The number of biomedical science postdocs in the US greatly outstrips the number of research faculty positions available. As a result, competition for independent positions has become fierce and postdoctoral training has lengthened. Previous suggestions to address this issue included a major cut in numbers of graduate students (Bourne, 2013; Alberts et al., 2014). However, this recommendation received little support from the UW-Madison research community. Cutting the number of students would limit the number of trained scientists entering the workforce, which was not favored. In addition, casting a wide net was viewed as the best way to capture the most talented and diverse graduate students, as argued previously by others (Kelly and Marians, 2014; Marder, 2014). And there was little support among faculty for the proposal to shift funding for graduate students from research project grants to training grants. There were three main reasons for this: training grants only cover a portion of training costs; they fund few non-US citizens; and the relatively narrow focus of training grants would limit intellectual diversity. The prevailing view was that dramatic cuts to graduate student numbers and a shift to training grants would do more harm than good.

Instead of cutting the number of graduate students, we recommend a narrowing of the workforce pipeline at a later stage. Our first recommendation is that fewer PhD students continue as academic postdocs. Most workshop participants preferred this option and supported the broadening of PhD programs to include experiences relevant to non-academic careers. In the trainee-only discussions, students reported feeling pressure from their mentors to pursue an academic career, and they argued that opportunities for experience with non-academic careers should be expanded to make them less likely to ‘default’ to an academic postdoc (see Box 2). This suggestion need not extend the length of graduate training, but it does require a cultural shift within some disciplines.

Box 2 Input from students and postdocs. As UW-Madison graduate and postdoctoral trainees who attended the March pre-workshop discussions and the April workshop, we recommend the following proposals to address the systemic flaws in biomedical research in the US: Too many PhDs for too few PhD-worthy careers: Expand Masters programs as an honorable option within PhD training programs, which may be coupled with secondary training in law, policy, communication, business or other areas.

Inherent conflict of interest in trainee funding: Decouple trainee support from investigator funding and provide trainees with time to pursue career-oriented training. We recommend two weeks of protected time per semester.

Inflexible and outdated definitions of success: Broaden the metric of success used at NIH and promoted by principal investigators to recognize successful careers outside academia and reward diverse training opportunities.

Limited knowledge of funding system among trainees: Require a course on research administration, funding mechanisms and institutional policy to educate and empower junior scientists to more effectively engage in these national discussions. Kimberly A Haupt, Carlton P Frost, Dominique N Lisiero PhD, Patrick E Nyman, Funita P Phan, Aman Prasad, Megan E Spurgeon PhD. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.09305.005

In parallel with these changes to PhD programs, the NIH must revise its criteria for evaluating training grants so that non-academic science careers are considered as successful training outcomes for students funded by such grants. To increase transparency about the career paths open to PhDs, all NIH-funded labs and training programs should post trainee career outcomes on their websites. Grant holders should also be required to be supportive of trainees who want to pursue careers outside research. This pipeline change will not reverse the current crisis immediately but it should have a major impact within a few years. A second mechanism is for a subset of graduate students to earn a Masters of Science degree instead of a PhD. One problem with this suggestion is that a Masters degree is sometimes viewed as a consolation prize, rather than a valuable postgraduate qualification: to combat this perception, we suggest that a Masters degree should be made a mandatory step towards a PhD.

Our second recommendation is to increase the number of scientists who have a supporting role, rather than the leading role, in a lab: the idea of increasing the number of such ‘staff scientists’ has also been proposed by others (Alberts et al., 2014; Daniels, 2015). Such a shift has the dual advantage of reducing reliance on trainee labor and improving career prospects in biomedical research. But that shift comes with increased expense and a need for more stability of the staff scientist career track, a concern voiced by UW-Madison staff scientists (see Box 3). We suggest a few mechanisms to foster this career track. First, the NIH should provide funds to cover the extra cost of replacing a trainee position with a staff scientist; the mechanism for doing this could be similar to the supplements used to promote the diversity of the research workforce. Second, the NIH should expand the number of Research Specialist Awards recently introduced at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to support staff scientists. Finally, institutions should develop mechanisms to recognize staff scientists and promote their careers.

Box 3 Input from staff scientists. We believe that an increasing reliance on staff scientists is an attractive way to redress the imbalance between the number of PhDs and the opportunities for PhDs in research. However, academic staff scientist positions often lack stability and opportunity for advancement. Accordingly, we recommend that the stability of the staff scientist position should be increased progressively with time of employment by the development of federal or institutional funding mechanisms that cover at least part of the salary of the staff scientist. We also recommend that institutional rules be modified to explicitly increase the opportunities open to staff scientists for promotion, recognition and compensation. Additionally, we recommend that staff scientists be allowed multiple roles as a means to both broaden the work experience of the scientists and to provide a potential fallback if support for research is lost: these other roles could include administration (e.g., at a core facility), teaching or outreach. Finally, we recommend that the roles and expectations of staff scientists be clearly defined. Andrea Bilger PhD, Mats W Johansson PhD, Suzanne M Ponik PhD, Megan E Spurgeon PhD. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.09305.006

Our final recommendation is that institutions should increase incentives for retirement. We did not favor an NIH emeritus award to support lab closure, because such awards take funds from more competitive research, and we did not favor NIH grants explicitly partnering senior and junior investigators, because forced collaborations rarely yield innovative science. Instead, institutions should remove barriers to retirement and provide incentives for lab closure as a way to open more faculty positions.