Is academia really more tolerant than corporatia?

A figure of merit for “tolerance” is policy, e.g: Is the same health coverage offered to domestic partners as to spouses? For the top institutions, the answer’s yes: 80% of the Fortune 50 companies have DP coverage, and 92% of the US News top 25 colleges. More broadly, only 51% of the Fortune 500, and only 64% of the US News 100 colleges offer DP benefits. Larger lists drop the percentages more. In addition, US government labs and observatories do not offer DP benefits. So from this measure, academia doesn’t clearly lead the corporate world.

(People often assume their institution has more progressive policies than it actually does. Readers can check & compare their institution’s equality policies here: tinyurl.com/3tda3)

DP benefits are just equal-pay-for-equal-work. If my straight colleague gets health coverage for his wife, and I can’t for my wife, then I’m getting paid less for the same work. Not to mention the financial & health insecurity of not having coverage. The lack of DP coverage makes it significantly harder for queer scientists to balance work & family.

Aside from policy, there’s “environment”. Personally, I’ve had a very positive experience as an out astrophysicist. Most of my colleagues have been swell. We talk about our families at morning coffee. They’ve written letters to city & university leaders, arguing for DP benefits. Aside from some faggot jokes, the environment has been great. What’s been difficult has been institutional policy.

(Numbers from the 2005 HRC State of the Workplace.)

I am very much convinced that becoming a physicist (at least in academia) is not a wise choise from a purely financial perspecive. I did a brief stint in a computer science related internship and then consulting (back in the early 90s before the internet boom) before I had any degrees. Thireteen years later (including prestigous PhD and postdocs), I still am not compensated as well as I was back then. If your primary goal is to do well financially, then I would not becoming a physist in academia.

If you want to help females/minorities/WASP males to make lots of money, I think that there are much better suggestions you can give than studying physics!

I’d be interested to see a proper economic analysis (that considers costs, opportunity costs, inflation, income taxes, overtime, realistic vacation time, etc) of two career paths: 1) teaching high school straight out of undergrad (assume that you get a masters within a few years of teaching and do some paid work during most summers you’re not working towards a masters) versus 2) spending 6 or 7 year to get a physics/astronomy PhD, doing one or two postdocs, and then going into either a) academia or b) industry. Which career path comes out ahead (financially) by retirement age? Has anyone done such an exercise?

That is a pretty big ‘and’. What about the people who don’t land a job in a technical field?

Equally, it would be good to hear from all those oppressed physicists who, like this gentleman, enjoy sexual intercourse with cars:

http://jalopnik.com/cars/weird-news/sex-with-wheels-british-mechanic-shags-cars-243094.php

Look, there are lots of great reasons to get a PhD. I’m just saying that money isn’t one of them — if you know you don’t want to stay in academia, leaving at the master’s is the smart move.

And here’s a US Census Bureau release on income and education:
http://www.census.gov/prod/2002pubs/p23-210.pdf

It unfortunately does not break down STEM vs. non-STEM, but does show higher lifetime earnings for those with higher educations (see fig. 3).

Regarding Amanda’s point though about being behind your peers in earnings by going to get a higher degree, it has been shown that in the long run of things you end up making more money by going to obtain a higher degree (even though it puts you back for the short term). The reason for this is you will be making more money down the line compared to them on average, so those few years you spent getting the advanced degree ends up not mattering as much.

By the way, a complete tangent here: I do think that one of the greatest reasons you have such a gap between STEM and non-STEM when it comes to minority groups is because we do a pretty bad job trying to explain what sort of opportunities exist in the field. Physics can be particularly bad in this regard: most students assume you should only major in physics if you want to become a physicist even though only about 1/20 physics majors actually become physics majors. Physicists do a terrible job trying to point out what the remaining 95% do, even though these positions can be very lucrative, and I can’t tell you how many students I’ve met who like physics and would love to major in it, but don’t because they think the end degree would be “useless” in the real world.

If you want a job in STEM work, go study Electrical Engineering.

Sure everybody should be ‘free’ to pursue a career regardless of sex or gender, but career is not, or rather need not be “the be all and end all” of life.

PS - I see of course in Society we do still discriminate according to degree and ability, earning potential and ability to pay.
Alas we have done so well, got rid of soooo many prejudices, and then replaced them with ability to make money or access to high paid careers. How much you earn is who (or what) you are! lol.

But hey, everyone has to pursue a dream in life. What’s yours?

There’s another bias about comparing average salaries between majors. You need some way to compare the high acheivers in non-STEM fields with STEM fields. Many non-STEM fields are diluted with large numbers of slackers in ways that STEM majors just cannot be. You cannot scrape by in physics (or math or chemistry, etc.) by screwing around all year, BSing your way through a final paper, and cramming for a test, the way I saw some political science majors run their lives, for example. Many STEM courses have prerequisites that take years to fufill. By contrast, at my undergrad institution at least, none of the courses required for a psychology major had any prerequisites, and one could do the entire major in the senior year without having taken a single psychology course previously. What I describe is certainly not a recipe for success and further academic study, but non-STEM fields are diluted by people whose work ethic won’t lead to high salaries in a way that STEM fields aren’t.

I’m curious as to why you said white straight men. Is there a demonstrable sexuality gap in the sciences?

It’s harder to judge, since it’s easier to hide sexual orientation than gender or race, but it’s enough of an outsider culture that I suspect some of the same issues that affect women and minorities apply. However, I don’t know of hard data so perhaps shouldn’t have added it in. My anecdotal experience is that acceptance is improving — a decade ago most of the gay men and women I knew in astronomy & physics were pretty closeted at work, but most seem to be much more comfortable being out at work now. It could potentially work out that white gay men are overrepresented in academia, given the more generally more tolerant environment. Any of the better informed queer CV readership want to weigh in? It’s not a topic that’s gotten as much discussion as the more obvious women/minorities issues.