PhD and Postdoc salary? - are the salaries reasonable? (Apr/02/2009 )

well, I can tell you what I am offered:

stipend: $41,000 first year at UCSD (the houses or apartment rental are expensive in San Diego!)

I didn't bargain for the stipend, as I am very happy with what they offer.

benefits: FREE health insurance for the whole household (which means I won't need to pay a penny for the health insurance cost, but I do will need to pay for the co-pay and low deductible, etc). Retirement benefits, blah blah...

Does this answer your question? noelmathur

PayScale.com is quite nice website to check salary for different countries, education/degree, area of expertise, years of experience etc. (click on "Research Center" on the bottom menu).

I have a question. More like I need help to make some international statistics about the pay of PhD students vs Postdocs. I am a PhD student in Germany at a Max Planck Institute. There were recently discussions in between the PhD community and the general administration about fair pay of the PhD students. The story is like this: in Germany, a PhD student is considered half a Postdoc (as the president of Max Planck Society 'nicely' explained in Spiegel, one of the most read newspapers here), as such he will be paid only half a Postdoc salary. This is when students are on working contracts. So, the brutto salary of a PhD student is 1700 €, after tax one gets like 1200 € a month. A Postdoc gets exactly double the brutto, but after taxes he gets a bit less than 2400€. When on a scholarship, a PhD student (in Max Planck Society) gets 1365 € per month. But from this he must pay health insurance and in the end gets a bit above 1100 €. To make the long story short, the same president of the Max Planck Society stated in Spiegel that a PhD is half a Postdoc all over the world and we, because we rebel against the system should consider that nowhere else is different. However, I hear otherwise from my friends from around the world. But I want overall information for the entire world, if we are to attack the president again. So: how is this around the world. Basically, I need info like this:
PhD student: 1700 €/month (before taxes); 1200 € after taxes when on a working contract
1365 €/month scholarship
Postdoc: 3400 €/month (before taxes) on a working contract

Thank you in advance for your help.

Andreea

I currently have no information about the salary of a post-doc here, but I can tell you, that depending on the luck with fuding the same Ph.D. student get 560 €/month after taxes ( I was really considering getting a second job like.. "what else can I do instead of biology?, mmm, nothing well enough probably, so.. shop assistant in Lidl?"...) and a year later 1200 €/month after taxes
Situation is rather complicated by taxes, because full-time students up to 26 don't pay them, also full-time students can be funded from certain parts of a grants that are considered a gratuity, which is also not taxed. When I had a break in the studies, that meant my salary went down by 120 €/month, because I had to tax everything I got and the amount didn't change.
Also Ph.D. students in the first 4 years (which is considered to be a normal duration of Ph.D.) get around 240-320 €/month scholarship (not taxed) from university, which is generally the main reason why everyone wants to employ a Ph.D. student. Because they can pay them only half the salary from their resources.
Of course that in the capital the numbers are bit different, but I rather don't think much about it, after all money is not my important motivation.
If the question was also about if by working on contract you have a fixed salary, then no. Usually you got a one-yer contract each year, and the salary depends on the actual grant funding available. You never know what will be next year.

In light of what you are saying about Czech Republic, we at Max Planck are spoiled brats who complain But seriously now, my question is more the ratio of payment of PhD vs Postdoc. For us is not a problem of how much money, it is a question of a PhD is half a Postdoc, which is not true, in my opinion. I mean, on average they do not produce more articles and they do not work longer (it is almost 1 AM here and I am in the lab; the only other people here are other 2 PhD students, just saying...)

And, for the answers I need also the country for which the info is valid.

@ascacioc
I know you didn't ask for that, but I kind of couldn't help it
I will try to find some info about the ratio you are interested in.

Here is what I know about the situation in Australia.

PhD scholarships are $25 000 per year (tax free)- so about $2000 per month (which is about 1500 euro)
They go for 3 1/2 years, after which you usually have to finish up unpaid.

Post docs start from $65 000 (this would be your 1st post doc starting salary) per year before tax- $5400 per month (about 4200 euro)

Does that help?

Thanks guys. You are very helpful. Keep them coming from all the countries.

Andreea

ascacioc on Sun Oct 7 21:16:28 2012 said:

Unless it’s a real good competitive doctoral award from the CIHR or CGS-Canada Graduate Scholarships eg Banting and Best, Bell, Vanier etc ($30,000 +/yr), most PhD fellowships on the average is about 20-22,000. If they have to pay tuition fee and health insurance, then the net income gets even more reduced (but they don’t need to pay taxes in the end). The postdoc salary usually starts from 38,000 but many institutions now peg the minimum at 40,000 (and this can go a lot higher depending on experience and qualifications). Regarding the postdoc net income, it would depend on how they are classified: https://sites.google.com/site/canadapostdoc/who-is-a-postdoc-in-canada. So over-all, yup, the proportion of PhD to a postdoc fellowship is about half and sometimes even less than half.

But isn’t this expected? The postdocs already have the degree, done their tour of duty so to speak and probably slaved away 4 to 7 years of their lives (compared to how many of yours- one, two?) so they deserve to be paid more. if you look at it from their angle (after PhD, that’s usually the next step), would you then think it’s fair to get the same salary as a PhD student? Perhaps, the president of Max Planck is reluctant to change policies and increase the salary of PhD students not bec he's being difficult or scroogey but bec he may have to implement a parallel increase for the postdoc fellowship as well?

ascacioc on Sun Oct 7 22:49:02 2012 said:

The difference is they already have the degree and the experience iow, more qualifications than just what a mere student has (I know, I know….even if some of them are what you referred to as ‘idiots’ in the other thread ). But back to burning the midnight oil, is your boss forcing you to do 16-hr work days? If you’re working this long and this hard, is it for him or the lab or yourself? I think that this rampant self-exploitation is one of the roots of the problem hence producing such a sense of injustice and unfairness. If you’re getting only 20,000 euros and work on the average 80 to 90 hr weeks then you are definitely grossly underpaid and this surely violates labour laws. But are you being coerced to do this….or is it just the lab culture? And if a new PhD student comes, they’d end up doing the same thing just to fit in less they be labelled lazy, unmotivated, or not hard-working enough. So this style of work ethic is perpetuated year in year out. Perhaps if this cycle of self-exploitation is broken, then the PIs wouldn’t be expecting too much or would not build their lab’s output and success around PhD students ‘cheap' labour.

Btw, how much of an increment are you pushing for (in relation to a postdoc’s salary?) almost at par? This can be counterproductive bec a PI might not choose a PhD student over a postdoc if he’s paying them the same salary anyways. Just my two cents.

Because I'm working in Germany, here it's more or less the same (i.e. both PhD students and postdocs are in the same salary level of German public service (here TV-L 13), only with 50% paid working time for most PhDs (there are a few lucky with more) and postdocs (with 50-100% working time, where the portion of more than 50% is higher).

A few other comments:
Doing PhD at Max-Planck is surely more challenging and the workload higher compared to other institutions, anyway when you got a PhD there, then it's like a foot in the door for a good scientific career (usually) . And well compared to other institutions which are usually underfinanced, at Max Planck with lots of funds, few or now students and highly motivated staff, the research conditions are very good. So actually the others should be the ones to complain.

A professor explained to me once, that the 50% paid working time for PhD is given (from a formal point of view), because the student works 50% for a project (which can be also include work for his/her degree, but this is not a must) and the other 50% are for the degree, which is more or less a voluntary part, that is the student's own "problem" and the work is only for him-/herself (which includes also thesis writing, publications, reading papers etc etc). The payment for this part is the "Dr. rer. nat." in the end....