workplace to avoid for a researcher - Postdoctoral Fellow Linköping University Employee Review

Linkoping University is a relatively young institution which is proud of achieving significant reputation in around 50 years. If you are inside, it feels like this whole reputation is fake. I was at IFM at Linkoping University. The department is pretty successful in terms of acquiring research funding, but has negative financial results since circa 2010. Instead of fixing too large expenses, the University builds new buildings and transfers the financial burden on the researchers. In addition to the overheads on the research projects, there are additional fees which are which are specific to LiU and difficult to cover from research funding, such as fees on the office space, enormous fees on IT, fees on the laboratory space (cancelled at the last moment, after laboratories were emptied), fees on the use of basic equipment etc. Because of that, people routinely do not get access to the most primitive and basic equipment they need, such as the Atomic Force Microscope. Moreover, many researchers employed at IFM at the level of assistant professor and higher are now facing a significant risk of unemployment. Some attempt to increase the productivity in their groups by bullying and pressing PhD students and postdoctors. The working environment is bad. Recently, bad administrative decisions motivated by pursuit of easy money put IFM in a center of a research misconduct scandal. It is easy to google, see "forbetterscience Linkoping University". It is certainly not a place where you want to work.