Abstract
We analyzed and compared the decision-making processes underlying two approaches that academics might use to decide whether to pursue a professorship or an alternative career: academic coaching (a paid service that supports academics with career-related issues) and decision analysis (a method for applying decision theory to real-world decision problems). To this end, we conducted in-depth expert interviews with seven out of 11 academic coaches known to work in Berlin to examine empirically the career decision-making process that they use. Moreover, we demonstrate theoretically how decision analysis can be applied to an academic’s hypothetical career choice problem. A comparison of the two approaches showed that they both advise (i) structuring the decision problem by dividing it into smaller components, (ii) using the academic’s objectives to generate career alternatives, and (iii) quantifying the uncertainty of decision outcomes using subjective probabilities. Moreover, the observed differences in the way the two approaches structure the decision problem suggest ways in which they could inform each other: (i) they could make use of each other’s techniques to help academics define their objectives and generate career alternatives; (ii) academic coaching could, in addition, use decision trees (a hallmark of decision analysis) to represent the structure of the career decision problem, and use simple measurement scales to quantify how much the career options contribute to the academic’s objectives.
Highlights
Considering the difficulties of becoming a professor, many young academics must deal with the following decision problem: Should I pursue a professorship or an alternative career? The problem is relevant to young scientists in Western countries such as Germany, Italy, and the United States, where decreasing budgets and increasing relative costs have led to fewer scientists being offered permanent positions [1]
The scope of the present article is to analyze and compare the decision-making processes used in academic coaching and decision analysis—user-friendly approaches that could aid academics in their decision to pursue a professorship or an alternative career
This article was aimed at analyzing and comparing the decision-making processes used in academic coaching and decision analysis—two approaches that academics could use to aid their
Summary
Considering the difficulties of becoming a professor, many young academics must deal with the following decision problem: Should I pursue a professorship or an alternative career? The problem is relevant to young scientists in Western countries such as Germany, Italy, and the United States, where decreasing budgets and increasing relative costs have led to fewer scientists being offered permanent positions [1]. Taking a closer look at the German case, 29,218 new doctoral degrees were awarded by German universities in 2015 [2].
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