Labor market outcomes of PhD graduated in Canada and the policy implications : an analysis of the national graduate survey in 1997

The emergence of knowledge-based economy has sparked the demand for people \nwho have advanced education and training. The looming faculty shortages in Canadian \nand other developed countries make a study of the PhD graduates especially urgent. \nBy using 1997 National Graduate Survey (NOS), the thesis aims to analyze the \nschool to work transitions of the PhD graduates in the mid 1990s. An individual?s choice \nof a field of study (FOS) is treated as a personal agency variable, and gender, visible \nminority status are considered as the paramount social structure variables when the \ngraduate is trying to initially establish himself or herself in the labor market two years \nafter graduation. Criteria of successful transitions include the graduate?s income, job \ncontinuity and job satisfaction. \nFindings in this study reveal that PhD graduates were facing a tough labor market \nduring the mid 1990s, when their unemployment rate was not far away from bachelor \ngraduates, and even higher than master?s graduates. However, those PhD graduates who \ncan find jobs make a relatively higher income, and are more satisfied with their jobs than \nthose graduates at lower levels. \nContrary to the conventional wisdom, this research finds that overall PhD \ngraduates who have worked in academic jobs have relatively higher income than those \nwho have worked in non-academic jobs. Professors also tend to be more satisfied with \ntheir jobs than those non-professors. \nWomen were still under represented at the doctoral level. However, this study \nshows that they are increasingly present in the academic world where men have \ndominated for many years, hi addition, women PhD graduates have no income gaps with their men counterpart. It is observed that visible minority PhD graduates in the 1997 NGS \nhad a lower annual income than the non-visible minority PhD graduates. It appears that \nwomen?s status shows improvement at PhD level, but not those who have visible \nminority status. Vocational graduates usually earn more than that of the liberal graduates. \nThis study suggests that the crisis of faculty shortage may be exaggerated. First, the \nmajor indicators o f labor market outcomes for PhD graduates working in academic jobs \nare better than those working in non-academic jobs. This finding is directly at odds with \none major worry about faculty shortage, which argues that non-academic labor market \nprovides better incentives for PhD graduates. The labor market outcome advantages will \nattract future PhD graduates to enter the academic labor market. In addition, about eight \nin ten 1995 PhD graduates have worked in the non-academic labor market, and they may \nprovide additional resources to address the faculty shortage problems. If the supply of \nPhD graduates is not scarce, then the faculty shortage may not be as severe as predicted. \nSecond, over two in ten master graduates, and almost eight in one hundred bachelor \ngraduates demonstrate that they intend to pursue a PhD in the future, which suggests that \nPhD candidates may be plentiful in the future. Third, the faculty shortage is not equally \ndistributed across different disciplines. The present research suggests that applied \nsciences demonstrate more serious shortage than the areas of liberal arts. Lastly, unlike \nthe periods between 1950?s and 1960?s, the last three decades have witnessed the \nexpansion of mass university education in Canada (Lin, 1999), which has greatly \nenhanced the university system?s capacity to produce PhDs. Therefore, the problem of \nfaculty shortage could be addressed faster than many people now believe.

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