Mary Ann Mason

Mary Ann Mason Warns of Brain Drain in Academia

The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 27, 2009, by Mary Ann Mason
http://chronicle.com/cgi2-bin/printable.cgi?article=http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2009/01/2009012701c.htm

Unless the old academic culture—which discourages family formation at all levels but is particularly unfriendly to graduate-student parenthood—radically changes, we are in danger of losing many of our best and brightest minds to other professions. There has been some movement to accommodate new faculty parents, but by then it is already too late to capture many disaffected graduate students who have already found careers elsewhere.

Mary Ann Mason Documents Grads Disillusionment with Academe

The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 15, 2009 by Audrey Williams June
http://chronicle.com/cgi-bin/printable.cgi?article=http://chronicle.com/daily/2009/01/9652n.htm

“In this profession, everything is very front-ended, and that’s a pressure-cooker situation,” says Mary Ann Mason, referring to the dizzying schedules of Ph.D. students and pretenure faculty members…. “This generation of graduate students is completely different. They no longer see how that will work for them,” she says.

Mary Ann Mason Asks Obama to Heed Concerns of Young Women

Chronicle of Higher Education, Dec. 17, 2008 by Mary Ann Mason
http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2008/12/2008121701c.htm

They worry that they will not be able to handle both their chosen profession and their family responsibilities. They know that child care is impossibly expensive and notoriously unreliable. They understand that employers offer some family leave when children are born, or when family members are sick, but it may be unpaid.

Melissa Murray, Mary Ann Mason Discuss Motherhood and Tenure Conflicts

Diverse Issues in Higher Education, Nov. 13, 2008 by Gregory A. Patterson
http://diverseeducation.com/artman/publish/article_11946.shtml

Mason … co-director of the Berkeley Center on Health, Economic & Family Security, says higher education could be at the beginning of a sea change sweeping women away from tenuretrack jobs. Women are opting for academe’s second-tier posts, filling in the part-time, adjunct and lecturer ranks, becoming what Mason calls the ‘gypsy scholars’ of the university world.

“The decision to have a child on the tenure track was not a decision at all,” Murray says. “For me the bigger question was, how was I going to make the tenure track work around my decision to have a family.”

Mary Ann Mason Exposes Gender Inequity in Academia

Chronicle of Higher Education, Oct. 17, 2008 by Mary Ann Mason
http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2008/10/2008101701c.htm

“Women who do pursue careers in academic science pay a high price for playing the game. Nationally, “married with children” is the academic-success formula for men, but the opposite is true for women, for whom there is a serious “baby gap.” Among scientists who achieved tenure, 72 percent of the men are married with children as opposed to only 50 percent of women. Is that gender equity?”