The impact of research independence on PhD students' careers: Large-scale evidence from France
Sofia Patsali, Michele Pezzoni & Fabiana Visentin
#2021-036
This study investigates the effect of research independence during the
PhD period on students' career outcomes. We use a unique and detailed
dataset on the French population of STEM PhD students who graduated
between 1995 and 2013. To measure research independence, we compare the
PhD thesis content with the supervisor's research. We employ advanced
neural network text analysis techniques evaluating the similarity
between the student's thesis abstract and supervisor's publications
during the PhD period. After exploring which characteristics of the PhD
training experience and supervisor explain the level of research
similarity, we estimate how similarity associates with the likelihood of
pursuing a research career. We find that the student thesis's similarity
with her supervisor's research work is negatively associated with
starting a career in academia and patenting probability. Increasing the
PhD-supervisor similarity score by one standard deviation is associated
with a 2.1 percentage point decrease in the probability of obtaining an
academic position and a 0.57 percentage point decrease in the
probability of patenting. However, conditional on starting an academic
career, PhD-supervisor similarity is associated with a higher student's
productivity after graduation as measured by citations received, network
size, and probability of moving to a foreign or US-based affiliation.
Keywords: Research independence, Early career researchers, Scientific
career outcomes, Neural network text analysis
JEL Classification: D22, O30, O33, O38