January 15, 2009
Thinking Twice About Jobs at Research Universities
An article on The Chronicle’s Web site today describes the results of an important new survey that shows a growing proportion of graduate students worry about balancing a career and family. As a result, they are turning away from a career at research universities in favor of one at teaching institutions that are perceived as more family friendly.
The survey of 8,400 doctoral students from University of California campuses was conducted in 2006-7 by Mary Ann Mason, a professor at Berkeley and co-director of the Berkeley Law Center on Health, Economic & Family Security, and by Marc Goulden, director of data initiatives in academic affairs at Berkeley.
According to their findings, only 29 percent of women and 46 percent of men rated research-intensive universities as family-friendly workplaces for tenure-track professors. In contrast, 82 percent of men and 73 percent of women considered teaching-centered institutions to be family friendly.
Of particular concern is the finding that many Ph.D. students who had aspired to work at a research university had had a change of heart on the way to the degree:
Forty-five percent of men and 39 percent of the women surveyed intended to become professors at a research institution when they started their doctoral program. However, once into their programs, the numbers dropped to 36 percent and 27 percent, respectively.
That shift was especially pronounced among women in the sciences, where a mere 20 percent of women “still wanted to become professors at research institutions, compared with 31 percent at the outset of their Ph.D. programs,” Audrey Williams June notes in her article.
So tell us, readers: Do those numbers surprise you? What can research universities do to improve their family-unfriendly reputation?
By Gabriela Montell | Posted on Thursday January 15, 2009 | PermalinkComments
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The numbers don’t surprise me at all. Currently, there’s too much competition for far too few faculty positions at top-tier research institutions. When you look at your graduate advisor and see someone in a failing marriage who works 90+ hours per week and lacks even the most basic social skills, you tell yourself: “I NEVER want to be like that.”
— mel Jan 15, 10:45 PM #