Employee Postdoc
Leave Benefits in the U.S.
These
charts augment a mini-series of blog posts examining the enormous variation in
U.S. postdoc leave benefits. While most postdocs do not consider benefits packages when choosing a position,
the benefits available can greatly affect quality of life, and sometimes mean
the difference between staying in academia and leaving it — especially for
caregivers and those with chronic health conditions. I surveyed 21 U.S.
universities with highly ranked ecology programs (according to The Chronical of Higher Education and U.S.
News and World Report) and the U.S. federal government by looking up
employee postdoc benefit information on their webpages, and present the data here. Blog readers have also
posted leave policies with which they are familiar and I update these charts to
reflect that data, as well.
Blog posts:
Postdoc parental leave policies, part 1
Postdoc parental leave policies, part 2
Postdoc parental leave policies, part 3
Parental
leave, beyond the numbers
Plumbing
advice for the leaky pipeline
Tables
General
leave
Family
leave
Paid paternity and adoption leave
Graphs
I did
the research for these tables and graphs while I was at home on paid maternity
leave from Harvard, while my baby slept on my lap. The fact that so many of my
female friends and colleagues struggle with making motherhood compatible with a
science career strikes me as a real problem that needs addressing. My hope is
that awareness of university leave policies will both give parents-to-be the
information they need in choosing compatible postdoctoral positions, as well as
promote stronger policies at the university level.
December
2014
A footnote: I did all my research online by
probing through institutional policy pages and documents. I did not talk to any
HR reps. Sometimes I was not able to discern whether a particular policy
applied to postdocs or not, because postdocs can be classified as regular employees or in a
special category by themselves. Sometimes I had to do some interpretation,
because policies were vague. The results I present are my best attempt to
understand the policies at these institutions as of July 2014. They may change.
(I hope so!) Please let me know if you find errors or if there are policy
changes by adding a comment to any of the above blog posts.