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"I think it becomes more difficult [to cheat] when the student knows what the professor knows and the professor knows what the student knows." --Adil Shamoo

Jones believes that senior scientists have "lost a sense of accountability to the next generation insofar as all of our interests in them are self interests ... so that
our career can get advanced but not necessarily
their career."

“Reduced economic opportunities in some fields relative to others … may be an important factor driving native students to enter particular occupations and avoid others.” --George Borjas

Working with a professor and lab mates from back home make for an easier, more congenial experience than plunging into a strictly American cultural environment.

"To me, having a Ph.D. and being a professor is a lifelong learning experience. The degree, to me, is to teach you how to teach yourself later on." --Adil Shamoo

“The glut of graduate students enticed by the growing support a few years ago have since found it difficult to get their own work funded … and the sudden deceleration in funding has left many researchers feeling slighted even though their funding grew by leaps and bounds in the past decade.” --Yuval Levin

"We hear persistent reports of postdocs and other folks working on grants who are either forbidden to take maternity leave or told that if they do, they'll be fired." --Joan Williams

"The best and the brightest seem not to be going into science as much as they did in the past." And those who do opt for research careers "seem to be dropping out at a very high rate." --Mark Donowitz

"If, in the course of the day, faculty spend some time talking about their career and careers in general, it wouldn’t be something they would have to keep a note of in a logbook and say, ‘Oh, this isn’t research-related.’ ”--Joseph Ellis

GREAT is now transforming its committee on postdocs into a body that will have its own independent, university-appointed membership, elected leadership, and meetings.

"Programs should provide all NRSA trainees with additional professional development skills and career guidance."

“We very much support employees’ rights to choose for themselves whether or not they think unionization is beneficial.” --Paul Schwartz

"Nowadays," she continued, "people have much more freedom in their personal lives and professional choices than they did when they were sold to an apprenticeship in the old days, and yet, at the same time, they're buying into this almost feudal system in which once you dedicate a certain number of years, you are bound by the amount of time you've spent." --Allegra Goodman

"Given postdocs' dependence on their mentors for both current working conditions and future career prospects, potential effects on mentor-postdoc relations have raised concern. Predictions range from destruction of that crucial partnership to a new era of improved mutual respect."

"If [the union] is open, honest, and transparent, I think that postdocs at UCSF would welcome discussion." --Anne T. Union

For the first time ever, all UC postdocs, regardless of their funding source, have access to the same comprehensive group health insurance.

"His lab mantra was, 'It's better to ask forgiveness than permission,' 'If I don't know about it, it doesn't happen,' [and] 'Get it done at all costs, and don't tell me how.' " --Maura Lee Upright

”Nothing is more important than supporting the new investigators early. … In the press of budget adjustment, we do not jeopardize the seeds of the future.” --Elias Zerhouni

The glue holding together the two parts of the increasingly creaky system—and the rationale for thousands of men and women with a decade or more of university study to accept salaries that according to the Sigma Xi data average $38,000 ($7000 less than the average earnings of a similarly aged college graduate)—is the widespread but usually futile hope of becoming an independent university researcher.

"We need to tell society and our community that [postdocs] exist and play a major role in our research labs and our research organization." --Gary Slater, dean of the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies, University of Ottawa.