UK short of specialist careers advisers for PhD students

A shortage of specialist career advisers for PhD candidates could make it impossible for UK universities to meet new minimum standards of care towards doctoral students, it has been warned.

Under UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)’s “statement of expectations for doctoral training”, which took effect earlier this year, institutions are asked to “provide high-quality professional development options” for PhD students seeking careers advice, with a commitment that this will happen in the “first year of doctoral training to enable students to make informed choices”.

However, a new paper from the Careers Research and Advisory Centre (Crac), commissioned by UKRI, warns how the requirement for a “systematic careers conversation with a professional” which is “hinted at” in UKRI’s new guidelines might not be possible given the lack of dedicated careers staff for PhD students.

Given that there is only one dedicated doctoral careers adviser for every 3,000 PhD students in the UK, according to research by the Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services (Agcas), this ratio “could mean 1:1 engagements are not currently feasible”, says the study.

Author Robin Mellors-Bourne, Crac’s director of research and intelligence, told Times Higher Education that while he welcomed the revised UKRI expectations on careers advice for PhD students, which were “dramatically better” than the “very thin” expectations published in 2016, these requirements could be hard to achieve in light of the lack of specialist careers advisers.

“The bigger research-intensive universities may have a few, but most institutions do not,” said Dr Mellors-Bourne.

“There is a spectrum of careers advice available in universities but it generally caters to undergraduates – partly because universities are judged on graduate employment metrics these days, so this is where the resources are centred.”

Without enough staff geared towards post-PhD employment advice, the onus was likely to fall on doctoral supervisors, Dr Mellors-Bourne continued.

“We should not be expecting supervisors to have that level of knowledge about potential career opportunities, which can be very varied – they should be encouraging a curiosity of what might be possible, but shouldn’t be the only source of advice,” he said.

Campus resources for early career researchers

While bespoke careers advice was important for PhD students, Dr Mellors-Bourne said he believed a “broader conception of careers advice” was required, in which contact with different industry professionals was integrated into PhD training.

“For undergraduate degrees, courses are designed to ensure students have to reflect on a careers question in every single year, pushing them to engage with careers services – that isn’t happening at PhD level, but training could be tailored so there is some trigger for careers support in the first year,” he said.

The recommendations from the Crac report have been welcomed by Agcas. Claire Toogood, the organisation’s research and intelligence director, said that while “the shortage of specialists in this area is a concern”, Agcas supported Crac’s recommendation “that career learning should be both perceived as integral to doctoral training and developed in a much more embedded way within doctoral study”, and its call for universities to “employ and develop the specialist staff needed to deliver this work”.

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com