Between 1980 and 2015, over one million Americans defended their PhD theses. The idea is that their PhD trajectory is the start of their academic career in which they do research, teach and supervise students. It makes sense that not everyone becomes a professor, but the intention is that there should be equal opportunities to grow in academia through a PhD position. In practice, this does not always seem to be the case, says Hofstra. “The higher up the academic ladder you go, the fewer women and non-white academics you find in the United States.”
Positive role models
To find out how this happened, Hofstra delved into a huge database full of PhD theses. Not to read the theses themselves, but to analyse their metadata. “You can find lots of information in the metadata of a thesis, such as the supervisor, the academic field and the university the PhD candidate was studying at. Of course, these factors are important too: obtaining a PhD at a prestigious university or having a well-cited academic as a supervisor can help. Independent of these factors, we can see that women and non-white academics structurally have less of a chance for a career in academia.
Although female and non-white academics are a minority, Hofstra and his colleagues found that the opportunities for these academics increase if they have a supervisor with a similar background. “These supervisors can be positive role models for PhD candidates because they know how to succeed in academia. They can explain the route.” This effect was seen for both women and non-white academics.
Other perspectives
It is important to know, but it is because these groups are a minority in academia that there are not enough female and non-white mentors, at least for the moment. “There are mechanisms in place that perpetuate inequality. We have to be aware of them. How can we ensure that these under-represented groups feel welcome in academia and promote equality?” Hofstra mentions mentoring programmes so mentors from all backgrounds can get their mentoring skills to the same level as female and non-white mentors.
Another option Hofstra mentions is taking a critical look at the composition of research committees that deal with research proposals. “We have not looked into these, but it follows that people with different backgrounds bring different perspectives. Research committees may not recognise the value of these kinds of proposals and an academic may therefore step down.”
Academic talent is lost
This study has provided a clear picture of inequality using big data in the United States. But what are things like in the Netherlands? "There is an ongoing PhD study that is researching this. We also want to identify temporal trends more clearly. Slowly but surely, things are getting more diverse, but this can happen much faster. We want researchers to be judged on their academic achievements and not to be biased towards female and non-white academics." Currently, this bias is present and it comes at the expense of academic talent.”
Want to read the whole paper? https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/23780231221085118
Photo: Gown room Radboud University. Phot by Dick van Aalst