The continued lack of racial diversity is a bit surprising, says Marcus Lambert, a higher-education researcher at SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University in New York City. He notes that the trend persists despite some gains in the enrolment of members of minority ethnic groups in university science programmes. “The STEM workforce is connected to the educational pathways,” he says. “If people are switching majors and dropping out of STEM programmes, we’re not doing our jobs.”
Lambert was a co-author of a 2020 study that surveyed more than 1,200 biomedical postdoctoral researchers in the United States about their career plans1. It found that 24% of male postdocs from minority ethnic groups had decided to get out of research or leave science altogether, even though they had already gone far in their training. For comparison, only 14% of white postdocs were planning to quit research or leave science.
Lambert’s survey found that even some highly productive postdocs from minority ethnic groups who had authored a number of high-quality publications didn’t feel completely comfortable in their jobs. “It’s not that they don’t love science,” he says. “Whether it’s politics or negative stereotypes, they don’t feel welcome or completely satisfied.” Read more here.
