NYT: So Many Research Scientists, So Few Openings as Professors

Funny. Acceptance rates for publication are about 5% for NEJM and 7-8% for Nature.

Yes, but what are the mid range ACT scores?

Simply is true Re #38

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2015/02/university_hiring_if_you_didn_t_get_your_ph_d_at_an_elite_university_good.html

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/02/13/study-suggests-insular-faculty-hiring-practices-elite-departments

@barrons , please note the title of this thread “research scientists”. The two links you provide refer to the same study that evaluated job prospects in the fields of “history, business and computer science”. I stand by my claim. Go to the web sites of research universities and look at the biographies of the faculty in scientific research programs. You will find that many, if not most, research faculty did not receive their PhD’s at top 10 or even top 20 (per US News ranking) campuses. I am referring specifically to scientific specialty programs that are not MD/PHD related.

Here is a link to departments at Oregon State University. I picked this campus at random ( I would love to live in Oregon) but you will find the same pattern at any large campus.
http://www.science.oregonstate.edu/academics
If you follow the links to each department and to individual faculty pages you will find that quite a few list their PhD institution. Few of these colleges would be considered ‘elite’ but they are great at training researchers in specific fields.

Colleges will continue to conduct research in every aspect of the natural world and will continue to hire and offer tenure to competent scientists in these fields. Obviously if someone can’t muster the will to switch from biomedical research to, say, fish toxicology or other more esoteric line of investigation then their options will be limited. But flexibility has always been the cornerstone of a successful career, regardless of discipline.

@barrons - For a PhD, working with Dr Big-Expert-in-the-Field who has a raft of publications in Top-Journal, and lots, and lots of solid connections in the field, is what matters. Dr. BEitF can be at Bathtub U, and the people in the field will still be beating a path to her/his door.

And then there’s the whole issue of women being “harassed out of science”:

http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/07/how-women-are-harassed-out-of-science/492521/

You are all sadly mistaken. Read the full study here. They believe it generalizes to ALL fields. That’s why they chose 3 very different areas. Find a better study or stay misinformed.

http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/advances/1/1/e1400005.full.pdf.

Regardless of what the authors “believe” in the absence of any data, you simply can’t extrapolate the pattern of career trajectories in computer science, business and history to careers in the natural sciences, where the bulk of research takes place at land-grant universities. Why do you suppose they did not include a single ‘hard’ science profession in their analysis? The answer is simple if you spend a few minutes to look at the raw data available on every state flagship web site. Most of the research in natural sciences conducted at land-grant universities isn’t even carried out at "elite"schools, which have historically focussed on the liberal arts.

Oh, and Aaron Clauset, the lead author of the study you cite, received his PhD from the most elite of institutions, The University of New Mexico.

“computer science, business, and history”

LOL. Gotta wonder how their statement that data from only those three specific fields were enough to make formal evaluations for “characterizing general patterns in faculty placement in academia” got past the peer-reviewers.