The effect of trainee career intentions on mentor’s interest in the trainee: Experimental evidence from academia

52 Pages Posted: 29 Aug 2023 Last revised: 29 Oct 2024

See all articles by Inna Smirnova

Inna Smirnova

University of Michigan School of Information

Austin Shannon

Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Michigan

Misha Teplitskiy

University of Michigan School of Information

Date Written: October 29, 2024

Abstract

In many industries trainees often seek careers different from their mentors. For example, many PhD students seek non-academic careers. Anecdotally, mentors invest less in different-career trainees, but causal evidence is lacking. To fill this gap, we conducted an audit experiment in academia, where a fictitious prospective PhD student emailed immunology and microbiology principal investigators (PIs) about mentorship. The student’s career intention was randomly described as “applied research in industry” (n = 1,000), “basic research in academia” (n = 1,000) or no description (control, n = 442). To mitigate concerns about skills and motivation, all emails highlighted the student’s great academic record. Contrary to expectations, PIs responded at similar rates across all conditions. Treatment effects showed little heterogeneity based on the PIs’ institution prestige, industry connections, and career length. These null findings challenge the widespread belief that mismatched career intentions cause less mentorship (although the two may still be associated) and the mechanisms assumed to drive that effect. Our results call for caution in deploying interventions to fix problems related to advisor-mentee misalignments before clearly establishing their source.

Keywords: academic labor market, selection of trainees, mentor-trainee career mismatches, audit experiment

Suggested Citation

Smirnova, Inna and Shannon, Austin and Teplitskiy, Misha, The effect of trainee career intentions on mentor’s interest in the trainee: Experimental evidence from academia
(October 29, 2024). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4551383 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4551383

Inna Smirnova (Contact Author)

University of Michigan School of Information ( email )

105 S State St
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
United States

Austin Shannon

Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Michigan ( email )

1500 East Medical Center Drive
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
United States

Misha Teplitskiy

University of Michigan School of Information ( email )

Ann Arbor, MI
United States

HOME PAGE: http://www.misha.mx

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