Does Holding a Postdoctoral Position Bring Benefits for Advancing to Academia?

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu Postdoc is a special transitional position for those with a doctoral degree and is usually regarded as an investment to accumulate the additional human and social capital needed to facilitate future job searches or to add to an academic reserve army of unemployed PhDs. Given the prevalence of postdoctoral positions nowadays, it is crucial to explore the role played by postdoctoral participation in the post-PhD labor market. By taking advantage of a comprehensive data set from the National Profiles of Human Resources in Science and Technology in Taiwan, we first explore several characteristics associated with the choice of a postdoctoral position for newly-minted doctoral degree holders, such as age, discipline or the time taken to complete the degree. We then apply the control function approach to address the possible endogenous decision of postdoctoral experience when estimating the effects of postdoctoral positions on the current career choices between academic and non-academic jobs. The empirical results suggest that engaging in postdoctoral positions could increase the probability of advancing to the academic sector by about 6.1%. The heterogeneous effects of gender, major and cohort in regard to the postdoctoral experience are also found by splitting the data. Moreover, we experiment with several groupings for the definition of being awarded an academic position and obtain very robust empirical results. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SJEL Classification: I2, J24

Board 97: Is Postdoctoral Training Linked to Faculty Careers and Higher Salaries among Engineering Ph.D.s?

“…In particular, surveys of postdocs in the U.S. and Mexico have shown that postdoc training is considered to enhance their research profile [2], [14] and to increase their chance of attaining a tenure track faculty position [8]. On the other hand, some studies have indicated that postdoc positions are taken when no other employment options are available [10].…”

“…This association is particularly strong among women [16]- [18]. Age at the time of PhD attainment tends to have a negative correlation with postdoc training, which has been attributed to shorter expected career span and/or family obligations for older PhDs [2], [9], [10]. Moreover, Lin and Chiu found that longer expected time of PhD degree completion is associated with higher likelihood of postdoc employment, possibly due to relatively fewer job options being available [10].…”

“…It is estimated that among all postdocs in health, engineering, and science fields, only 15-20% eventually obtain tenure track faculty positions [20], while others find employment in non-tenure track positions or employer sectors outside of academia [11], [19]. Using data from Taiwan, Lin and Chiu [10] found that postdoc training is associated with higher likelihood of maintaining an academic research career for engineering PhDs. Using data from Frances, Hanchane and Recotillet [9] found postdoc experience to be correlated with likelihood of a research career in science, but not in engineering fields.…”

“…citizenship, we also control for age at the time of receiving the doctoral degree, as previous studies indicate that age may play a role in the set of career options available to PhDs [2], [10].…”

“…We account for several covariates related to experiences during doctoral study which may influence initial career choice. Time to degree and the source of doctorate funding are closely related to the PhD's activities during the doctoral program (for example, research, teaching, fellowship, or other), which may influence the PhD's interest in and opportunities for different career paths [10], [21]. We measure time to doctoral degree as the number of years between the year of entry into the engineering doctoral program and the year of degree completion.…”