Tag Archives: employment

The urgent need to recognize and value academic labor

Posted on by

Two Harvard professors share their thoughts on the latest from the US Republican Party’s tuition waiver tax plan.

Crowdfunding-smaller

Recently the House of Representatives essentially voted to destroy graduate education in the United States. By taxing tuition waivers as income — and therefore treating their taxable income as two to three times the amount graduate students are actually paid — the Republican tax bill would effectively put graduate study outside of the reach of all but the independently wealthy. While the Senate version of the tax bill does not include this provision, it is far from certain what the final bill after the reconciliation process will look like.

Continue reading →

Changes to the U.S. tax code will harm graduate student mobility and career prospects

Posted on by

Increased financial burden for students will harm science in the long run, says Aliyah Weinstein.

piggybank

A recent editorial in Nature described the harm that newly proposed changes to the United States tax code will have on graduate student finances. If passed, these regulations — ostensibly designed to simplify tax calculations — will eliminate benefits previously given to students. Of particular harm to graduate students and the scientific world would be the elimination of the tax-free status of tuition waivers.

Continue reading →

A picture is worth a thousand words

Posted on by

Karin Bodewits and Philipp Gramlich share their thoughts on how an infographic CV could set you apart from the crowd.

By Karin Bodewits & Philipp Gramlich

In most western countries, the number of PhD graduates in the life sciences has increased by around 50% over the last ten years. As the job market, in both academia and industry, has been largely flat in most countries, this PhD glut is creating undesirable patterns of employment — and unemployment. Some academics are calling for ‘academic birth control’, but the academic system itself profits from the resulting endless supply of cheap labour. Continue reading →

The hidden costs of a career in scientific research

Posted on by

Does a career in science select against those unable to afford frequent relocation, unpaid work and short-term contracts?

Nick Riddiford

That a career in science is demanding is unsurprising. But alongside long hours spent in the lab grappling with abstract concepts, the number of years of education it takes to enter the professional ranks and the increasingly unstable nature of such employment, exists a further demand: money. It’s no secret that science costs money — building the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and sequencing the human genome cost around €3 billion each — but what is less obvious is that entry to a career in science often requires considerable personal financial sacrifice.

save-money-1362382_1920 Continue reading →

It’s time to reduce the number of PhD students, or rethink how doctoral programs work

Posted on by

Gwilym Croucher, University of Melbourne

There are not enough academic jobs vacant in Australia each year to employ all our PhD graduates.

This imbalance risks training an increasing numbers of doctoral students on a promise that cannot be fulfilled: that is future academic employment.

4925267732_492be0075f_o-smaller

We need to accept a hard truth that Australia needs to rethink the design of the PhD and the expectations around it, or radically reduce intake to doctoral programs. Continue reading →

Ageism “as bad as racism”

Posted on by

Ageism in the workplace is as bad as racism and over-50s applying for jobs are five times more likely to get interviews if they do not disclose their age, reports David Payne.

Andy Briggs, the UK government’s new adviser on older workers, told The Times this week that 27% of men of UK men aged 65 to 70 are in paid employment, compared to 15% in 2006. The figure for women is 18% and rising, and one in ten people aged over 70 are still working. And employers have an unconscious age bias.

Employers have an unconscious age bias

“Just as there are resources invested in younger workers in coaching and career development, and similarly when women return from career breaks, companies should invest in their older staff and give them midlife career counselling. It’s in business’s interest to do this,” he said. Continue reading →

Transferable skills: Seek development opportunities

Posted on by
Reply

Team work and good communication are the two most valuable soft skills an academic can develop, says Elizabeth Silva.

Contributor Elizabeth Silva

teamwork-naturejobs-blog

Working effectively as a team means you need to understand how different people communicate.{credit}PhotoDisc/ Getty Images Brad Goodell{/credit}

PhDs commonly assert that their skills and experience are specific to their research niche: valuable at the bench but nowhere else. This perception is reinforced by the extraordinary time spent trouble-shooting experiments and analyzing data in detail. It is certainly true that any PhD moving away from academic research will need to learn new techniques or tools, referred to as hard skills, but most trainees are well-equipped to acquire these as needed. More important is the recognition that the real worth of a research-based PhD is in the development of highly-valued soft skills. It is these skills that many PhDs fail to see in themselves. It is also these skills that PhDs can and should be cultivating during their research, regardless of career goals.

At its best, a PhD selects for creative, rigorous and independent thinkers. A PhD’s greatest training is not in learning the details of a scientific problem but in how to find the answers they seek and critically evaluate the evidence underlying them. It is up to you, as a trainee, to actively seek opportunities to improve these skills, and these abound when you simply look for them at conferences, in journal clubs, in collaborating with colleagues, engaging in seminars and in broader scientific one-on-one conversations. It can be incredibly tempting to narrowly focus your attention on the science and techniques that are relevant to your research niche, but pushing yourself beyond your comfort zone will make you a better researcher and a more valuable employee. Continue reading →

What is the reality for disabled STEM students and job-seekers?

Posted on by
Reply

Nick von Behr, Contributor 

Barriers still exist for disabled graduates looking for jobs in STEM. How can we bridge the gap?

Credit: STEM Disability Transition Group

STEM Disability Transition Group Conference London 2013 Moving up, Moving on{credit}Credit: STEM Disability Transition Group {/credit}

Earlier this month, the STEM Disability Transition Group, of which I am a member, organised a conference about in and out of university transitions for disabled students in the STEM subjects.

The conference was a great success, bringing together a range of delegates from the English university sector, other parts of the education system and employment. Many mentioned how useful it was for them to be able to engage face-to-face on shared issues around supporting disabled students in the STEM subjects.

There were fascinating speakers, including two STEM graduates who explained in a very personal way the obstacles they had to overcome at university and in accessing employment because of their particular disabilities. An official from the UK Government’s Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) explained the Government’s forthcoming employment strategy for the disabled. One shocking statistic was that the employment rate for people with mental health conditions is as low as 15%. While higher levels of qualifications increase the employability of disabled people, there are still significant gaps a few years after graduation between their employment rates and those of the non-disabled. Continue reading →

New squeeze on tenure in the United States?

Posted on by
Reply

Hundreds of tenured staff are taking early retirement deals on offer at US universities, Times Higher Education reported last week. Universities are offering incentives of up to two years’ salary in a move that some see as a way to further reduce the proportion of tenured positions in academia, according to the report.

John Curtis, director of research and public policy at the American Association of University Professors, says that although the incentives are not targeted at tenured staff, they may be contributing to tenure’s continuing decline. “Many of the tenured faculty members who are retiring, or who depart a particular university for a different reason, are not being replaced by a tenure-track colleague,” he told Naturejobs.

The proportion of faculty members in the tenure stream in the United States has been dropping for the past 40 years, falling from around three-quarters in 1970 to around 30% in 2007 (see ‘The changing face of tenure’). Curtis says that faculty members in limited-term or part-time positions are essentially ‘at-will’ employees, referring to the mode of employment that basically means staff can be fired at will without good cause, and are therefore wary of pushing their students too far or speaking out on controversial topics. He says universities moving away from the tenure system are failing to invest in their core mission of teaching and research.

What do you think? Have you been affected by the early retirement of a tenured colleague or professor? Are you struggling to find a tenure-track position? Do you live in a country where there is no tenure system? Post a comment to let us know your thoughts.