早期职业学科转向的代价：来自博士招生证据
The Costs of Early-career Disciplinary Pivots: Evidence from Ph.D. Admissions
Sidney Xiang, Nicholas David, Dallas Card, Wenhao Sun, Daniel M Romero, Misha Teplitskiy
AI 速览：分析17万份博士申请发现，申请者从先前学位转向语义距离更远的目标项目时，录取概率更低，且入学后毕业更慢，但发表和引用表现无显著差异。
Science often advances when researchers pivot from one discipline to another and import new ideas. However, for established researchers, such pivots are associated with fewer publications and citations. Here, we investigate pivoting at the beginning of a research career--doctoral admissions--when the benefits of importing ideas might outweigh the switching costs. Analyzing 171,347 PhD applications at a large research university from 2013 to 2023, we measured the semantic distance between each applicant's prior degree and target program. Applicants who pivot further had lower undergraduate grades and, controlling for academic and demographic predictors, lower admission chances: the average pivot corresponds to a 5.3% lower admission probability (0.80 percentage points). Among enrollees, the average pivoter takes longer to graduate than non-pivoters, with a 10.7% lower graduation hazard, and similar publication and citation counts on average and at the tails. Our results suggest that pivoting at the outset of research careers, even if it benefits research communities, comes with significant costs to individuals.