⟪The best and the brightest⟫?

Economic incentives and recruitment to doctoral degrees in Norway. In recent decades, a strong increase in the number of people enrolled in higher education in Norway has taken place despite low economic returns to schooling in Norway. The increase in the number of doctoral degrees has been particularly strong. In this article we focus on two issues: first, the economic returns to a doctoral degree, and, second, how these returns (low or even negative) have affected recruitment to doctoral studies. A data set of nearly all graduates in five major educational fields from Norwegian universities from the early 1980s until 1996 was used, and the data analysed by means of median regression (wage and income data) and logistic regression for discrete time event history data (attainment of doctoral degrees). There are negative income effects of doctoral degrees in medicine, mathematics and natural sciences, and engineering, and positive but not particularly strong effects in the humanities and social sciences. There is no evidence that these different economic returns have had significant effects on recruitment patterns. There is, for instance, a strong positive effect of university grades in all five educational fields. Thus, the negative economic returns in some fields do not seem to have had strong negative effects on the quality of recruits.