  About one fifth of Ph.D's across all STEM disciplines secure a tenure track
position in academia. It is also the case that science and engineering have
evolved significantly and so has the nature of the labor market and the
increasingly multidisciplinary nature of the greatest scientific challenges.
These realities, however, have not altered the main objective of graduate STEM
education: the training of unidisciplinary academic researchers. There is
therefore a gap between what the students and society need and what graduate
STEM education offers. At root of the problem is not only the lack of
information regarding actual career opportunities but the lack of formation
because, as the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine
recognized in its recent report entitled "Graduate STEM Education for the 21st
Century", "many graduate programs do not adequately prepare students to
translate their knowledge into impact in multiple careers". In that report, the
National Academies of Sciences sets new standards for graduate STEM education,
describes the actions required by each stakeholder, and urges all to strongly
commit to this paradigm change. Astro2020 represents an opportunity for the
astronomy and astrophysics community to show this commitment by issuing
recommendations on the redesign of astronomy graduate education following the
new guidelines set by the National Academies of Sciences. By "minding the gap"
between expectations and opportunities, keeping in mind the evolving needs of
the STEM workforce, we can better justify the use of tax-payers money with an
investment that allows to do transformative science while conscientiously
training highly qualified STEM professionals able to apply the power of science
to problems and opportunities of generations to come, as envisioned by Vannevar
Bush's science as the endless frontier.
