The PhD fallacy

The day I stood on the podium and received my PhD was one of my proudest. I had worked for five and a half long years to finally get there. I lost friends and relationships and lived below minimum wage. But I did it. I lived the dream, and now I could go out and live my research career dreams, work under my own name and make something of myself. I now had my doctorate.

A PhD is many years of study. Sometimes taking up to 10 years to complete. You also have to do an undergraduate degree, an honours degree and sometimes a masters to get accepted into the program. But every day we turn out more and more PhD students with no job prospects. The only other degree that is as intensive is the medical degree. Six years of study, then residency, then specialisations to really get somewhere. But at the end of a medical degree there are jobs in the medical profession. After the PhD, you need to be really lucky to end up working in academia and continuing on in a research capacity.

Instead I see people with PhD’s working in some of these areas

– IT specialist (this one is super popular)

– Genetic Counsellor (another degree to do this one)

– Retail manager at Harvey Norman

– Event planner

and plenty more (I don’t see too many MDs ending up in these careers after study).

So why is it so hard, and why are PhD graduates moving away from research and academic research? And why oh why do we keep signing up more PhD students? To me it comes down to one major problem : Australian Research funding. Research is underfunded and keeps getting cut. There is no money to employ PhD graduates, instead more and more research programs are looking at the student as a way to help complete their projects. What does a student offer, that a graduate doesn’t? Simply a very low cost solution to an growing problem of ‘how do we hire staff, when we have no money?’. Students often either get a stipend scholarship or have to fund themselves. All the Researcher needs to worry about are the overheads (which they would need to pay for a staff member anyway) of sitting at a desk or bench. The student is often happy to do the menial tasks and analysis that no one else has time for. They are a great research asset. Yet what happens to these students after they finish?

I have been very lucky. I graduated from my PhD and got a 3 month position at a laboratory. I loved it, they loved me and I stuck around for many more years. In that time I discovered my love of all things Public Health and went back and did my masters. I then moved on to an academic public health position, and have been there until recently. The reason I have been let go? They need someone cheaper. Simply put. I am too expensive.

Job hunting has been eye opening. I have come close to getting positions, but it seems I am up against many others with a PhD as well. We are all out there competing for jobs, that once we would never have looked at. It is becoming really hard. And will be even harder as time goes on. On the flipside, their are plenty of positions I have applied for where I am sure I am seen as over qualified. It utterly shocked me to find out that over 70 people applied for a position with over half having PhD’s. This position only called for an undergraduate degree, but times are so tough, graduates are competing for any job they can. It makes it much much harder to find work for those with and without a degree.

So what to do? Some of the Universities have seen the problem. They are putting on courses on surviving the PhD graduation and trying to equip their graduates with business skills they can use to find a job. This is a great place to start. Look at equipping yourself with further skills (more on this in another blog post)

So what do I think the PhD fallacy is? I think it is the notion that the PhD is the ultimate in a University students life. Too much pressure is put on students to achieve their PhD. The University has to shift its focus and start supporting students into real careers, and real futures and not this notion of getting a PhD and research.

If you have stuck with me till now – thanks! I would love to hear your thoughts on this issue. In future blogs I am going to tackle some of the other issues surrounding a PhD including what I think students should consider before starting, how to better equip yourself for employment, and some other ideas I have brewing!