Mapping Europe’s Post-doc Landscape
Last year, the EU and its Member States awarded post-doctoral positions to at least 11,000 people. Despite this impressive record, there is still too much fragmentation in the Union’s post-doc landscape.
According to a conservative and non-exhaustive survey conducted by the European Commission, at least 10,700 post-doc positions (schemes or programmes resulting from an open call for proposals) were awarded across the EU in 2004, including 2,100 by pan-European organisations, mainly through the Commission’s Marie Curie programme.
The inventory exercise also found that the average duration of a post-doc was 2 years and the average post-doc candidate earned €22,700 per year. However, there is a noticeable trend in several European countries of providing longer five year, or more, contracts to allow post-docs to pursue longer-term research objectives. These programmes are offered by countries such as Austria, Finland, Germany, Spain, Turkey and the UK.
The study – which was launched in October 2004 as part of the preparations for the forthcoming Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) – found that most post-doc schemes in Europe were open to foreign researchers, ie. non-nationals of the country offering them. Furthermore, more and more schemes are targeting nationals working abroad.
Improving career prospects
The European market for fellowships can surely benefit from being better structured. Only France, Germany, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey and the UK have programmes awarding more than 200 positions a year.
In addition to the larger number of minor schemes in the inventory, other aspects make the application procedure difficult, such as the short duration of some of the fellowships offered (between 6 and 24 months), and the different requirements from one scheme to the other.
Finally, few schemes are part of a well-defined career path, such as the five-year schemes, or schemes that build a bridge with the private sector, or elite schemes that prepare researchers for a career in research institutes or universities.
The Commission proposal for the FP7 ‘People’ programme includes the possibility for co-funding national, regional, and international fellowships that contribute to the career development of advanced researchers by financing the trans-national mobility part of the national scheme. The community co-funding may also allow the duration of the fellowship to be extended and/ or to upgrade the financial conditions. This new ‘People’ instrument will contribute to the free movement of researchers and will help spread the standards met by the Marie Curie Actions as reflected in the European Charter for Researchers and the Code of Conduct for their Recruitment.
