
The bachelor’s to Ph.D. STEM pipeline no longer leaks more women than men - tomp
http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00037/full
======
cryoshon
I've discussed this in the past, but the basic reasoning here is that more and
more people ("men" are singled out for this article but it's irrelevant) are
leaving academia and not looking back, along with rising populations of people
opting to not enter academia in the first place.

Science offers a shitty value proposition: spend your youth in the laboratory
for poverty-wages, then your late youth doing the same for poor wages, then
your middle age doing the same for poor wages, then maybe you become a
professor and make average to decent wages. Sure, science is interesting, and
for a certain kind of personality (mine, for instance) the bullshit can be
tolerated, for a time. Some people can tolerate it forever because tolerating
bullshit means they get to research something that is intensely interesting to
them.

But everyone sees the writing on the wall-- science is not a path to a healthy
middle class lifestyle for the current generation, and wasn't for the previous
generation of scientists either. In fact, I reckon you'd have to go back to
the boomers if you want to see people who really had a good thing going in the
scientific establishment. There is no opportunity to "hit it out of the park"
and somehow come back with a windfall.

~~~
rayiner
No, you don't understand.

Science is its own reward. You're pushing forward the frontier of human
knowledge! You should share everything you learn for free with the world, and
just be happy that you left the world a better place than you found it.

Money is such a lesser reward anyway compared to the adulation scientists get.
After all, history will remember the guy who discovered the capacitive
touchscreen, not the one that made billions putting it into a phone.

~~~
toolz
The world would be a better place if we all had this thought process, but I
could never have this perspective. Even when I first read your comment, my gut
reaction was disgust. It took me a moment to reflect and even then I know I
couldn't condition myself to think like this. I crave external approval and as
much as scientists might think of themselves, the world at large see's you as
a tool used by politicians and entrepreneurs.

Thanks for being able to have a healthy perspective and I hope you can
convince more people to do the same.

~~~
wfo
I'm pretty sure his post was dripping with sarcasm.

~~~
d4rti
I'd agree - I'd bet more people know the name Steve Jobs than Bill Buxton.

------
danieltillett
The reason is more men are leaking. Unless you think this a good thing then
this is not progress. We would not think we are making progress in equalising
gender differences in life expectancy by bumping off little old ladies.

~~~
tomp
Why would "more PhDs" equate with "more progress"? Maybe the people
purposefully avoid PhDs, because they don't consider them valuable enough?

~~~
brighteyes
Yes, exactly: Maybe men irrationally pursued more PhDs than made sense, while
women made more logical decisions all along, and men's lower rates reflect
them improving their life choices.

~~~
kyzyl
Maybe both men and women irrationally pursued more PhDs than made sense, but
the men were historically more likely granted the opportunity to find out for
themselves why it was a bad idea ;-)

(I get your point though. "Just sayin'", as the phrase goes)

------
cup
I had a long discussion with my old supervisor last week about the merit of a
PhD (in Biology, Physiology, Pharmaceutics and that genre of field) and she
mentioned to me that she doesn't recommend students pursue them anymore.

It was a sad conversation but not surprising. So many students, myself
included, invest such significant portions of their lives pursuing a level of
education that statistically won't be useful for them or society.

There are no jobs available, funding is drying up and specifically theres an
over supply of PhD qualified researchers out there. Thats not to say doing a
PhD isn't a bad idea, but from an academic persective there are better
alternatives. Especially in the biology field.

After the 7-10 years it takes to pursue a PhD one could become a clinical
specialist, employed with arguably better working conditions and research
prospects.

~~~
ousta
In most of european countries only fools will expect to do a PHD and get money
out of it. it is common knowledge that you will gt a PHD, some prestige around
it, some students will go private with luck if they work on some employable
field such as a PHD thesis on machine learning for instance but most of the
other PHDs will end up teachers which isnt the best pay ever in europe. and
this is true for the real scientific PHDs. I am not talking about "PHDs" on
gender studies, sociology or psychology which is a synonym for "please do not
employ me my degree is useless". at the end it is really the subject of your
PHD that will decide how much you will make. Even more than the outcome of
your thesis...

~~~
cup
The suggestion that a psychology, sociology or even gender studies PhD is
useless reeks of ignorance. A serious body of academic work, no matter what
It's field, is important for the advancement of our society, no matter how
gradual.

The maxim that no one goes into a PhD to get rich is true, but at the same
time, no one goes into a PhD to be unemployed or to become a teacher. Theres
no reason to invest a decade doing primary research when an undergraduate with
a masters in teaching will suffice.

~~~
ousta
I meant "employability" of the PHD is useless. and I do not agree with any
body of academic work being 'important for the advancement of our society'.
looking decades back and now i can guarantee you that a lot of bodies of
academic work contributed to make our society regress rather than advance.
Computer science is even one example of this, where litterally some guys spend
two years of PHD to look where to put a "next button" on a UI.

I know many people that did a PHD on the sole basis to become a teacher as
this was the best they could aim for in terms of pay/benefits.

~~~
cfallin
I'd be interested in seeing a citation for that "next button" work, too. In
general HCI is a serious (and useful) field.

And while I agree that there's high variability in quality of work, both
between and within disciplines, I would argue that there have been mountains
of _really fundamentally useful_ things that have come out of CS academia (and
EE / computer engineering academia to support it), both historically and
recently. Everything from programming language theory and optimizing
compilers, to modern computer architecture, to all of the fundamental
algorithms and data structures, to the basis for modern machine learning and
distributed systems and ... I could go on. Industry applies and polishes it,
but (in my experience at least) there's simply no way that most of industry
would tolerate the multi-year risky projects that lead to useful
breakthroughs.

------
kelukelugames
Proud STEM PhD drop out from MIT reporting in. Aside from a few who went into
consulting or banking, I make way more as a code monkey than those who stayed
to finish.

~~~
ska
And if that's how you are measuring "success", then you obviously made the
right choice for you.

Don't get me wrong, I left academia (albeit further on) and think there are
lots of sensible reasons to leave.

However if the relatively low pay is either a) a surprise to you or b) a known
problem for you when entering a PhD program - then you just didn't do your
homework and probably shouldn't have entered the program. Of course sometimes
it takes a while to work this out for yourself.

With a few very specific exceptions, entering a PhD program for the money is
inept.

~~~
kelukelugames
It's one thing to do your homework and another to be eat ramen when you are 25
years old.

~~~
arcanus
not really -- ska point was that graduate school in STEM is transparently not
about maximizing your salary potential. He is completely correct.

I went to a USNEWS top-25 undergraduate program, and had offers at consulting
firms, ibanks and science phd programs. My top-10 USNEWS phd program was quite
open about a 22k-30k salary for the duration of your phd. The substitution
effect had I chosen another route (back of the envelope) was a few 100k in
lost earnings.

No one does science (in particular, a phd) for the money, because these are
smart, academically accomplished individuals who could find more profitable
work elsewhere.

~~~
kyzyl
I mostly agree, but I interpret kelukelugames's comment as saying that it's
one thing to do your homework and be _aware_ of what you're getting yourself
into, but it's quite another thing to _actually_ be living on ramen in your
mid- to late-twenties. That is to say, people--especially your typical 22 y.o.
undergrad--probably often overestimate their willingness to fully _live_ the
life of a PhD/postdoc, regardless of how much they "aren't in it for the
money".

------
lambda
Hmm. Some interesting data, but it doesn't really cover anything like the full
"pipeline", which goes past the PhD to postdocs and then to faculty positions.
And of course, that's only covering academic exits, while going into industry
is another avenue, and there has been no analysis of whether the pipeline from
bachelors to industry has been leaky in STEM fields.

Now, hitting a cap on the percentage of people entering the "pipeline" does
mean that there's only so much effect that the "leaky pipeline" could have.
The self-selection that happens even upon entering a bachelor's program is a
pretty large factor, which needs to be studied; is it due to differences at
the high school level? Difference in perceived job prospects, perhaps due to
problems further down the pipeline like postdoc and tenure positions? Even if
the pipeline is only getting a small percentage of women up front, it's
possible that feedback from further down the line is what is causing that
disparity.

Anyhow, it is good to have some concrete numbers on at least this portion of
the pipeline, to inform where efforts should be spent. It sounds like the
bachelors to PhD portion was fairly leaky in the past, so efforts to improve
that have helped, but now effort would be better spent on looking at other
aspects of the system.

------
grandinj
Isn't it obvious that this is just supply and demand at work? There are now
too many people chasing a career in academia, which is driving the price down.

~~~
homulilly
Maybe in part, but that ignores the fact demand for academia has gone down
what with all the cuts to science and education.

As a society, we value research and knowledge less and less.

~~~
T-A
[http://www.aaas.org/sites/default/files/Agencies_4.jpg](http://www.aaas.org/sites/default/files/Agencies_4.jpg)

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Right, now measure on a per-capita basis or on the basis of percentage of GDP.
At least it's adjusted for bloody inflation.

~~~
T-A
So more dollars are cuts if population or GDP grows faster?

Does the same principle apply to other quantities too? Let's try a fun one:
atmospheric CO2 concentration. From 1980 to 2012, it grew roughly 17% [1].
During the same period, world population grew 57% [2], and gross world product
grew 144% [3]. So atmospheric CO2 has been drastically cut? :P

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_at...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_atmosphere#/media/File:AIRS_Carbon_Dioxide_Vertical.png)

[2]
[http://www.geohive.com/earth/his_history3.aspx](http://www.geohive.com/earth/his_history3.aspx)

[3]
[http://kushnirs.org/macroeconomics/gdp/gdp_world.html](http://kushnirs.org/macroeconomics/gdp/gdp_world.html)

