In the past two days, one of my posts in LinkedIn received more than 1700 responses. This is unprecedented in the history of my activities in LinkedIn; all my previous posts had no more than 200 responses. What is this new post about? I wrote, postdocs need career paths other than being a PI. If academic institution does not prepare to connect postdocs with such opportunities during their time as a trainee, they will lose enthusiasm to research, and the whole scientific enterprise will collapse.

I thought that this is already an emergent issue that every one in academics knows, so I just tried to remind some PI friends. To my very surprise, this topic caught so much attention and rose so many comments and discussion. I realized that many postdocs did not find their institutes or PIs ready to implement such connection/transition into their research program. Looking into my own experience in lab for almost 20 years, I have to agree with them.

In many research institutes, the so-called career planning training is just seminar series with non-academic speakers. Sharing experiences is good but not sufficient. Gaining the ability to pursuit different career paths need to be part of daily works in laboratories. For example, how to build connection (especially with non-academic professionals). This can be initiated by building collaborative projects with researchers in other branches or institutes. Unfortunately, many PIs still don't intend to do so because fearing competition.

Another important aspect is to learn how to expand the expertise, instead of over specialization. Many postdocs become very but only capable of specific techniques after years of research, and then get "locked in" for their choice in career. I actually have seen PI who trained posdocs in that way.

Most importantly, the academic leadership needs to recognize the new reality and engage to change the culture. Undeniably, many of them still think that the current model to run scientific enterprise can continue for another few decades. "Publish or perish" is still the slogan. No, the new slogan in academics should be "Connect or collapse".

Let me end this post by borrowing the lyrics of John Farnham's song, "You are the voice":

You're the voice, try and understand it
Make a noise and make it clear
Oh, whoa
We're not gonna sit in silence
We're not gonna live with fear
Oh, whoa