One-third of the institutions surveyed by COSEPUP have no office to assist foreign nationals with visas, taxes, Social Security, housing, or language skills. Even in schools with special postdoc programs, officials lose track of their foreign postdocs' needs. While their problems often are not unique, they can be magnified through the scope of an unfamiliar culture. The COSEPUP study reports anecdotal evidence that foreign-born postdocs are paid less than natives; sometimes foreign female postdocs are not paid at all. "There's no doubt that foreign postdocs are very vulnerable," says Michael Teitelbaum, program director at Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which funded the Postdoc Network, a Web-based community connecting postdoctoral associations across the country. Maxine Singer, COSEPUP chair and president of Carnegie Institution in Washington D.C., echoes that sentiment, "A lot of the institutions don't have particular assigned staff to help with their needs, and they fall through the cracks."
Nese Akis, ...
