Workforce Alternatives to Graduate Students?

The system suggested by Susan Gerbi et al., resembles an academic system used in France (universities, CNRS, etc.). Researchers or university teachers are hired at a low-level entry tenured position (usually after a 2-year postdoc, in biological sciences). Those researchers then spend about 10 years to a life-time working in a lab, headed by a principal investigator (PI) who is responsible for the CNRS to organize research, get external funding, and decide general scientific directions. Those labs could therefore get very big, in a true pyramidal way (unlike the U.S. system, which is anything but pyramidal, because positions in between postdoc and PI are basically absent).

The advantages of such a system are numerous, and inconveniences are few: (i) scientific culture/history in the lab is maintained by those tenured researchers; (ii) supervising and teaching in the lab is very effective, with experienced scientists working daily at the bench; (iii) the work force is less dependent on graduate student number and/or level of experience; and (iv) there is a true group effort toward big scientific goals, with a pyramidal coordination (up to higher levels, since PIs are also evaluated at the CNRS national level). As for the inconveniences, the main one is less chance for those low-level entry researchers to start their own lab rapidly. Only the "best ones" are able to make it to the PI level (internal promotion). Also, this early tenure system might arguably put less pressure on researchers compared with the U.S. system of tenure. Finally, the French system only exists because there is a huge long-term budget effort for research agencies (80% of the CNRS's budget is devoted to life-time salaries).

There is presumably no easy way to transpose this very centralized system from France to the United States, but an analysis of the French system would certainly give an insight to what could be done (and what should be avoided), and make the best use of those intermediate research positions proposed by Susan Gerbi et al.