Abstract
It has long been thought that biomedical doctoral students pursue careers primarily as tenure-track/tenured faculty at research institutions. Recent reports showed, however, that the majority of biomedical doctoral alumni engage in a variety of careers. Wayne State University (WSU) undertook a project to understand the career trajectories of its biomedical doctoral alumni to create programs to better prepare its students for careers in multiple pathways. Data were collected on career outcomes of WSU’s biomedical doctoral alumni who graduated in a 15-year period from 1999–2014. Careers were classified into three tiers by Employment Sector, Career Types and Job Functions and career paths were examined by alumni gender, race, U.S. citizenship status, and association with certain academic characteristics. Several statistically significant differences in career paths among all demographics were found. For example, women were more likely to be in teaching and providing healthcare, men in faculty and research; Black alumni pursued careers in Government at higher rates and Whites in For-Profit careers; Asians and non-U.S. citizens spent more time in training positions than others. There was no association of academic characteristics such as GRE, GPA, and Time-to-Degree completion with careers in the two largest sectors of Academia or For-profit. Since our trainees are engaged in this rich variety of careers essential to advancing biomedical science and research nationally, it is imperative for the graduate training community to embrace all careers as successful, and transform the model for biomedical doctoral training to foster student success across this broad career spectrum.
Highlights
Academic institutions have long held the belief that biomedical doctoral students pursue careers primarily as tenure-track/tenured faculty in research institutions, and training programs focused almost exclusively on preparing students for academic careers
In 2015 Wayne State University (WSU)’s Graduate School launched an Alumni Census Project in which the current employment information of 866/950 (91%) biomedical doctoral alumni who graduated from 1999–2014 from biomedically-related programs were collected, as previously described [7]
We examined the association of academic characteristics with the two largest Employment Sectors of Academia and For-profit, since participation in other sectors is too small to allow for meaningful comparisons
Summary
Academic institutions have long held the belief that biomedical doctoral students pursue careers primarily as tenure-track/tenured faculty in research institutions, and training programs focused almost exclusively on preparing students for academic careers. With increasing calls for transparency of reporting career outcomes [3,4,5,6], some academic institutions posted their outcomes data publicly [7,8,9,10,11]; it quickly became apparent that these institutions were using a variety of taxonomies to define the same job sectors, types and functions, making it difficult to aggregate data to report collective career trends nationally. A number of groups, including members of the National Institutes of Health Broadening Experiences in Scientific Training (NIH-BEST) grantee consortium, Association of American Medical Colleges’ Graduate Research Education and Training (AAMC GREAT) group, and Rescuing Biomedical Research (RBR), came together in 2017 and proposed a common three-tier taxonomy to standardize these classifications: Tier 1 includes five Employment Sectors, Tier 2 five Career Types, and Tier 3 26 Job Functions [12], and as shown in S1 Table
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
