A quantitative study on Australian doctoral students’ perceptions of employability preparedness: how gender and age matter

ABSTRACT

Twenty-first-century doctoral candidates face a consistently evolving employment landscape. This paper explores how gender and age influence doctoral students’ perceptions of employability preparedness provided by their higher education institution for future career pathways. A survey-based study (n = 222) was undertaken at a large regional Australian university to assess what employment pathways graduates intend to pursue, how prepared they feel for these pathways, and what strategies could be utilised to increase the effectiveness of doctoral training with a view to employability. Transition pedagogy is used as a lens to unpack and explore participants' perceptions about systems designed to support success. Key findings include (i) a surplus of candidates seeking academic careers; (ii) candidates reporting doctoral training inadequately prepares them for their preferred career path; and (iii) young males feeling most prepared by their doctoral programme and older females feeling the least prepared. We discuss how preparedness is not experienced equally, and how the conditions of higher education are constructed with assumptions of who a doctoral candidate is, with implications for who is most likely to benefit from it.

KEYWORDS:

• Doctoral education
• transition pedagogy
• doctoral programme
• privilege
• gender
• graduate employability

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. While we acknowledge that gender is a social construct that exists as a spectrum rather than binary categories, the literature we were able to source defined gender in binary male/female terms.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kim Beasy

Kim Beasy works at the University of Tasmania in the School of Education, teaching and researching contemporary issues underpinning questions of equity and sustainability. Kim’s research includes effectiveness of pre-service teacher training in studies of equity and diversity, World Cafes to inspire change, Sustainability Skills Cafes, effects of diversity on group decision-making for sustainable outcomes, post-graduate experiences of higher education and LGBTIQ+ inclusive teaching practices. Kim is Chair of Education for Sustainability (EfS) Tasmania, a network of stakeholders invested in collaborating together to promote EfS in Tasmania, and Secretary for the National Australian Association of Environmental Education.

Joseph Crawford

Joseph Crawford is a leadership and higher education academic based at the University of Tasmania, Australia. Dr Crawford leads a series of high priority projects relating to student retention and success and has considerable expertise in digital pedagogy. He is the Editor in Chief of the Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice. Dr Crawford was recognised for his contribution to business, as Founder of start-ups Fifth Estate Co., and the Negative Distillery, by the Launceston Chamber of Commerce as their Young Professional of the Year. His recent work include reconceptualisations of leadership and followership, rethinking psychometric scale development methodologies and producing one of the first cross-cultural works on the effects of COVID-19 on higher education.

Sarah Young

Sarah Young is a lecturer in the Tasmanian School of Medicine at the University of Tasmania, where she is active in both teaching and research roles. She writes and delivers unit content for the public health stream of the MBBS programme, and has helped transition the delivery of this programme to a blended model of learning using her expertise in digital pedagogy. Current research projects include a qualitative, longitudinal study of the effectiveness of blended model teaching in a medical curriculum, as well as investigations into women’s experiences of maternity care in Tasmania.

Jo Kelder

Jo Kelder is Adjunct Senior Researcher in the College of Sciences and Engineering at the University of Tasmania, working to embed scholarship and research informed teaching into STEM course curricula. She provides higher education consultancy services through Jo-Anne Kelder Consulting. She has led institutional and national projects focussing on quality assurance of curriculum and enhancing student experience, as well as research to develop staff capability and practice in curriculum evaluation and scholarship, co-leading the inaugural Australian Council of Deans of Science Fellowship (2019–2020). She is editor of two higher education journals, Advancing Scholarship and Research in Higher Education and Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice.