Evolution of a functional taxonomy of career pathways for biomedical trainees

Abstract

Several reports have shown that doctoral and postdoctoral trainees in biomedical research pursue diverse careers that advance science meaningful to society. Several groups have proposed a three-tier career taxonomy to showcase these outcomes. This three-tier taxonomy will be a valuable resource for institutions committed to greater transparency in reporting outcomes, to not only be transparent in reporting their own institutional data but also to lend greater power to a central repository.

Visualization of gender, race, citizenship and academic performance in association with career outcomes of 15-year biomedical doctoral alumni at a public research university

“…With increasing calls for transparency of reporting career outcomes [ 3 – 6 ], some academic institutions posted their outcomes data publicly [ 7 – 11 ]; however, it quickly became apparent that these institutions were using a variety of taxonomies to define the same job sectors, types and functions, making it difficult to aggregate data to report collective career trends nationally. A number of groups, including members of the National Institutes of Health Broadening Experiences in Scientific Training (NIH-BEST) grantee consortium, Association of American Medical Colleges’ Graduate Research Education and Training (AAMC GREAT) group, and Rescuing Biomedical Research (RBR), therefore came together in 2017 and proposed a common three-tier taxonomy to standardize these classifications: Tier 1 includes five Employment Sectors, Tier 2 five Career Types, and Tier 3 26 Job Functions [ 12 ], and as shown in S1 Table .…”

“…We used the career in which the alumnus was engaged at the point in time of the data collection and “binned” these data in aggregate for alumni based on number of years from graduation (0–5 years; 6–10 years; and 10–15 years post-graduation). These aggregated career outcomes data were then classified per the unified three-tier taxonomy [ 12 ], and used to ask the following questions: (a) in which Employment Sectors, Career Types, and Job Functions are WSU’s alumni engaged; (b) is there a distinction between the types of careers pursued based on gender, race and U.S. citizenship status of alumni; and (c) is there a correlation of career outcomes with academic characteristics such as GRE scores, doctoral GPA, and Time-to-PhD Degree completion? To our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive report examining the demographics and academic preparedness of biomedical doctoral alumni as they relate to short and long-term career outcomes.…”

Applying Experiential Learning to Career Development Training for Biomedical Graduate Students and Postdocs: Perspectives on Program Development and Design

“…Concern over extended time to degree for those who participate in professional development events, including internships, seems to be unfounded (Schnoes et al, 2018; Cornell University, Rutgers University, University of Chicago, University of North Carolina, Vanderbilt University, Virginia Tech, unpublished results). In fact, spending time exploring and preparing for careers can increase the motivation to complete graduate or postdoctoral training, resulting in a greater focus on research progress (Mathur et al, 2018;Watts et al, 2019;UNC, unpublished data). Efforts to build faculty support can be achieved through broadly sharing doctoral career outcomes with faculty to enhance their awareness of careers that PhD graduates are actually pursuing.…”

Applying inter-rater reliability to improve consistency in classifying PhD career outcomes

“…In response to the current lack of career outcome visibility, organizations and funding agencies have made concerted efforts to encourage and support institutional commitment to public sharing of career outcomes data. Many groups have called for institutional transparency in career outcomes for PhD-trained scientists, including, but not limited to: the National Institutes of Health (NIH) 1 , the Future of Bioscience Graduate and Postdoctoral Training (FOBGAPT) conferences I & II 2,3 , Rescuing Biomedical Research (RBR) 4,5 , Future of Research (FoR) 6 , the UW-Madison Workshop 7 , the National Institute of Health Broadening Experiences in Scientific Training (BEST) Consortium 8,9 , the Coalition for Next Generation Life Science (NGLS Coalition) 10 , Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) 11 , the Association of American Universities (AAU) 12 , the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) 13 , and the National Academy of Sciences 14,15 . Many institutions are now publicly sharing their alumni career outcomes data on websites and in publications 8, [16][17][18][19] .…”