Doctoral futures: are PhD candidates ready to work?

Contemporary doctoral students face new and unique challenges compared to their predecessors (Crawford & Probert, 2017). Doctoral programs are no longer designed for direct entry into academia (Cuthbert & Molla, 2015), with more PhD candidates graduating in Australia each year than there are available employment places (Beasy, Emery, & Crawford, 2019). Globally, there are more diverse PhD programs being developed, such as national internships in industry (Jones & Warnock, 2015).

This presentation provides an overview of a quantitative survey of 222 doctoral candidates at the University of Tasmania. The results indicate that most doctoral students intended to work in academia and were generally well prepared for such a pathway. Those students who intended to seek work outside of academia were generally the worst prepared for their future career, with an identified skills gap (Molla & Cuthbert, 2015). Compounding these findings, a surplus of candidates were planning to seek academic employment. These findings exemplify the challenge of employability preparedness for non-academically inclined doctoral students, and the importance of highlighting the benefits of liaising with industry during doctoral candidature (Jackson & Michelson, 2014). The opportunity this presentation highlights is to challenge the landscape for learning and teaching within the doctoral setting, with a greater focus on setting reasonable expectations between candidates and their supervisors. The practical implication of our findings is that doctoral training programs will benefit from stronger industry engagement and a willingness to adapt traditional programs for a diverse group of learners.