When the Survey of Earned Doctorates was released in December, much of the analysis focused on the worsening job market for those with new doctorates in humanities fields.
But research presented this weekend at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science -- based on that survey and other federally sponsored data -- suggested that the job market for those in many scientific fields is also taking a beating. And this is so much the case that tenure-track jobs should now be considered "alt-ac" positions (or alternative academic careers) because they are not the norm anymore for new Ph.D.s, in the words of Paula Stephan, a professor of economics at Georgia State University who specializes in the intersection of economics and science.
In several science disciplines, she said, so many young scholars are being forced to go for postdocs rather than tenure-track jobs (even a few years out of doctoral education) that career paths are shifting in ways that will hurt science. "Things weren't really so great before 2008, and since (the start of the economic downturn), they have gotten much worse," Stephan said in an interview about her presentation.
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