An international exploration of post-PhD careers. Discussing the issues of employability and intersectorial mobility

Introduction

We are excited to present a significant and timely addition to Studies in Higher Education – a special issue focused on the multifaceted landscape of post-PhD careers. The journey beyond the realm of academia following the completion of a doctoral degree is a topic of increasing importance and intrigue, this is particularly the case in countries such as the Netherlands and the UK where about 70% of PhD-holders will be expected to find employment outside academia (e.g. van der Weijden et al. 2016; Teelken and van der Weijden 2018; Hancock 2023), whereas in Denmark within the social sciences and humanities, most PhDs are employed within academia and employment in other sectors is less frequent (Rasmussen and Andreasen 2023).

As academic, professional, and industrial landscapes continue to evolve, so do the career trajectories that doctoral graduates embark upon. This special issue delves into the diverse range of opportunities and challenges that define the post-PhD career phase. Since it is no longer sufficient to consider only traditional academic pathways; today’s doctoral recipients are expected to explore avenues that span academia, industry, entrepreneurship, consultancy, policy-making, and more. While the impact of several international developments such as the Bologna process and the shaping of the European Area of Higher Education have become increasingly visible in the European systems of higher education, at the same time, universities have had to deal with less financial resources. This results in less options for long-term employment, resulting in the necessity to increase awareness concerning employability of PhD-students and junior academics outside the academic sector.

A relevant and elaborate supply of highly and broadly skilled talents is crucial for the current and future knowledge economy in Europe. In particular, research and analytical skills are essential. A combination of recent developments encouraged us to shed a new light on the academic and post-academic careers of PhD-holders. The most important of these developments includes the extensive growth in the supply of PhD-graduates from European universities. This growth was promoted by EU agendas for higher education such as the Bologna process, with an objective of increasing investment in research and development (European Commission 2015) and creating the third cycle in the Bologna Process, in addition to the bachelor and master programmes. On the basis of data from the OECD and other sources, Sarrico (2022) highlights the growth in doctoral education, which has increased by almost 200% since 1998 (140,000 new doctorates were awarded in 1998, compared to 276,800 in 2017). In the five years between 2014 and 2019, the growth was about 25% whereas gross domestic spending on research only increased by 18% between 2000 and 2020 (OECD 2021). However, these data does not present a complete picture as some countries are not included such as China, whilst other countries have several years of data missing.

Hence, this development has three consequences. First, given that employment opportunities at universities have not increased at the same rate of the PhD graduations, awareness should be raised that PhD-holders will have to find their employment increasingly outside academia. Second, public and private employers need to consider hiring PhD-holders to ensure supply of highly qualified employees. Third, there are consequences for the organization and content of the doctoral programmes, since universities have to encourage PhD students to achieve more general competences during their PhD studies. Overall, it is increasingly necessary that future PhD-holders are prepared for both university and non-university employment (e.g. OECD 2021; Van der Weijden et al. 2017) through the development of transferable skills, that are applicable in a broad variety of work situations.

The preparations for this special issue go back to the summer of 2018, when planning for the European Conference on Educational Research (ECER) conference in Bolzano, we decided to apply for funding and to organize an international research seminar at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam on March 29th, 2019, where about 20 draft papers in this area of research were presented. Out of these 20 preliminary papers, six are now published in this special issue. Thus, this special issue of Studies in Higher Education focuses on the issue of employability of PhD graduates outside and inside academia viewed from different research projects across Europe. It is based on six contributions, derived from Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, and the UK, and one global study.

Through these separate contributions, the overarching aims of this special issue are:

1. To investigate the current PhD trajectories and the further careers prospects both inside and outside academia adopting a European and international comparative perspective,

2. To encourage theory development in the area of graduate teaching and career development. The authors will address some crucial and little-explored topics like: training of doctoral students in relation to current professional destinations and the learning potential of professional transitions towards extra-academic contexts, consequently contributing to identity, career, and socialization theories.

3. To contribute to research and reflections on the career paths of PhD graduates and how these gradutes match the needs of the contemporary labour market, and further develop knowledge that can be useful to policy makers, graduate schools, and supervisors.

These overarching aims refer to the extent that there is an academic or a non-academic labour market for PhD-holders from all disciplines and lead to the following general research questions, which are addressed in varying ways across these six contributions.

1. What are the general developments going on concerning the labour market of Phd-holders? This question is answered in the papers by Hancock (2023) and Marini and Henseke (2023), which are both based on extensive surveys amongst PhD-holders in the UK, using social and human capital theory.

Whereas Hancock aims to answer the question: to what extent and for which reasons do PhD graduates find employment outside academia? Marini and Henseke focus more on the financial compensation Phd-holders receive, and whether they are overqualified for their current employment. They aim to answer the following research questions: Do PhDs earn more than Master degrees when parity of discipline, job experience, and other covariates exist? The second question concerns whether that premium is higher than the cost-opportunity (and fees) paid for studying four years to become PhD?

(2)

The second part of the special issue focusses on the considerations that the PhD-holders make themselves. What makes PhD candidates ‘choose’ their career paths, how do they use their PhD competences, and how are they considered useful on the labour market both inside and outside of academia? How should current graduate education and PhD supervision be adapted to these developments? The papers by Rasmussen and Andreasen (2023) and Galimberti (2023) answer these questions from a variety of angles and across different national contexts, namely Denmark and Italy. Rasmussen and Andreasen focus on ‘what characterizes the career strategies of Danish PhD graduates from the humanities and social sciences, and what contributes to their employability?’ which is analysed drawing on data from research amongst Danish PhD graduates in the humanities and the social sciences. Rasmussen and Andreasen focus on narratives evolving from re-analysing interviews with PhD graduates on their career strategies and use of PhD knowledge, whilst also asking how the discourses emerging in the narratives align with, or differ from, the broader policy discourses around employability and transferability. On the basis of these narratives, they present the knowledge discourses of competitive, applied, and transferred knowledge, addressing research and development in market-oriented perspectives. These appear both within and across the narratives of the PhD graduates’ career strategies.

Galimberti addresses the question ‘How is it possible to translate previous learning experiences/competences and how does this affect professional identiy?’ in the context of Italian higher education. This article is focused on the role of tacit knowledge acquired through the incoporation of an academic habitus; an underestimated dimension playing a crucial role in professional transitions. The core argumentation is based on the idea that differences in organizational habitus may represent a source of disorienting dilemmas engaging individual agency and requiring the ability to detect learning context assumptions and expectations, a meta-competence that should be taken into account when designing training modules for PhD students.

(3)

The third part of this special issue refers to the precarious nature of postdoctoral research employment, in other words, those PhD-holders who continued their career within academia in a temporary research position, at least initially. The study by Jones (2023) focusses on the issue of academic career breaks, researching to postdoctoral appointments, which are generally competitive but also resulting in prolonged periods of disrupted career progress. Jones used a worldwide online survey amongst 950 postdoctoral researchers, finding that half of them had experienced at least one career break. Findings are based on a two-stage analysis and explore the perceptions, motivations, experiences, and implications of these breaks. The results of the study reveal significant differences between males and females in key areas, whereas maternity was the main reason for females’ career breaks, for males it was redundancy or the end of a contract. Females tended also to resume employment with the existing employer while males moved to a different employer.

The last paper of this special issue, by Van der Weijden et al. (2023) is based on a survey of more than 600 postdoctoral researchers at Dutch research universities. The findings of the survey provided a nuanced picture of this intriguing group of employees. On the one hand, the quantitative findings reveal a lack of personal wellbeing, specially triggered by the lack of career perspectives, but equally the survey points to several compensating factors. The qualitative findings indicated a distinction in respondents across three groups: positive (20%), ambivalent (37%), and negative (43%) experiences with their employment. Whilst the first two groups mentioned several compensating factors such as support from their direct collegues or their supervisor, the third, a negative group, did not perceive such benefits.

We think that our special issue can be considered relevant for higher education researchers, but also for current PhD candidates contemplating their future, academic advisors guiding aspiring scholars, or graduate school directors, this special issue provides invaluable insights into the advancing landscape of post-PhD careers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.