WORKING-CLASS ACADEMICS BLOG

Update of Beyond graduation study.  The  PhD experience and its potential for disadvantage

As followers of this blog will know, my research is concerned with the long term trajectories of PhD students.   The following commentary is an unstructured discussion, or a think piece, of a research area I am exploring to see if it should be included in my ongoing thesis.  I will be writing a more detailed discussion paper at a later date.

As I have discussed in previous blog posts, my aim from the start of this research was to consider all types of trajectories eg not just employment .An emerging theme I noted in the literature (see the excellent research by Stanley 2005 and Wakeling and  Kyriacou, 2010, The Sutton Trust) was the case for postgraduate (PG) study being the new widening participation issue.  In brief these studies noted that PG students were drawn disproportionately from certain backgrounds or groups e.g students were more likely to be male, from higher social classes. Ethnicity, access to finance  and structural factors such as attainment, subject of study and institution attended at first degree level also influence entry onto PG courses (Wakeling and  Kyriacou, 2010 ).  I have found evidence that supports some of these findings which I will discuss at a later date.

The purpose of this exploratory blog post is to briefly highlight a further area of interest that has emerged through conversations with friends, colleagues and friends from social media – the  PhD experience and its potential for disadvantage.  This theme has a number of areas that are widely discussed amongst PhD students, but until recently has had little attention from either the academic or ‘outside’ world.  To date I have observed that concerns within this emerging research area are twofold…although as this is an emerging fold this list is not exhaustive

Expectations during the PhD experience 

• Scholarship/bursary students being expected to teach undergraduate courses and mark work  – including dissertations –  an unpaid basis
• Universities  assigning teaching work as part of the course.
• PhD students who do not take on this work being harassed about the consequence of this decision on their future employment prospects in the university (The Independent, Postgraduate students must unite to fight for their labour rights, Monday 11 June, 2012)

(See Thatcher, 2012 http://www.academia.edu/1848526/PhDs_of_the_UK_Unite_Your_Futures_Depend_on_It for a more detailed discussion of these themes)

Experiences Post Phd

The main stories I hear from those about to finish their PhD or those who have completed it is that they have two choices post PhD – rely on insecure contracts within academia or look ‘outside’ and be overqualified and under paid’.

•  In most areas five years as a postdoc is  a prerequisite for landing a secure full-time job – but gaining a post doc (someone who has obtained a Ph.D. and is working as a research assistant RA on a project that is funded by a grant that has been won by a principal investigator PI) in some areas five years as a postdoc is now a prerequisite for landing a secure full-time job.  However such funding is  few and far between, every advertised academic post draws a flood of candidates, and grants fund only a tiny fraction of applicants.
• Female PhD’s being less likely to stay on in academia due in part to insecure contracts http://www.guardian.co.uk/higher-education-network/blog/2012/may/24/why-women-leave-academia
• Graduates who find work outside universities may not fare all that well. For instance a  OECD study shows that five years after receiving their degrees, more than 60% of PhDs in Slovakia and more than 45% in Belgium, the Czech Republic, Germany and Spain were still on temporary contracts. Many were postdocs. About one-third of Austria’s PhD graduates take jobs unrelated to their degrees. In Germany 13% of all PhD graduates end up in lowly occupations. In the Netherlands the proportion is 21%

These are just a few concerns I have noted in my brief examination of this issue.  It should be noted that awareness is being raised, for instance through the excellent work of the PostGraduate Workers Assocaition http://postgraduateworker.wordpress.com/ , as well as other institutional subsidaries.  There have also been recent surveys, that remain unpublished to a wider audience, conducted by individual institutions to evaluate how they treat PhD students.

Next steps

Further observations and conversations are needed in order to evaluate if those affected by these issues are  from certain backgrounds, if  structural factors play a part, or if indeed this is a general HE issue.  Apologies with regard to the informal nature of this piece, but it is just some general thoughts at present, I would welcome any comments on these issues from colleagues old and new so I could begin to see if I can draft these thoughts into anything more

Teresa