Many PhD students in Australia face a bleak job market. Scholarships are increasingly difficult to get, early career research opportunities are more and more competitive and academic positions are limited. The playing field has changed, and it won't be changing back any time soon. So is all that hard work actually worth it?
By JACKSON PECK
Would you recommend doing a PhD to a friend?
“Oh, that’s a good one,” whispers Lincoln, a PhD student in Psychological Sciences. Looking up to the ceiling in contemplation, he chooses his words carefully.
“If it was something that they were really passionate about and something that they really wanted to do, I would encourage them to do it, but at the same time I would still sit with them and tell them like it is.”
David, another PhD student, unsuccessfully stifles a laugh.
“I would have to ask them why they were doing it, you have to have a passion for it, you have to put up with being exploited for a very long period of time, it’s a lot of work,” he said.
It’s not just students toiling away at the challenging three to four-year degree who think twice before recommending it. Once it’s over, the work is just beginning.
Dr Danielle Edwards, an early career academic now based in the US, says she would ask them if they were willing to move.
“I would also ask them to seriously think about if they really wanted to do it. It’s not been an easy ride,” she says.
Dr Kelly Gerard, another early career academic, qualifies her recommendation with a list of considerations including whether her friend is willing and able to “face job insecurity … move for jobs … work long hours … and travel”.
One reason for the hesitation around recommending a PhD is that graduates face poor job prospects. The most recent Postgraduate Destinations Report, published by Graduate Careers Australia in 2015, showed that 23.7 per cent of PhD graduates were looking for full-time employment at the time of the survey.
An entry-level lecturer position in social sciences recently advertised at Monash University received 200 applications.
Lincoln says that it's “it’s a tough time for research and research funding", right around the world.
“Starting a PhD now is very different from the way it was 5, 10, 15 years ago [because of] funding uncertainty and scholarships.”
He loves what he is doing but believes that before starting, students should be clearly told about the lack of academic positions available.
“When I started my PhD I was probably a bit more naïve and had the thought [that] I’ll just go in and I’ll work really hard and I’ll be really good and everything will work out fine.”
Lincoln is a year from finishing his PhD. Like many of his colleagues, he worries about the future.
“I think we’re all a little concerned about how lucky we’re going to be once we graduate. But I would like to think that most of us are aware of the uncertain nature and the competitiveness.”
Dr Tim Nielsen, a businessman who completed his PhD in biochemistry in 2009, agrees that students need to be made aware of the difficulty of getting a job in academia.
“It’s in the supervisor’s interest to have more PhDs as it’s cheap and it’s in the uni’s interest to churn out research, but it’s in the student’s interest to know exactly what the opportunities are.”
Dr Nielsen doesn’t recall ever being given a career lecture at university. The assumption during his PhD was that students would become researchers.
At the end of his PhD he was offered a one-year post-doctoral position but after that, he found breaking into academia very difficult.
He is now a medical liaison in the healthcare industry.
“I looked for something to combine my science, business and people skills,” he explains over the phone from his backyard in Adelaide.
Dr Nielsen is a strong advocate for young scientists facing a tough job market in academia to look to "industry" for opportunities.
After writing several articles on the issue, he is often contacted by confused science graduates searching for answers.
He describes a difficult cycle that many of the science graduates he meets go through when, after eight or more years of tertiary study, they realise that a career in academia might just be out of their reach.
“It starts with naivety. This is followed by anger, denial, resentment and then finally acceptance, for those who find a job in industry.”
However, despite the very difficult job market, many PhD students are determined to become researchers.
David, who is five months into his PhD in Criminology, is one of them.
He meets me in a cafe after clocking off from his hospitality job. Dressed in checked chef pants and a tie-dyed shirt, he doesn’t fit the stereotypical look of a PhD student.
"It starts with naivety. This is followed by anger, denial, resentment and then finally acceptance, for those who find a job in industry.”What is his plan of attack to get one of those elusive academic jobs?
“Start creating your research narrative, do your publications and stuff like that. Essentially it’s kind of like acting as though you are professionally employed and on tenure before you’ve even got it, and that’s quite a lot of pressure.”
David was accepted into a PhD programme with a scholarship on his second go, spending six months last year preparing his application so he could maximise his chances.
He feels grateful to have a scholarship. But he did work hard for it.
“I felt that when I looked at my application, the level of [academic] publications that I was having, not necessarily the quality, but I guess the number and the amount and the variety of it, it was more akin to someone who had finished their PhD rather than someone who had finished their Masters.”
A points system at Monash used to rank students for their scholarship applications has recently raised the bar, explains School of Social Sciences postgraduate administrator Sue Stevenson.
And she would know, as Monash’s longest-serving employee. An award recognising 50 years of service hangs in her office.
Ms Stevenson has seen a lot of change in academia. Previously, students were ranked if they received 20 points on the scale. Now they need 25-27 to be competitive.
The most recent Postgraduate Destinations Report, published by Graduate Careers Australia in 2015, showed that 23.7 per cent of PhD graduates were looking for full-time employment If a student gets 95-100 per cent in their honours degree, an incredible and very rare achievement, the student only gets 18 points.
“You can have a H1 and you’re eligible to actually apply for the scholarship, but as you can see, you can be so far off the mark,” says Ms Stevenson.
So how can a student make themselves competitive for a scholarship?
“From what I understand from what my supervisor said, [my publications] pushed my application over the edge,” David says.
But publications are notoriously difficult to get. Even after completing a PhD.
“I don’t understand how, for instance, someone else in my situation who needed a scholarship and didn’t have my publications, what would happen to them.”
Other factors include awards that the student has received, work experience as a research assistant and strong academic references.
The scholarship covers David’s course fees and pays him enough money to live on.
However, he still chooses to work two days a week as a kitchen hand even after acknowledging that it has an impact on his PhD.
He doesn’t want to get caught out with no money again.
The pre and post-scholarship stage are the hardest, he explains. After the scholarship he received for his Masters finished, he still needed another six months studying full-time to complete his degree.
“I had to borrow quite a lot of money from a lot of friends and family and stuff like that.”
Ms Stevenson considers whether she would recommend the PhD path to her nephew, who is now in his first year of studying Communications at university.
“Well, I would like to see a bit more motivation first,” she jokes.
“If you’re that way inclined and that’s what you really want to do … if you’re dead keen you’ll do it no matter what, but don’t think it’s going to be handed to you on a platter.”