What makes a productive Ph.D. student?
Alberto Corsini, Michele Pezzoni & Fabiana Visentin
#2021-011
This paper investigates the impact of the social environment to which a
Ph.D. student is exposed on her scientific productivity during the
training period. Vertical and horizontal relationships depict the social
environment. Vertical relationships are those supervisor-student, while
horizontal relationships are those student-peers. We characterize these
relationships by assessing how the supervisor's and peers' biographic
and academic characteristics relate to the student's productivity as
measured by the publication quantity, quality, and scientific network
size. Unique to our study, we cover the entire student population of a
European country for all the STEM fields. Specifically, we analyse the
productivity of 77,143 students who graduated in France between 2000 and
2014. We find that having a female supervisor is associated with a
higher student's productivity as well as being supervised by a
mid-career scientist and having a supervisor with a high academic
reputation. The supervisor's fundraising ability benefits only one
specific dimension of the student's productivity, i.e., the student's
work quality. Interestingly, the supervisor's mentorship experience
negatively associates with student's productivity. Having many peers
negatively associates with the student's productivity, especially if
peers are senior students. Having female peers positively correlates
with the student's productivity, while peers' academic status shows
mixed effects according to the productivity dimension considered. We
find results heterogeneity when breaking down our sample by field of
research.
Keywords: French Ph.D. students, Productivity determinants, Social
environment, Supervisor, Peers
JEL Classification: J24, O30