Experiential learning in high energy physics: a survey of students at the LHC

Abstract

More than 36,000 students and post-docs will be involved in experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) until 2025. Do they expect that their learning experience will have an impact on their professional future? By drawing from earlier salary expectations literature, this paper proposes a framework aiming at explaining the professional expectations of early career researchers (ECR) at the LHC. The model is tested by data from a survey involving 318 current and former students (now employed in different jobs) at LHC. Results from different ordered logistic models suggest that experiential learning at LHC positively correlates with both current and former students' salary expectations. At least two not mutually exclusive explanations underlie such a relationship. First, the training at LHC gives early career researchers valuable expertise, which in turn affects salary expectations; secondly, respondents recognise that the LHC research experience per se may act as signal in the labour market. Respondents put a price tag on their experience at LHC, a 'salary premium' ranging from 5% to 12% in terms of their future salaries compared with what they would have expected without such experience.

FCC-ee: The Lepton Collider

“…This translates into an absolute lifetime salary premium of about 90 000 euro to 230 000 euro per person with an average added value of ca. 160 000 euro for a doctorate degree obtained during a research period at CERN (2018 currency value) [570,571]. Based on CERN's current training programme capacity, during a 15 year construction phase and an initial operational phase of 20 years.…”

Human and social capital accumulation within research infrastructures: The case of CERN

“…Following Camporesi et al. (2017), the survey was organized into four sections. Section A refers to personal information of ECRs including their gender, nationality and educational background, among others; section B refers to their experience at LHC including carried out activities and developed skills.…”

Social Cost-Benefit Analysis of HL-LHC

“…Our assumptions are mainly based on interviews with experts in of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) at CERN 13 , working in different departments and groups. HL-LHC needs additional developments related to software, storage, networking and computing solutions (see e.g.…”

“…Using the yearly arrival rate of ESRs and the average time of stay at CERN, we estimate how many ESRs start a professional career elsewhere every year (see [12], [13], [14]). We then compute the time discounted value of the benefit for ERS, DHj:…”

“…Details on the estimation of these benefits are provided in [1]. The best guess at the point of making the assessment was to multiply the estimated avoided cost due 13 We 15 Given the difficulties to quantify the impact of such ICT technologies, we conservatively assume that these benefits are the same as those produced by ROOT. We thus posit that they are zero until 2025 when they peak and then remain constant until 2038.…”