How research degrees lead to greater employability

A ny new postgraduate hoping to spend a year or four alone with their subject and emerge with an original thesis had better think again. Ever since the 2002 Roberts review into science careers stated that skills training was vital to a research degree programme, postgraduates have increasingly been expected to be not only brilliant researchers but team players, communicators, and, above all, employable. Even before the Roberts review, educators and employers were becoming concerned that not enough attention was being paid to what postgraduates could do other than research. In 2001, the UK Research Councils, in collaboration with what was then the UK Grad Programme, an organisation that champions the career development of researchers, issued a joint statement on skills, setting out the skills that postgraduate researchers would be expected to develop during their research training. They ranged from understanding the processes for the funding and evaluation of research, to the ability to show initiative, respond perceptively to others and write an effective CV. That statement is now being updated into a new framework of skills due to be published in the next few weeks. Janet Metcalfe, chair of UK Grad's successor, Vitae, says: "The environment in which people are doing research has changed from what it was 10 years ago. Research is broader now. It incorporates more need to have public engagement, to communicate science and to make an impact." She says the new framework will also acknowledge the changing environment in which research is carried out and the characteristics needed by researchers. "While the joint skills statement looked at what skills and competencies you should have by the end of a doctorate, this is looking at how you develop as a researcher," she says. It starts earlier, going right back to skills developed during a research project for a master's degree. The aim of the new framework is to enable researchers to trace their progress and identify areas they need to work on, as well as providing them with a basis for discussions with supervisors. Institutions will be able to use it to help them develop postgraduate training programmes and careers services to offer the right kinds of support, and funders will be able to get an idea of where their grants are going. The hope also is that employers inside and outside academia will use the framework to discover what exactly postgraduates can offer them. This is the latest in a raft of initiatives by institutions, the government and postgraduate organisations aimed at boosting recognition by employers of the generic skills acquired by postgraduates during their degrees. Last October, Universities UK (UUK), the umbrella group of university vice-chancellors, brought out a report entitled Promoting the UK Doctorate, in which UUK president Steve Smith stressed the need to promote the attractiveness of a PhD from a British institution to employers as well as to students. UUK wants this to form a key part of the postgraduate review announced by business and skills secretary Lord Mandelson and due to report in July. Earlier this year, Vitae launched its career stories portal, revealing, through case studies, what postgraduate students end up doing and how they get there. It has also recently surveyed employers in various sectors about their attitudes to employing postgraduates. The survey found that, of the 100 respondents, nearly three-quarters would welcome more applications from doctoral graduates and more than a third were already targeting them. This focus on employability is partly because there are so many postgraduates now – more than 140,000 studying for master's degrees and 90,000 for doctorates. There is also a realisation that half of those graduating with postgraduate degrees do not continue into academia, and that many never intended to. The recession has increased the numbers opting for a postgraduate qualification to avoid a tricky jobs market while boosting their CVs. But it is also because of government emphasis on the "knowledge economy" and the importance of high-level skills in helping the UK out of recession. Last year, a government report, Building Britain's Future: New Industry, New Jobs, highlighted the economic impact of research and encouraged closer ties between researchers and industry, arguing that "Britain is, and will continue to be, an economy driven by the creation and exploitation of knowledge." Metcalfe says the contents of the new Vitae framework have "definitely been influenced by a change in the environment in terms of researchers being seen as important for the knowledge economy". While Kyle Wedgwood, who is in his first year of a Phd in mathematical neuroscience at the University of Nottingham, is wary of a tick-box approach to developing skills by simply accumulating credits from training courses, he recognises that reflecting on the skills he has gained will be a valuable way to collect his thoughts when preparing job applications. But more important to his future job prospects, he says, is his involvement in activities outside his study. "On a social level, and purely from a developmental point of view, it gives you an appreciation of where your work fits in and how people perceive what you do." While his course has boosted his ability to communicate what he does and to work in a team, he argues that it is by organising dodgeball sessions and taking part in other extra-curricula activities that he has really honed the kinds of skills likely to be appealing in the workplace.