■ Liu Shengjun
Recently, a university in Jiangsu openly recruited staff for the society, requiring all the recruited staff to have doctoral degrees, but what it recruited was not academic posts, but administrative posts and laboratory posts. This move triggered a heated public discussion.
For administrative positions in colleges and universities, a master’s degree is sufficient, but it is not a case that employers require all staff to have a doctorate degree. For example, Henan University had previously required that the 15 administrative personnel it recruited must be doctors, and they could not change jobs within four years.
Public opinion is concerned about this because the public questions whether this is a mismatch between high-end talents and jobs, and it also shows that the supply and demand of the doctoral job market have undergone a qualitative change. This problem should arouse our thinking.
The pressure of academic competition is transmitted to the doctoral level
The requirement for all doctors in administrative positions in colleges and universities reflects the current situation of the academic market — — As a "market", there will always be people entering and others leaving. Among them, there is no doubt that there is fierce competition in the entry process, and doctoral students also need to prove their academic ability through academic qualifications and experience to obtain a teaching/research post.
Under the background of college enrollment expansion, the number of college graduates has climbed to new heights, and will reach 11.58 million in 2023. At the moment of fierce employment competition, academic qualifications are rolled up from undergraduate to master, and finally transmitted to doctoral level. In recent years, the rate of postgraduate entrance examination remains high, which is reflected by the rising scores of postgraduate entrance examination.
This leads some people who do not have academic research ability and lack academic enthusiasm and interest to choose to study PhD; There are also some doctoral students who find themselves unsuitable for academic research after several years of study. For these doctoral students, it is understandable to voluntarily withdraw from the academic market and choose to be diverted to enterprises, government agencies and universities to engage in administrative work. However, it is obviously a waste of talents for those who are interested in continuing academic research but are forced to choose non-academic market employment for some practical reasons.
If we leave aside those who voluntarily withdraw from the academic market, we can sum up several specific reasons only in the latter case.
First, the mismatch between the scale of doctoral enrollment expansion and the number of academic research posts provided by colleges and universities is the main reason. In recent years, the enrollment scale of doctoral students in China has expanded dramatically, and the number of students enrolled has increased from 65,600 in 2011 to 139,000 in 2022, doubling in 10 years. According to statistics, as early as 2020, the number of doctoral students in universities nationwide reached 524,000.
At the same time, there are only about 35,000 jobs available in colleges and universities across the country, which are not only teaching and research posts, but also counselor posts for master’s and undergraduate students and other administrative and logistics posts.
Secondly, this is a kind of helpless move forced by reality, and even a kind of compromise. After all, doctors are generally not young when they graduate. Even in the most ideal situation, this master’s degree is generally about 29 years old or above. If you have worked before studying for a master’s degree or a doctor’s degree, it is not unusual to be 35 years old.
At present, there is serious age discrimination in China’s job market, and there is widespread "35-year-old age anxiety". If you find an unstable job when you graduate, there will be no advantage in changing jobs after you are 35. Therefore, choosing a stable and relatively free university is the general first choice for doctoral students’ employment, even if they are reluctant to engage in administrative positions where teaching and scientific research cannot continue.
Third, administrative posts in colleges and universities also have certain advantages. For doctoral students who are suffering from scientific research, this job means that they can continue to stay in a familiar university environment without the challenge and torture of scientific research. As a public institution, colleges and universities also have room for promotion in their administrative positions, and once they have certain administrative positions, they still have the opportunity to be seconded and transferred to government agencies. In reality, a large number of administrative leaders have experience in university management. What’s more, administrative posts in colleges and universities also have two holidays in one year, which is also an important welfare compared with enterprises and government agencies.
It is necessary to change the concept and guarantee the mechanism.
Some experts have pointed out that all fields and posts in society need doctoral talents. Doctoral students should change their employment concept, dare to enter small and medium-sized enterprises and other fields, and even dare to start their own businesses. They should have the determination and courage to do something. In this regard, the author believes that the doctor’s choice of non-academic market employment can not be solved simply by "changing ideas", but by considering comprehensive factors and corresponding institutional mechanisms.
First of all, the cost of trial and error for doctors to choose non-academic market employment is very high. When the doctor graduated, he was old enough to talk about marriage and establish a family, and even many doctoral students were married. Therefore, the family burden and economic pressure it faces are not small, and the cost of trial and error and the family’s ability to bear risks cannot be ignored. The so-called "changing ideas, daring to enter small and medium-sized enterprises, and even starting their own businesses" is not a simple statement, and this statement is not universal.
Secondly, there is still a very high sunk cost for doctors to choose non-academic market employment. It takes at least 10 years for a student to go from undergraduate course to master’s degree to doctor’s degree. Therefore, when making a choice, we should not only consider changing our ideas, but also ignore past investment.
Finally, as mentioned above, age discrimination is not uncommon in China’s current employment practice. This phenomenon exists not only in enterprises, but also in some government agencies and institutions. If you choose to work in an enterprise or even start your own business after graduation, you will face the risk of active or passive "re-employment" after the age of 35 or even 40. At this time, doctors no longer have any advantages in age, and at the same time they lack security, which will seriously affect their choice of employers in non-academic markets and non-institutional systems, and is also not conducive to doctors’ main body of innovation — — Play a role in the enterprise.
Therefore, employers in the non-academic market should consider the risk of trial and error, the sunk cost of past investment and the risk of re-employment in the future when introducing doctors, and provide them with corresponding treatment and protection.
In order to support the regional economic development, the local government of the employer should establish specific systems and mechanisms when introducing high-end doctoral talents, solve the risks and costs of doctors’ choosing non-academic market employment, establish a guarantee mechanism for them, solve worries, and consider combining the long-term development of doctors’ personal career with local social and economic development.
At the national level, doctors are the main force of scientific and technological innovation. In order to continuously promote scientific and technological progress and innovation and solve the problem of "sticking the neck", China should establish corresponding security systems and mechanisms, guide doctors to change their concepts, choose to work in non-academic markets such as enterprises, and continue to engage in scientific and technological innovation. Otherwise, as the main force of scientific and technological innovation, doctors have no choice but to give up their scientific and technological innovation work and mismatch with employers, so they cannot play their due role. The huge economic and time costs paid by the state, universities and individuals will be wasted. This is not conducive to the realization of personal value for individuals, but also a huge social cost loss for the country.
In administrative work, doctors have an "advantage"
From the perspective of institutional economics, it is beneficial to university governance for doctors to engage in the administrative work of colleges and universities to some extent.
In colleges and universities, there are different colleges and departments according to different disciplines, which are very different from each other. The professional knowledge and information of teaching and scientific research are more in the hands of secondary colleges or departments. This knowledge is "local", which determines that colleges or departments have the right to take actions according to their actual needs, so as to avoid increasing the cost of information transmission between university-level administrative organs and departments, realize more effective scientific decision-making and promote teachers’ scholarship.
In this respect, doctors engaged in administrative work have certain advantages.
Because of academic training and a certain academic vision, it is easier for doctors to form a consensus with teachers as administrators, which is helpful to promote the study of university teachers. The content of teachers’ scholarship includes the design of training objectives and schemes of various teaching projects, the approval of students’ academic level, the evaluation of academic level and contribution of teachers’ research, the formulation of academic standards for teachers’ employment and professional title promotion, and other academic issues. The solution of these problems not only needs a certain degree of "locality", but also needs a certain academic cognition.
Therefore, from the perspective of university governance, doctors as administrators will help reduce the management costs of universities and improve the level of university governance. This is what we need to pay attention to.
(The author is a professor at civil aviation university of china Law School)