The term
"academic research careers" refers to jobs and professions that involve conducting research in an academic setting.
Full definition
The minority of respondents who had left academia reported doing so mainly due to obstacles inherent to the current system
of academic research careers, not lack of desire.
After a preconference job - hunting workshop on Friday at which University of Pittsburgh neuroscientists Michael Zigmond and Beth Fischer discussed the challenge of landing a job as a professor at a research institution and suggested alternatives to academia, a handful of students told Science Careers that they had been planning to
pursue academic research careers prior to the workshop.
An investigation by Science has identified at least two dozen such researchers who have managed to resume productive
academic research careers after being debarred.
A recent study on the career preferences of science graduate students, published in PLoS ONE, has attracted a lot of attention for one of its conclusions: that student interest
in academic research careers declines over the course of graduate school.
The limiting factor on young scientists» abilities to
start academic research careers is thus the number of available faculty positions, which over recent decades has fallen farther and farther behind the number of scientists the system is producing.
Despite efforts to promote research careers in industry, government, and the nonprofit sector, an independent
academic research career remains the top goal for many budding biologists.
In the early cohort of bio / life scientists, for example, 78 % were positive
about academic research careers; 64 % held positive opinions of academic teaching careers; 71 % found the prospect of working in government appealing; 59 % found careers at a large firm in industry «attractive» or «extremely attractive.»
In service of that institutional need, academic culture has fostered the misleading narrative that graduate school and postdoc positions are solely intended to prepare young scientists
for academic research careers rather than for a range of nonacademic and even nonresearch endeavors.
In graduate school, only industry careers were mentioned as an alternative to
academic research careers.
Awards are for women who are starting
their academic research careers.
Certainly, the days in which a bench biologist with basic scripting skills could land a programming job in industry are probably gone, but I think opportunities still abound for biologists seeking
an academic research career.
I have learnt that it is better to sometimes decide to call it a day and that even if you do so, you can always find an environment where you can use and develop the skills you've learnt from
your academic research career.
Here's the result that has gotten the most press:
Academic research careers were less popular with the late cohorts than the early ones in all disciplines, suggesting, perhaps, that graduate students are disillusioned by exposure to the lives and careers of their faculty advisers.
Even though, at least in principle, I still had two more attempts ahead of me, I worried that soon I would have to either give up my dream of
an academic research career or abandon my home country.
Because writing and obtaining grants is a critically important aspect of
an academic research career in pediatric hematology - oncology, all fellows are encouraged to write a grant proposal in support of their research.
Deeply committed scientists like Voglmaier are proving hard to find as attrition exacerbates a shortage of clinicians interested in
academic research careers.