More What Do PhDs Do-ery

My reader (hi John) has probably noticed that I didn't post much for a while, and that's because I was a bit pressed for time, what with graduate employment not researching itself and whatnot. This isn't so bad because it means that there's a backlog of things I can write about (yes, let's accentuate the positive on this). Excuses over now - let's start writing.

'What Do PhDs Do' was the first attempt to take a look at the destinations of PhD graduates in the UK in a systematic way, and it made some interesting findings about the outcomes of doctoral study - not least that most PhD graduates don't go into academia - much to the surprise of everyone involved.

The sequel is now out (ok, it's been out a while), which takes a look at regional PhD study and employment as well as migration. Now, this is based on data for graduates from 2003 (data for 2004 graduates are available here, but in much less detail), but the findings are applicable in most cases to the current state because PhD employment is not terribly volatile at the moment. There is little to massively shock anyone in there, but this sort of work is useful in that there is a lot assumed about PhD outcomes, but not a lot known. In time, this work (which is continuing), will allow us to do some things that we can't really do very effectively at the moment - like map PhD employment trends.

In the meantime, the lack of volatility might change if we have a pharma industry crash, for example, but it's interesting to see where the opportunities are, both within and outside academia.

Technorati tags: higher education, universities, labour market information, LMI, postgraduates, PhD, PhD employment, PhD employment