Tim Tai

Postdoctoral fellows and associates at Yale are voicing dissatisfaction with their salaries and with the University’s timeline for applying new compensation minimums and raises.

After the University set this year’s compensation minimums for postdoctoral fellows and associates, the Yale Postdoctoral Association — or the YPA — is advocating for greater involvement in setting compensation policies, higher pay and the adjustment of salaries at the same time of year.

“We want postdocs’ experience to be appreciated, their effort to be appreciated and postdocs to have a comfortable living wage, not just to get by,” Alaz Ozcan, co-coordinator of the YPA Advocacy Committee, told the News. “That’s all we want from Yale, and I believe the university has the funds to support that.”

Rishi Tripathi, a third-year postdoc and another co-coordinator of the YPA Advocacy Committee, said that the postdoc compensation is “untenable” for researchers who have dependent spouses or children or face certain work restrictions as non-U.S. citizens.

“We have to keep advocating for a compensation that keeps in track with the times because for the longest time, the postdoc compensation was barely enough to get by,” Tripathi said. “Whatever the situation may be at the time, it becomes really hard for anyone to dedicate themselves to their work when they’re just constantly struggling to stay above water.”

According to Erin Heckler, the associate provost for postdoctoral affairs, the University considers data from peer institutions and performs a regional cost of living analysis when determining yearly compensation minimums. Heckler also highlighted that the National Postdoctoral Association has recently recognized Yale as a “leader in postdoctoral recruitment” with its “dedication to competitive postdoctoral scholar compensation.”

However, members of the YPA said that Yale’s timeline for salary adjustment creates inequities among postdocs with varying levels of experience.

In October, the YPA conducted a survey finding that 61 percent of postdocs’ salaries remain below the current base pay of $68,000, with postdocs hired between 2021 and 2023 reporting the highest rates of below-minimum salaries. The survey also found that 84 percent of respondents were unsatisfied with their pay. 210 out of Yale’s approximately 2,000 postdocs responded to the survey.

The current base pay was raised on July 1, the start of the 2025 fiscal year. The policy states that salary raises are applied at the annual reappointment. Thus, compensation for postdocs remains below the set minimum of $68,000 for some period after July 1 raise until their reappointment.

“It was never a question of, ‘so and so is getting this much money,’” Tripathi told the News. “It was a question that if you are calling it a new University minimum, and you’re saying that this is the minimum compensation we offer, then it should apply to everyone equally.”

Tripathi explained that a postdoc reappointed on June 30 of the previous fiscal year would have to wait until nearly a year after July 1 in the current year to receive a raise, shortly before a new minimum for the next year would go into effect for postdocs reappointed the next day. 

According to Tripathi, this creates “three different levels of compensation for the exact same work.”

“This actually infuriated — to say the least — a lot of postdocs with years of experience because we had postdocs with three, four years of experience who just jumped below the minimum compensation and would have to wait months until they can receive base salary,” Ozcan said.

Heckler wrote that the Office for Postdoctoral Affairs — or the OPA — reviews compensation for all postdocs to ensure compliance with the base pay and communicates any concerns regarding compensation minimums with administrators within academic units.

Benoit Mermaz, a co-chair of the YPA, pointed to the compensation policies enacted for fiscal years 2022 and 2024, which allowed salary adjustments to be made mid-cycle on July 1, rather than on the date of reappointment. According to Mermaz, a uniform timeline for salary increases would prevent the problem of salaries falling below the minimum during the year under a rolling timeline.

However, Heckler explained that the policies from fiscal years 2022 and 2024 were exceptions to the University standard in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and a major shift from a five-tier minimum compensation scheme to the current two-tier system, respectively. 

Heckler also wrote that the University adjusts compensation on annual reappointment dates because compensation level is determined by the years of experience someone has in a postdoctoral position.

Laura Santos, the other co-chair of the YPA, told the News postdocs had expressed concern about the compensation policy as early as April, but the Office for Postdoctoral Affairs, or OPA, ultimately did not change the proposed policy before implementing it in July.

“For the first time ever, we got so many emails from postdocs in our YPA email address, which never happened before,” Santos said. “[Postdocs were] complaining and were disappointed and frustrated about this policy, so we tried to change it.”

Initially, the OPA said that they would consider implementing YPA’s proposed policy change, which they described as “a reasonable plan” per Santos. However, in June, the OPA informed postdocs that the University would keep the standard compensation adjustment timeline, Santos said.

According to the YPA’s meeting minutes for its April monthly meeting, Heckler had informed postdocs that it “has always been the case” that compensations are adjusted on reappointment dates, and she encouraged postdocs whose reappointments fell before July 1 to negotiate a higher raise with their principal investigators. In its June meeting minutes, the YPA had attributed the OPA’s policy decision to a “lack of communication and representation of postdoc interests.”

Heckler wrote to the News that administrators at the OPA “continue to have good conversations about how best to support postdocs during their time at Yale.”

Mermaz told the News that the YPA plans to hold a town hall for postdocs next week to discuss the results of its October survey and to share their findings with the Office for Postdoctoral Affairs.

The YPA was founded in 2014.