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Abstract
This paper analyses wage differences among workers with doctoral studies depending on their specialised area of knowledge (humanities and social studies or science) and on their type of job (university teacher or other professional activity). Traditionally, science-related activities have been associated with higher wages than humanities and social studies ones due to the fact that the market tends to value higher the productivity of disciplines considered to be sciences. By estimating an endogenous switching model and applying the Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition, we have observed the existence of a positive wage difference in favour of Ph.D.s of humanities or social studies for university teachers, and for the Ph.D.s of science in other professions.
Acknowledgements
This research has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation project ECO2008-03468. We would like to thank the National Statistics Institute (INE) for having provided us with the database ‘2006 Survey on Human Resources in Science and Technology’.
Notes
*In the probit selection between sciences and humanities and social studies 57 university dummy variables are included.
1. The Bologna Declaration signifies a profound change in how the content and structure of graduate and post-graduate courses are defined (Silvana Citation2008). In the specific case of Europe, a wide variety of models coexist which can be summarized into three groups: doctoral schools, individual supervision, and courses in addition to individual supervision (Kehm Citation2007b). Along with these models we can add the aims doctorate courses want to achieve: there are research degrees, professional degrees, doctorates in which the research work is carried out in cooperation with an enterprise, etc. From the Bologna Declaration onwards, a more structured phase of qualification for a doctoral degree has been established (see Bologna Working Group on Qualifications Frameworks Citation2005), and it has also been set out that doctoral training should be aimed at building transferable skills in an interdisciplinary way and therefore at training students for a wider employment market (Reichert Citation2010).
2. See Ehrenberg (Citation2004) for a summary of the main studies on higher education as well as econometric problems facing researchers, and Psacharopoulos and Patrinos (Citation2004) on the study of returns to investment in education.
3. In order to increase the level of awareness of the superior training cycle, the EU has promoted surveys through EU Regulation 753/2004 on Science and Technology, which provides a framework for the development of statistics on workers who have obtained a doctorate degree.
4. The ‘Survey on Human Resources in Science and Technology 2006’ distinguishes between 42 areas of knowledge and 27 professional activities.
5. Ehrenberg, McGrawb, and Mrdjenovicb (Citation2006) estimate wage differentials by fields, but only for the group of university teachers, and provide evidence that variations in field differences in average full professor salaries across universities are associated with variations in field differences in average faculty quality.
6. This estimate is available on request.
7. The National Statistical Institute provides data on trends in the number of new entrants to university by sex and field in Spain.
8. Buela-Casal et al. (Citation2009) make a research ranking of Spanish public universities.
9. We present data from 16 regions. In seven of these there is only one university. Source: National Statistics Institute and International Economics Institute.
10. As pointed out by Ehrenberg (Citation1991), wages in alternative occupations (in this case, other fields) show clearly significant effects. However, the database does not list the employment history, so we do not know when the graduate had to decide between university professor and other activity.
11. Oaxaca (Citation1973a, Citation1973b).
12. In some research on wage differences (Davia and Hernanz, Citation2004; De la Rica, Dolado, and Llorens Citation2008), this fact is related to discrimination, even though it only should be understood as that part of wage differential that cannot be explained by wage equations (see Canal and Rodríguez Citation2008).
13. Table A contains the variable definitions and Table A contains descriptive statistics for the variables included in the various estimates.
14. See Mora (Citation2001) for a complete summary of the existing system in Spain for evaluating the academic and research activities of university teachers.
15. There is no information on how many individuals in each field of knowledge may have gone from being university teachers to some other professional activity and vice versa. As such, the comments on wages do not take into account the possible effects of changes in professional activity.