Dutch postdocs treated like royalty

Thanks in part to our linkurl:Best Places to Work as a Postdoc;http://www.the-scientist.com/2006/3/1/53/1/ surveys, 150 postdocs throughout The Netherlands will be spending three days in a four-star hotel in Bergen. That's according to Peter Peters, dean of postdoc affairs at linkurl:The Netherlands Cancer Institute;http://www.nki.nl/, which just won a 100,000-euro grant from linkurl:The Association of Dutch Universities;http://www.vsnu.nl/web/show/id=40917/langid=42 to expand its training program nationwide. The cancer institute ranked 11th in our linkurl:survey in 2006;http://www.the-scientist.com/2006/3/1/55/1/, which was a drop from its third-place finish in 2005. Still, Peters credits the survey in helping bring attention to inadequate postdoc training in his country. When Peters surveyed institute postdocs, he found that 80% of postdocs want a tenure-track position in academia. Only 15%, however, will ever get one. "They are all pipetting in the lab, and listening to the boss and very rarely do they think about their own future. They think that once I have my...