policy & reform campusreview. com. au
Doctorate at large
Is the chief scientist out of touch with what PhDs want?
By Loren Smith
“ I have no patience for people who tell me that a person with a PhD who starts a company, or goes into the public service, is a waste of a good academic researcher.
“ The purpose of a PhD is to allow talented people to develop their strengths and choose their direction.
“ I was lucky, again, to have the guidance of exceptional colleagues and mentors, some of them researchers, some of them with experience in business.
“ But that was the sort of luck I made for myself: I sought out those people whose advice I knew I could trust.”
Chief Scientist Dr Alan Finkel, who could have been speaking of his own professional trajectory, made these keynote remarks at the recent Quality in Postgraduate Research Conference.
Held in Adelaide, the blurb of the 13th biannual“ world’ s biggest and longest-standing conference on doctoral education” noted that the contributions of PhD graduates are essential to most national economies. It further provided that such graduates increasingly pursue non-academic careers.
Confusingly, the blurb then states,“ It is in this context that QPR2018 seeks to address the‘ so what?’ question about doctoral education, inviting proposals addressing the conference theme of Impact, Engagement and Doctoral Education.”
In light of this, were Finkel’ s comments productive, glib or something in between? Was he sincere about PhDs wanting to choose their own academic or non-academic paths, or was this a distraction from the fact that the academic job market is evaporating?
The problem is, this cannot be answered, as we don’ t really know what happens to the thousands of PhD students who graduate every year.
Some facts, however, have been established: although 60 per cent are initially employed in industry( rather than academia), industry employers are relatively disinterested in this type of candidate.
“ Demand for academic jobs far outstrips supply at all levels, not just post-PhD,” says Jonathan O’ Donnell, co-founder of the Research Whisperer blog and senior adviser( research grants development) at the College of Design and Social Context, RMIT University.
“ However, the outlook is not completely dismal … PhD graduates do reasonably well in getting academic jobs, in the short term,” he added.
Natasha Abrahams offers a different view. The national president of the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations( CAPA) thinks that whatever career path post-PhDs select, it doesn’ t really matter – at least on a societal level.
“ People undertake doctoral study for a diversity of reasons,” she says.
“ Regardless of what a PhD student plans for after their graduation, their doctoral research contributes to the national research output.”
Yet she suggests a reason for why some PhD graduates choose to leave academia: money, or more accurately, a lack thereof.
Associate Professor Inger Mewburn agrees with this supposition. The Thesis Whisperer blog founder ANU academic, whose current research focuses on PhD outcomes, supports her belief with the fact that the cohort with the worst PhD completions are white, male, domestic students in the sciences – arguably among the most privileged people in society.
She thinks the non-completions occur because scholarships are paltry and are generally only awarded to full-time students; they can hardly support someone individually, let alone a whole family. She also shares more pointed comments on Finkel’ s words. Speaking to his experience having job options in both academia and industry, she says that“ some people start closer to the finish line”.
“ You can make your own opportunities, but sometimes your choices are more limited.
“ The overwhelming majority of students go into PhDs wanting an academic role [ afterwards ],” she says.
Because of this, she thinks the‘ resilience narrative’ that is continuously fed to PhD students is unhelpful.
“ It’ s very hard to replace [ their concepts of their imagined future selves ] with‘ I’ m going to use my skills to work at a bank’.”
Notwithstanding that, she believes the conceptual academic / non-academic career dichotomy also undermines positive outcomes for PhD graduates. This is particularly pertinent in the sciences, she says, where there is a sense that if you’ re not constantly publishing papers, you’ ll fall behind.
She says university league tables, designed to attract students, substantially fuel this ethos.
“ Until we stop publishing those things, I don’ t see anything changing,” she reflects.
“ Putting a number on something creates a perverse incentive. [ We need to stop ] putting numbers on things.” ■
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