The Relevance of Employment for the Time of Completion of PhD in Brazil

Resumen

This paper investigates whether employment is a relevant predictor of the time in which Ph.D. students complete the program and earn the degree in Brazil. Based on human capital theory, it is argued that professional activities may alter the costs and benefits faced by students because of the extra effort necessary to balance professional activities with the requirements to continue and progress in the program. Based on this argument, the first hypothesis investigated herein is that there is a positive correlation (conditional on the relevant covariates) between employment during the Ph.D. and the time expected to successfully complete it. It is also hypothesized that public employment predicts a shorter time of completion than private employment. Such associations are empirically tested using a novel dataset with information on Brazilian Ph.D. students from the CAPES database merged with employment data from the ‘Annual Social Information Report’ (RAIS). The results indicate that, holding all else constant, each year of the Ph.D. in which a student is employed is associated with a 0.145 additional year necessary for completion of the program. Employment in the public sector is found to predict a higher time of completion than employment in the private sector, but the difference between the estimated coefficients is small and not meaningful. These findings provide relevant insights for the design and improvement of Ph.D. programs and evaluation systems that acknowledge and take into consideration the context in which these students develop their studies and research.