A Study On Research Incentive Mechanism Of Science And Engineering Ph.D Students In China University

Since the rapid development of doctoral education highlighted the scarcity of resources and problematic institutional mechanism, a high degree of concern has been inevitably focused on the quality of doctoral training. As an important part of doctoral education, science and engineering doctoral education is the main channel to cultivate highly qualified professionals for scientific research and engineering exploration. In addition, the key method to examine the quality of doctoral education is to test doctoral students'scientific research capability, which can be motivated by incentive mechanism. Therefore, by seeking support from the incentive theory, this essay probes into the crucial role of motivation and incentive mechanism in the higher education and the cultivation of doctoral students'research capability.Based on the academic review of management, economics, psychology and education, this essay elaborates the essence of doctoral education and the relation between doctoral students'research capacity and the incentive theory. The core of the incentive mode is to help doctoral students to improve professional performance. Under this mode, the maintenance of a high level research effort can be realized, and an opportunistic feedback system will be formed. The research question and hypothesis of this essay is proposed on the basis of this conceptual mode.In order to further analyze the current situation, the internal relations and the problems of incentive mechanism for doctoral students'research capability, and to construct a structural equation mode between this mechanism and research performance, a survey was conducted, which involved 858 interviewees who are doctoral students generally from 16 universities of "985 Project" and "211 Project" in the Eastern, the Central and the Western parts of China. Additionally, by following the path of empirical research, a more comprehensive and systematic theoretical study and analysis on the incentive problems of science and engineering doctoral students are also supported by an interview conducted among doctoral students, doctoral tutors and education management staff.Through preliminary analysis of the data, it is found that the main incentive subject is absent. Neither universities nor doctoral instructors would undertake the responsibility to motivate doctoral students, which leads to the failure of incentive actions. In addition, weak, inadequate and inflexible incentives exist in current mechanism. Group researches are ignored. There is no preference in current mechanism since the composition of incentives is ignored.Through further analysis of the data, the theoretical models and associated assumptions are verified. This essay concludes that, first, science and engineering research incentives are mainly targeted at seven areas which namely include personal growth, scientific research achievements, research emotion, research environment, the team spirit (teacher-student relationship), research autonomy, research reward. Secondly, doctoral students present preference for the seven different incentives in the order of high degree to low degree: scientific research achievement, research autonomy, team relationships (teacher-student relationship), scientific research reward, research emotion, personal growth, and scientific research environment. Thirdly, doctoral students'research performance can be significantly influenced by "research environment", "research autonomy" and "scientific reward"rather than the other incentives. Fourthly, research performance will also be influenced by doctoral instructors'moral qualities, research qualification, and care for students. Finally, the doctoral students' personality also influences personal choice of incentives.Based on the above empirical conclusions, the mode of "competence-based objectives and processes incentives" has been constructed. The essence of this mode is to enable doctoral research incentive mechanism to be developed by focusing on the doctoral students'innovative capability, which can be defined as a mechanism of higher level. The intensity, frequency and social comparison of the whole system should be considered to promote motivation. Student-center, emotion, interest and equality should all be considered as basic principles for the construction of the mechanism. Meanwhile, instructors'main role should be emphasized. The goal of incentives and the whole procedure should be combined. Preference for incentives and assessment system should also be concerned.This study significantly influences the theory and practice of the doctoral research incentive mechanism in China. Innovations mainly can be found in the following aspects: The analytical framework for science and engineering doctoral students'research incentive has been established by probing the essence of doctoral education, influential factors on doctoral research capacity and the meaning of research incentives. This study is a pioneering work to analyze the relation between incentives and research performance, the influence from instructors on research performance. The differential analysis on personality and incentives, which is based on a large-scale empirical study, is also a shining point this research. This research also verifies the hypothesis about influence from incentive composition, preference, and instructors'moral qualification, care for students on research performance. The mode has been firstly constructed. The questionnaire of this study can be a tool for the management of doctoral education in colleges and universities so that doctoral students'research characteristics can be well known, and their research performance can be assessed objectively.