A high percentage of graduate students are opting out of professor positions to instead focus on balancing life and family responsibilities, a new UC Berkeley study shows.

The report, written by three UC Berkeley researchers, is based on a 2006-07 survey of 8,373 doctoral students from across the UC system and represents the first of its kind, said Mary Ann Mason, one of the study's authors and co-director of the Berkeley Center on Health, Economic & Family Security.

The report, called "Why Graduate Students Reject the Fast Track," revealed that both men and women who began graduate school hoping to become professors tended to change career paths.

The pressures of the job, including the push to conduct research, were among the reasons that students chose to look to other careers.

About ten percent fewer students who began graduate school with a career in academia in mind still wanted to enter academia at the time of the survey, one to seven years later. The drop was slightly more dramatic for graduate students in science and mathematics.

Mason, who is also a professor of social welfare, said the report reflected the high percentage of graduate students who were married-around half for both men and women-or were thinking of marriage in the future.

"We were looking at a leak in the pipeline, particularly for women, with regard to family issues," Mason said.

Eighty-four percent of female graduates expressed concern about the family friendliness of their career choices, compared to 74 percent of men.

The reason for this, Mason said, is the strong pressure today's women-and often men-feel to devote their full efforts to both their families and their careers as they reach their thirties.

"When people turn a certain age, they imagine the next step," she said. "It's the make-or-break decade, where they have to make it professionally and they also have to make it reproductively."

Mason herself has faced the dilemna of raising a family while managing a demanding career. Her daughter, Eve Ekman, is a UC Berkeley graduate who plans to return to study social welfare.

Mason said the recent economic downturn did not factor into the survey because it was conducted in 2006-07, before the recession began.

Marcia Linn, a professor of math, science and technology education in the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education, said an uncertain job market was just one of the reasons current graduate students-especially married students-are reconsidering their career options.

"What the economy is doing is making it harder and harder to find the jobs they want," she said. "The economy is limiting the choices, but the choices themselves are also limited by the clear difficulty of having two people in tenure-track positions."

Linn, who teaches graduate students who plan to become educators, discussed Mason's report with her students during her first class.

"The students were sympathetic," she said. "We talked about alternatives, and how to plan a career so you can make sure you can balance your life."

Linn said that, while challenging, it was certainly possible for her students to balance positions in academia with familial responsibilities.

Mason said she hopes to advance family friendly policies in the workplace.

"If you have enough evidence and enough data, the numbers really push it and allow you to make it a strong argument," she said. "The ultimate goal always has been to change policy."

Tags: GRADUATE STUDENTS, REPORT