Cumberland Lodge recently ran a conference for PhD students aimed at exploring ‘Life Beyond the PhD’. As a former attendee of a similar conference back in 2009, I was delighted to be invited back as a speaker, having now finished my PhD and securing a three-year academic research fellowship. Much of the conference focused on the inevitable anxieties PhD students face when contemplating their future careers, particularly given that only a minority will stay employed within academia after graduation. A huge range of careers is potentially open to a PhD graduate, and we heard from people who had successfully transitioned into consulting, careers advice, third sector work and non-academic research to name but a few.
However, one thing that struck me as an emerging theme throughout the conference was the tension between the ideals and aspirations of the PhD student participants and the needs of possible future, non-academic employers. Few people make the decision to undertake a PhD with the express intention of improving their employability; most take the plunge for a combination of reasons uppermost of which is usually a passion for their field of research, a desire to immerse oneself in an exciting field, and the intention to step on the first rung of the academic career ladder. Students haven’t usually spent their PhDs honing their CVs to suit a job market in the world beyond the academy: instead they’re a world expert in some tiny, fascinating area the details of which are likely to be incomprehensible to anyone outside their field. Yet the academic career path is fraught with obstacles, and nobody can quite anticipate the impact that teaching funding cuts, particularly in the arts and humanities, will have on the availability of post-doctoral and lecturer positions in the UK over the next few years. The current statistics are startling: less than a third of PhD graduates remain within academia across all disciplines, and even fewer in post-doctoral positions.
So it is that many PhD graduates either will not be able to secure academic posts, or will actively want to leave academia in pursuit of better job security and conditions. This leaves them (and I include myself in that category) in the difficult position of attempting to market themselves to employers who, in all likelihood, will not have any interest in the specifics of their subject expertise. Rather, they are seeking such esoteric qualities as interpersonal skills, team-working, leadership abilities, communication skills and project management competence. As it happens, all of these skills and abilities may well have been finely honed during the PhD process: we have all had to present data and theories to a variety of specialist and non-specialist audiences; many of us will have negotiated delicate situations with supervisory teams and fellow lab workers; and a completed PhD thesis is perhaps emblematic of a capacity to manage a vast and complex project from start to finish. In a sense then, a PhD graduate can amply demonstrate a range of hugely marketable skills that employers are likely to value highly. So what’s the problem?
The problem is one of language. Vitae has conducted some excellent research into employers’ attitudes towards PhD graduates, which revealed that they often do not know what skills such applicants have because they do not or cannot use the right kind of language in describing those skills. Aside from the persistent ‘ivory tower’ perception of academics as obsessively, overly specialised and detached from the rest of the world, it seems that the biggest obstacle for PhDs in leaving academia is the ability to market themselves successfully to employers. One may wince as the prospect of attempting to sell oneself as a job applicant, thinking that one’s record of hard work, commitment and determination and ought to speak for itself, but it is a skill in itself that few students may have considered developing during their PhD.
What I found so interesting about these discussions at the conference was the obvious parallel they demonstrated with the state of academia in the UK today, and its increasing need to justify its existence and public expenditure by ‘marketing’ itself to the public and its funding bodies. Increasingly we need to demonstrate ‘impact’ (and I will not attempt to define that nebulous term here), to show how our research has some benefit or use to society and the economy. The marketization of undergraduate degrees following the Browne report is a case in point. In short, academia needs to sell itself in terms that the broader public will understand and appreciate. Just as the PhD student may need to articulate his or her collaboratively written journal articles in terms of demonstrating interpersonal and team-working skills, so too will the academy need to find ways to explain and substantiate its value, to an audience that may not share the intrinsic ideal of seeking knowledge for its own sake, rather than as an instrumental good. It may be of some comfort to the PhD graduate attempting to translate their valuable research expertise into a description of a marketable skill-set, to know that their situation reflects the predicament facing academia as a whole in the UK today.
Natalie Banner
Wellcome Research Fellow
Centre for the Humanities and Health
King’s College London
