> My daughter's boyfriend has been taking years
> to get his Ph.D in Neuroscience from UCLA. At
> long last it appears he is actually going to have it
> this spring. * * * Now he wants to move over
> to Cal-Tech. He will only get a third more than
> he is getting now - under $30,000 to be exact to
> work on a post- doctorate at Cal-Tech.
>
> I thought when one gets a PhD that they are qualified
> to be a professor and get a decent salary?
You don't explain why you presumed this to be so, but, anyway, it most certainly is not correct - especially in/for real sciences (which includes the variants of neurochemistry) at "major" institutions like UCLA, Cal-Tech, and the like.
> What is going on here?
Some whose last most recent academic credential is a Ph.D. in molecular biology or some branch of the neurosciences who do not want and do not find private sector employment (e.g., with a pharmaceutical manufacturer) or in some sort of civil service (non-academic) position (e.g., in some municipality's or county's public health dept. testing This-or-That biological substance) might indeed find a (primarily) teaching job at some small private or municipal or community (i.e., for want of a better term, "low level") college; but so doing also takes one out of the (academic) science loop (including employment with the NIH or one of its constituent or related entities). IOW, the "post-doc" option is a necessary step for almost all scientists who want to do research at institutions comparable to Cal-Tech, including almost all medical schools in the country.
Note, too, that, for the most part, and arguably very much unlike in the "arts" and "humanities" including in economics (even with cut-backs in tenure granting in those non-science fields), the larger and more scientifically prestigious the institution, the more "tenure" is increasingly just a nominal term, since, for the most part, research scientists who remain that will find themselves in effect re-applying for their jobs every two or three years because of the need to apply for and to be awarded peer reviewed research grants as a condition of continued employment. Indeed, other than for a comparatively decreasing number of some good state universities (mostly in the southeast and southwest), larger and even (and, perhaps, primarily) the most prestigious of research institutions rely for faculty salaries on the "overhead [for salaries, etc.]" portions of NIH and like grants.