Academic Sponsorship and Scientists' Careers

Abstract

Scientists' academic sponsors might influence their students' careers through the quality of training they provide and through their ability to transmit to their students a professional status and other ascriptive advantages. Using data for a probability sample of doctoral chemists, this study explores the effects of scientists' Ph.D. departments and several characteristics of their doctoral sponsors on their scientific productivity and positions over their first postdoctoral decade. Sponsorship appears to play a vital role in the chemists' careers. Their sponsors' productivity affected sample members' predoctoral productivity, and the calibre of their Ph.D. department affected their postdoctoral productivity. Although measures of the quality of their training did not affect the setting (university versus other employer) of the chemists' jobs, two measures of their sponsors' professional stature were consequential. These results suggest ascriptive effects of doctoral sponsorship, independent of the effects of sponsors' performance, the calibre of the Ph.D. department, and the chemists' own productivity.