Examining the Relationships among Doctoral Completion Time, Gender, and Future Salary Prospects for Physical Scientists.

Graduate students are the lifeblood of most academic research laboratories and their success is often a reflection of our own success as mentors. This study by Potvin and Tai presents a very interesting inverse correlation between the time towards degree and the future salary of graduate students in the physical sciences. The unusual and surprising aspect of this finding is that it is only true for male Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) students and not females (evidently, it does not matter how long it takes for women to complete the degree, their salaries are fairly consistent and lower than that of their male counterparts). The authors draw no conclusions as to the root of either the salary relationship for males or the gender disparity, but this may point towards personal or cultural biases concerning the abilities of graduate students based on the time required to complete work towards a thesis and/or the gender of the Ph.D. recipient.

In the life sciences, it is more common for freshly minted Ph.D.s to undergo additional training, either in academics or industry, as postdoctoral trainees. One wonders, therefore, whether this same perhaps subliminal assessment of the quality of a job applicant extends to the length of time a Ph.D. in the life sciences spends in a postdoctoral position. As mentors, we are now faced with balancing the future earning potential of a graduate student or postdoc against our desire to extract as much productivity out of them as possible.