ on postdoctoral fellow (PDF) taxation. I’d like to follow up on that discussion from examining the issue from a different angle. I personally have been a PDF for 6 years, at two different institutions in Ontario, a president of a postdoctoral association and more recently the Chair of the Canadian Association of Postdoctoral Scholars (CAPS). My opinions are my own, not solicited or contributed to by CAPS, but certainly formed by my many discussions with that group. I personally in the past 6 years have been classified as the typical ‘no distinct status’ that most PDFs in Canada share, an ‘employee’ PDF of a research institute and most recently as a ‘trainee’ or academic PDF receiving tax exemption on my stipend. The ideal situation for a PDF in Canada has in the end little to do with exactly how they are paid or taxed, but requires that they are appropriately compensated for experience, extensive education and enormous contribution to the scientific endeavour. Indeed, considering that many graduate students and technical scientific employees bring home considerably more than the average PDF indicates that this needs to change. How that change is enacted must be carefully and thoughtfully done so as not to penalize the current PDFs nor prevent new PhDs from entering the Canadian PDF system.
Having PDFs treated akin to medical residents is a wonderful idea, but no matter how it appears to be stipulated by the CRA it isn’t feasible in the current system. Why? Frankly, it is due to how we are compensated. PDFs, by in large, are paid from public research fund budgets through granting agencies – either directly through fellowships or indirectly through competitive grants earned by our mentors. Residents, who perform clinical duties are paid from health care budgets, not academic research ones. In our case, the granting councils, particularly the Tri-council of NSERC, SSHRC and CIHR have a lot to say about the nature of our tenure. They have explicitly said that the postdoctoral period is one of extended training and not one of employment. Thus, this explains the modest stipend levels and why like graduate student scholarships, PDF fellowships should be tax exempt. Obviously this message did not reach the CRA or the government of Canada. So, assuming that they rather than granting agencies, provinces and academic institutions gets to decide who is a legitimate trainee, where do we go from here?
The obvious choice is employment. The problem with this is the assumption that a simple change in status will result in higher wages, extended health benefits, job stability and overall better conditions for PDFs. It will by its nature allow PDFs to contribute to EI, CPP, RRSPs, but I emphasize the word CONTRIBUTE. That does not necessarily mean a higher wage to cover those contributions. Indeed, in my personal experience, employment status in and of itself only resulted in a smaller paycheque. That may sound glib, because it did results in significant changes to the nature of my relationship as a PDF, and provided me a number of basic rights that I lacked prior to the change. However, I was in a good lab, with a great mentor and a clear career path. When we approached our institute with our new found ‘employee’ status looking for benefits we thought we were due, we were promptly informed that we were a ‘temporary, contract employee’ not entitled to the extended benefits of permanent research staff. By its very nature, a postdoctoral period is NOT a career, thus is temporary, even up to 6 years. Thus, access to anything other than basic employee deductions is likely to require significant negotiations and will depend on employee relations within the individual institutions. This is not something that will be mandated nationally, unless instituted by those who provide our funds – the funding agencies. Thus, before any PDF seeks employment status they need to be clear of its implications. Unless and until we can first lobby for reasonable and well earned compensation (closer to the $70,000/year the government suggests we receive than the $38,000/year average stipend that currently exists) than a change in status will likely hit the individual PDF very hard, in the pocketbook. On the other hand, for the first time in history, both the government and the CRA have provided us with solid evidence that the current system is not appropriate and requires significant change. They must now mandate the national community (particularly the publically funded research councils) to enact this change in a reasonable and proactive way.

2 Comments

Marianne, May 12th 2010 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Financial, General, Jobs

The CRA response to CAPS: Implications and where should we go from here?

Posted May 11th 2010 at 7:00 am by Carl

QUICK HIT:
The Black Hole team is thrilled to welcome its first guest blogger to the site. Carl Wonders is a post doctoral fellow at the University of Toronto and one of the founding members of the UofT Post Doc Association. We are always open to ideas for guest blog entries on a one time or regular basis, so please do not hesitate to get in touch with us. Great article Carl, we’ll look forward to our readers’ responses!

The CRA response to CAPS: Implications and where should we go from here?

Last year, in response to the growing controversy over the taxation of postdocs in Canada, the Canadian Association of Postdoctoral Scholars (“CAPS”) submitted a formal letter to the Canadian Revenue Agency (CRA). The letter specifically addressed the lack of uniformity over what a “postdoctoral fellow” is and how their income should be treated. On April 28, 2010, the CRA responded:

“The CRA has never [emphasis mine] accepted that Academic PDFs [postdoctoral fellows] are generally students with exempt scholarship income for purposes of income tax. We have written several letters to this effect, both prior to and after 2006, when most scholarship income became fully tax-exempt. The focus of the letters has varied between the nature of the income (as scholarship income, employment income, or research grants), and the role of postdoctoral fellows (as students, employees, or something else), however, the answer has generally been consistent.”

The CRA took things farther:

“Generally, the CRA does not consider Academic PDFs to be “students” as that term is used in the Act. Rather, the CRA views Academic PDFs to be the same as other individuals who are required to undertake a period of paid training after completing their studies prior to pursuing an independent professional career. In our view, Academic PDFs are most similar to apprentices, articling students, and medical residents.”

While the consistency of the CRA can certainly be debated, it is now clear that the CRA does not view postdocs as students for the purposes of taxation, at least as far as the scholarship exemption goes. Lumping us in with apprentices, articling students, and medical residents is curious, but probably done to put us in a category of individuals receiving training en route to an independent career. Unfortunately, this shared categorization is not recognized by most universities. Medical residents in Ontario (and I believe throughout Canada) particularly are in a far better position than postdocs at the same institution. To use the situation at the University of Toronto as an example (http://www.pgme.utoronto.ca/tax.htm), medical residents:
• Are paid on a T4
• Receive a T2202A (they’re not eligible for tax exemption as they aren’t on scholarship, but they do get tuition/education credits)
• Are eligible to receive a T2200 and thus claim employment expenses (something that only salaried or commission-based employees can do)
• Get full employee benefits (supplementary health insurance, life insurance, etc.)
• Get topped up to 75% salary when they go on maternity leave
• Have their salary scaled according to how many years they have worked (http://www.pairo.org/Content/Default.aspx?pg=1094)

In other words, medical residents are employees who are also receiving training. Thus, U of T, and indeed the majority of universities throughout Canada, is treating two groups of “training professionals” (medical residents and postdocs) completely differently, despite the fact that the CRA is now on record as considering them to be in the same category! I would suggest using this fact as Argument 1 as to why postdocs should be considered employees. Consider that employee status would provide:
• The ability to pay into CPP and EI. This is especially important for postdocs looking to take parental leave, as you must work 13 consecutive weeks at an insurable (EI-paying) job to be eligible.
• The ability to contribute to RRSPs. Fellowship income does not count as “earned income” for the calculation of RRSP deduction room (although, see quotation below)
• Improved benefits including supplementary health insurance. While some universities do have a plan to buy into (e.g. U of T), it’s certainly not ideal. Some institutions have begun to remedy this situation, as the University of British Columbia in April 2010, started to allow postdocs to buy into the staff plan. Hopefully other universities will follow this example in the future.
• The potential for scheduled wage increases. Unless you receive a higher-paying fellowship, chances are you haven’t received much of a raise since starting. I know I’m making the same amount of money as when I started three years ago. Employee status would go a long way towards preventing this from happening, and open the door to potential unionization. In the UK, postdoc wages are scaled based on experience, and this scaling is also included in the NIH guidelines for postdoc salaries in the US.

One final point. The CRA makes a curious statement towards the end of their letter, which may prove somewhat useful (emphasis mine):

“…Academic PDFs often asked for amounts to be classified as research grants, rather than employment income or scholarship income, as research grants were allowed deductions for certain expenses (unlike employment income), while still qualifying as eared income for purposes of contributions to registered retirement savings plans (“RRSPs”) (unlike scholarship income)….In some cases, the income received by an Academic PDF could be properly included in income under paragraph 56(1)(n); in most cases, we would expect either section 5 (for employment income) or paragraph 56(1)(0) (for research grants) to apply.”

My interpretation of this is that the CRA is saying that postdocs have the option of treating their income, which is reported as a scholarship/fellowship (T4A, Code 05) as a research grant (Code 04) even if it is not reported that way on the postdoc’s own T4A. Indeed, the tax code does include a provision that would allow someone receiving a fellowship to report it as a research grant if the money was received “solely for the purpose of conducting research.” This is something that I had advocated two years ago to the University of Toronto Postdoctoral Association. At the time, the concern was that, should the CRA rule in our favor regarding the tax exemption, switching back to a scholarship might be problematic. Now that that door is officially closed, I see no reason to not re-classify fellowships as research grants in the future and perhaps to go back and do the same for prior years.

In summary, I feel that the best course of action to take is to begin lobbying for employment status for postdoctoral fellows across Canada. The fact that the 2010 Budget says in no uncertain terms that postdoctoral fellowships are not tax exempt should put to rest any ideas of fighting for classification as students for tax purposes. Furthermore, I believe that the long-term benefit to employee status (EI, scaled salary, better benefit packages, etc.) far outweigh the shorter-term benefits of tax exemption. I would strongly urge CAPS and the rest of the postdoctoral community to consider this as they continue to move forward.

4 Comments

Carl, May 11th 2010 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Financial, General, Jobs

Quarterly Summary: “CAP”ital Action and Effective Communication

Posted April 1st 2010 at 5:38 pm by Dave

This quarter has been a very active one for the Black Hole site, marked most notably by a tripling of site traffic in the month of March. Admittedly, most of this increased traffic was due to Budget 2010 and the sheer panic it invoked in the post doc community. Fortunately, the momentum that I hoped would continue has certainly done just that. Two prime examples of this forward movement over the last quarter have been:

1. The Canada Foundation for Innovation model of autonomy and flexibility was named “world’s best practice” and the contribution to developing both the quality and quantity of research infrastructure was highlighted. The matching investment in people needs to be the focus going forward, let’s hope the policymakers realize this. They have built it… will the scientists come?

If you are a prospective post doctoral research fellow, the answer right now is “probably not” as a flurry of bad press surrounds Canada as a place to complete this part of one’s training. It’s curious because Canada definitely has excellent core components in place for research success with great equipment and buildings, internationally heralded expertise, access to other scientists and patient samples, etc etc. So what’s wrong with the picture? The answer lies in the second burst of momentum from this quarter

2. What exactly is a post doctoral fellow? – in Canada there is certainly no easy answer and it seems that they are classified as trainees, students, or employees depending on which status benefits them the least. In Britain and Australia, a post doc certainly leans toward the employee side of the coin with good wages (often 25-35% higher than Canadian post docs), benefits similar to other employees at the institute, pay taxes, etc etc. In Canada, however, post doctoral fellows often get terrible wages (78% earn less than $40,000 after 10+ years of university training), benefits are inconsistent at best and often absent (though UBC just made an impressive announcement about PDF benefits), and Budget 2010 proposes to make post doctoral fellowships taxable.

The momentum from the Canadian Association of Post-Doctoral Scholars in recent weeks has produced the following:
- An FAQ entitled “What is a post doctoral fellow?”
- An online petition to maintain the competitiveness of a postdoctoral research career in Canada
- A campaign that has gotten recognition for post doctoral fellows in Parliament

Great to see this kind of effort being put forth to improve the trainee environment in Canada. Let’s hope we get some results!

This quarter also saw The Black Hole become even more connected as exemplified by our growing toolbar of excellent links to check out including recent additions of:

Canadian Programs
CIHR Science to Business Program – Program to encourage and enable individuals who have obtained a recent health-related PhD to pursue an MBA
The Science Creative Quarterly – UBC based online collection of scientific articles that are spiced up for a general audience

Excellent organizations/resources for Canada to learn from
The Royal Society – The UK’s national academy of science which is leaps and bounds ahead of the Royal Society of Canada when it comes to public and governmental interaction
The Society of Biology– A whopping 80,000 members who support the strong presence of biology in academia, industry, education and research

Other blogs of interest
Margin Notes – University Affairs blogger Leo Charbonneau tackles many of the institutional issues that are discussed heavily on this site – great insights and wonderfully in touch with the hottest topics.
rENNISance Woman – Self described Cancer Research grant wrangler Cath Ennis and her thoughts form a frequently updated Nature Network blog worth reading!

As for blog entries, Beth has been squirreling away on entries related to the theoretical (What is Science? and Evaluation vs. Research) and the very practical (Talking Science to Non-Scientists and Community Collaboration) sides of science. She also introduced us to the CIHRs Science to Business program which aims to equip PhDs in the medical sciences with MBAs.

I’ve been (again!) a little less focused and was certainly side-tracked in Budget season with entries related to taxes, moving forward from the budget, and the CAPS campaign.

The story of how DNA and genetics became buzz words on everyone’s lips is one that I often share with people about the importance and long term impact that public outreach can have (especially when it comes to a general willingness to support research in the area) – this tipped off two entries ( >The Least Work Principle and
Getting Involved in Science and Society) and was followed up with an entry on my current pet peeve in Britain which is going to consistently underwhelming climate change related talks.

Other entries on the lack of science policy in Canada and the importance of scholarships and networking to one’s future career generated good buzz, but also resulted in a strong criticism of our blog and other blogs for being far too focused on complaining about the situation. While politely disagreeing with this being the case for the Black Hole site, I have made a mental note (and followed up with physical entries!) to give credit where credit is due on the many great things happening in the country and continue to keep an extremely open mind to future solutions.

Hope you’ll all continue to read and contribute, it’s been a fun six months so far!

PS: If you’re interested in writing a guest blog entry or a regular blog column, please do get in touch.

2 Comments

Dave, April 1st 2010 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Financial, General, Jobs, Science Communcation

CAPS Getting Progress in Parliament

Posted March 24th 2010 at 7:40 pm by Dave

I just thought I would quickly bring it to people’s attention that the Canadian House of Commons has been hopping with activity regarding post doctoral fellows and the repercussions of Budget 2010. A quick scan of the comments in March can be found here and if you want to keep track on your own, check out the Hansard records.

The Canadian Association of Post Doctoral Scholars has spearheaded this charge by contacting ~20 relevant Members of Parliament, two of whom have directly brought up the taxation of post doctoral fellowships matter in the House as an area of grave concern for promoting research in Canada.

What do these early comments tell us:

1. There is massive confusion as to the status of post docs – are they students? employees? trainees?

- Responding to a question of why a particular Post Doc in Quebec should have to deal with a $4000 tax increase, the Hon. Diane Finley responded by saying that the Conservaties have done a lot for students and then listed off several benefits, none of which post docs can benefit from.

- Numerous other MPs referred to post docs as “post doctoral students”

2. There is also confusion as to how much of the scientific workforce post docs represent and how well they are compensated:

- There are ~5700 post doctoral fellows in Canada
- According to a 2009 survey, over 50% of post docs make $40,000 or less and nearly 80% make less than $45,000 before taxes
- Prior to beginning a post doctoral fellowship, the vast majority of PDFs will have just emerged from 8-12 years of university and student loans are extremely common

The Hon. Mr Flaherty’s statement about “pure scholarships” is quite confusing. What exactly is a “pure scholarship” – is it the kind of thing that is merit-based, awarded by an external organization, and awarded to an individual? If so… please explain to me how a CIHR, NSERC, or SSHRC post doctoral fellowship award does not belong in this category?

Or perhaps he would argue that PhD students are training for a degree while post docs are graduated and therefore no longer training (i.e.: “part of the workforce”) – if this is the case, then that’s fine… but again I beg to ask as I did in a previous post:

What other career path recognizes more training and more experience with less pay and little to no benefits?

This lack of defined status is exactly what causes the problem because the powers-that-be will always decide to classify post docs as students when it suits them and as employees when it suits them. If all PDFs are to be classed as employees and tax paying citizens, then their wages and benefits need to reflect that.

- Make fellowships worth more (and not the $70,000 kind – something civilized like $45,000 or $50,000 would be fine and clearly distinguish them from the majority of graduate student stipends)
- Establish minimum salaries for post docs paid from a grant
- Scale the wages based on research experience

Funnily enough, it would almost certainly be less expensive for the Government to simply grant the scholarship exemption to post docs.

Until then, please consider writing Jim Flaherty and/or your MP to explain your story. You can also sign the petition if you haven’t already.

No Comments

Dave, March 24th 2010 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Financial, General

Budget 2010: Post Docs, be careful what you wish for…

Posted March 10th 2010 at 1:55 pm by Dave

Last week Canadians were treated to another Harper Government budget where the post doctoral stage of developing highly qualified researchers was finally recognized as an important part of the research enterprise. Post docs shared a grand “hurrah!” as this was a good thing, and long overdue.

Oddly enough, it was not just lip service as Jim Flaherty was “especially pleased to announce in the Budget, new funding for post-doctoral researchers” proposing to create a program for post docs akin to the Canada Graduate Scholarship (which recently gave select graduate students an excellent stipend over their studies at $35,000/yr) which would earmark $70,000 per year for select PDFs over the next five years.

BUT… look a little more deeply – say…somewhere around page 349 in Annex 5, it couldn’t be written more clearly:

post-doctoral fellowships will be taxable

We hear you, and thank you for the clarity. It’s been a long haul through the murky waters since 2006 when post docs were unsure whether or not their fellowships would fall under the scholarship exemption. See previous blog entries here and here to get a sense. Budget 2010 proposes to straighten this up.

So, yes – lots of post docs are upset as this represents an instantaneous $4000-$6000 pay cut. If you are getting a $38,000 fellowship from SSHRC, you get knocked down to ~$33,000 and if you get a $40,000 fellowship from NSERC/CIHR, you now take home ~$35,000. So, as of 2010, a fellowship funded PDF will take home the same or less than a PhD funded by a Canada Graduate Scholarship.

I ask you – What other career path recognizes more training and more experience with less pay and little to no benefits?

You say – what about these newly conceived $70,000/yr fellowships? I say – there aren’t enough of them to go around as there are 6000 PDFs in Canada and only 140 fellowships (2%). Also, Post docs don’t just last two years (in fact, some single experiments on their own last two years!), so after your glory years of funding, you take a 50% pay cut…sounds fun doesn’t it? Add all of that to the reality that just about every advertisement in medical science related faculties at McGill, Toronto, Alberta, and UBC amongst others has a requirement for 3-6 years of PDF experience. I had to ask my brother with the mathematics degree to figure this complicated stuff out for me.

Seriously… who thinks up these policies? Why not ask someone (oh I don’t know… maybe someone like the Canadian Association of Post Doctoral Scholars) about what a post doc actually does and would such a program work?

There are 6000 PDFs in Canada that are critical to the research enterprise and the human resource shift over the last 15 years is staggering. Will this program keep the best and brightest in Canada and attract new international fellows?

NO

The reasons are simple
1. The program is for 2% of PDFs
2. The funding lasts for two years only – the average PDF length is substantially longer
3. The wide discrepancy gives a major financial disincentive to stay longer than two years

And really… I don’t know what kind of hot shot junior scientists you think are out there, but picking post docs is not like a hockey draft where a selection like Sidney Crosby will change the fate of your entire lab. Research happens in incremental bits through the hard work and dedication of teams of scientists. Telling 98% of them to “suck it up” so 2% can enjoy an excellent salary is not sending the right message.

What the government really needs to do is improve the entire trainee environment and cultivate Canada’s international reputation as a great place to do scientific research, full stop. Stop grabbing headlines with superstar scholarships… it does very little practical good, especially at the graduate student and post doc levels.

So, in the end, the real problem is not whether or not PDFs should be scholarship exempt it’s whether or not they take home a fair wage. So the solution could be a tax exemption, but it could also be a national raise in PDF salaries.

The latter would be reasonably easy (and not so expensive) to achieve by doing three things:

1. Making fellowships worth more (and not the $70,000 kind – something civilized like $45,000 or $50,000 would be fine and clearly distinguish them from the majority of graduate student stipends)
2. Establishing minimum salaries for PDFs paid from a grant
3. Scaling the wages based on research experience (as the National Cancer Institute of Canada already does successfully with both its fellowships and for PDFs paid off NCIC program grants)

Funnily enough, this type of change would not cost the Government much more than the $45 million promised for the superstar fellowships – but of course it wouldn’t be nearly as sexy to release in a Budget, it would merely make sense.

What I hope you’ll do to push this issue:
1. Sign the online petition to maintain the competitiveness of a postdoctoral research career in Canada
2. Write your MP using the template on the CAPS site
3. Tell all your research friends to do the same and if you know a sympathetic person in politics or the media, put them in touch with CAPS.
4. Join the Facebook Group

18 Comments

Dave, March 10th 2010 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Financial, General, Jobs

Climbing up the Hill: Getting involved in Science and Society

Posted February 22nd 2010 at 10:23 pm by Dave

As promised in my least work principle entry, today’s entry will try to identify relatively easy ways for science trainees and professors to help further the public knowledge of, and excitement about, scientific research. I’ll try to stick to dissemination of academic information and communicating with governments and Beth will follow up next week with getting general information out to the public (adults and kids!)

We are by no means capable of offering a comprehensive list of things that you could partake in within Canada or indeed internationally, so please do contribute your ideas, anecdotes, complaints, suggestions, etc and they will be part of Quarter 2’s summary doc at the end of March. The comment box below or an email to us would both work!

For Everyone:

Look up two terms in your field on Wikipedia, read them and see if you cry. If you do… fix it.


Sign onto various charters (e.g.: Stem Cell Charter), read and respond to university and/or funding agency calls for input – your voice and name matter.

Communicate with your political representatives (especially Ministers of Education, Health, and (can we get one, please?) Science), let them know about exciting progress, encourage them to attend events, etc. If you’re worried about turnover, talk to the senior brass of the bureaucracy.

Open House Nights at your University/Institute – take part. If you don’t have them yet, help make it happen. Universities are interesting places especially for those that don’t get to see them often! Also, think about the charities that might support your research and ask them if they’d like to host something.

Volunteer with the Science Media Centre: This is the type of project that can really improve science reporting across the country and it needs the support of the science community.

For Professors (because their attention span for such rambling is probably more limited):

Write to newspapers (and not always in response to something! There’s this thing they call an Opinion Editorial)

Be an expert. Most universities have a site that the people can come to for further information on a topic or to find an expert (e.g.: UBC, UofT, and UofA) – make sure you’re on the list.

When your grant asks you to spend money on public outreach, give it proper consideration and make it count. These types of projects give your research and lab excellent exposure if done well. If you think it’s an inefficient use of money, write them and encourage them to pool those dollars into something larger.

Encourage your trainees (alongside generating excellent research of course) to participate in and maybe even build a career in these fields. Remember that you only need to create a professor to replace yourself something like 2-3 times over your entire career!

Use the FRSC. We don’t have as vibrant a Royal Society as they do in Britain – it’s not the quality of our fellows, but the lack of infrastructure supporting them. If you’ve been recognized with such a distinction, you have an amazing ability to command an audience.

Post the phrase “Dr/Prof X would be happy to have enquiries about his/her field directed to (insert email/webpage here)” on your website

For Trainees:

Use your student / trainee voice. I have seen far too many student-run organizations that are solely focused on socialising. Of course social programs are critical to support, but the real power of such organizations (student councils, trainee organizations at institutes, etc) is that they can be a single voice for many people, which gives you a bigger stake in decisions. As much as you think it’s not true, your supervisor and the university both want you to succeed, and they will typically find time to listen to you. That being said, take it seriously, prepare your case and bring it to them in a way that compels them to agree with you.

Write about your field. A great example of this is a UBC initiative called the Science Creative Quarterly, which aims to compile fun and interesting pieces about science and research. Give it a whirl, it’s a great way to start getting feedback if you’ve ever thought about a career in science writing or journalism.

Change things from the bottom up. Instead of taking the negative attitude that one of our frequent comment makers complains about… try to bring a positive change to your local trainee environment. One of the most exciting examples that I bore witness to in Vancouver was the creation of the
Jobs in Science Interview Series (JISIS). JISIS was driven almost entirely by a single person with an idea that spent months germinating… her passion for getting some help for those looking for alternative careers in science related disciplines was contagious and eventually morphed into a great series that still continues to help people get perspective and to deal with the changing human resources in academia.

On a final note, the Science Canada folks highlighted an article in the Globe and mail that called for the next set of big ideas with respect to Canadian policy and I think that the science community needs to be part of this. In comparison, just today, my good friend Erika forwarded me an email from the newly formed UK based Society of Biology, an amalgamation of the Biosciences Federation and the Institute of Biology:

The Society of Biology is a single unified voice for biology:

* advising Government and influencing policy;
* advancing education and professional development;
* supporting our members,
* and engaging and encouraging public interest in the life sciences.

The Society now has over 70 Organizational Members and nearly 12,000 individual members.

That’s a lot of oomph.

2 Comments

Dave, February 22nd 2010 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in General, Jobs, Science Communcation

2010 Canadian Taxes: Did you get your T2202 and T4a?

Posted February 7th 2010 at 1:31 pm by Dave

IMPORTANT – As of March 4 and the 2010 budget, the Government of Canada has made the statement that post doctoral fellowships ARE taxable as they do not lead to a degree. See pages 348 and 349 here

As I outlined in one of my very first blog entries, the waters are quite muddied when it comes to understanding the tax benefit regarding scholarships outlined in the 2006 budget:

Budget 2006 takes action in support of a more skilled and educated workforce by proposing:

• A new tax credit for the cost of textbooks, which will provide a tax reduction of about $80 per year for a typical full-time post-secondary student

• The elimination of the current $3,000 limit on the amount of scholarship, bursary and fellowship income a post-secondary student can receive without paying federal income tax

• Expanded eligibility for Canada Student Loans through a reduction in the expected parental contribution, starting in August 2007

~ 2006 Federal Budget

The middle statement is the one that provoked the most interest as it meant that all scholarship, bursary, and fellowship income could be received as non-taxable income. It became quickly apparent that things were a little more complicated though, especially when it came to post docs on fellowship or trainees paid from their supervisor’s grant. If you get the right forms (T2202 and T4a Code 05) you’re sailing… but even though people are in the exact same position (e.g.: graduate student at an off campus research hospital), the same forms are not always being issued.

Four years later and the waters are no clearer than they were for those first brave few who fought to claim this tax benefit in 2006. No ruling from the Canada Revenue Agency on the tax status of a post doctoral fellow, no consistency (even within the same university) with respect to tax forms issued to graduate students and/or PDFs, and no idea whether or not you should be saving some pretty sizeable chunks of money to ensure you’re in the black with the federal government.

In my Money, Money, Money… entry from October, I tried to outline the possibile situations that grad students or post docs might find themselves in and have some loose templates available for anyone who would be interested in filing a reassessment for previous years of miscalculated taxes or for the 2009 tax year. Feel free to email us to get these sent to you.

My own current situation is that of an international post doc on a Canadian merit based fellowship for which my funding agency will (in theory) be issuing a T4a Code 05. I have obtained a letter from my supervisor detailing the training/education nature of my current position and have drafted a letter in lieu of a T2202 based on the excellent work done by the UofT Post Doc Association some years back. Their site is certainly worth a visit when considering how you should proceed. Together, this has worked for others… my fingers are crossed.

Remember though… if you do successfully obtain get your scholarship/fellowship marked as non-taxable, the Canada Revenue Agency can reassess you and decide that you/they were wrong and in fact you owe them a pile of money. The lack of clarity makes PDF fellowships and positions filled from supervisor grants particularly subject to this possibility, so go in with your eyes open before making these tax filing choices.

The real problems with all of this lay in the long trail of inconsistencies… three examples:

1. Fellowship funded post doc (~$40,000)
University/Institute A issues the appropriate forms and no taxes are paid
University/Institue B refuses a T4A Code 05 and income is taxed – (~$6000-7000)
Result: PDF takes home several thousand dollars less strictly because they are working at a particular institute.

2. Graduate student funded off supervisor’s research grant
University/Institute A issues a T4A Code 05 to all graduate students irrespective of whether or not they get an external scholarship or are paid a stipend from the lab
University/Institute B issues a T4A Code 05 to those who get external scholarships and issues a T4A Code 04 to those who are paid off a grant.
Result: Graduate students in some labs get tax free status, others in exactly the same situation (i.e.: paid off the supervisor’s grant) do not.

3. The double whammy: Winning a fellowship decreases your income – HUH?
This just doesn’t make sense… but there it is, happening to the lucky folks who win a fellowship. Many institutes have benefits packages for “employee-like” post docs who are paid off grants (a $2000-3000 value usually), but as soon as you become a scholarship paid trainee, these benefits are revoked because you no longer “work for” the institute. If you then do not receive a T2202 or get the wrong coding on your T4a (or both), you get the privilege of having the income taxed and losing your benefits for nothing… the things one can suffer to get a tick box on the old CV!!

It is easy to see how this type of inconsistency could influence a student or post doc’s decision to enter a particular lab or university. So… if you happen to be in charge of such a place – wouldn’t it make sense to have clear procedures in place that maximally take advantange of this very progressive tax policy? In some cases it’s like giving your trainees a 15% raise without having to pay for it – how perfect is that?

—
In the long run though, a yearly ritual of such rigamarole hardly seems ideal… so what can be done and how can you help out?

CHANGES NEEDED:
• A clear ruling from the CRA on the tax status of the post doctoral fellow.
• Clear rules from each educational institution about which income receives which tax form – preferably made clear to each individual upon starting their new position. Many research hospitals or off campus institutes are unable to issue T2202 forms (these come from the university and sometimes the payroll/human resources departments are not the same) or unwilling to issue T4a Code 05 (because everyone is on the same payroll system and classed as an employee irrespective of where the money originally came from). This sort of red tape is really hard to cut around, especially for post docs.

YOU CAN:
• Inform students and post docs at your university of the UofT website, the CAPS site, this blog, and other such resources for helping them out in the short term. This includes your university’s graduate student caucus and/or post doc association(s).
• Join CAPS and help them fight this battle with a unified voice for all post docs (lobbying government officials, the CRA, etc) and influencing good policy decisions at universities and research institutes.
• Inform your own human resources department of how other groups are handling these matters and working with them to get the correct forms issued each year.

Good luck with filing 2009 returns and post your comments on previous and current successes/failures with respect to navigating through tax time!

6 Comments

Dave, February 7th 2010 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Financial

Grades are everything! or are they… knowing about and winning scholarships (hint: yes, you should apply)

Posted January 10th 2010 at 6:15 pm by Dave

Quick Hits:

In a comment on my Quarterly Summary, Veronique drew my attention to a great set of data released by the The Conference Board of Canada under “Education and Skills” – I encourage a read through her comment and a glance at the actual report too – we score pretty poorly in many categories!

Academia.edu
I was recently forwarded onto a site that purports to connect academics in an effort to quickly scan the world for “Who’s researching what?” – it is in an embryonic stage no doubt, but holds promise as a sort of academic Facebook.

Grades are everything! or are they… knowing about and winning scholarships (hint: yes, you should apply)

In 2002, I was one day away from selling knives for an entire summer in the heat of Southwestern Ontario, then I got a letter reading “someone has turned down their summer NSERC … you are on the waiting list – want it?”

I had thought I wasn’t good enough to win such awards, they were only for people who had spectacular grades. While mine weren’t terrible (low to mid 80s), they were certainly not the benchmark for excellence. So, in short, I had already written off the summer as “making money for later” and resigned myself for a long uphill battle of trying to eventually win a research scholarship at some distant point in the future.

The letter of course was very welcomed (and thank you, people of 2002, for turning down your NSERCs!) and I jumped at the opportunity and began working in a lab doing research. Looking back, I realize there were multiple career flashpoints surrounding this particular award:

How did I hear about this award?
My friend Mike had spent the previous summer doing one

Who were my references?
I had spoken to very few “Professors” halfway through 3rd year undergraduate… I picked the people whose classes I did the best in.

What came of the experience?
An additional 12 months part time in the lab and 16 total months of getting exposed to research (and researchers!)

Funnily enough, all of these relied on meeting the right people at the right time – and my own experiences were far from perfect… PS: the reference that a professor writes based on your grade in a class is terrible (unless they enjoy lying). I was lucky enough to have met Mike in second year (who made me aware of the scholarship) and was lucky enough to meet graduate students and professors in my final two years who passed on many additional tidbits regarding graduate school. All of this underscores a critical problem in undergraduate training – students (partly their own fault!) do not get enough high level interactions with people (professors, graduate students, senior undergrads, etc) – addressing this will be a future blog entry.

For now… I want to focus on how important recognition (e.g.: scholarships) are for a future in science and what resources undergraduates have to find out about them.

First things first… as an academic your entire career will probably depend on continually getting funding. It is no surprise that when a hiring squad looks at potential tenure track applicants, a key question is: “How fundable is this person?”

Fundability is comprised of many candidate attributes (thankfully grades become less and less important!) and in medical science this comes down to publication record, grant writing ability, location of research, history of collaborations, international conference talks, and training experience (i.e.: who trained you and who have you trained), amongst other things.

Sadly, but importantly, the lazy first screen of applications often queries “Has this candidate been funded before?” – a phenomenon often referred to as being on the gravy train. If another organization has already done the “real” work to discover the candidate’s fundability and given a thumbs up, then my job as reviewer is already done. This is amplified with each award/fellowship/scholarship that you get and while it certainly doesn’t guarantee your success in a new application, it definitely helps you avoid getting tossed out immediately.

So, our group asked the question of how we win scholarships and the biggest hurdles were identified as “knowing about them” and “preparing an application”

Knowing about Scholarships
We brainstormed about this for quite some time… in high school it tended to be parents, guidance counselors, and teachers who get a student in touch with programs like Shad Valley or entrance scholarships at universities in Canada (which are typically due in November through to January for any high school students on here looking for scholarships!). The vast majority of Canadian students (from our limited time window of experience in the 1990s) did not get this information, and those that did could quickly point to an exceptional person within the three groups listed above. Canada could probably do a better job, similar to what Australia has put together in their GET SMART guide to scholarships for attending post secondary institutes.

At the undergraduate level, the diversity of scholarships by region, study area, university, etc is enormous and Canada lacks a good resource to get this information out to undergraduate students. Students are often found browsing the Internet ( scholarshipscanada, studentawards.com, etc) but many of these are accused of being junk mail factories, colossal wastes of time, not specific enough to what they want to do, etc. I would say that there are probably useful items on these sites, but none offers a comprehensive overview of Canadian scholarships. One other quick read is Rob Taylor’s guide to scholarships, awards and applications.

In medical science as an undergraduate, you want to have your eyes on the following:

During your undergrad:
NSERC Undergraduate Summer Research Awards
Local University Scholarships (bursaries, awards, exchanges) – my undergraduate school was UWO in London, ON and I would have looked here and here (please feel free to post any good sites from your university in the comments below!)

Looking ahead to graduate school:
NSERC Masters and Doctoral Awards
CIHR Masters and Doctoral Awards
Charitable Foundations that support the research area you are keen on (there are many, and often, professors aren’t even aware of all the possible sources – do look out for these though!)

Other interesting links to check out for:
Women in Science
Aboriginal Students
Google Canada Anita Borg Scholarships (for Senior Undergrads in Computer Science)

Application Preparation
This is an area that probably has the most inequality… it reminds me of all the medical school applicants who go on practice MCAT courses and have mock interviews. Of course these are good things to do, but many other applicants who do not do them are prevented either by a lack of money or a lack of contacts. Similarly for scholarship applications, if you have access to tools (other people’s applications, graduate students and/or professors) your application will almost certainly improve. Knowing how to say something is often just as important as what you say. As awful as it sounds, there tends to be a scholarship application formula that gets improved as you get more experience, but is greatly facilitated by having an experienced eye look it over. I’ll eventually get around to a blog entry on scholarship writing strategies, but I fear attention is already waning after a long entry!

Moving forward, I think the solution partly rests with individual universities to make time for researchers to reach out to undergraduates and to increase the exposure of merit based awards to all of their students, but a huge onus must be placed on individual students to be proactive about increasing their level of interaction with professors and more experienced students or TAs. And when looking at a scholarship application… don’t use the “I’m too busy/lazy” or simply “not interested” excuses… these things formally recognize your skills, often make the financial burden of education a little easier, and are an absolute necessity (and good grant writing practice!) for succeeding in academic science. They’re much more important than squabbling for a few percent on that organic chemistry midterm.

2 Comments

Dave, January 10th 2010 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Financial
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