优秀的冒险者:中国博士后的职业选择与职业路径分析

Excellent Adventurers: An Analysis of Career Choice and Path of Chinese Postdoctoral Researchers

随着博士培养规模的扩大,博士后职位在中国越来越普遍。但博士后进入该职位的影响因素及其职业路径尚有待研究。基于全国13所高校1 533名博士毕业生调查数据,对其中373名博士后的职业轨迹进行了分析。研究发现:博士毕业生的学术表现越优秀越可能进入博士后岗位,大多数博士后最终能够留在高校系统,其中超过一半的人进入精英学术机构,并且不乏回母校就职者。上述发现表明,博士后职位已成为优秀博士获得高校学术职位尤其是精英大学学术职位的重要途径,但其中的学术"近亲繁殖"现象值得进一步研究。此外,由于仍有一部分博士后并没有进入高校或者精英学术机构,因此他们要比直接就业的博士多付出数年时间面对职业生涯的不确定性。未来的研究需要更加关注博士后的实际工作体验,通过相关研究为博士后工作和训练质量的提升提供支持。

With the increasing number of doctors, postdoctoral positions are becoming more and more common in China. But what factors affect postdoctoral career choice and the postdocs’ career paths need to be explored.Based on the survey data of 1 533 doctoral graduates from 13 universities in China, this paper analyzes the career trajectories of 373 postdoctoral fellows after graduation of Ph.D. It is found that postdoctoral fellows generally have excellent academic performance during their doctoral study period. Most of postdocs work in colleges and universities finally, more than half of them enter elite academic institutions, and many postdoctoral fellows return to the universities that awarded them doctoral degrees. The above findings indicate that postdoctoral positions have become an important way for excellent doctors to obtain academic positions in universities, especially in elite ones,but the phenomenon of academic"inbreeding"is worthy of further study. In addition, there are still some postdoctoral fellows who have not entered universities or elite academic institutions, so compared with doctors who directly employed, they have spend more years to face the uncertainty of career. Future research needs to pay more attention to postdoctoral work experience, so as to provide support for the improvement of postdoctoral work and training quality.