Stanford Cardiovascular Institute, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, United States of America.
Office of Postdoctoral Affairs, Stanford University, Stanford, California, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2024 Jun 7;19(6):e0303792. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0303792. eCollection 2024.
The mission of NIH-sponsored institutional training programs such as the T32 is to provide strong research and career training for early career scientists. One of the main avenues to pursuing health-related research is becoming research faculty at an academic institution. It is therefore important to know whether these programs are succeeding in this mission, or, if barriers exist that prevent trainees from pursuing these careers. Our institution currently trains ~ 2400 post-doctoral scholars per year, approximately 5% of whom are enrolled in one of our 33 T32 programs. In this study, we 1) compare the proximal professional career trajectories of T32 trainees with non-T32 trainees at our institution, 2) compare proximal career trajectories of trainees in a subset of cardiovascular T32 programs based on their previous training backgrounds, and 3) survey past and current T32 trainees in a subset of cardiovascular T32 programs about the barriers and enablers they experienced to pursuing research-oriented careers. We find that former T32 trainees are significantly more likely to attain appointments as primarily research faculty members, compared to other trainees. Trainees report a perceived lack of stability, the paucity of open positions, and the 'publish or perish' mentality of academia as the top barriers to pursuing careers in academia. However, they were still more likely to choose research over clinical careers after participating in a dedicated T32 program. Our results support the conclusion that structured training programs strengthen the pipeline of young scientists pursuing careers in academic research, including those from underrepresented backgrounds. However, T32 postdoctoral researchers are held back from pursuing academic careers by a perceived lack of stability and high competition for faculty positions.
美国国立卫生研究院（NIH）赞助的机构培训项目（如 T32）的使命是为早期职业科学家提供强大的研究和职业培训。从事与健康相关的研究的主要途径之一是成为学术机构的研究人员。因此，了解这些项目是否成功完成了这一使命，或者是否存在阻碍受训者从事这些职业的障碍，这一点很重要。我们机构目前每年培训约 2400 名博士后学者，其中约有 5%的人参加了我们的 33 个 T32 项目之一。在这项研究中，我们 1）比较了我们机构 T32 受训者与非 T32 受训者的近期专业职业轨迹，2）比较了基于其先前培训背景的一组心血管 T32 项目的受训者的近期职业轨迹，3）调查了一组心血管 T32 项目的过去和现在的 T32 受训者，了解他们在追求以研究为导向的职业时所经历的障碍和促进因素。我们发现，与其他受训者相比，前 T32 受训者更有可能获得主要是研究人员的职位。受训者报告说，缺乏稳定性、职位空缺少以及学术界的“出版或灭亡”心态是他们追求学术生涯的最大障碍。然而，在参加专门的 T32 项目后，他们仍然更有可能选择研究而不是临床职业。我们的研究结果支持这样的结论，即有组织的培训计划加强了年轻科学家从事学术研究职业的人才储备，包括那些来自代表性不足背景的科学家。然而，T32 博士后研究员在追求学术生涯时受到缺乏稳定性和教职竞争激烈的阻碍。
