Postgraduate's Image about Future Scientific Work

Statistical data demonstrate that the number of postgraduate students in Russia has enlarged three times from 60 000 in 1996 to 130 000 in 2014. There were 13 190 postgraduates in Saint-Petersburg in 2014. Now, sociologists have not got adequate information about  their  views  which are constructed through the process of postgraduate education. According the phenomenological methodology in focus of our attention are educational process as biographical situation of postgraduates, their action, motives and results, images about scientific work and necessary qualities.

The study employed data of expert  survey  which took place in autumn of 2014. Participants were recruited through e-mail invitation sent out to 21 Saint-Petersburg Institutes of the Russian academy of science and 4 Saint-Petersburg State Universities. We analyzed 151 responses, what is 2.0% of general community in SPb.  Three groups of postgraduate students were chosen:  natural sciences postgraduates (physicists, geographers, chemists, biologists, physiologists etc.) (n=48); technical sciences postgraduates (engineers, constructors) (n=50);  humanities   postgraduates (economists, sociologists, philologists, linguists etc.) (n=53).

Problems of formation of new generation of scientists are constructed as early as in the process of post-graduate education. Analysis of the motivation to enter postgraduate school and beliefs  about research activities based on common knowledge about science, resources and effectiveness of work and problems it affecting, as well as some social characteristics allow obtaining a portrait of the "typical postgraduate student". Based on the analysis of the responses to the question about possibilities of gain in science, one can conclude that the postgraduate students think that  scientific work as of a primarily   individual, creative, well-paid, conferring scientific worker with a high social status "scientist", free from formal norms, and therefore allowing free mode of work that does not require physical effort.