Informal discussions suggest the need to understand which professional skills are taught1 in ocean science graduate schools and which are perceived as needed in the workplace by employers and by employees who are in the first five years of their professional careers (termed early-career employees). Is there any agreement among students, faculty, employers, and early-career employees on which skills are relevant to their careers, needed in the workplace, and taught well to students?

Miller, A., and M. Briscoe. 2012. Results of a preliminary survey on graduate training in professional skills. Oceanography 25(4):6–8, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2012.107.

Austin, J., and B. Alberts. 2012. Planning career paths for PhDs. Science 337:1,149, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1226552.
1. Rosenberg, M. 2012. An “honorable” career in academia vs. an “alternative” career in the private sector. ASBMB Today, August 2012. Available online at: http://www.asbmb.org/asbmbtoday/asbmbtoday_article.aspx?id=17458 (accessed October 24, 2012).

This is an open access article made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format as long as users cite the materials appropriately, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate the changes that were made to the original content. Images, animations, videos, or other third-party material used in articles are included in the Creative Commons license unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If the material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission directly from the license holder to reproduce the material.