diff --git a/doc/tex/bib.bib b/doc/tex/bib.bib index e5251a4..3014b5a 100644 --- a/doc/tex/bib.bib +++ b/doc/tex/bib.bib @@ -1,5 +1,5 @@ -@article {Clausete15, +@article {Clauset15, author = {Clauset, Aaron and Arbesman, Samuel and Larremore, Daniel B.}, title = {Systematic inequality and hierarchy in faculty hiring networks}, volume = {1}, @@ -9,7 +9,6 @@ @article {Clausete15 publisher = {American Association for the Advancement of Science}, abstract = {The faculty job market plays a fundamental role in shaping research priorities, educational outcomes, and career trajectories among scientists and institutions. However, a quantitative understanding of faculty hiring as a system is lacking. Using a simple technique to extract the institutional prestige ranking that best explains an observed faculty hiring network{\textemdash}who hires whose graduates as faculty{\textemdash}we present and analyze comprehensive placement data on nearly 19,000 regular faculty in three disparate disciplines. Across disciplines, we find that faculty hiring follows a common and steeply hierarchical structure that reflects profound social inequality. Furthermore, doctoral prestige alone better predicts ultimate placement than a U.S. News \& World Report rank, women generally place worse than men, and increased institutional prestige leads to increased faculty production, better faculty placement, and a more influential position within the discipline. These results advance our ability to quantify the influence of prestige in academia and shed new light on the academic system.}, URL = {http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/1/e1400005}, - eprint = {http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/1/e1400005.full.pdf}, journal = {Science Advances} } @@ -88,9 +87,9 @@ @PHDTHESIS{Bellm2011 @PHDTHESIS{Williams02, author = {{Williams}, B.~F.}, title = "{Galaxy dissection: The evolution of the disk of Messier 31 from stellar populations analysis}", - school = {UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON}, + school = {University of Washington}, year = 2002, - month = November, + month = Nov, adsurl = {http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2002PhDT........15W}, adsnote = {Provided by the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System} } @@ -100,7 +99,7 @@ @PHDTHESIS{Williams11 title = "{Supernova remnants as a probe of dust grains in the interstellar medium}", school = {North Carolina State University}, year = 2010, - month = October, + month = Oct, adsurl = {http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010PhDT.......132W}, adsnote = {Provided by the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System} } @@ -146,3 +145,41 @@ @PHDTHESIS{Capelo12 adsurl = {http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2012PhDT.......311C}, adsnote = {Provided by the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System} } +@inproceedings{Charfman80, + Abstract = {Not Available}, + Adsnote = {Provided by the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System}, + Adsurl = {http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1980IAUS...87..645C}, + Author = {{Charfman}, J.~J.}, + Booktitle = {Interstellar Molecules}, + Date-Added = {2016-03-21 20:48:14 +0000}, + Date-Modified = {2016-03-21 20:48:16 +0000}, + Editor = {{Andrew}, B.~H.}, + Pages = {645}, + Series = {IAU Symposium}, + Title = {{Detection of Interstellar BS in the Cirrus Dark Cloud of the Numbum Association - Part One - an Intuitive Model and its Subsequent Observation = [INCREDIBLE!]}}, + Volume = 87, + Year = 1980, + Bdsk-File-1 = {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}, + Bdsk-Url-1 = {http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1980IAUS...87..645C}} + +@electronic{Charfman12, + Author = {{Charfman}, J.~J.}, + Date-Added = {2016-03-21 20:44:38 +0000}, + Date-Modified = {2016-03-21 20:47:08 +0000}, + Month = {October}, + Title = {{A motivational correspondence}}, + Url = {http://jjcharfman.tumblr.com/post/33151387354/a-motivational-correspondance}, + eprint = {http://jjcharfman.tumblr.com/post/33151387354/a-motivational-correspondance}, + Year = {2012}} + +@article{Weissmann12, + Author = {{Weissmann}, Jordan}, + Date-Added = {2016-03-21 20:59:58 +0000}, + Date-Modified = {2016-03-21 21:01:20 +0000}, + Journal = {The Atlantic}, + Month = {Apr}, + Title = {The Wrong People Have Stopped Applying to Law School}, + eprint = {http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/the-wrong-people-have-stopped-applying-to-law-school/255685/}, + Year = {2012}} + + diff --git a/doc/tex/writeup.tex b/doc/tex/writeup.tex index 80f96b3..e8f5a9d 100644 --- a/doc/tex/writeup.tex +++ b/doc/tex/writeup.tex @@ -46,15 +46,15 @@ \section{TO DO} \section{Introduction} -It is difficult to determine the state of the Astronomy job market. Analysis of the science job market often lumps all sciences together, in which case Biologists dominate the statistics, or, if the sciences are separated, Astronomy is usually grouped with Physics (e.g., the Bureau of Labor and Statistics lists 20,000 Physicists and Astronomers jobs in 2014 \footnote{\url{http://www.bls.gov/ooh/life-physical-and-social-science/physicists-and-astronomers.htm}}), where the number of Physicists outnumbers the Astronomers. The American Astronomical Society currently lists it's membership at around 7,000. +It is difficult to determine the state of the Astronomy job market. Analysis of the science job market often lumps all sciences together, in which case Biologists dominate the statistics, or, if the sciences are separated, Astronomy is usually grouped with Physics (e.g., the Bureau of Labor and Statistics lists 20,000 Physicists and Astronomers jobs in 2014 \footnote{\url{http://www.bls.gov/ooh/life-physical-and-social-science/physicists-and-astronomers.htm}}), where the number of Physicists outnumbers the Astronomers. The American Astronomical Society currently lists its membership at around 7,000. \citet{Seth09} build on the work of \citet{Metcalfe08} and looks at the rise of the postdoc era in Astronomy and Astrophysics. They show that as the inflation-adjusted US-Astronomy budget doubled over 20 years, there was a modest increase in PhD production and a huge rise in the number of temporary postdoc positions. -In this paper, we use the ADS to explore the ramifications of that rising postdoc bubble. While the NSF regularly surveys PhD recipients (e.g., \url{http://nsf.gov/statistics/nsf07305/}), even with high participation rates, surveys will tend to be biased against those that leave the field since they will be harder to contact. +In this paper, we use the ADS to explore the ramifications of that rising postdoc bubble. While the NSF regularly surveys PhD recipients\footnote{\url{http://nsf.gov/statistics/nsf07305/}}, even with high participation rates, surveys will tend to be biased against those that leave the field since they will be harder to contact. Thus, we propose to use the publication record of PhDs to track the overall health of the field. -Unfortunately, some faculty still espouse the theory that, ``... the [astronomy faculty job] market is no worse or better than it is has been for at least a decade or two'' (via Charfman \url{http://jjcharfman.tumblr.com/}). The goal of this paper is to check this statement and quantify the astronomy job market by tracking the digital footprints Astronomers leave in ADS. +Unfortunately, some faculty still espouse the theory that, ``... the [astronomy faculty job] market is no worse or better than it is has been for at least a decade or two'' \citep{Charfman12}. The goal of this paper is to check this statement and quantify the astronomy job market by tracking the digital footprints Astronomers leave in ADS. XXX-description of ADS, how it includes peer-reviewed papers as well as things like conference proceedings, posters, grants, etc. @@ -75,7 +75,7 @@ \section{Database Construction}\label{sec:db_construct} For common names (e.g., Williams, B), our author query returns entries from multiple authors. To try and restrict the results to only those papers with the same author as the PhD thesis, we construct a network graph of the ADS entries using \citet{networkx}. -There can be variations in how author names are spelled, including capitalization variations (e.g., VanderPlas and Vanderplas) as well as variation in accent characters. To ensure we match authors correctly, we reduce all author names to the format ``first initial, last name'', and consider names to match if they have a Levenshtein distance less than three. +There can be variations in how author names are spelled, including capitalization variations (e.g., \mbox{VanderPlas} and Vanderplas) as well as variation in accent characters. To ensure we match authors correctly, we reduce all author names to the format ``first initial, last name'', and consider names to match if they have a Levenshtein distance less than three. Every ADS entry is a node in our network. We draw an edge between nodes if they meet any of the following criteria: @@ -90,11 +90,11 @@ \section{Database Construction}\label{sec:db_construct} For our affiliation matching, we consider the affiliations to match if one affiliation is contained in the other. For example, ``University of Washington'' is considered a match to ``Department of Astronomy, University of Washington, Box 351580'' but not ``Washington University''. We also compare the two affiliation strings with the python difflib SequenceMatcher, and consider any affiliations that have a similarity ratio greater than 0.7 as matching. For example ``Berkeley'' and ``UC Berkeley'' have a ratio of 0.8, and would thus be considred matching. -This is an attempt at codifying the common-sense process one would take to infer if it is the same author on two papers. With author's being able to identify their papers with services such as ORCID\footnote{\url{http://orcid.org/}}, it should soon be possible to build a network of papers known to be linked to a single author as a training set for machine learning algorithms. +This is an attempt at codifying the common-sense process one would take to infer if it is the same author on two papers. With authors being able to identify their papers with services such as ORCID\footnote{\url{http://orcid.org/}}, it should soon be possible to build a network of papers known to be linked to a single author as a training set for machine learning algorithms. As the final step, we select only the entries which are linked to the PhD thesis of interest. Some example ADS entry network graphs are shown in Figure~\ref{fig:example_networks}. -Once we have selected only those entries we believe are connected to the thesis author, we demand that at least one of the entries be in a peer-reviewed astronomy journal or a contribution at a major astronomy conference to eliminate physics thesis entries. The list of publications we use to label someone as an astronomer are listed in Table~\ref{table:journal_list}. We consider an ADS listed publication to be a match if any of our selected journals are contained in the publication string, e.g., ``Astrophysical Journal Letters'' would count as a match because it contains ``Astronomical Jounal'' which is in our list. This step is necissary to remove PhD authors who would be better classified as Physists, Geophysists, Planeteray Scientists, etc. +Once we have selected only those entries we believe are connected to the thesis author, we demand that at least one of the entries be in a peer-reviewed astronomy journal or a contribution at a major astronomy conference to eliminate physics thesis entries. The list of publications we use to label someone as an astronomer are listed in Table~\ref{table:journal_list}. We consider an ADS listed publication to be a match if any of our selected journals are contained in the publication string, e.g., ``Astrophysical Journal Letters'' would count as a match because it contains ``Astronomical Jounal'' which is in our list. This step is necessary to remove PhD authors who would be better classified as Physicists, Geophysicists, Planeteray Scientists, etc. We do not limit our search to only first-author publications for either the publication graph construction or determining if the author meets our criterion for being labled an ``astronomer''. @@ -115,7 +115,7 @@ \section{Database Construction}\label{sec:db_construct} Astrophysical Journal & AJ \\ Astronomical Journal & ApJ \\ Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society & MNRAS \\ -Icarus \\ +Icarus & --\\ American Astronomical Society & AAS \\ International Astronomical Union & IAU \enddata @@ -203,7 +203,7 @@ \section{Observations} Figure~\ref{fig:non_1st_frac} shows the fraction of PhDs that are still in ADS, but not as first authors. Each cohort shows a sharp rise in the past 2-3 years. We suspect this could be an artifact where after 8-15 years, some active astronomers have moved to mentoring roles where they do not publish as first authors every year. Thus, if we re-ran the experiment several years from now, those sharp rises would shift to the right. -This seems a less likely explination for the recent PhD cohorts, and a better explination could be that they have left the field, but they are still being listed as authors on projects they contributed to months to years ago. +This seems a less likely explanation for the recent PhD cohorts, and a better explanation could be that they have left the field, but they are still being listed as authors on projects they contributed to months to years ago. \begin{figure} @@ -211,7 +211,7 @@ \section{Observations} \caption{The 4, 6, and 10 year retention fractions as a function of PhD cohort year.\label{fig:retention}} \end{figure} -Figure~\ref{fig:active_curves} shows that recent PhDs are leaving the field much faster than a edcade ago. The values of 70-80\% retention after 4-6 years may not sound so bad. Figure~\ref{fig:1stA_active} perhaps helps explain what is going on. While recent PhDs are still apearing in the ADS archive at the 70-80\% level, they are still apearing as the first-author only 40-50\% of the time. A possible explination is that recent PhDs are leaving the field and their former collaborators are slowly finishing projects which they contributed to. +Figure~\ref{fig:active_curves} shows that recent PhDs are leaving the field much faster than a edcade ago. The values of 70-80\% retention after 4-6 years may not sound so bad. Figure~\ref{fig:1stA_active} perhaps helps explain what is going on. While recent PhDs are still apearing in the ADS archive at the 70-80\% level, they are still apearing as the first-author only 40-50\% of the time. A possible explanation is that recent PhDs are leaving the field and their former collaborators are slowly finishing projects which they contributed to. Another possibility is that few PhDs have first-author ADS entries every year. The cohorts from the 90's and early 00's all see marked downturns at the @@ -221,7 +221,7 @@ \section{Observations} \section{Discussion} -{\bf{The Astronomy labor market is not suffering from a funding crisis, but rather a funding {\emph{allocation}} crisis.}} A simple thought experiment can help illustrate the problem. What would happen if the NSF was able to double it's Astronomy budget? Much of that money would be distributed as grants, that would then be used to hire graduate students and post docs. Very little of the money would go to funding permanent positions. Increasing federal astronomy funding actually exacerbates PhD overproduction. +{\bf{The Astronomy labor market is not suffering from a funding crisis, but rather a funding {\emph{allocation}} crisis.}} A simple thought experiment can help illustrate the problem. What would happen if the NSF was able to double its Astronomy budget? Much of that money would be distributed as grants, that would then be used to hire graduate students and post docs. Very little of the money would go to funding permanent positions. Increasing federal astronomy funding actually exacerbates PhD overproduction. With a large increase in funding from XXXX to XXX, driven largely by NASA, there has been an increase in Astronomy PhD production with little to no increase in long-term positions for these PhDs. This needs to be recognized as a failure of Astronomy funding agencies, as they paid to develop a talented workforce with no plans to retain that talent. Similarly, we must hold professional organizations responsible for failing to advocate for a funding stream allocated for the long-term health of the field. @@ -230,7 +230,7 @@ \section{Discussion} There is also a mostly invisible effect on the field when the career potential drops, the best and brightest may chose to never enter the field. The recent popping of the law school bubble %xxx-see \url{http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/the-wrong-people-have-stopped-applying-to-law-school/255685/} and \url{http://www.lsac.org/lsacresources/data/lsats-administered}, \url{http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/08/21/law_school_applications_more_students_with_high_lsats_are_applying.html} for a starting place. -Given the sharp recent change in PhD retention seen in Figures~\ref{fig:1stA_active} and~\ref{fig:retention}, it is important to also consider the resulting impact the change will have on recruiting new graduate students. We never see the students who chose to not apply for graduate school. This is an important observational bias. If astronomy PhD career prospects start to resemble Art History PhD career prospects, we might expect the technical skills of the two groups of graduate students to become more similar. With poor career prospects, astronomy risks losing the ability to recruit top students. Law schools recently saw a drop in top student applications with the collapse of the legal job market (see \url{http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/the-wrong-people-have-stopped-applying-to-law-school/255685/}). +Given the sharp recent change in PhD retention seen in Figures~\ref{fig:1stA_active} and~\ref{fig:retention}, it is important to also consider the resulting impact the change will have on recruiting new graduate students. We never see the students who chose to not apply for graduate school. This is an important observational bias. If astronomy PhD career prospects start to resemble Art History PhD career prospects, we might expect the technical skills of the two groups of graduate students to become more similar. With poor career prospects, astronomy risks losing the ability to recruit top students. Law schools recently saw a drop in top student applications with the collapse of the legal job market \citep{Weissmann12}. There seems to be little hope that university departments will undertake a grass-roots effort to improve the career pipeline. Thus, it seems to fall to the funding agencies to enforce better behavior. One approach could be to require a minimum ratio of permanent-to-temporaty PhDs (and PhDs in training) in a department before that department can recieve federal funding. This prevents reseach universities from running degree-mill type programs, or from relying too heavily on adjunts for teaching. This also encentivises states to fund colleges at a reasonable level to maintain access to federal funding. @@ -241,8 +241,8 @@ \subsection{Future Work} \begin{itemize} \item{Extending this analysis to countries beyond the US.} \item{For many author networks, it should be possible to programatically guess the author's gender, alowing one to compare career trajectories based on gender.} -\item{One could analyze the network of PhD granting institutions and final hiring institutions to rank the prestige of graduate programs as in \citet{Clausete15}.} -\item{The technique of linking publication hsitories to PhDs can easily be extended to other fields.} +\item{One could analyze the network of PhD granting institutions and final hiring institutions to rank the prestige of graduate programs as in \citet{Clauset15}.} +\item{The technique of linking publication histories to PhDs can easily be extended to other fields.} \end{itemize} \section{Conclusions}