Freeing Up Japan's PhD Potential
Woodherd writes:
Better prospects are needed in universities and industry to make the most of valuable talent:
Japanese science has a problem: there are too many PhD holders and not enough senior roles in universities for them to move into. This is partly caused by a well-meaning, but flawed policy to promote Japanese research that dates back almost three decades.
In 1996, Japan began a plan to boost the number of its academic researchers with a PhD but who are not yet in permanent faculty positions. The country aimed to produce 10,000 of these postdoctoral roles and by 2006 it had exceeded this goal, creating more than 16,000 positions. This leaves a fairly obvious question; what happens to a researcher after they've completed a postdoc? There hasn't been a serious enough effort to create a career pathway for these researchers in academia. Employment in industry is also an uphill battle for them because - although progress has been made - Japanese businesses on the whole still don't fully appreciate PhDs as a qualification.
Some comparison:
Many students here in Japan increasingly believe that finding jobs in industry, even in pharmaceutical firms and other research-related companies, is easier without a PhD. This is because there can be a belief in industry that it's better and easier for a company to train newly hired employees from scratch, rather than training someone who already has their 'own way of doing things'. In the United States, 40.2% of PhD holders are employed in private industry, but in Japan that figure is just 14%. Hopefully, the 14% in Japan will prove how PhD holders can contribute to businesses so that more companies employ doctoral graduates, something that could also lead to greater collaboration between academia and industry.
Earning a PhD demands an excess of patience, imagination, flexibility and expertise. Surely these are enviable characteristics for any candidate seeking promotion, be that in academia or private industry.
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