Career Choices in Academia

Based on a unique survey, we conduct a stated choice experiment to examine the determinants of career choice in academia. Both early and later stage researchers value a balance between teaching and research, appropriate salaries, working with high-quality peers and good availability of external grants. Attractive academic jobs for early stage researchers feature in addition a combination of early independence and career (tenure) perspectives; later stage researchers favour jobs which make it easy to take up new lines of research, which pay according to a public scheme including a performance element and where research funding is provided by the university. Our findings have important implications for the structure of academic careers and for the organisational design of research universities. Furthermore, they shed light on the institutional determinants of the asymmetric mobility of highly talented scientists between the EU and the U. S.

[1]  Thomas Philippon,et al.  Financiers Vs. Engineers:Should the Financial Sector Be Taxed or Subsidized? , 2007 .

[2]  James A. Perkins,et al.  The Higher Education System: Academic Organization in Cross-National Perspective , 1985 .

[3]  A. Rustichini,et al.  Performance in Competitive Environments: Gender Differences , 2003 .

[4]  Grit Laudel,et al.  Migration Currents Among the Scientific Elite , 2005 .

[5]  D. Hicks.  Performance-based university research funding systems , 2012 .

[6]  Philippe Aghion,et al.  Appropriate growth policy: a unifying framework , 2006 .

[7]  D. McFadden,et al.  Specification tests for the multinomial logit model , 1984 .

[8]  P. Allison,et al.  Comparing Logit and Probit Coefficients Across Groups , 1999 .

[9]  Pedro Albarrán,et al.  A comparison of the scientific performance of the U.S. and the European Union at the turn of the XXI century , 2009 .

[10]  F. Docquier,et al.  Globalization, Brain Drain and Development , 2012, SSRN Electronic Journal.

[11]  F. Docquier,et al.  Documenting the Brain Drain of “La Crème de la Crème” , 2009 .

[12]  K. Train,et al.  Mixed Logit with Repeated Choices: Households' Choices of Appliance Efficiency Level , 1998, Review of Economics and Statistics.

[13]  F. Lissoni,et al.  Career progress in centralized academic systems: Social capital and institutions in France and Italy , 2012 .

[14]  Jeffrey Grogger,et al.  Attracting Talent: Location Choices of Foreign-Born Phds in the Us , 2011 .

[15]  Christine Musselin,et al.  Towards a European Academic Labour Market? Some Lessons Drawn from Empirical Studies on Academic Mobility , 2004 .

[16]  Patrick Gaulé,et al.  Chinese Graduate Students and U.S. Scientific Productivity , 2013, Review of Economics and Statistics.

[17]  M. Finn,et al.  Stay Rates of Foreign Doctorate Recipients from U.S. Universities, 2007 , 2010 .

[18]  Paula E. Stephan,et al.  Exceptional contributions to US science by the foreign-born and foreign-educated , 2001 .

[19]  D. McFadden.  Conditional logit analysis of qualitative choice behavior , 1972 .

[20]  K. Train.  Halton Sequences for Mixed Logit , 2000 .

[21]  Gordon H. Hanson,et al.  The Scale and Selectivity of Foreign-Born PhD Recipients in the US , 2013 .

[22]  F. Lissoni,et al.  University Research and Public–Private Interaction , 2010 .

[23]  William M. Capron,et al.  Dynamic Shortages and Price Rises: The Engineer-Scientist Case , 1959 .

[24]  Muriel Niederle,et al.  Do Women shy away from Competition , 2004 .

[25]  Paul A. Ruud,et al.  Approximation and Simulation of the Multinomial Probit Model : An Analysis of Covariance Matrix Estimation , 1996 .

[26]  G. Dosi,et al.  The relationships between science, technologies and their industrial exploitation: An illustration through the myths and realities of the so-called ‘European Paradox’ , 2006 .

[27]  C. Bhat.  Quasi-random maximum simulated likelihood estimation of the mixed multinomial logit model , 2001 .

[28]  B. Clark.  Places of Inquiry: Research and Advanced Education in Modern Universities , 1997 .

[29]  Paula E. Stephan,et al.  The Mover's Advantage: Scientific Performance of Mobile Academics , 2012 .

[30]  Kimberly S. Hamilton,et al.  The increasing linkage between U.S. technology and public science , 1997 .

[31]  Richard Williams,et al.  Using Heterogeneous Choice Models to Compare Logit and Probit Coefficients Across Groups , 2009 .

[32]  Kenneth E. Train,et al.  Discrete Choice Methods with Simulation , 2016 .

[33]  David M. Drukker,et al.  Generating Halton Sequences using Mata , 2006 .

[34]  Filippo Radicchi,et al.  The Possible Role of Resource Requirements and Academic Career-Choice Risk on Gender Differences in Publication Rate and Impact , 2012, PloS one.

[35]  Woo-Sung Jung,et al.  Quantitative and empirical demonstration of the Matthew effect in a study of career longevity , 2008, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[36]  Andrew J. Oswald,et al.  The Elite Brain Drain , 2009, SSRN Electronic Journal.

[37]  R. Merton.  Priorities in scientific discovery: A chapter in the sociology of science. , 1957 .

[38]  M. Finn,et al.  Stay Rates of Foreign Doctorate Recipients from U.S. Universities, 2013 , 2018 .

[39]  David M. Blank,et al.  The Demand and Supply of Scientific Personnel. , 1958 .

[40]  J. Ben-David,et al.  Fundamental Research and the Universities: Some Comments on International Differences , 1968 .

[41]  Michele Pezzoni,et al.  Scientific Productivity and Academic Promotion: A Study on French and Italian Physicists , 2010 .

[42]  R. Veugelers,et al.  An ‘Elite Brain Drain’: Are Foreign Top PhDs More Likely to Stay in the U.S.? , 2012 .

[43]  J. Halton.  On the efficiency of certain quasi-random sequences of points in evaluating multi-dimensional integrals , 1960 .

[44]  Paula E. Stephan.  How Economics Shapes Science , 2012 .

[45]  R. Veugelers,et al.  Destination Choices of Mobile European Researchers: Europe versus North America , 2011 .

[46]  J. Hunt,et al.  How Much Does Immigration Boost Innovation? , 2008, SSRN Electronic Journal.

[47]  J. Hicks,et al.  The economics of science , 1996 .

[48]  David C. Mowery,et al.  Universities in National Innovation Systems , 2006 .

[49]  Ben R. Martin,et al.  The Changing Social Contract for Science and the Evolution of the University , 2003 .

[50]  J. Ben-David,et al.  The Scientist's Role in Society: A Comparative Study , 1973 .

[51]  D. Hensher.  The valuation of commuter travel time savings for car drivers: evaluating alternative model specifications , 2001 .

[52]  P. Altbach,et al.  Paying the Professoriate: A Global Comparison of Compensation and Contracts. , 2012 .

[53]  David A. Hensher,et al.  The Mixed Logit Model: the State of Practice and Warnings for the Unwary , 2001 .

[54]  J. Marschak.  Binary Choice Constraints on Random Utility Indicators , 1959 .

[55]  Ahmed Tritah,et al.  The brain drain between knowledge-based economies: the European human capital outflow to the US , 2008 .

[56]  P. David,et al.  Toward a new economics of science , 1994 .

[57]  E. D. Weert.  Support for continued data collection and analysis concerning mobility patterns and career paths of researchers , 2013 .

[58]  A. Hole.  Fitting Mixed Logit Models by Using Maximum Simulated Likelihood , 2007 .

[59]  Paula E. Stephan,et al.  Choice of Country by the Foreign Born for Phd and Postdoctoral Study: a Sixteen-Country Perspective , 2013 .

[60]  J. Ben-David,et al.  Universities and Academic Systems in Modern Societies , 1962, European Journal of Sociology.

[61]  Vannevar Bush,et al.  Science, the endless frontier : A report to the President , 2011 .

[62]  John M. Rose,et al.  Applied Choice Analysis: A Primer , 2005 .