Many people put their degrees on hold and struggle to find work.

On The Conversation, a group of Vietnamese authors who are studying for their PhDs and working at universities in Australia have contributed to the country's draft education reform "Reshaping and reimagining higher education, setting the stage for the next decade and beyond".

The authors include Cuong Hoang, a research fellow at Victoria University; Binh Ta, a lecturer at Monash University; Hang Khong and Trang Dang, teaching assistants at the Faculty of Education at Monash University.

The authors synthesized multiple data sources and said the total number of Australians with PhDs increased from about 135,000 (in 2016) to about 185,000 (in 2021).

One of the motivations for pursuing a doctorate is to pursue an academic career, working in research institutions and universities.

There are approximately 185,000 PhDs in Australia as of 2021, steadily increasing by 4,000 - 10,000/year.

However, this dream is becoming increasingly distant due to a decline in academic vacancies and a steady increase in the number of Australians undertaking PhDs. In particular, the number of PhDs has increased steadily over the past two decades from around 4,000 to around 10,000 each year.

Meanwhile, universities are downsizing due to costs, especially in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The teaching staff has decreased from 54,086 in 2016 to 46,971 in 2021.

On the other hand, the federal government also provides some funding to universities based on the number of doctoral students who complete their programs. Education is also completely free for domestic students.

Therefore, schools put pressure on the teaching staff, forcing them to guide and supervise to ensure that the doctoral students complete their dissertations on time. This is also one of the criteria for evaluating promotion.

Only 25% have the right job, the rest struggle to find work

There is no official data on how many PhD graduates work in academia. Only about 25% of PhD graduates are in a relevant profession, according to a small 2011 survey.

Estimates by the Vietnamese authors suggest that this figure has not changed much since 2021. If there are around 185,000 people with PhDs (2021), this figure is four times higher than the number of available academic positions (46,971).

As a result, many PhDs struggle to find jobs outside of academia despite their prestigious degrees.

Only about 25% of PhD graduates are in the right profession. The 2022 survey by the Australian Department of Education's Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching (QILT) Initiative found that 84.7% of postgraduate research graduates (including research masters and PhDs) were in full-time employment within six months of completing their studies, compared to 78.5% of undergraduate graduates.

Not all PhD students want to pursue a career in academia. A 2019 national survey found that 51% of PhD graduates in Australia wanted to work in the public or business sector.

However, there are significant differences in employment expectations depending on the field of study. Specifically, two-thirds of PhD students in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields hope to work in a variety of fields outside of academia. Among them, banking, civil engineering, mining, energy and healthcare/pharmaceuticals are top priorities.

Meanwhile, two-thirds of PhD students in the social sciences (including history, politics, education, sociology, psychology, economics and anthropology) want to work in academia.

"Society should abandon the mindset: Having a PhD means having a job"

The results of in-depth interviews by a group of Vietnamese authors with 23 PhDs who completed their programs from 5 universities in Australia 5 years ago gave 2 main conclusions: PhDs find it difficult to find stable jobs in the academic field and they are not ready for a working environment outside the academic field.

“Society needs to get over the mindset that because you have a PhD, you will automatically get a job. That is not the case. There are many PhDs out there who cannot find jobs or are doing what we call manual labor or ‘hand-to-mouth’ jobs,” one PhD shared.

“Employers were less impressed with publications. They were more interested in the skills I had. So I took some online data courses like the ones on LinkedIn, then I tried to apply for some jobs that had those skills and went in that direction.”

Currently, there are no restrictions on PhD training in Australia because the more PhD students a university has, the more federal government funding it receives.

To balance supply and demand, the research team recommends that the Australian government consider funding quotas for PhD students in each field. This would help select the most suitable PhD candidates according to the strict regulations in PhD research.

(Source: Vietnamnet/The Conversation)

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