Unpaid work and access to science professions
Date
19/06/2019Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Unpaid work in the sciences is advocated as an entry route into scientific careers. We compared the success of UK science graduates who took paid or unpaid work six-months after graduation in obtaining a high salary or working in a STEM (Science, Technology Engineering and Mathematics) field 3.5 years later. Initially taking unpaid work was associated with lower earnings and lower persistence in STEM compared with paid work, but those using personal connections to obtain unpaid positions were as likely to persist in STEM as paid workers. Obtaining a position in STEM six months after graduation was associated with higher rates of persistence in STEM compared with a position outside STEM for both paid and unpaid workers, but the difference is considerably smaller for unpaid workers. Socio-economic inequality in the likelihood of obtaining entry in STEM by taking an unpaid position is a well-founded concern for scientific workforce diversity.
Citation
Fournier , A M V , Holford , A J , Bond , A L & Leighton , M A 2019 , ' Unpaid work and access to science professions ' , PLoS ONE , vol. 14 , no. 6 , e0217032 . https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0217032
Publication
PLoS ONE
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1932-6203Type
Journal article
Description
Funding: Holford’s time was funded by the (UK) Economic and Social Research Council (https://esrc.ukri.org/), through the Research Centre on Micro-Social Change (MiSoC) [reference number ES/L009153/1] and the open call grant ‘Inequality in Higher Education Outcomes in the UK: Subjective Expectations, Preferences and Access to Information’ [reference number ES/M008622/1].Collections
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