Academic Capitalism and Doctoral Student Socialization

As industry-academia partnerships grow, cultural tensions are likely to occur as the result of fundamental differences between business and academic values. Given that graduate school provides anticipatory socialization to the academic profession, this trend leads to important questions about the changing nature of these professions, including: How are graduate students coping with conflictive cultural messages as they are socialized in environments where both industry and academia coexist? Moreover, successful socialization is a strong predictor of doctoral retention; therefore, socialization patterns in departments heavily involved with industry open questions about doctoral attrition. The purpose of this work is to focus on the socialization of graduate students to investigate the effects of academic capitalism on the anticipatory socialization to the academic profession and doctoral retention.