Career aspirations and capital conversion among doctoral students in non-research-intensive Chinese universities

Despite the global expansion of doctoral education, labor markets remain highly stratified, shaping how students and graduates envision attainable futures. Existing research has focused predominantly on PhD students at research-intensive universities, leaving limited understanding of how doctoral students at non-research-intensive (NRI) universities form their career aspirations under conditions of institutional hierarchy. Building on Bourdieu’s concepts of field, capital, and habitus, and Goffman’s concept of stigma, this study conceptualizes doctoral career aspirations as a process whereby students anticipate whether doctoral capital can be converted into legitimate career opportunities. Drawing on 69 interviews with doctoral students and recent graduates from 31 NRI universities in China, this study primarily examines how full-time doctoral students form career aspirations under conditions of institutional hierarchy, while part-time participants serve as contrasting cases to illuminate the role of organizational embeddedness in shaping capital conversion. The findings reveal that many full-time students align their career aspirations with local academic, administrative, and public-sector positions due to the anticipated symbolic devaluation associated with their prior educational pedigree and NRI institutional origin. Part-time students, in contrast, often leverage the doctorate to solidify their existing organizational positions and internal advancement rather than as a vehicle for occupational change. Across cohorts, adjustments in aspirations reflect a capital conversion gap: doctoral training may enhance cultural capital, yet its conversion into symbolic recognition and desirable employment remains constrained by prestige-based screening. The study advances research on doctoral career aspirations by demonstrating how institutional stigma and anticipatory habitus shape the formation of career aspirations within stratified higher education systems.