Shaping the Future of Research: a perspective from junior scientists

McDowell, Gary S.; Gunsalus, Kearney T. W.; MacKellar, Drew C.; Mazzilli, Sarah A.; Pai, Vaibhav P.; Goodwin, Patricia R.; Walsh, Erica M.; Robinson-Mosher, Avi; Bowman, Thomas A.; Kraemer, James A.; Erb, Marcella L.; Schoenfeld, Eldi; Shokri, Leila; Jackson, Jonathan D.; Islam, Ayesha; Mattozzi, Matthew D.; Krukenberg, Kristin A.; Polka, Jessica

doi:10.12688/f1000research.5878.1

Cited by 41 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…PhD training in immunology, if designed for both future societal needs and employment options, can teach key skills applicable to a much wider and more varied range of careers than working as a Federally-funded Principal Investigator at a University or Research Institute. Interestingly, in this regard I largely agree with the major points made in a recent report from the Future of Research Symposium (F1000), held to provide junior scientists with a forum to influence discussions about the future of biomedical research in the US [4]; see Box 1 for a summary of key relevant points from the report.…”

supporting

confidence: 63%

Yes, we need PhD immunologists!

Bishop

2015

Trends in Immunology

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supporting

confidence: 63%

Yes, we need PhD immunologists!

Bishop

2015

Trends in Immunology

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“…Given that many students report a lack of information about non-academic career options [15] this finding suggest that better information about a variety of career pathways earlier in the PhD may be beneficial [6,32]. Workshops and information sessions are offered by many institutions [33] but may have a limited ability to truly convey what it means to work in other sectors.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Declining Interest in an Academic Career

Roach

Sauermann

2017

SSRN Journal

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There is increasing evidence that science & engineering PhD students lose interest in an academic career over the course of graduate training. It is not clear, however, whether this decline reflects students being discouraged from pursuing an academic career by the challenges of obtaining a faculty job or whether it reflects more fundamental changes in students' career goals for reasons other than the academic labor market. We examine this question using a longitudinal survey that follows a cohort of PhD students from 39 U.S. research universities over the course of graduate training to document changes in career preferences and to explore potential drivers of such changes. We report two main results. First, although the vast majority of students start the PhD interested in an academic research career, over time 55% of all students remain interested while 25% lose interest entirely. In addition, 15% of all students were never interested in an academic career during their PhD program, while 5% become more interested. Thus, the declining interest in an academic career is not a general phenomenon across all PhD students, but rather reflects a divergence between those students who remain highly interested in an academic career and other students who are no longer interested in one. Second, we show that the decline we observe is not driven by expectations of academic job availability, nor by related factors such as postdoctoral requirements or the availability of research funding. Instead, the decline appears partly due to the misalignment between students' changing preferences for specific job attributes on the one hand, and the nature of the academic research career itself on the other. Changes in students' perceptions of their own research ability also play a role, while publications do not. We discuss implications for scientific labor markets, PhD career development programs, and science policy.

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“…Ideally, these workshops should be convened at the grassroots level and publish their findings. An admirable model is a very large October 2014 workshop that was organized in Boston by postdoctoral trainees whose conclusions were published in a thoughtful 17-page summary (2). We are also aware of several universitybased efforts in 2015, including major upcoming efforts at the University of Wisconsin, Duke University, and the University of Michigan (see, for example, https://research.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%