The Early Careers of Social Science Graduates and the Value of a Phd

Ernest Rudd

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, 1990, vol. 153, issue 2, 203-232

Abstract: To look at the relevance of a PhD to the careers of graduates in the social sciences, the Economic and Social Research Council commissioned a survey of a sample of graduates in certain social science subjects who gained first‐ or upper second‐class honours degrees at British universities between 1972 and 1977. A substantial proportion of respondents with PhDs, and especially of those who also held first‐class honours, had become university teachers. The rest were scattered over a wide range of jobs, but few of them had needed a PhD to gain their first job after completing their studies, and there was no job group where the majority of respondents said that they had needed a PhD to do their first job well. In all job groups there were some respondents who regarded skills in research as relevant to their jobs, but other qualities imparted by a university, such as a training of the mind, were generally regarded as more relevant. Graduates with no university level post‐graduate qualifications were generally paid more than those with a PhD, implying that employers put a higher value on experience in employment than on post‐graduate research.

Date: 1990
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.2307/2982801

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jorssa:v:153:y:1990:i:2:p:203-232

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://ordering.onli ... 1111/(ISSN)1467-985X

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A is currently edited by A. Chevalier and L. Sharples

More articles in Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A from Royal Statistical Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().