Megan Bohn and Catherine Zander

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced increased stipend levels for the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Awards (NRSA) for fiscal year 2018 on May 9, 2018. Stipend levels for postdoctoral scholars now begin at $48,432, a two percent increase over the previous level set in December 2016. Annual increases for experienced postdocs follow a similar trend to recent stipend schedules, with a 0.8 percent stipend increase for the first two years of experience and approximately four percent annual increases thereafter. Importantly, the NIH also increased Training Related Expenses and the Institutional Allowance to support benefits such as health insurance. According to NIH Deputy Director for Extramural Research Mike Lauer, MD, on his Open Mike blog, this change was made in recognition that postdocs with NRSA support do not receive the same benefits as postdocs funded under research project grants, potentially discouraging applicants from seeking these awards.

This latest increase comes in the immediate wake of the release of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) report The Next Generation of Biomedical and Behavioral Science Researchers: Breaking Through, which recommends NRSA salaries start at $52,700 with annual adjustments for inflation and cost-of-living increases. Although the most recent NRSA increase is below both this National Academies recommendation and previous recommendations from NASEM and the NPA, Tracy Costello, PhD, Chair of the NPA Board of Directors, commented, “The NPA is thrilled to see both steady stipend increases and the increase of the Institutional Allowance to ensure support of postdoc benefits. We feel that these steady improvements will encourage better conditions for training, support the PIs’ mentoring, and allow mentors to help transition their postdocs into the next phase of their careers.”

The NIH has maintained an upward trend for NRSA stipends since the early 2000s. The most striking increases have come in the past five years and were spurred by the publication of the 2012 Biomedical Research Workforce Working Group Report and by proposed changes to the Fair Labor and Standards Act overtime rules in 2016. Though these changes were ultimately blocked by injunction, they still motivated the NIH to boost the NRSA stipend by roughly nine percent in 2017. Though a welcome and needed increase for postdocs, the large stipend increase sent research institutions scrambling to find funding to meet the new budgetary demands. As such, in order to support feasible and appropriate stipend levels for postdocs, the NPA formally supports phased-in, steady approaches to increase stipend levels that allow institutions to predict, plan for, and gradually adjust to the impact on budgets and grant support. When disruptions to research, postdoctoral training, and benefits are minimized, the resulting stability and predictability will benefit both research institutions and the postdoc community.

Megan Sampley Bohn, PhD, is the co-chair of the NPA Advocacy Committee and the assistant director for the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Office of Postdoctoral Affairs, where she works on policies and programming for postdoctoral training. Catherine B. Zander, PhD, is an American Society of Hematology/American Association for the Advancement of Science Science and Technology Congressional fellow. She is also the vice chair of the Outreach Committee for the NPA and the co-chair of the Advocacy Committee for the NPA.