• FishFace@lemmy.world
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    18 hours ago

    As far as I can work out about this USA, this is not true. It is certainly not true where I am from. It may be true in the case of postdoctoral researchers (but not always), i.e. relatively junior researchers who don’t yet have a permanent position. But a permanent position is just that - it’s like a permanent job, and you’re paid a salary by the university that gave you that position. You will typically also need to apply for grants in order to pay for things like:

    • travel to conferences
    • travel to collaborate in person with colleagues at other institutions
    • make papers open access
    • hire postdoctoral researchers and PhD students.

    I did two postdocs during my time in academia and both were grant funded (one awarded to me, one awarded to a more senior researcher who then took me on as a postdoc). I also applied to one postdoc position I remember which although fixed term, not permanent, was paid for by the university. I worked with many permanent staff who had salaries from the university as well as grants for other things.

    As far as I can tell in the USA the only real difference is that your salary may only be for the 9 teaching months, not the full academic year, and you’re expected to top up those 3 months if you want to be paid a proper wage.

    • Flubo@feddit.org
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      15 hours ago

      Still, the people on permanent positions are rare and act as the masterminds behind the research rather than doing research themselves. Professors are guiding their PhDs and postdocs through experiments and writing. If all these people that are more or less early in their careers that are working on Grant money get defunded, than even Professors cannot really do science anymore cause they lack the staff… And of course this future Generation of Professors is looking for other Jobs or leaving the US if they can.