Faculty roles don’t guarantee financial stability. Many must fund their own research, go unpaid in the summer, or take on extra service work to survive. Financial precarity doesn’t end at tenure—it compounds. #STEM #AcademicLife
Faculty roles don’t guarantee financial stability. Many must fund their own research, go unpaid in the summer, or take on extra service work to survive. Financial precarity doesn’t end at tenure—it compounds. #STEM #AcademicLife
My dad, who grew up poor, would never have been able to do 2 postdocs then work as a tenured sci prof at a small school without the support of my mother and her family wealth. Today? He would never have been able to afford undergrad, let alone a masters or PhD. A masters and PhD where he met my mom.
Academia normalizes poverty as a “rite of passage.” It’s not character-building—it’s exclusionary. We need to reject this culture, fund our people, and prioritize equity at every career stage. #AcademicEquity #STEMReform
Raising stipends. Funding paid internships. Supporting housing. Waiving fees. Promoting open science. Change isn’t impossible—it’s a matter of priority. My new paper lays out systemic solutions to financial inequity in STEM. #HigherEdReform
We’re losing brilliant scientists to debt, burnout, and economic instability. If STEM is serious about diversity and innovation, we need to fund the people doing the work—not just the work itself. Read the paper. Share it. Demand more. #AcademicTwitter #DEI
In addition to the financial aspects that you summed up very well, there's also academia's unwritten rules regarding networking and prestige, rules that the upper classes are quick to suss out and take to like a fish to water.