<html>
<body>
From the chronicle for higher education<br><br>
<br>
<font size=2>
<a href="http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2009/01/2009012701c.htm" eudora="autourl">
http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2009/01/2009012701c.htm<br><br>
<br>
</a></font><h2><b>BALANCING ACT<br><br>
<br>
</b></h2><h1><b>A Bad Reputation</b></h1><b>Why are more and more
graduate students turning away from careers at research
universities?<br><br>
</b><a href="mailto:careers@chronicle.com">By MARY ANN MASON</a><br><br>
"I don't want to live your life." Faculty members who train
graduate students hear that remark a lot these days. In a
<a href="http://chronicle.com/cgi2-bin/printable.cgi?article=http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2009/01//free/2009/01/9652n.htm">
major new study</a> of doctoral students' career goals, our research team
received candid responses from more than 8,000 Ph.D. students in all
disciplines at the University of California system. The news was not
good.<br><br>
We may be losing some of the most talented potential academics before
they even arrive for a job interview. In the eyes of many doctoral
students, the research university has a bad reputation one of
unrelenting work hours that allow little room for a satisfying family
life.<br><br>
This is a new generation caught in an old culture. The pool of graduate
students is no longer dominated by young men with stay-at-home wives.
Nearly half of our graduate students are women, and this generation wants
a different kind of life not one where the men work round the clock and
the women take care of the home and children. Instead, these students
envision dual-career families with both parents sharing in child
raising.<br><br>
Family balance weighs heavily on the minds of students in considering
their career choices: 84 percent of women and 74 percent of men
registered the family friendliness of their future workplace as a serious
concern. But they do not see their own universities meeting that goal.
More than 70 percent of women in the survey, and more than half of the
men, <i>did not</i> consider research universities to be family
friendly.<br><br>
The number of young women who want to pursue careers in academic research
declines by 30 percent over the course of their doctoral study, and the
number of men by 20 percent. In explaining their decision, men are more
likely to report that they do not like unrelenting work hours. One male
student in the survey complained that he was "fed up with the
narrow-mindedness of supposedly intelligent people who are largely
workaholic and expect others to be so as well." But most women give
up on academic-research careers for family concerns. As one woman in the
survey said, "I could not have come to graduate school more
motivated to be a research-oriented professor. Now I feel that can only
be a career possibility if I am willing to sacrifice having
children."<br><br>
Women also change career paths to accommodate their partners. Among
academic couples in which both partners are seeking tenure-track jobs
the much-debated "two body" problem women are more likely to
defer their career plans for the benefit of the relationship. As one
female doctoral student explained, "To pursue a tenure-track job in
English you need to be willing to move anywhere in the country to take
the job. The salaries for these positions are not enough to justify a
spouse giving up his job, and many of these positions are not in places
where a spouse could easily find another job, especially if he is an
academic."<br><br>
Role models also make a difference. When we asked women in the survey
whether they viewed research universities as family friendly, their
opinions differed significantly depending on whether or not it was common
in their departments for female professors to have children. Where it was
common, 46 percent of female respondents agreed that research
universities were family friendly. Where it was uncommon, only 12 percent
of women agreed.<br><br>
Not many babies are born in graduate school, even though more than
two-thirds of the female respondents claimed that the optimal time to
have a first child would be between the ages of 28 and 34 the very
years in which they are struggling to obtain their Ph.D.'s. The average
age at which women receive a Ph.D. is 33, meaning that those lucky enough
to find tenure-track jobs right out of graduate school cannot expect to
earn tenure until they are 39. They can see their biological clocks
running out before they achieve the golden ring of tenure, but they feel
helpless.<br><br>
Money is a major consideration for why women don't have children in
graduate school. Few members of the Association of American Universities
(the 62 top-ranked research universities) offer paid maternity leave to
graduate students who are employees or supported on fellowships, and only
a handful provide them with dependent health care for a child.<br><br>
Women in our survey said they didn't have time in graduate school to have
children, and they also feared that doing so would mean they would no
longer be considered serious scholars by their professors. One student
said of her department's attitude toward pregnant doctoral students:
"There is a pervasive attitude that the female graduate student in
question must now prove to the faculty that she is capable of completing
her degree, even when prior to the pregnancy there were absolutely no
doubts about her capabilities and ambition." The majority of women
in the survey, as opposed to only 16 percent of the men, were somewhat or
very concerned that pregnancy would be similarly perceived by future
employers.<br><br>
Academic science offers even more challenges for graduate-student
parents, particularly mothers. The competitive race to achieve scientific
breakthroughs and prove oneself offers little respite for childbirth or
child rearing. The effect of parenthood on the career choices of female
doctoral students supported by federal grants (the source of support for
most students in the sciences) is undeniable. Forty-six percent of female
respondents began their graduate studies working toward a faculty
position in a research university. Babies changed that; only 11 percent
of new mothers indicate they now want to continue on that path.
Fatherhood for men similarly situated appears to have less impact 59
percent began their doctoral programs planning to pursue a
research-intensive academic career and 45 percent still plan to do
so.<br><br>
Where do all the graduate students go when they reject careers at
research institutions?<br><br>
The biggest winners are business and government. Four-year teaching
colleges are also a popular choice, since they are perceived as being the
most family friendly of all career choices in higher education. That may
surprise faculty members at four-year colleges who often complain of
heavy teaching loads and lack of accommodations for pregnancy and child
rearing.<br><br>
Unless the old academic culture which discourages family formation at
all levels but is particularly unfriendly to graduate-student parenthood
radically changes, we are in danger of losing many of our best and
brightest minds to other professions. There has been some movement to
accommodate new faculty parents, but by then it is already too late to
capture many disaffected graduate students who have already found careers
elsewhere.<br><br>
For starters, some of the policies now offered to many faculty members
could be extended to doctoral students who are employees or supported on
fellowships. Those include: paid maternity and paternity leave, paid
dependent health insurance, subsidized child care, relief from teaching
and work obligations for several weeks following childbirth and adoption,
and stopping the Ph.D. career clock after childbirth for both mothers and
fathers.<br><br>
At present, too many graduate students agree with this woman's appraisal
in our survey: "Don't get a Ph.D.! Just don't do it: There are so
many other things in life that you could do for a living that are as
intellectually challenging, pay more, and where women having children is
not a big deal. Academia is stuck in the 1970s at best on this
issue."<br><br>
Mary Ann Mason is a professor and co-director of the Berkeley Law Center
on Health, Economic & Family Security and the author (with her
daughter, Eve Mason Ekman) of <i>Mothers on the Fast Track.</i> She
writes regularly on work and family issues for our Balancing Act column,
and invites readers to send in questions or personal concerns about those
issues. She will answer your questions in a future column. E-mail your
comments to
<a href="mailto:careers@chronicle.com">careers@chronicle.com</a> or
to<a href="mailto:mamason@law.berkeley.edu">mamason</a>
<a href="mailto:mamason@law.berkeley.edu">@law.berkeley.edu</a>. To read
previous Balancing Act columns, see
<a href="http://chronicle.com/cgi2-bin/printable.cgi?article=http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2009/01//jobs/news/archives/columns/balancing_act">
http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/archives/columns/balancing_act</a><br><br>
<div align="center"><br>
<font size=2>
<a href="http://chronicle.com/cgi2-bin/printable.cgi?article=http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2009/01//help/copyright.htm">
Copyright</a> © 2009 by
<a href="http://chronicle.com/cgi2-bin/printable.cgi?article=http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2009/01//">
The Chronicle of Higher Education<br><br>
</a></font>
<a href="http://chronicle.com/cgi2-bin/printable.cgi?article=http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2009/01//subscribe/?src=A71LAD">
Subscribe</a> |
<a href="http://chronicle.com/cgi2-bin/printable.cgi?article=http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2009/01//help/about.htm">
About The Chronicle</a> |
<a href="http://chronicle.com/cgi2-bin/printable.cgi?article=http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2009/01//contact/">
Contact us</a> |
<a href="http://chronicle.com/cgi2-bin/printable.cgi?article=http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2009/01//help/useragreement.htm">
Terms of use</a> |
<a href="http://chronicle.com/cgi2-bin/printable.cgi?article=http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2009/01//help/privacy.htm">
Privacy policy</a> |
<a href="http://chronicle.com/cgi2-bin/printable.cgi?article=http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2009/01//help/">
Help</a><br>
</div>
</body>
</html>