Education or employment: What is a post-doc? What is a PhD student?

The legal situation in Israel

I mention Israel first since am involved in a legal case before the Israeli national labor court on this very question: Arguing that those PhD candidates who are required to work all week long, who are forbidden from working outside the university, who can be required to teach up to a limit according to the needs of their academic departments etc. etc. - who contribute significantly to the research (and teaching) "outputs" of the university, should be considered its employees, and the monthly "stipends" that they get should be recognized again as their salary. This is case ע'ע 5439-04-16 (Labor Appeal 5439-04-16). I've authored a booklet on the history of this struggle, which has an English version:

"These are student recipients of prizes":
On the erasure of the Technion's junior researcher class

Or get the Hebrew version; in fact, if you can read Hebrew, you can find the court case documents here.

The legal situation in the US

Another, perhaps more relevant, legal treatment of this matter can be found in the recent ruling of the National Labor Relations board, in the case of Graduate Workers of Columbia University, UAW, AFL-CIO vs the University of Columbia (NLRB 364-90: HTML PDF, all case files): The court has found that, indeed, Graduate students who perform meaningful research or teaching work as part of the course of their PhD program (and are paid), are considered university employees to the extent of the applicability of US labor law, especially the laws governing unionization and collective bargaining.

That decision reversed the unfortunate (3-to-2) decision in the 2004 case of Brown University (NLRB 342-42: HTML, PDF), which had itself reversed the 2000 decision in the case of NYU (NLRB 332-111: HTML, PDF).

See also the AAUP description of the Columbia U case and their position.

The actual answer

I can talk for hours, literally, about this subject, and I actually have... but in a nutshell:

• Being an employee and being undergoing a process of education are not mutually exclusive; and you always learn when you're starting out in a new career path, be it in industry or in academia.
• The common labor-legal criteria for being considered an employee can and do apply to many/most/all PhD candidates (depending on which state in the world, which kind of PhD work etc.)
• A university is an organization whose ongoing objectives are to produce research findings and to teach students. If you contribute towards those goals (by performing research and teaching), even if you're also undergoing a process of education yourself, you should be recognized and remunerated as such.
• Post-Docs only undergo any sort of education through their practical research work (which, of course, involves learning - but that's the case also for the most high-ranking Professors); they don't take classes, get homework and take exams to see whether they've studied well enough. so about them there should not be any doubt of being in relations of employment.

as for why have PhD candidates when you can have Post-docs - I've already written enough, let others discuss that :-)

The distinction between postdoc and PhD student is orthogonal to that between employment and education.

First, both PhD "students" and postdoctoral "researchers" may or may not live on stipends. In Germany, for example, both PhD students and postdocs are in most cases employed by their university or research institutions. In some cases, PhD students live on a grant that is paid directly to them, without the social benefits etc. that come with a work contract. Less frequently, even postdocs may live on a grant. AFAIK, the prestigious Marie Curie grants are paid out directly as a stipend. On the other hand, many postdocs are indirectly living on research grants, but these are paid out to their host institution, which in turn pays their postdocs a regular salary.

Second, both PhD "students" and postdoctoral "researchers" continue their own education while, at the same time, preforming work in research and (often) teaching. A defendable PhD thesis is not only the "final" assignment in an education program. It also has to make a real contribution to its field and contains the published (or to be published) results of a research project. A postdoc does real research, but she will also have to continuously broaden her knowledge of the field she works in and her experience with the latest methods in order to make a living in academia.

Regarding your last question: PhD students are less expensive and in less scarce supply than postdocs. Moreover, the education of (many, talented) PhD students is part of a professor's assigned job, and it adds to their prestige.

Practices vary between countries.

Here in the UK PhD students usually get a tax-free stipend provided through the University (but ultimately funded by either a research council or sometimes an industrial partner), this stipend is not considered employment. They may also work for the University on the side doing lab demonstrating and similar tasks. The PhD is mostly research-based culminating in the assement of the thesis, some programs may also require students to take courses.

"Postdocs" (or PDRAs to use the technical term) on the other hand are employees. There is an expectation that postdocs will have either completed or be close to completing their PhD.

From the point of view of a research funder PhD students are cheaper than postdocs but obviously less experianced.