Professional Careers and Mobility of Russian Doctorate Holders

Abstract

The international mobility of skilled personnel, doctorate holders in particular, is the subject of much European research (Auriol 2007, 2010; Jonkers 2008; Musselin 2005). Usually, social shifts themselves are deemphasized in the studies, while the labor market structure (Altbach 1996; D’Agostino et al. 2009; Dhondt 2010; Fox and Mohaparta 2007) or the institutional peculiarities of scientific communities are emphasized (Jonkers 2008; Knight 1995; Saito et al. 2008). But it should be pointed out that mobility is a complex phenomenon which is not limited to a simple relocation from one country or organization to another but it is accompanied by a range of social causes and consequences. First of all, mobility is related to the changes of an individual’s position in a social space, to the rises or falls of social status or “value”, especially in the labor market. The view of “mobility” as of a “social process” along with a “physical relocation” implies the study of an individual’s positional changes in the social hierarchy and of an individual’s ability to mobilize various resources. In particular, it is a matter of the diversity of professional practices, for instance, a combination of research activity, teaching and consulting; simultaneous or consecutive employment in different sectors of economic activity; participation in different kinds of international cooperation, etc.

Appendices

Appendix 1. Variables Related to Scientific Capital and Social Mobility

• I Scientific Capital set

  • 1. “Symbolic power”—the active properties that provide the respondent with the ability to apportion other signs of scientific recognition:

    • (1) biography published in the Russian encyclopedia/handbook

    • (2) biography published in the international/foreign encyclopedia/handbook

    • (3) public conference/talk in Russia

    • (4) public conference/talk in foreign countries

    • (5) publications in the media

    • (6) speech on the radio or on television

    • (7) publications about him/her in the media (interviews, reviews, etc.)

    • (8) personal blog or site on the Internet

    • (9) citation index

    • (10) number of peer-reviewed articles in leading Russian journals

    • (11) number of peer-reviewed articles in leading international journals (Web of Science, Scopus, etc.)

    • (12) monographs in a national publisher house

    • (13) monographs in a foreign publisher house

    • (14) translations of his or her work into foreign languages

    • (15) patents

    • (16) scientific and academic awards from Russia and other countries

    • (17) personal grants received

    • (18) number of the foreign languages used by respondent in professional communication (reading literature, presentations or lectures, writing papers)

  • 2. “Bureaucratic power”—the active properties that allow the respondent access to institutional resources:

    • (19) participation in scientific councils

    • (20) membership on editorial boards

    • (21) membership in governmental/national expert boarding/council

    • (22) membership in committee on graduate programs for graduate theses

    • (23) assignment to administrative posts connected with the distribution of employment and financial resources

    • (24) administrative posts connected with management of national and international scientific and educational projects

    • (25) leading position at university/research institution

  • 3. “Academic power”—the active properties that enable control of the social reproduction of the corps of scientists:

    • (26) membership in professional organizations/associations

    • (27) membership in governmental/national expert boarding/council

    • (28) membership in thesis/dissertation examining committee

    • (29) supervision of dissertations

    • (30) number of doctorate awarded under his/her supervision

  • 4. Post-graduate training/retraining:

    • (31) courses, trainings, seminars in own or related areas

    • (32) courses, trainings, seminars in other areas of specialization

    • (33) courses, trainings, workshops in management, planning, etc.

    • (34) computer courses in certain software products

    • (35) foreign languages courses

• II Social Mobility set

  • 1 Labor autonomy:

    • (1) leadership/supervision of other employees

    • (2) number of personnel under his/her supervision

    • (3) participation in decision-making about recruitment or dismissing an employee of respondent’s unit

    • (4) allocation of duties

    • (5) negotiating the terms of contracts/orders from customers

    • (6) participation in decision-making in choosing a supplier, contractor

    • (7) autonomy in determining the timing of the job

    • (8) autonomy in determining the schedule

    • (9) autonomy in determining the composition/volume of required work

    • (10) autonomy in the choice of methods/technologies/materials

  • 2. Access to financial resources:

    • (11) management of educational and/or implementation projects

    • (12) management/participation in research programs funded from state

    • (13) management/participation in research programs funded from non-budget sources

  • 3. Career path:

    • (14) early professionalizing, entrance to professional activity during study at university: full-time/part-time work or side job related to specialty

    • (15) participation in research projects during study

    • (16) relation of first job to university diploma

    • (17) relation of present principal job to advanced research qualification

    • (18) change of field of science during last 10 years

    • (19) professional mobility during last 10 years (job-to-job mobility)

    • (20) current position on the scale of professional attainments: from an assistant to a head of institution (present principal job)

    • (21) rate of moving up the “career ladder”

    • (22) availability of additional work

    • (23) relation of second job to advanced research qualification

    • (24) current position on the scale of professional attainments: from an assistant to a head of institution (second job)

    • (25) sector of employment for principal and second job (business enterprises, government, higher education, other education, private non-profit organizations)

    • (26) occupation in the principal and the second job

    • (27) total job tenure

    • (28) seniority in a scientific or research position

  • 4. “International career”:

    • (29) teaching activity (visiting professor), stay abroad up to 3 months

    • (30) research activity (visiting research fellow), stay abroad up to 3 months

    • (31) studying, training at foreign organizations (up to 3 months)

    • (32) working on a joint publication with foreign authors

    • (33) working on a joint projects, programs with researchers in another country

    • (34) participation in international conferences, seminars, other events held abroad

    • (35) participation in international conferences, seminars, other events held in Russia

  • 5. Level of wealth and consumption:

    • (36) principal job salary

    • (37) annual income

    • (38) consumption level of the family

    • (39) number of dependent children

Appendix 2. Operationalisaing Social Mobility

The operationalization of social mobility should occur as follows:

• ideally, social mobility should be expressed of one number,

• comprehensive character—social mobility should incorporate all of the collected sociological information on the total shifts of the doctorate holder, and

• systemic—social mobility should establish a correspondence between the social shifts of all of the doctorate holders in the sample.

The approach outlined below attempts to introduce the concept of social mobility that will satisfy these criteria.

For the sake of brevity, we only discuss the set ${\left\{{I}_k\right\}}_{k=1}^{k=m}$ of indicators that characterize the social shifts in the sample S _N . Obviously, in this case, the sociological information on the sample S _N can be written as $m\times N$-matrix I ^m _N , which consists of m columns and N rows. However, we can present the information contained in I ^m _N in another way: as $N\times N$-matrices U, which characterizes the system of social differences that exist between the total social shifts in the sample S _N . The mapping ${I}_N^m\to U$ is bijective. The element u _ij of the matrix U corresponds to the conditional probability that social mobility of the j-th respondent is more than social mobility of the i-th respondent. Then the matrix U has non-negative entries and the row sums are equal to one

$$ \left(\forall i,j\in {S}_N\right):0\le {u}_{ij}\le 1, $$

$$ \left(\forall i\in {S}_N\right):\;{\displaystyle \sum_{J\in {S}_N}{u}_{ij}=1.} $$

For complete certainty, it suffices to demonstrate the method of calculating u _ij based on the results of sociological measurement

$$ \left(\forall i,j\in {S}_N\right):\;{u}_{ij}=\frac{d_{ij}}{{\displaystyle {\sum}_{j\in {S}_N}{d}_{ij}}}, $$

where d _ij denotes the value of the uniform metric which establishes a measure of proximity between the i-th doctor and the j-th doctor in the space of their social shifts.

Social mobility is actively involved in the production of academic space in order to move social structures of science and academia forward. Accordingly, there is some reason to interpret the value of the respondent’s social mobility as a probability of his or her upward mobility. We denote this probability as M _j . As follows from the ergodic theorem for Markov chains with a countable state space (Borovkov 2013, p. 404–405), the probabilities ${\left\{{M}_j\right\}}_{j\in {S}_N}$ are the unique solution of the system

$$ {\displaystyle \sum_{j\in {S}_N}{M}_j=1,} $$

$$ {M}_j={\displaystyle \sum_{i\in {S}_N}{M}_j{u}_{ij}} $$

in the class of absolutely convergent series. Social mobility M _j is a function of the social shifts of the PhD holder. Analyzing the ergodic theorem for Markov chain it is easily to see that the more is the volume of the social shifts, the more is the value of M _j , although the relationship between the two is non-linear.