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I plan to apply for PhD in Finance/Statistics next semester, and hence searched for potential supervisors.

An issue I have is that many interesting candidates are above age 60, and in Germany Professors retire at 65, such that a subsequent post-doc/habilitation would most likely require a different supervisor after PhD. One Professor just started his position at age 40, but so he has not many notable publications and I am unsure whether he might change university soon (he just changed it from another 4 years position).

Could someone advise me on the importance of age for selecting a PhD supervisor in context of a long-term future academic career?

The time for PhD would be 4-5 years, and PostDoc/Habilitation/AssociateProf usually again 4-6 years, with goal of potentially becoming Full Professor in Finance/Statistics.

emcor
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  • @PeteL.Clark "Future academic career"(also habilitation/PostDoc). I think it would be hard to find a different professor for habilitation if I had not had my PhD with him? – emcor Jul 06 '14 at 08:02
  • Formally it requires a supervisor, but the research is more independent, with a final examination in the end. – emcor Jul 06 '14 at 08:36
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    You should also mention the field you are in; traditions vary wildly (for example, habilitations are becoming very rare in some, but are still more or less expected in others). – Christian Clason Jul 06 '14 at 08:49
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    emcor: "I think it would be hard to find a different professor for habilitation if I had not had my PhD with him?" I'm not sure why you think that. I checked several examples just now and in none of them was the Habilitation supervisor the same as the PhD supervisor. Moreover, from all that I know (but again, I am talking about a different academic system from my own), thinking seriously about your Habilitation before you begin your PhD program is almost uselessly premature. – Pete L. Clark Jul 06 '14 at 08:57
  • @PeteL.Clark Thanks good point.It is truly premature in a sense, but I was just unsure that I could make a mistake now if I cannot change it after. I realized that when the supervisor retires/passes away, at least I would definetely not be able to habilitate there (it happened to some people I know). – emcor Jul 06 '14 at 09:05
  • @emcor That sounds like wrong information to me (and I come from an academic system that has habilitation). – xLeitix Jul 06 '14 at 09:44
  • @Alexandros I just pointed that this was the "least" which can for sure happen if one does not consider the age (so it is important to consider). I was asking what other things might be relevant in this context, e.g. as said the younger supervisors usually do not have as many good publications. – emcor Jul 06 '14 at 16:24

2 Answers2

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First: a few people commented that thinking about your postdoc/Habilitation before even starting your Ph.D. is premature. I disagree. I have seen too many people coast along during their Ph.D. time without ever knowing what they are going to do afterwards, and certainly not preparing for their post-Ph.D. time, whether in academia or in industry. So I would say you demonstrate good long-term thinking. Already thinking about your academic career will help you prepare to work out a research program, network (more on this below) etc.

Second: there is no problem whatsoever with changing advisors between the Ph.D. and the postdoc period. To the contrary! If you stay at the same place for almost ten years, you will need to explain why you never moved, never checked out other places to work, other approaches to research. Many, many (most?) people will switch advisors at least once, or possibly even do postdocs in two different places.

Incidentally, this is why I think it is a good thing you are already thinking about your long-term future now, because it is never too early to start meeting people at conferences with your future in mind. You may just meet someone at your first conference who you could collaborate with or spend your postdoc time with.

So I would definitely recommend that you consider the older potential advisor. He sounds like he could introduce you to lots of people, and you will likely not need to pack up and move somewhere else during your Ph.D. period, which seems possible with the younger professor and which could somewhat mess up your personal life.

Of course, these considerations are all not the highest priority. You should definitely keep other aspects in mind in choosing where to do your Ph.D., like the kind of project you would be doing for either of the two professors, or whether the two of you "click" on a personal level, or what financing there is, or lots of other things you should discuss with your potential advisor ahead of time.

Finally, there is no Habilitation in Germany any more. Nowadays, Germany has moved to a more American style in academic careers. You will do a Ph.D., then a postdoc, then usually a Juniorprofessur (roughly, assistant professorship - not tenured and limited to six years), then get your Ruf to a tenured position. It's quite possible to skip the Juniorprofessur, though.

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Stephan Kolassa
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    There still is a Habilitation, but it is losing importance. Often it is enough to have something equivalent, such as a Juniorprofessur, leader of a Emmy-Noether-Gruppe, or similar positions abroad. – Pieter Naaijkens Jul 07 '14 at 07:32
  • Thanks for your complete answer, also good point that changing supervisor is really expected and beneficial. – emcor Jul 07 '14 at 08:18
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    I am puzzled by your equation of "postdoc" with "Habilitation". In my understanding these are not the same at all: e.g. (i) a postdoc is a job, whereas a Habilitation is a written document followed by an exam. (ii) A postdoc is what you start right after a PhD ends; a Habilitation cannot be done at this point. Could you clarify who commented that thinking about postdocs before starting a PhD was premature? – Pete L. Clark Jul 07 '14 at 14:12
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    Also: "Finally, there is no Habilitation in Germany any more." I am not German, but from all the information I can find that does not seem to be factually correct. – Pete L. Clark Jul 07 '14 at 14:13
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    Finally, I think you are taking my comment in the wrong spirit. Someone who is starting a PhD should absolutely think about their longterm academic career. But there is a big difference between thinking about the future and trying to plan a decade ahead based on the (understandably) rather naive assumptions of someone who hasn't even begun a PhD program. The whole premise of this question is that the OP is afraid to choose a PhD advisor who will not be around in 10-15 years to direct a Habilitation (which by then really may not exist). This is not a useful kind of planning ahead. – Pete L. Clark Jul 07 '14 at 14:13
  • The Habilitation used to be the qualification you needed to apply for professorships. It main component was the Habilitationsschrift, also called a "second thesis" - essentially another book, after the Ph.D. thesis. Conflating the Habilitation with the postdoc is rather analogous to conflating the Ph.D. (which is a title) with the time period one typically ends with getting a Ph.D. Essentially, why would you do a postdoc if your goal was not to stay in academia, which until recently meant doing a Habilitation but now can be done via a Juniorprofessur? – Stephan Kolassa Jul 07 '14 at 14:34
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    I am more familiar with the French system than the German system: I once witnessed a French Habilitation defense. The candidate -- who was older and more eminent than I am, though at the time I had a tenure-track job -- must have been at least 10 years past his PhD, and he was doing this so as to be able to officially (rather than de facto) direct PhD students. As I said before, something that you cannot start until several years after your PhD seems quite different from a postdoc. BTW, a Juniorprofessur is not the same as a postdoc either: that position has no equivalent in the US. – Pete L. Clark Jul 07 '14 at 16:32
  • I did a bit more research. It turns out that the German system is significantly different from the French system. In the French system there is no academic designation for people preparing for the Habilitation (hence my remarks above), but in Germany they have the "academic assistant". This webpage http://www.eui.eu/ProgrammesAndFellowships/AcademicCareersObservatory/AcademicCareersbyCountry/Germany.aspx makes a distinction between a postdoc and an academic assistant, but I agree that the two are closer together than I had thought. – Pete L. Clark Jul 07 '14 at 16:49
  • Trying to reduce the German academic system to a simple statement is impossible -- the traditions in different fields, states (which are autonomous in this respect), universities and even departments are too varied for this. In general, an open position for a full professor will (often, but not always) list among the requirements a "habilitation or equivalent qualification", where the hiring committee can decide on what counts as "equivalent"; a successful evaluation as a Juniorprofessor will usually do the trick, and is even frequently explicitly listed. – Christian Clason Jul 07 '14 at 23:09
  • @PeteL.Clark A Juniorprofessor can, as a first order approximation, be compared to a tenure-track assistant professor, while a postdoc almost exclusively refers to someone (with a PhD) hired for a grant (meaning fixed duration of two to three years with a possible extension, no teaching duties, and research deliverables specified in the grant proposal). The "academic assistant" is a position that really has no analogue in the US system; it's a long-term postdoc (up to six years) not tied to a grant, but including teaching duties and at least formally without any independence. – Christian Clason Jul 07 '14 at 23:15
  • @Christian: A Juniorprofessor position is like a tenure-track assistant professor but without the possibility of tenure in that job: that is however a huge difference! And Juniorprofessors can have PhD students, which is very unlike any non-tenure track job in the US. And "postdoc" itself means several different things (even in the US), as I have had the occasion to discuss on this site before. The type of postdoc that I did, for instance, seems perhaps closest to "academic assistant", although still not that close. It's complicated! – Pete L. Clark Jul 08 '14 at 01:20
  • @Christian: Anyway, with your experience maybe you can weigh in on the question at hand: it still looks almost useless to try to pick one's Habilitation director at the same time one picks a PhD program. Do you disagree? – Pete L. Clark Jul 08 '14 at 01:22
  • @PeteL.Clark In principle, a Juniorprofessor should be able to get tenure after a positive evaluation, but the practice varies wildly from university to university. Some do in fact offer tenure (at least after a counter offer), some hire five Juniorprofessoren for two tenure positions... You are of course right about postdocs in the US (that's something I learned on this site), but in Germany the term is exclusively used for positions financed by grant money, while university-employed researchers are called academic assistants. – Christian Clason Jul 08 '14 at 06:54
  • @PeteL.Clark And of course I don't disagree - who knows what field the OP will be interested in in five years. And no advisor will commit to mentoring a habilitation before they have seen how the PhD turns out. – Christian Clason Jul 08 '14 at 06:57
  • The Juniorprofessor-ship has been ruled unconstitutional as it is a thing given by the federal republic whereas education should be a country thing. I am not sure about the current state, but I think this construct is no more. – Martin Ueding Apr 21 '16 at 13:51
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As others have mentioned, planning the trajectory of your academic career past your PhD is very premature at this point. (After all, one of the jobs of your PhD advisor is precisely to help you with this.)

Something that -- surprisingly -- has not been mentioned so far: Talk to the professors. Taking on a PhD student is a serious commitment no advisor will make lightly, so if they have any doubts whether you can complete the thesis with them (either because they plan on retiring completely from academic life, or moving next year to a different continent), they will tell you so. We can only guess at the likelihood, but they will (hopefully) have a much clearer idea.

Christian Clason
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  • Yes I have no doubt to finish PhD if I start it, but if after retirement the Prof. is no longer active this might be a problem for future connections, and for a young supervisor they switch university more likely which might also be to considered. I will also 'talk to the professors', just thought this forum might also be a good source. – emcor Jul 08 '14 at 10:09