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96 This acknowledgment appears in UC Berkeley assistant professor Mark Brilliant ’s 2010 book, The Color of America Has Changed: How Racial Diversity Shaped Civil Rights Reform in California, 1941–1978.1 Rarely, we suspect, do such public tributes to university policies occur. But until recently, it was almost as rare for faculty fathers (and, indeed, most mothers) to take advantage of family-friendly policies. At many universities such policies didn’t even exist. This single accolade does not signal the moment to declare victory in the campaign for familyfriendly policies in higher education, but it does indicate progress. Higher education needs these policies. The rigid career structure of academia often clashes with the caregiving responsibilities of faculty, particularly women. The graduate student and postdoc years are important, but have received comparably little attention from scholars of higher education. These are the years when many women, and some men, turn away from an academic career after evaluating the academic workplace and reaching the conclusion that they cannot achieve a successful balance of work and family. Others marry fellow academics and defer to their partner’s career. And still others have babies in graduate school and postpone their careers indefinitely. These critical years represent a substantial leak in the academic pipeline. Ironically, these are the years receiving the least attention in recent campaigns to make family life more compatible with work life for academics. 6 Toward a Better Model When Ezra Max Brilliant was born in August 2008, I discovered that the house of myself that I thought I knew so well after so many years had another room, and in that room there was a closet, and in that closet there was a shoebox, and in that shoebox I could fit the house that I knew before Ezra. He is the joy of the world, and I look forward to enjoying him all the more now that this book is done. That I was able to enjoy him as much as I did during his first year without risking my career owes in good measure to the architects of the UC Faculty Family Friendly Edge program. They designed enlightened policies that children of all working parents should receive, as Ezra did and for which I am forever grateful. TOWARD A BETTER MODEL 97 Those scholars who do persist confront the pressure cooker years leading up to the tenure decision. These are also the years when family responsibilities are likely to be the greatest. Many women, and some men, defer children and marriage to focus on their careers. After tenure, family responsibilities weigh less heavily on career advancement. Still, mothers never catch up in salary or in the competition for positions of authority. Only in the decision to retire do men and women attain parity. Even then, academics with children at home will continue to work longer. The current career structure of the university is not well adapted to the demographics of today’s young scholars—women and men who have different priorities and responsibilities than previous generations of professors. The new academic workplace must create flexibility for family needs. Without this change academia will lose some of its most talented young stars. It is not just the right thing to do; it is the economically prudent strategy. Hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent by universities and the federal government to train the best and brightest through graduate school, postdoctoral fellowships, and the early tenure-track years to become the new creators of knowledge and innovation . Our sizable investment is lost when our most promising minds abandon academia after this prolonged training period. The good news is that there is increasing awareness of the structural problems in the academy, and there are many new initiatives to transform the academic workplace into an environment in which work-family balance is a central value, not just a marginal add-on. These initiatives are not just occurring at universities; the Obama administration has taken a positive step by inaugurating new family-friendly policies for researchers funded by the National Science Foundation.2 This final chapter reviews existing family-friendly programs and suggests new directions. Gender equity in higher education requires sustained effort and commitment at all levels. This includes tenure reform, promoting the inclusion of fathers, offering special consideration for graduate students and postdocs , encouraging federal granting agencies to adopt family-friendly policies, and adopting strategies that promote change in institutional cultures. This cultural change is essential; new policies alone will not...

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