The Fora: A Higher Education Community

Given that the "entry point" is 2 papers, and the "exit" point is not publishing for a year...

It's also possible that, say, the attrition in physics just happens before this study starts, and once people have "established" they're more likely to stay. There needs to be a parallel study of when someone has two papers published- for me this would be halfway through my PhD, for some fields this is before starting grad school.

I'd argue that the fact that the fields with the fewest women have the most similar attrition rates indicates that those fields lose people sooner, which fits well with the data I've seen for survival analysis of interest entering college -> graduating college -> finishing a PhD -> finishing a postdoc -> getting a faculty job.

Quote from: dismalist on Today at 10:11:39 AMI find discussion of group differences tedious in the extreme. There is no reason for two groups to be equal in anything. Men are taller than women. Men are over-represented in construction, sewer maintenance, and trucking. Blacks are over-represented in basketball.

I don't have any problem with noting group differences; my problem is with assuming that certain kinds of differences must be due to some nefarious intentions or actions of someone or other.

QuoteWomen's groups lobby to increase representation in all kinds of academic fields, but not in sanitation departments.

As noted, certain kinds of differences don't seem to need any explanation by the people who assume other differences are due to bad causes.

Quote from: jimbogumbo on Today at 09:22:07 AMfizzycist: we ar actually in complete agreement. Imo this article gives us no useful info regarding the drop off in female participation after high school or the early undergrad data. Physics and Math are essentially identical at those decision points.


Aside: I would greatly enjoy being a fly on the wall if a certain trio (picture a physicist, a mathematician and dismalist*) were passionately arguing.


* If dismalist is unavailable, substitute with a random economist.

A chemist, a physicist, and an economist are stranded on a deserted island. They were able to retrieve a can of tuna fish from the wreckage of their boat. How to open the can so that they can eat something?

The chemist suggests they start a fire and heat the can until it explodes. The physicist nods approvingly and says he'll calculate the trajectories of the pieces of tuna fish coming out of the can and put leaves on the appropriate places on the ground to catch them. Proud of their thinking, they turn to the economist, who is still lost in thought.

Well, they ask? The economist says: Let's assume we have a can opener!

I find discussion of group differences tedious in the extreme. There is no reason for two groups to be equal in anything. Men are taller than women. Men are over-represented in construction, sewer maintenance, and trucking. Blacks are over-represented in basketball.

Women's groups lobby to increase representation in all kinds of academic fields, but not in sanitation departments. The data set under discussion is used to find a problem. It's nothing more than the human proclivity to want more.

I don't think you can simply call attrition from a science department "attrition from science" without knowing where the person landed. At my school, many science majors "attrit" from one science field to another.  Similar with what happens post graduation. They may not go to physics grad school, but might work in public outreach at a national lab. i don't think that us "attrition."

Quote from: apl68 on Today at 07:39:26 AM

Quote from: FishProf on October 05, 2024, 09:13:12 AMI keep reading that as a DEMON affiliation.  Now that would be a powerful asset in trying times....

Funny how easy it is to misread some words.  I used to read The Journal of Plant Physiology as The Journal of Plant Psychology.  Which would be an entirely different discipline....

They had to name that journal Plant Signalling and Behavior to avoid confusion or criticism.

At the same time, plant physiology has gone out of fashion, so those journals are changing names to keep up with the trends.

Quote from: fizzycist on Today at 08:06:35 AMHibush, our dept had done climate surveys and the like. Often we find that our students have lots of similar complaints independent of gender (too many classes, too hard, lack of community early on, super long and risky training path, etc.). Seems to lead to gender imbalance in response. But we would benefit from a ton of more and higher quality info including comparison with adjacent fields and schools.

What major do they switch to? I'm in an applied biology department, a field that is not on the radar of high school students. Therefor we get transfers from biology at sophomore year, after they took an intro course and discovered that this field is a lot more fun than basic biology. That change of major may be attrition from the initial path to a health career or a biology research career. But it is not "attrition" from science or from academic success. The biology department isn't worried about it.

fizzycist: we ar actually in complete agreement. Imo this article gives us no useful info regarding the drop off in female participation after high school or the early undergrad data. Physics and Math are essentially identical at those decision points.


Aside: I would greatly enjoy being a fly on the wall if a certain trio (picture a physicist, a mathematician and dismalist*) were passionately arguing.


* If dismalist is unavailable, substitute with a random economist.

Quote from: marshwiggle on Today at 05:56:29 AM

Quote from: Langue_doc on October 05, 2024, 04:28:52 PMWe're required to give time and a half at a minimum for accommodations regardless of how much time students are given to complete even low-stakes assignments. I had a student in an online course complain to the Disability office that the weekly low stakes assignment that would be posted on Monday and due the following Friday wasn't in compliance with her accommodations so I had to post these assignments extra early for her or give her extra time (time and a half) because of her disability. I also had to excuse her from submitting revised drafts and peer reviews as there were only so many days in the semester, so giving her the extra time and a half for each assignment would have resulted in her needing half of the following semester to complete her assignments. As far as the Disability office was concerned, they made sure to let faculty know that they had the upper hand, regardless of the harm to the students who were always behind.

The obvious, and least disruptive, option for the "time and a half" accommodation, (and others like it), would be to have students simply spread their courses over more terms. If two semesters' worth of courses for "ordinary" students were spread over three semesters, students would automatically have 50% more time to devote to each course. A degree would nominally require 6 years instead of 4, but in most situations that wouldn't matter to employers or graduate programs, and then there wouldn't be course-level adjustments all over the place that potentially raise questions about how this student's performance compares with others.

ETA: I've heard it discussed already at my institution; i.e. the idea of limiting the number of courses a struggling student could take in a subsequent term. It makes a lot of sense. For that reason, it may not happen.

That sort of thing is basically what happens here and it is very unpopular due to the financial and career cost to students. The trend, of course, is to therefore remove content and rigor from the major to minimize this. All that already happened, which is why an additional 20+% and growing students who are eligible for further accomodations gives one pause.

I suppose in the limit you are concerned with Marsh, we could then offer an accelerated path for the "gifted and abled". This is, of course, the path our K-12 system has taken (beginning in early elementary over here!). I dislike it philosophically and think it would practically be a disaster here--imagine the tuition and faculty salary costs it would take to double up on all our classes.

Jimbo, American Physical Society is a great prof society but it has negligible effect on gender outcomes, one only needs to compare to other countries to see that.

Last I checked, physics has a lower fraction of women degree attainers than similar disciplines like math, astronomy, chemistry. Yet 50% of HS physics takers are women. I think it's safe to say that physics is not free of gender issues (we can argue whether it is a problem or not, but I personally think yes).

Hibush, our dept had done climate surveys and the like. Often we find that our students have lots of similar complaints independent of gender (too many classes, too hard, lack of community early on, super long and risky training path, etc.). Seems to lead to gender imbalance in response. But we would benefit from a ton of more and higher quality info including comparison with adjacent fields and schools.

 

Quote from: FishProf on October 05, 2024, 09:13:12 AMI keep reading that as a DEMON affiliation.  Now that would be a powerful asset in trying times....

Funny how easy it is to misread some words.  I used to read The Journal of Plant Physiology as The Journal of Plant Psychology.  Which would be an entirely different discipline....