なぜ博士課程進学はキャリア選択から除外されるのか

—キャリア観・社会とアカデミアの関係性への認識に着目して—

抄録

This study explores the mechanisms of career decisions among master’s degree students who do not wish to advance to doctoral programs, focusing on their perceptions of the relationship between universities and society and the factors that generate these perceptions. The decreasing number of doctoral students has been attributed to financial difficulties during students’ studies and the difficulty of finding employment after obtaining a doctorate, as well as poor employment conditions after. In addition to these problems, interviews with students reveal that the mechanisms that exclude doctoral study as a career choice also consist of social stresses and anxieties arising from a perception that being a researcher is a career that only has indirect impacts on society, and from a belief that research must be practical to be of social significance. This study also suggests that such social stress and anxiety may contribute to postgraduates’ underestimation of their research skills and aptitudes, which is one of the reasons for not going on to doctoral studies and is often perceived as a personal issue, as well as the potential for institutional and policy approaches to address them.