If anyone has comments on this overview of my PhD proposal, I'd be interested to hear them. I put it together with the IRCHSS deadline (this Friday) in mind. But comments at any stage over the next while are welcome, as they would be useful.
Title: A Microeconomic Analysis of Ph.D. Outcomes: Returns to Education, Educational Mismatch and Satisfaction with Educational Attainment
The proposed research project will examine the returns to Irish Ph.D. education and the determinants of job mismatch for Ph.D. holders in the Republic of Ireland. The determinants of satisfaction with Ph.D. attainment will also be examined, in both Ireland and the USA.
The specific questions to be answered are:
(i) Is there job mismatch for Ph.D. holders in the Republic of Ireland? If so, what are the determinants of this mismatch?
(ii) What are the determinants of satisfaction with Ph.D. attainment in the Republic of Ireland?
(iii) How valuable were the individual returns to Ph.D. education in Ireland between 2001 and 2005? Did these returns offer a premium on "BA" and "MA" degrees?
(iv) What are the determinants of satisfaction with Ph.D. attainment in the USA?
(The full proposal is available on request).
2 comments:
A complication to be considered is that lots of PhD holders in Ireland got them elsewhere & people who got them here may live abroad.
Arnaud Chevalier's work on over -education is worth a look.
I think it has been found that he returns to PhDs are low or even negative partly because the returns are partly non-monetary:the joy of teaching undergraduates & monitoring blogs all day!
Also the merits of a PhDs are very heterogeneous (compared to a BA): depends a lot on the subject , the institution, the supervisor..
I agree with Kevin - you should look at non-pecuniary returns to PhD's. There is a big literature on artists labour supply that might be informative with respect to some of this.
Point (iii) is a different project in a way, in my opinion. But I think it looks as though data availability will restrict this anyway from what you were saying.
I think the idea of matching the Irish and US data is great. If you can factor in Kevin's point about migration that would be good.
The general literature on job satisfaction is interesting to be aware of here. I have all these papers and you already have the NBER papers on PhD satisfaction.
It is amazing the degree of heterogeneity in these relationships. Talk further later.
Post a Comment