Department of Ecology and Environmental Science PhD student career planning survey FoUR / Folmer Bokma

Report 2010-0216

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Career planning of PhD students at EMG Summary: All EMG’s PhD students that did not yet defend their thesis were asked to fill an online questionnaire. 34 people took the survey, which (assuming no fraud) is approximately 85% of EMG’s approximately 40 PhD students. The survey consisted of 10 questions, all presented on the last page of this report. All respondents answered on all questions, except year of birth which was left unanswered by two respondents. Respondents indicate that family situation is the most important factor determining whether or not to pursue an academic career, followed by scientific interests and job prospects. Nevertheless, career plans appear not noticeably affected by marital status or having children, or by age or gender. The only factor significantly predicting preference for a scientific career was how frequently the supervisor encouraged applying for a post-doc position. How often a supervisor encourages a student to apply for post-doc positions appears unrelated to objective performance measures of the student such as numbers of study credits, submitted manuscripts, or published articles.

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Career planning Central question of the survey from the point of view of this report was question # 9: “Will you try to continue your career in academy (typically apply for a post-doc position)?” and “Will you try to continue your career outside academy (e.g. private sector, county administration)?”.

In the following we will use the responses of the participants to other questions in the survey to investigate which factors influence whether students choose an academic career. We will also make some general remarks on the responses.

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Own motivation Question 10 directly asked which factors influence the decision to pursue an academic career:

According to the responses, the family situation is the most important of the suggested factors affecting career planning: 94% of respondents indicate this factor as quite important or crucial, of which 71% as crucial. Scientific interest and job prospects are the second and third most important factors respectively, with 91% indicating these as quite important or crucial. Financial prospects are least important. The fact that the family situation is the most important factor in career planning does not mean that the actual family situation determines whether or not to pursue an academic career. An academic career becomes progressively less likely from single students to those who have children, but it is more striking to see how small this effect is.

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Geographic origin It appears that PhD students that started their undergraduate studies in Umeå are approximately equally likely to pursue an academic career as are students that started their studies at other Swedish universities. Students with a foreign background are clearly more interested of an academic career: all respondents with a foreign background indicate that it is likely to certain they will apply for a post-doc position.

It is intuitive to think that this is because foreign students are less often tied to Umeå by their family situation, the most important motivating factor (above). Indeed, foreign students indicate single as marital status slightly more often than Swedish students, and clearly more Swedish students have children. However, these factors did not seem to have much effect on the choice for an academic career (above).

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Role of supervisor Only 4 of the 34 respondents were repeatedly encouraged by their supervisor to apply for post-doc positions. 47% of the respondents have never been suggested to apply for a post-doc position by their supervisors.

This difference in how often a supervisor suggests to apply for a postdoc position may have a profound effect on the career planning of the student. Those students that have been frequently encouraged to apply for post-doc positions all indicate they will certainly do so.

It should be noted that it is not clear what is the causal order: are students’ attitude towards an academic career affected by their supervisors, or do supervisors refrain from suggesting an academic career when their students appear not to consider that possibility. Interestingly in that respect is that students that have never been encouraged to apply for a post-doc position actually have more credits in LADOK, more submitted manuscripts and more published manuscripts on average than those students that have been suggested (sometimes or repeatedly) to apply for an academic career. This suggests that how frequently the supervisor suggests to apply for a post-doc position is little influenced by the performance of the student that could predict success in pursuing an academic career.

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Gender There appears to be very little difference in career planning between male and female PhD students: one male and one female respondent exclude the possibility of an academic career, and approximately equal proportions of male and female respondents find it likely or certain to pursue an academic career. If there is any difference, it is that more male students consider it likely to pursue an academic career.

Motivation for male and female respondents does not differ much either: both male and female students indicate their family situation as the most important factor in career planning.

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Quantitative analysis The most powerful single explaining factor of all alternatives in this questionnaire is how often a supervisor encourages a student to apply for a post-doc position. No other factor shows a significant relation with the career intentions of the student.

Single factors prediction response to the question “Will you try to continue your career in academy?” 1=certainly not 2=unlikely 3=likely 4=certainly. rSpearman

p

corrected p

factor

scoring

0.51

0.002

0.031

supervisor suggesting post-doc position

1=never 2=suggested sometimes 3=encouraged frequently

0.38

0.027

0.341

Expected year of defence

0.38

0.025

0.320

year of starting PhD studies

0.32

0.062

0.614

salary

-0.27

0.134

0.885

expected duration of studies

0.25

0.153

0.917

place of undergraduate studies?

0.23

0.208

0.970

year of birth

0.21

0.229

0.980

social life

1=depressing 2=bad 3=good 4=excellent

-0.19

0.302

0.995

ECTS in Ladok

how many study credits (ECTS) do you have (in Ladok)?

-0.16

0.358

0.999

sex

1=female 0=male

-0.15

0.407

1.000

marital status

1=single 2=unmarried partners 3=married 4=children

0.14

0.433

1.000

job prospects

1=depressing 2=bad 3=good 4=excellent

0.02

0.898

1.000

manuscripts published

how many manuscripts have you published?

-0.01

0.951

1.000

manuscripts submitted

how many manuscripts have you submitted?

-0.01

0.953

1.000

atmosphere at work

1=depressing 2=bad 3=good 4=excellent

1=depressing 2=bad 3=good 4=excellent

1=In Umeå 2=Sweden outside Umeå 3=Outside Sweden

rSpearman: Spearman rank correlation coefficient. p=uncorrected probability of no relation. Corrected p: p-value corrected for multiple testing 1-(1-p)15.

It is interesting to note that the performance of the student (as measured by study credits, number of manuscripts submitted/published) does not predict career plans, and shows no relationship to how frequently supervisors encourage to apply for post-doc positions either (above). In fact, none of the factors investigated here predicts how often a supervisor suggests applying for post-doc positions.

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