Budget cuts imperil Japanese scientists’ pay
JUN 18, 2012
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.026107
Nature : Japan’s government is set to cut the salaries of researchers who work in its public universities and national labs by 9.77% for managers and lab chiefs and 4.77% for postdocs and technicians, reports Nature‘s David Cyranoski. The pay cuts are part of a package of belt-tightening measures that would free funds for repairing the damage caused by last year’s earthquake and tsunami. In general, top-level administrators at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and other national research institutes receive comparable salaries to their counterparts in industry. That’s not true of researchers, especially in Japan’s biomedicine industry, where salaries are up to two times as high as in academia. As Japan’s universities struggle to enroll science majors, its scientists worry that the new pay cuts will make science even less attractive to students.
© 2012 American Institute of Physics
