Abstract
The publish or perish mantra among faculty in academia has received a lot of attention and research compared to doctoral students about to enter academia. Objective: This article addresses the question of doctoral students’ readiness for scholarly tasks. Scholarly tasks include publication and presentation of articles at conferences. Method: Data for this study was collected from 388 doctoral program completers from 2012 to 2014 at a research university. A productivity score was generated for each participant as well as personal and academic factors and various analysis were conducted to determine variables that explained a significant portion of the variance in the productivity of the doctoral program completers. Results: The results showed that International students were significantly different from their US citizen counterparts in terms of their productivity. Secondly, scholarly productivity was significantly different by a doctoral student’s major, with students majoring in Chemistry having the highest mean productivity scores followed by doctoral students in Mechanical Engineering. Conclusion: Even though majority of the doctoral program completers did not have an internship during their graduate education, those who did, had significantly higher productivity score than those who did not. In the final Model of the hierarchical regression, four out of twelve variables helped to explain the variance in the doctoral students’ productivity. Application: A Significant variable in preparing for the workforce is having an Internship. The results and implications for future research and practice were discussed.
Erratum
ARE GRADUATE PROGRAM COMPLETERS READY FOR SCHOLARLY TASKS? Raymond Doe (Corresponding author) Lamar University Department of Psychology Lamar University P.O. Box 10036 Beaumont, TX 77710 Email: rdoe@lamar.edu Phone: (409) 880-8283 Fax: (409) 880-1780 Michael F. Burnett J.C Floyd Endowed Professor of Agriculture Louisiana State University 131 J.C. Miller Baton Rouge, LA 70803 Email: vocbur@lsu.edu Phone: (225) 578-6194 Fax: (225) 578-0777