Abstract
BackgroundAcademically talented high school students (ATHSSs), an exceptional cohort, are not well studied for their career expectations, especially for those with medical career expectation (MCE). Nowadays, the public perception of the medical profession is changing in China. The purpose of this study was to answer questions about ‘is medicine attractive for ATHSSs and ‘what factors affect medical career expectations (MCE) for ATHSSs’ in China.MethodsA total of 16,479 representative ATHSSs in senior three completed a questionnaire and four different academic tests. Frequency statistics showed the proportion of ATHSSs with MCE. Unpaired t-tests were performed to find out the differences in demographics, family background, and academic performance between students with and without MCE. The logit models analysis were applied to explore the potential factors that affected the MCE of this exceptional group of students.ResultsATHSSs with MCE accounted for 20.6% (ranking 7/18) of the respondents. They were more likely to be female, came from relatively poorer families, lived in a rural area, and performed significantly worse in all academic tests except for mathematics, compared with those without MCE. In addition, the results revealed that gender (β = − 0.436, p < 0.01), region of hometown (β = − 103, p < 0.1), mother’s years of schooling (β = − 0.019, p < 0.05), and father’s occupational status (β = − 0.005, p < 0.01) contributed significantly to the MCE of academically talented students. Better performance in mathematics affected the MCE of ATHSSs taking the liberal arts and science tests differently.ConclusionsWe found the medical career is becoming unattractive to academically talented students and the medical career may be losing their aura in China. Students who have medical career expectations are likely to be females and to have a weak family background.
Highlights
Talented high school students (ATHSSs), an exceptional cohort, are not well studied for their career expectations, especially for those with medical career expectation (MCE)
Two research questions (RQs) are raised in this exploratory study: RQ1, what is the current status of Academically talented high school students (ATHSSs)’ medical career expectations (MCE) across China compared with other careers; and RQ2, what factors affect the MCE of ATHSSs across China? Based on the aforementioned discussion, we considered students’ demographics, family background and academic performance
The distribution of career expectations was aligned with the reality of the job market in China where the majority of ATHSSs are heading to well-paid, relatively stable jobs such as economists or financial analysts, and college/university faculty
Summary
Talented high school students (ATHSSs), an exceptional cohort, are not well studied for their career expectations, especially for those with medical career expectation (MCE). The purpose of this study was to answer questions about ‘is medicine attractive for ATHSSs and ‘what factors affect medical career expectations (MCE) for ATHSSs’ in China. The health profession, which is an extremely demanding career, provides a critical safeguard for human health and safety. It is rather competitive and selective in general, and qualified students compete for admission to higher medical education institutions across the world [10]. A wide range of research on the career trajectory of health professionals after graduation has explored how different factors [11,12,13] (e.g. gender, family background, indebtedness and academic performance) affect medical students’ choices of work location (urban or rural) [14, 15], work status (full-time or parttime) [16], profession (surgeon, physician, general practitioner, etc.) [17], career success and drop-out rates [18]
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