On not perpetuating academic survivorship bias
Source: Created with OpenArt [1]
As senior women in STEMM academics, we are proud to be role models for our junior colleagues. But we should take care to avoid the potential pitfalls of the survivorship bias that pervades academia.
By Janet G. Hering and Patricia A. Maurice
26 May 2026, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20290438
As senior women in STEMM academics, we have worked hard to overcome the challenges of academic careers. We have often been lucky in our personal life histories, having had supportive families, mentors, and/or colleagues. Even when the going has been rough, we have found a way to pursue our careers, enjoying the opportunities they offer. Like Prof. Jen Heemstra, whose book we reviewed in a recent post [2], we take satisfaction from the mentorship we can offer to our junior colleagues and are proud to serve as role models. But in the absence of role models for successful career trajectories outside (or ‘beyond’) academia, our visibility can create a survivorship bias, promoting unrealistic expectations for academic careers among our doctoral students and postdocs.
Survivorship bias
The term “survivorship bias” is often used to describe a logical error that can occur when researchers are sampling a population. It is important not to unwittingly draw conclusions based on only those who have survived without also considering the initial population and what happened to those who fell out of the sample. As female academic leaders, we need to be aware that our survival in academia can affect how we evaluate and mentor others. We need to recognize that there is an element of luck in any success story, and we should also recognize that everyone faces different challenges. For example, not everyone can afford to follow an academic career path, especially if burdened by academic debt or family responsibilities. But we also need to be cognizant of how our successes might affect those around us, especially students and junior colleagues. Are we setting unrealistic goals or perhaps discouraging younger women who do not think they can attain the same level of success? Do we make it all look too easy or too hard?
The academic bubble
Academic life is busy and intellectually fulfilling. Since universities and research organizations provide a community and social structure, including cultural and sporting events and opportunities, it is not surprising that the academic campus can become a ‘home away from home’ for many academics. Conferences, panels, advisory boards, and other professional activities offer a means to stay in contact with colleagues (including former doctoral students and postdocs) who become friends over our professional careers. But what about former friends and colleagues who pursued their careers – often with great success – beyond academia?
The 90% (or more) career path
Despite the bias in our professional circles, the vast majority of doctorate holders pursue careers in non-academic sectors, including business, government, consulting, research management, science communication, and technology transfer. This is not a surprise because at any given time, there are simply far more PhD graduates than there are open academic (faculty) positions. For example, a 2015 study estimated that, in engineering, “in a steady state, only 12.8% of PhD graduates can attain academic positions in the USA” [3].
This is not a new phenomenon – the 2001 book Put your science to work: The take-charge career guide [4] (itself an update of a version published 1995) highlighted the wide range of employment opportunities for doctoral degree holders and provided practical advice on the job market beyond academia. Although detailed statistics for a specific university or program can be difficult to come by, Ghent University estimated in 2022 that “nine out of ten doctorate holders eventually build careers beyond academia” [5]. Even so, the title of a 2025 article in the LinkedIn Newsletter Future of Science [6], “Leaving Academia Is Not Failure. It Is a Career Decision.” [7], suggests that this message is not being effectively conveyed to doctoral students and postdocs (or Early Career Researchers, ECRs).
The ‘dangling carrot’ of academia
The lack of realistic information on academic careers available to ECRs may be partly attributable to the limited experience of their supervisors, many of whom have never worked outside of academia. However, it is important to recognize there is a disincentive for professors and their institutions to be transparent about job prospects in academia even though it has been clear for decades that the supply of doctoral degree holders vastly exceeds the demand in academia, especially at the professorial level [3-9].
It is easy to see how conflicts of interest between faculty and their current or former ECRs may arise. Since doctoral training can be valuable in a wide range of professional activities, ECRs may well wish to use some of their time to participate in career development programs offered through their academic institutions or by providers such as Alma.me [10] or EURAXESS [11]. A conflict of interest between advisee and advisor over time commitments may even be unrecognized given the pronounced value placed on academic careers within academia. As long as former ECRs focus on pursuing an academic career, their activities are likely to benefit their former advisors to some extent, for example through citations, joint publications, joint proposals, and other professional activities. But if former advisees pursue alternative career options beyond academia or even within academia but off the research track, their interests and motivation may cease to be well aligned with those of their former advisors. It is also the case that some universities and the systems that rank them use the success of doctoral degree holders in obtaining professorial positions as a quality indicator for the departments and research groups from which they obtained their degrees. The net result is to create an atmosphere of scarcity and hypercompetition, in which junior colleagues push themselves to achieve statistically impossible outcomes.
Not every advisee wants to become an academic
Although professors are often passionate about their work, not everyone wants to follow the same path. For example, some people love teaching, while others do not. As described by Dr. Elizabeth Haack in her post [12] on “The leadership experience in environmental consulting,” some people want to pursue careers that are directly applicable to peoples’ lives, which may mean working outside of academia. Academics often assume the most cutting-edge research occurs in academia, but that is not always the case. For example, in the decades prior to the early 1980s oil bust, many geologists chose to work for oil companies with state-of-the art laboratories, large research budgets, and access to large proprietary data sets. Today, many major advances in AI are occurring in corporate environments; academic institutions do not always have the resources or access to large datasets needed to push frontiers. Many brilliant young people in STEMM are turned off by the ‘publish or perish’ ecosystem, the hyper-competitiveness and lack of professionalism that dominate some academic environments, and the rampant sexism in some fields (although that can also be found outside academia). Some young people, especially in the US, accrue such large amounts of debt over the course of their education that they simply cannot afford to pursue academic careers. Some people have constraints on where they can live, whether driven by family, health needs, life partner, or language/cultural considerations. It is important not to judge our advisees by our personal standards; their dreams and goals may be loftier than our own, even if we do not realize it.
Bringing about overdue change
In his foreword to Fiske’s book [4], Bruce Alberts (then President of the US National Academy of Sciences) wrote “We older scientists have an obligation to younger scientists: we must offer you a broader pathway for using your science in productive careers.” That was over two decades ago. With the information resources available today, universities should be able to provide transparency on the career trajectories of their doctoral degree holders. As senior women leaders in STEMM, we can encourage our university leaders to fulfill this responsibility. We can also be honest with our prospective doctoral students so that they do not enter a doctoral program with false expectations.
These issues are even more salient for postdocs, who have made greater investments in their professional development. Both doctoral students and postdocs deserve opportunity structures (i.e., culture, mindsets, and career support structures) that “create a positive understanding of career opportunities” [9], including those beyond academia. Senior women academic leaders in STEMM can promote the allocation of resources for the staffing required by such opportunity structures, as well as other service activities [13].
We can also reflect on the benefits of having contacts outside the academic bubble. Our former advisees who have pursued careers beyond academics can be an excellent resource. If we have lost touch with them, this could be the stimulus to re-establish contact. We might consider the potential benefits of hiring some faculty who have work experience outside of academia, and who may thus be better equipped to advise students who want to pursue non-academic careers. Such faculty also can often offer a broader array of real-world examples to students in the classroom. We can be supportive of students who want to undertake internships in government or industry, or who want to take courses in STEMM-related business, entrepreneurship, and/or law. Finally, we can work to ensure that experiences outside of academia are valued and open the door to broader and more inclusive evaluation procedures. Indeed, this may be essential to the ultimate survival of academia. In many parts of the world, the public has grown weary of an ivory tower for which it pays but that does not always provide tangible benefits.
Some questions to stimulate further thought and discussion
· How many of your former doctoral students and postdocs have pursued careers beyond academia? Do you stay in contact with them?
· Are you (and your doctoral students and postdocs) aware of career services provided by your institution? Do you think they are sufficient?
· Do you discuss career prospects with your advisees? Do you encourage them to explore resources outside your institution (e.g., through professional societies)?
Notes, links, and references
[1] Created with AI Toolkit Artlist, https://toolkit.artlist.io/
[2] https://www.epistimi.org/blog/when-do-we-learn-about-leadership
[3] Larson, R.C., Ghaffarzadegan, N., Xue, Y. (2014) “Too Many PhD Graduates or Too Few Academic Job Openings: The Basic Reproductive Number R0 in Academia.” Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 31:745-750. https://doi.org/10.1002/sres.2210 (Note: not open access.)
[4] Fiske, P. (2001) Put your science to work: The take-charge career guide, AGU, https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1029/SP053
[5] OECD (2023) “Promoting diverse career pathways for doctoral and postdoctoral researchers”, https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/promoting-diverse-career-pathways-for-doctoral-and-postdoctoral-researchers_dc21227a-en.html
[6] Gaburro, S. “The Future of Science”, LinkedIn Newsletter, https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/future-of-science-7284718660298969089/
[7] Gaburro, S. (2025) “Leaving Academia Is Not Failure. It Is a Career Decision.”, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/leaving-academia-failure-career-decision-stefano-gaburro-phd-ccc-jrysf/
[8] Gaburro, S. and Rieux, E. (2024) Career Options in the Life Sciences: Guide Research for Your Path Beyond Academia, Springer, 83 pp.
[9] Bøgelund, P., and Tangkjær, C. (2025). Career opportunities and support for postdocs in academia: a conceptual framework for career engagement. European Journal of Higher Education, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/21568235.2025.2515573
[10] Alma.me, https://www.linkedin.com/company/almame/, https://www.alma.me/
[11] EURAXESS, “Beyond Academia Career Development Module”, https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/career-development/researchers
[12] https://www.epistimi.org/blog/the-leadership-experience-in-environmental-consulting