Career Trajectories

Early in my PhD studies a mass e-mail was sent out to PhD students from researchers at the Northwestern University recruiting PhD students to take place in a study on the training and aspirations of current PhD students. The study was a longitudinal study that included in depth interviews every one to two years to assess current training and aspirations with follow-ups to assess whether those aspirations changed and whether training experiences affected aspirations. Every so often I try to find what has come from the study and in searching recently stumbled across this report from the Welcome Trust on how PhD students choose their careers. If you skip to the end of the report for the conclusions and thinking points, they sound eerily similar to the suggestions from the recent report from Post-Docs and a working group on PhD education. 

MORE CAREER ADVICE AND SUPPORT DURING THE PHD

1. Help with planning careers and making grants applications to aid the transition to next stage.
2. Continue and enhance current networking opportunities. Access to information about different sorts of careers within and outside academia, provided early in the PhD.
3. For those who are struggling during the PhD, a system of mentoring with other scientists and researchers in the field would be welcomed, and could help give them a wider perspective

DEVELOPING NEW INNOVATIVE APPROACHES TO CAREERS IN, OR WITH, ACADEMIA

1. Considering the opportunities for research posts which involve academic research, but are not solely based in academia. This might include jointly-funded research posts in institutions, or industry sponsorship of research posts.
2. A range of flexible technical scientist roles. Scrutinize the PI role and see if this can be broken down and split into more than one role, for example one focusing on project management, the other on laboratory work.
3. Allow scientists to take up part-time or temporary research related roles, such as project management and managing a research budget, at different times in their careers to allow for more family-friendly work and regular hours. PhD experience – knowing how academia works and how to communicate with academics – would be invaluable for such roles.

CHANGE TO ACADEMIC CULTURE AND WORKING PRACTICES

1. Remove funding criteria which require PhDs to relocate and consider research into the extent to which moving around benefits the scientist or the science outputs.
2. Institutions to learn from family-friendly innovations and systems in other sectors that enable people with children to pursue careers, for example challenging the notion that long hours equate to productivity.
3. Potential for fewer academic funding awards, but for longer time periods.
4. More investment in staff and career progression, in line with what is common in other industries, so that PhDs can realistically plan their careers.
5. Institutions should find ways of incorporating new academics more into the ‘corporate world’ of the university, potentially through guaranteed teaching posts over time.
6. Effective ‘line management’ could be valued more in academia. This may involve training for senior scientists as well as juniors, plus incentives in the university system so that coaching, support and mentoring can be increased and valued.
7. Create awareness and raise the profile of a range of role models who have come to successful science careers through a variety of different routes and backgrounds. Challenge the prevailing opinion, evident in this study, that the Principal Investigator is the main and only career option for newly qualified post-doctoral researchers.
8. Women could also benefit from seeing more female role models following careers in academic research. This would be particularly valuable if accompanied by information on their backgrounds and how they have overcome any challenges.
9. Ensure that there is good communication and dialogue about working benefits that do exist within academia (often more comprehensive than those that exist in other sectors), such as maternity leave provision and the options for working more flexibly within academic research.
10. More information and research is needed on whether moving posts or institution, if pursuing a career in academic research, is actually of long term value to researchers. As science becomes more international, virtual technologies are helping to forge collaborations without the requirement for face-to-face contact.
11. There is a perception that it is a ‘requirement’ for a researcher to have moved posts to successfully apply for a certain grant; if this is a myth, then funders need to better communicate this.
12. Challenge the ingrained perception that working in industry equates to intellectual constraint while academia means intellectual freedom. One participant told us that new biotech companies offer legitimate opportunities to publish, but that academics do not necessarily know about. Knowing more about the world of industry may help early career scientists weigh up all the opportunities open to them to remain in science.

Reading through the rest of the report is quite interesting. Many of the quotes from participants could have easily come from graduate students and post-docs that I've known. The sobering part of the report is that there is no end in sight. With stagnate demand for new faculty hires and an ever growing glut of PhD graduates and post-docs these issues are likely to get worse before they get better.