University and Department Influences on Scientists’ Occupational Outcomes

Jeongeun Kim (), Molly Ott and Lindsey Dippold
Additional contact information
Jeongeun Kim: Arizona State University
Molly Ott: Arizona State University
Lindsey Dippold: Arizona State University

Research in Higher Education, 2020, vol. 61, issue 2, No 2, 197-228

Abstract: Abstract Over 50,000 Ph.D. degrees in Science and Engineering (S&E) are awarded annually by United States (U.S.) universities, but few studies have systematically considered how the various aspects of doctoral training can influence the occupational outcomes of S&E doctoral graduates. This inquiry draws from the National Science Foundation’s Scientists and Engineers Statistical Data System to investigate how the characteristics of U.S. degree-granting departments and institutions are associated with doctoral graduates’ entrance into different career sectors (i.e., academia, industry, government). The conceptual framework is based on the Scientific and Technical Human Capital theory (Bozeman et al. in Int J Technol Manag 22(7–8):716–740, 2001) as well as Berger and Milem’s (Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research, Agathon Press, New York, 2000) model of college impact. We find that a number of university and department factors are associated with the career choice of S&E doctoral graduates after finishing their Ph.D including: (a) structural characteristics, such as geographic location and faculty composition, (b) organizational behaviors, such as those symbolizing a program’s relative emphasis on traditional academic work versus activities valued in industry, and (c) peer group characteristics such as a department’s proportion of female and minority Ph.D. students. These results will be particularly informative for policy makers, faculty and administrators in S&E programs, and prospective doctoral students.

Keywords: STEM Ph.D. students; Occupational outcomes; College impact; Scientific and Technical Human Capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11162-019-09584-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:reihed:v:61:y:2020:i:2:d:10.1007_s11162-019-09584-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/11162

DOI: 10.1007/s11162-019-09584-6

Access Statistics for this article

Research in Higher Education is currently edited by Robert K. Toutkoushian

More articles in Research in Higher Education from Springer, Association for Institutional Research
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().