Universities should not offer the false hope of ‘fertility’ benefits

Talented young women and men in both the academic and business worlds share a common dilemma: their career development timeline overlaps with their most fertile reproductive years.

Like many, I tried for more than a decade to both advance my career and get pregnant. I understand, deeply, the primal call to bear a child. But when relying on IVF, I felt like little more than an exhausted lab rat doomed to run on a treadmill that never stopped.

At least my career in the tech sectors allowed me a little leeway in terms of the timing of my treatment; I learned from my academic friends that the time crunch is even more severe when you factor in the university and research world’s rigid, longstanding system of advancement and funding.

For instance, the average age for a scientist to get their first RO1 grant from the National Institutes of Health is 43 for non-medical applicants and just over 45 years old for medics. Ron Daniels, president of Johns Hopkins University, lamented this distressing trend in 2014, stating: “Young scientists are...