Motivation to Study for PhD Degree: Case of Latvia

This paper studies what goals individuals pursue when enrolling in doctoral studies and how it affects the characteristics of the university they find important for choosing it and information sources on doctoral programme they find useful. It uses data collected in 2014 from PhD students and PhD candidates in 14 universities in Latvia and from students born in Latvia but studying abroad. The main result is substantial heterogeneity of goals by field of study, allowing to divide the latter into three groups. Group 1 contains arts & humanities, economics, and education & psychology. Compared to it, students from Group 2 (biology, agriculture, environment & geoscience; physics, mathematics & chemistry; law, social & political science; and management) are much stronger oriented at labour-market goals. Students from Group 3 (computing & engineering) pursue primarily personal goals more often than students in other fields, but keep a labour-market goal as a second-order goal. The top 3 most important university characteristics and information sources do not change across types of goals, but important particularities are identified. The findings are important for proper marketing communications of higher education institutions in Latvia to prospective doctoral students.