When the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology's National Institute of Science and Technology Policy investigated the employment status and career paths of postdoctoral fellows who have obtained doctoral degrees and withdrew from school after completing the prescribed credits, less than 1% of them proceed to university faculty. I understood.Some have pointed out that continuing to be in an unstable position without being able to get a regular job has led to a shortage of young researchers.
The survey sent questionnaires to 2015 universities and research institutes nationwide in FY2016 regarding the employment status and career paths of postdoctoral fellows as of FY1,168, and received responses from 1,147 of them.
According to the report, the number of postdoctoral fellows in 2015 was 1, a decrease of 5,910 from the previous survey in 2012.The breakdown by gender is 250% for men and 71.1% for women.The average age was 28.9 years.
Japan has 1 nationalities, accounting for 1,465% of the total.There are 72.1 foreign nationals, 4,445%.Roughly 27.9% of foreign nationals are Asians such as China, South Korea, and India.In the field of specialization, science was the largest at 7%, followed by engineering, health, and agriculture.
Competitive funding accounted for 25.5% of the employment resources, and external funding also accounted for 11.7%.Only 32.7% of the employees were hired by their own financial resources such as basic expenses.
In the previous job, 29.2% were doctoral students and 33.2% were postdoctoral fellows from other institutions.As for the career path, 56.5% of the respondents continue to be postdoctoral fellows at the same institution, and only 9.4% have changed to university faculty.
Most postdoctoral fellows are in an unstable position as part-time with a fixed term.Japanese society is said to be harsh for non-regular workers, but the fact that it is extremely difficult for postdoctoral fellows to get regular jobs has become clear again.
