Even women & minorities who have earned their PhDs are 55% less likely to pursue a career in research.

Dave Huber at The College Fix has the story:

Women and some minorities show less interest in research faculty careers

Diversophiles beware: With career choice factors taken into account, women and “under-represented” minorities with Ph.D.’s are up to 55 percent less likely to show a “high interest” in pursuing university faculty careers in research.

The study published in the science journal PLOS ONE, “Biomedical Science Ph.D. Career Interest Patterns by Race/Ethnicity and Gender,” suggests that it takes more than just getting these groups interested in the field in the first place — the interest (or, one might say, the “overriding ambiance of diversity”) has to be sustained.

Minding the Campus reports:

At the point of Ph.D. completion, after controlling for factors such as research productivity, mentoring, confidence, and so forth (all factors that could affect career choices) women and members of under-represented minority groups are 36 to 55 percent less likely than white and Asian men to report high interest in faculty careers at research-intensive universities. Furthermore, under-represented minority women are nearly twice as likely as all other groups to report high interest in careers outside of research.