Turned Off From An Academic Career
Updated: Mar 31
TURNED OFF FROM AN ACADEMIC CAREER:ENGINEERING AND COMPUTING DOCTORAL STUDENTS AND THE REASONS FOR THEIR DISSUASION
Ebony O. McGee, Dara Naphan-Kingery, FaheemahN. Mustafaa, Stacey Houston, Portia Botchway Jeremy LynchFisk
When Ph.D. students begin a doctoral programin the United States (U.S.), they get an up-close look at academic facultylife. Doctoral students today are socialized to understand that most contemporary faculty positions require a wider array of capacities than what was expected of prior generations, be-cause expectations for scholarly productivity have increased at a rapid pace (Gonzales, 2013; Gonza-les, Martinez, & Ordu, 2014). The tenure-track research faculty path subjects new faculty members to persistent stress, grueling workloads, funding inequities, intense pressures to perform consistently at one’s highest capacity, and tenure uncertainty (DeMillo, 2011; Larson, Ghaffarzadegan, & Xue, 2014). Given the strains on today’s faculty, this paper explores the primary reasons why a group of engineer-ing and computing doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers in the U.S. are not attracted to pursuing academic research and teaching careers.