INFORM February 2026

14 INFORM FEBRUARY 2026 , VOL. 37, NO. 2

Universities have also experienced turmoil. In October, the Department of Education threatened to withdraw funding from schools that did not sign a compact agreeing to government oversight of academic programs and faculty. “Adopting the compact would destroy academic freedom and university autonomy and undermine the expertise and academic excellence that have made American higher education the envy of the world,” said a legal analysis published at Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute. Many schools rejected the compact, but some negotiated separate agreements. The job losses, evaporating grants, and the atmosphere of uncertainty have many scientists contemplating their next move. But the picture is not uniformly bleak, say career coaches who specialize in science. They shared their noteworthy advice with INFORM , applicable to everyone from early career researchers to late-career veterans. GET IN TOUCH WITH YOUR VALUES “Obviously, it is very difficult times out there— and people are getting jobs,” says Sarah Cardozo Duncan, an independent STEM career development strategist who is also a career coach-in residence at a prominent Boston academic institution.

Even though the biotech job market is relatively healthy, Cardozo Duncan says, it has cooled. A few years ago, she had clients that could go out on five job interviews and have five offers within 48 hours. “I am working with the best and the brightest, and it is still taking us four to six months to find a job,” she says.

stumbled on career coaching: “I did not even know that was a thing, really.” But she found that her business filled a gap. Many career coaches have no background in STEM, she noted. One of her primary missions now is to support diversity in STEM by ensuring that budding scientists from all kinds of backgrounds know they belong. Briggs starts with her clients by helping them identify their core values and how those align with potential career paths. The recent cuts have challenged two common values: stability and flexibility. Government jobs used to be thought of as stable, but for many this year, they became anything but. And many academic jobs are associated with freedom, but the reality may not match. “I think people are starting to recognize the handcuffs that come with chasing soft money,” Briggs says. “When those grants are cut, it gets really hard.” For some, struggles in government and academia may lead to a move toward corporate roles. For others, it may spark a move outside the country. Both Briggs and Duncan note that Canada, Australia, and Europe are all gaining interest from US job seekers. In May 2025, the European Commission launched the Choose Europe for Science initiative, “with the aim of attracting the brightest minds to Europe.”

Cassie Briggs, founder of Success In Science Career Coaching, echoed that, although it is taking longer for highly qualified candidates to find a job, pockets of the national job market are still doing okay. She had just completed a multi-month commitment with a division of NASA, however, where 400 research faculty were at risk of losing their jobs. “It is one thing to lose an entry level job; it is another to lose the job you have been working for your entire career,” she says. Briggs got into coaching through her own life changes. She began her career as a biology professor at Michigan State University. But as she and her husband started their family, her commute to campus was becoming untenable. She loved supporting students and early-career professionals and