Crippled at the Starting Gate

The Graduate Schools Created and Perpetuate the Gender Gap in Science and Engineering

Robert Leslie Fisher

• Publisher: University Press of America
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN: 9780761849124
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Education General
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In Crippled at the Starting Gate, Robert Leslie Fisher argues that the United States needs an education bill, much like the G.I. Bill passed after World War II, to send more Americans to graduate school in the sciences and engineering. Equally important, the graduate schools need to change their culture not only to recruit more women, African-Americans, and Latinos into science, but to promote them to senior faculty positions.

Accomplishing these changes in university science and engineering departments will be challenging since the institutions have a strong propensity to recruit white males similar to the overwhelmingly white male senior faculty.

In Making Science Fair (2007), Fisher urged new productivity metrics to assure that more women can advance in science. Now Fisher urges ending burdensome educational practices including requiring women and foreign graduate students to teach under-graduates, which adversely affects both the graduate students and the undergraduates.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter One: Hypotheses and Study Plan
• Chapter Two: Cosseted White Male Students
• Chapter Three: The Less Favored Graduate Students
• Chapter Four: What Do Women and Asian Students Need and Want (And May Not Be Getting) from Their Graduate School?
• Chapter Five: Schools and School Atmosphere
• Chapter Six: Summary and Conclusions
• Appendix One: Questionnaire
• Appendix Two: Additional Tables
• Bibliography
• Index