Timeline for What ratio of PhD graduates in STEM fields ultimately end up as (tenured) professors?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
25 events
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| Aug 30, 2017 at 12:48 | comment | added | badroit | Somehow the 42 votes beside the infogram makes it more ominous. | |
| Aug 28, 2017 at 21:26 | comment | added | GEdgar | I guess that 0.45% is for Britain? No wonder so many British academics come to the US. | |
| Aug 28, 2017 at 18:47 | answer | added | badroit | timeline score: 6 | |
| Apr 13, 2017 at 12:49 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://academia.stackexchange.com/ with https://academia.stackexchange.com/
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| Mar 13, 2014 at 13:48 | history | edited | badroit | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
add link to follow up question
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| S Mar 8, 2014 at 21:20 | history | bounty ended | badroit | ||
| S Mar 8, 2014 at 21:20 | history | notice removed | badroit | ||
| Mar 8, 2014 at 21:20 | vote | accept | badroit | ||
| Mar 4, 2014 at 10:02 | comment | added | StrongBad | @gerrit that is assuming that professors are the only one allowed to produce PhD students. In my UK department only about 10% of those allowed to supervise PhD students are "Professors". This reduces the number by an order of magnitude, but it is still too big. | |
| Mar 3, 2014 at 20:20 | answer | added | cbeleites | timeline score: 39 | |
| Mar 3, 2014 at 19:12 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | @cbeleites: Yes, I agree, which is why I mentioned that my statistic was specific to mathematics. Moreover it also varies regionally: 7 PhD students / professor would in the US be extraordinarily high. (E.g. my department has about 30 faculty and about 50 PhD students.) | |
| Mar 3, 2014 at 18:55 | comment | added | cbeleites | @PeteL.Clark: number of PhD students per professorship varies much across disciplines. E.g. the German Statistische Bundesamt reports on average 6 PhD students/prof with a range from 15 in engineering to 1 in arts. Science and maths being slightly more than average with 7 PhD students/prof. | |
| Mar 3, 2014 at 18:32 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | @gerrit: In mathematics, that is not only "a lot"; it is demonstrably more than maximal. See genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/extrema.php | |
| S Mar 3, 2014 at 18:17 | history | bounty started | badroit | ||
| S Mar 3, 2014 at 18:17 | history | notice added | badroit | Authoritative reference needed | |
| Feb 26, 2014 at 19:21 | answer | added | gerrit | timeline score: 24 | |
| Feb 26, 2014 at 19:06 | comment | added | gerrit | If a professor works for 30 years (say ages 40-70) and the situation is steady-state, a 1:200 ratio would require a professor to graduate 6-7 PhD students per year. That seems like a lot. | |
| Feb 26, 2014 at 11:12 | comment | added | Tara B | Indeed it is not at all unusual in the UK to go through one's entire academic career without ever attaining the title 'professor'. I'm not sure professorships in the UK are as rare as endowed chairs in the US, though. In my department (in Scotland) 1/3 of the permanent staff are currently professors. | |
| Feb 26, 2014 at 8:53 | answer | added | xLeitix | timeline score: 45 | |
| Feb 26, 2014 at 8:06 | comment | added | Mark Meckes | Furthermore, I believe (though I'm not certain) that many (maybe most?) full-time, researching, career academics in the UK never hold any position with the word "professor" in the title. This is totally different from the US, where all tenure-track positions (and some non-tenure-track positions) are called some flavor of "professor". | |
| Feb 26, 2014 at 8:03 | comment | added | Mark Meckes | A major question here is what "Professor" is supposed to mean --- academic titles in the UK work differently than in the US. Being a full professor in the UK is similar to having an endowed chair in the US, which very few US scientists ever reach. | |
| Feb 26, 2014 at 7:54 | answer | added | algorithmic_fungus | timeline score: 7 | |
| Feb 26, 2014 at 7:37 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/#!/StackAcademia/status/438578603589373952 | ||
| Feb 26, 2014 at 6:57 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | You're right: the 0.45% figure is literally incredible. I did some "Fermi problem" type calculations and came up with the idea that in mathematics about 20% of PhDs get tenure at a research institution (also Gerald Edgar mentioned this figure on mathoverflow.net) and that maybe 30-40% get tenure at some institution: this is in the US. In other STEM fields there are more industrial jobs, but I would be shocked if the average figure for STEM PhDs in the US were below 10%. (I don't include this as an answer because you want more formalized analysis, not guesswork...) | |
| Feb 26, 2014 at 5:42 | history | asked | badroit | CC BY-SA 3.0 |