Characterizing the landscape of plant science careers in the United States II: Academic perspectives

Abstract

Societal Impact StatementBotanical careers are more important than ever, given that environmental challenges such as climate change and deforestation threaten plants daily and because plants contribute to solutions to these problems. Plants act as our sources of food, medicine, textiles, and oxygen, which means finding ways to mitigate these environmental challenges is crucial. Despite this, little is known about what career opportunities exist for botanists outside of academia and how well academia is training graduate students for these careers. This study centers on the current state of academic botanical careers and how well students completing post‐baccalaureate degrees (herein referred to as graduate students) are being prepared to fill careers within the botanical workforce.Summary Plant science plays a crucial role in our society and in ongoing efforts to address many global challenges, including food insecurity and climate change. Despite a predicted increase in botanical career opportunities, little is known about how well academia is training graduate students for careers outside of academia. To further our understanding of the current state of academic training for botanical careers, we surveyed 85 faculty and 40 graduate students working in academia in the plant sciences in the United States. We found that the top challenges to university professors in academia are lack of support staff and funding, whereas students completing their post‐baccalaureate degrees cited finances and lack of supportive mentoring as their top challenges. Despite the fact that most graduate students surveyed wanted a career at a research‐intensive university, many botanists in academia are retiring without being replaced by more botanists. Faculty expertise is also misaligned with needs from industry and government employers, causing challenges to training graduate students for these careers outside of academia. Although our data point to a lack of career opportunities within academia, we also note that current graduate student education still emphasizes such careers and is not properly preparing graduate students for the careers they are more likely to obtain within the private and government sectors. We discuss the implications of these findings and present several recommendations for preparing future generations of plant scientists for more realistic career trajectories.

Characterizing the landscape of plant science careers in the United States I: Government and private sector perspectives

“…Research-based skills are critical and are in high demand across sectors. We present these data and all findings to our academic colleagues and further discuss their implications in our companion manuscript (Walsh et al, 2023).…”

“…Non-government organization respondents thought lack of management funding (89%) was the largest impediment, followed by lack of research funding (83%). Although we wish our data provided a more optimistic outlook, funding remains an ongoing challenge for botanical professionals in all sectors, including academia (Walsh et al, 2023).…”

“…These data are encouraging, as they suggest a multitude of pathways for young botanists to join the workforce without years of graduate training. This is especially promising for future plant scientists because our complementary academic paper found that graduate school is financially straining (Walsh et al, 2023). If nonacademic recruiters publicized that they hire botanists at the bachelor's and master's level, this could attract plant science enthusiasts who otherwise may be discouraged by the financial costs of pursuing a doctoral degree before entering the workforce.…”

“…Over the course of two companion manuscripts, one focused on the government and private sectors and the other focused on academia (Walsh et al, 2023), and we describe current trends in employment opportunities, training, and required skills related to careers in plant sciences. In the current article, which focused on government and private sector data, we address the following questions:…”