Commercializing the PhD: Training STEM Graduate Students to Think Like a Market

• In Event: Scientists as Workers

Abstract

The convergence of academic science and the market has had profound effects on academic knowledge production. This paper investigates how this convergence shapes scientific thought. Building from a four-year multi-sited ethnography loosely situated in polymer science and engineering disciplines, I theorize what I call the commercial imaginary, or the commercial assumptions upon which academic scientists produce knowledge. Through the commercial imaginary, academic scientists design research programs, develop professional relationships, and build careers.
To begin developing this concept, I posed a question to my data: Do students training under a market-oriented PI think about their research differently than students working under a nonmarket-oriented PI?
I find the market orientation of the PI had little effect on how students think about their research. During interviews, faculty often described shielding graduate students from industry projects because they were often less beneficial for students’ graduate careers. Regardless of their PIs market orientation, exhibited this commercial imaginary across many different contexts. In presentations, classrooms, and water cooler conversations, students discuss their work in market terms, highlighting the commercial application of their research. Students pursue relationships with industry, ties the U.S. government and universities work to facilitate.
The ties between academic science and the market are vast and evolving, and they are fraught with power imbalances. Through investigating how these ties shape the commercial imaginaries of students training to be scientists, this paper sheds light on power imbalances in the scientific field and their effects on academic knowledge production.

Author

• Tim Sacco, University Of Massachusetts Amherst