Where will the next generation of minority biomedical scientists come from?
โ Scribed by David R. Burgess
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1998
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 73 KB
- Volume
- 83
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0008-543X
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
โฆ Synopsis
O ne goal for the training of biomedical graduate students, who are the source of the future investigators who will address the cancer problem, is to assure that diseases that affect different populations disproportionately are studied. In this volume, there are articles that detail the disproportionate targeting by specific cancers to underrepresented minorities. The federal government, because of its support of biomedical graduate education, has a particular responsibility to assure that biomedical scientists are trained whose cultural identity and sensitivity would encourage them to study the cancers and other diseases that target underrepresented minorities. In an analysis of the trends for the training of biomedical graduate students over the past 20 years, I have come to the conclusion that, despite the dramatic rises in natural science baccalaureates awarded to underrepresented minorities over the past decade, no increases in the numbers of minority science doctorates have occurred. 1,2 This lack of training of minority biomedical doctorates is set against a backdrop of ever increasing numbers of doctorates being awarded to increasingly larger numbers of non-U.S. citizens.
The annual number of life science doctorates awarded has more than tripled since 1960 to nearly 8000 in 1995, only about 300 of which (an annual number that has not changed much in the past 10 years) were awarded to underrepresented minorities. Much of the increase in life science doctorates awarded over the past 10 years is attributable to the increases in the number awarded to non-U.S. citizens, whose numbers increased 5.5-fold since 1960. For every underrepresented minority doctorate today, there are nearly ten non-U.S. citizen doctorates, of whom about four will stay in the U.S. Historically, only 20% of foreign students changed residency status to become permanent residents, but, in 1995, that percentage increased to nearly 40% of foreign students becoming permanent residents while they were still graduate students, of whom over 90% will stay in this country. Against these data is the manpower issue of the employment prospects for such doctorates. The National Academy of Sciences reported in 1995 that the saturated U.S. job market for science doctorates results in delayed employment, underemployment, and under utilization of newly minted doctorates.
The lack of minority graduate students is no longer attributable to the old leaky pipeline problem that there just are not enough minority science baccalaureates being produced. The American Council of Education reported recently that over 19% of 1995 enrolled college students are underrepresented minorities. The National Science Foundation further reports that underrepresented minorities repre-
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