Up or Out: Research Incentives and Career Prospects of Postdocs in Germany

The career prospects of young academics in Germany are the subject of an intensive public debate. During the early 2000s, the academic career path was characterized by the availability of only few tenured professorships, high rates of dropout from an academic career both right after completion of a PhD and at further stages as a postdoc, disproportionately high rates of dropouts by females, and a high average age of appointment to a full professorship. In the public debate, it is argued that postdocs in Germany are not sufficiently independent and that there are insufficient incentives to engage in excellent research. Furthermore, postdocs in Germany often seem to lack clear career perspectives. There is concern that excellent young academics leave Germany because of better working conditions and career prospects in countries like the U.S., or they choose to pursue a non-academic career after completion of a PhD. Responding to some of these concerns, the German government implemented a number of reforms during the 2000s, which aimed at improving the attractiveness of an academic career in Germany. Part of the reforms was the introduction of assistant professorships (’Juniorprofessor’), which should provide a more independent alternative to the ’Habilitation’. In addition, a new salary system with more flexible and performance-oriented payment was introduced. Based on an online survey among postdocs in the fields of economics, business economics, sociology, and social sciences, this paper provides evidence on the perceptions and attitudes of postdocs regarding their research incentives, working conditions, and career prospects. Our data also allow to draw conclusions with respect to gender differences, especially in relation to parenthood. Based on a cluster analysis, we identify three types of postdocs, motivated optimists, confident academics, and frustrated academics, which differ with respect to age, gender, and the way they have obtained their PhD. Overall, the motivated optimists are more likely to have graduated from a PhD program rather than at the chair of a professor and they are more likely to be business economists. They are predominantly male and are on average younger than the confident academics and the frustrated academics. The latter might also explain the optimism among the motivated optimists, as career prospects are shown to deteriorate with age. In contrast, over 50% of all postdocs are pessimistic with regard to their academic career, mainly as a result of employment insecurity, and only 53% actually exhibit strong research incentives. However, research incentives differ strongly between different groups and are highest for assistant professors and for postdocs having participated in a PhD program, which may be due to the selection of these groups. In addition, research incentives are on average higher for female postdocs, which is, however, at least partly offset by significantly worse (perceived) career prospects related to parenthood. Apart from this, we find little gender differences. In general, working conditions and career prospects are perceived as most insecure in the fields of sociology and social sciences. Overall, besides the small group of assistant professors, postdocs see only a small impact of the university reforms on their working conditions, research perspectives, and career prospects. Another interesting finding concerns the assessment of the importance of networks. Over 25% of the respondents state that networks are more important for a successful career than academic excellence, the exception being economists, who view networks to be of less importance. Finally, good career prospects outside academia do not seem to reduce the motivation and research incentive of postdocs, despite their rather uncertain academic career prospects.

Fitzenberger, Bernd and Ute Leuschner (2012), Up or Out: Research Incentives and Career Prospects of Postdocs in Germany, ZEW Discussion Paper No. 12-020, Mannheim.