Recent statistics on post-doctoral career paths are beginning to note a growing shift away from the traditional route of academia.
The University’s graduate program has data on alumni from almost every department dating as far back as 2002 available on their website. The database lists the number of graduates entering academic tracks, postdoctoral fellowships, private enterprises and various other professions. It also presents a significant number of graduates entering historically unconventional fields.
While students and faculty alike hold the conviction that Ph.D. graduates mainly enter academia, figures from Duke’s database suggest a growing number of post-doctorates following paths in public or private sectors, often diverging from their academic field of study. Approximately 55 percent of the 2,935 students to successfully receive Ph.D.s from 2002 to 2012 currently hold positions in private profit enterprises, public occupations, or a host of other fields outside academia.
“Our graduates are all over the map,” said Sönke Johnsen, professor and director of graduate studies in the biology department. “Some go into industry, some do something completely different—we have a law clerk, a curator at a museum and pharmaceutical and ecological positions.”
Similar trends are apparent in Yale University’s Ph.D. placement statistics, which reports 56 percent of graduates holding jobs in academic positions.
Paula McClain, dean of the graduate school and vice provost for graduate education, said the increasing variety in Ph.D. career paths is a sign of the growing diversification of options available to a job applicant with a higher degree.
“What’s happening now is that students are looking at different career paths that use their Ph.D.,” McClain said. “As students go through the program, they realize they like the training they’re getting but they want to do something else, so you’re using what you’ve learned but you’re just not doing it as an academic.”
A recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education discussed a similar database for alumni with a Ph.D. in sociology from the City University of New York. This project found many of the graduates pursued career paths outside academia, due in part to a highly competitive academic job market.
“It’s always been difficult to find jobs because academic jobs are limited,” said Elizabeth Baltes, a Ph.D. candidate in art history. “It may take a Ph.D. student several years to find an academic position, or at least a permanent academic position, so they may try something else just to make ends meet.”
Few members of Duke’s graduate school were aware such a comprehensive database is publicly available.
Though English placement statistics are listed online, Baltes said she was not aware of a database of career paths of graduates from her department. She added that she acquired a sense of her options from communicating with peers.
“As far as I know, there’s no path to look at, but current graduates are in contact with each other, so we have a good sense of what people are doing and where they’re going,” Baltes said.
Emma Buckingham, a Ph.D. candidate in University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s department of classics, noted a similar problem with the publicity of statistics at UNC.
“I believe that we have a database but I’ve never accessed it before,” Buckingham said. “I have a general idea of where people are and how many successfully graduated and got jobs in the field.... I’m sure if more people knew about [the database], they would access it more often.”
Thomas Pollard, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Yale University said Yale University’s database receives a fair amount of traffic but is incomplete.
“We have just finished collecting data on current positions of our doctoral graduates since 2000, but have not yet analyzed the data,” Pollard said. “When we have done so, we will share the information with students and faculty as well as post them on our website where we already have information on time to degree and completion rates for each department.”
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