Where do UK PhD graduates go? Careers observatory may hold answer

Creating a national observatory for research careers to track where the UK’s PhD graduates work could provide valuable insights into whether it still pays to get a doctorate, experts have said.

At present there are currently no reliable long-term data on how many UK doctoral graduates remain in academia or research, or whether they enjoy an earnings premium from their PhD.

Most studies on the rates of UK PhD graduates who remain in academia rely on outdated information, small surveys or focus on the first few years after graduation. A highly cited Royal Society report on how many PhD students become professors – 0.45 per cent, it claims – was published in 2010 but relied on estimates drawn from figures collected in 2005.

To better understand the career outcomes of PhD graduates, the Careers Research and Advisory Centre (Crac) is now calling for investment in a central data collection service, or careers observatory, that would collate information from a wide range of sources such as HM Revenue & Customs, LinkedIn, ResearchFish and ORCID profiles.

Other agencies including Jisc, the Higher Education Statistics Agency (Hesa) and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) could also be encouraged to engage with the careers observatory, which could also work with universities.

This independent government-endorsed data clearinghouse could help to dispel certain myths about academic careers, argued Robin Mellors-Bourne, director of research and intelligence at Crac and its researcher development arm, Vitae.

“We often hear horror stories about only 0.1 per cent of PhDs becoming a professor leading to some people giving up an academic career, but it just really isn’t true – or at least there is no good body of evidence to back this up,” he explained. “The true information could be really helpful for PhDs or postdocs wondering if they should stay in academia or not because they might know what their chances were.”

A more comprehensive picture of PhD career outcomes could also provide insights into whether recent reforms to PhD training have made a difference to those individuals who had received it, Mellors-Bourne continued.

“If you think about how the doctoral training model has changed over the past 25 years – from a master-apprentice model to something very different involving lots of professional development – it’s been a huge shift. But we really have no idea about whether this impacted the career paths of PhD graduates,” he said.

The “hybrid approach” in which data is aggregated by an independent sector-endorsed body could work better for research careers, which are often highly mobile and international, than a typical graduate survey, continued Mellors-Bourne.

“There’s been concern for over a decade that we have so little understanding of what happens to people who start with a doctorate or whether they have a career in research because the systematic data only record the first couple of years after graduating,” he said. The main Graduate Outcomes Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) measure relies, for instance, on a survey taken 15 months after graduation, with only 40 to 50 per cent of graduates responding in any year.

“But there are loads of partial insights from different tracking activities by individual funders or institutions, and from other datasets, so could be some potential to join things up,” he added, noting the European Commission’s intention to set up a Research and Innovation Careers Observatory.

“We aren’t 100 per cent clear about what the ideal solution might be for the UK, but want to explore whether a UK central entity or observatory might help in aligning different activities, linking between data sources, and how that might be facilitated,” he said.

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com