If the people with skills that are the most valuable outside of academia leave universities in disproportionate numbers (as I think they do), students will miss out on what they have to offer, and there the risk that academia will grow progressively more insular. How might one counteract this effect? One straigh... read more

Awhile back I wrote about the Ginther and Kahn paper that compared men's and women's rates of hiring to tenure-track positions and promotion to tenure. The paper found that the differences between men and women could be entirely explained by marriage and children: having young children penalizes women but not men. ... read more

Brian May is finishing his doctorate in astrophysics with a thesis entitled, "Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud." May is probably better known for writing "We Will Rock You" as the guitarist for Queen. May interrupted his doctoral studies when the band started becoming successful in the early 70's. N... read more

I've been a little quiet recently because I've been hacking away on an update to phds.org: a shiny new job board. I've done a complete rewrite of the back end with the goal of enabling future expansions. The most visible changes: * New UI. I have redone the site's layout with the goal of making things easier... read more

The Chronicle reports that the National Science Board are urging the NSF to fund riskier projects with the potential for big breakthroughs rather than safer, more incremental projects. (Here's the NSB report) Taking more risks is likely to be a good thing for NSF. Consider the financial analog: it's like hol... read more