Research Career Pathways

Posted by Lynne Forrest

As I enter the final few months of my PhD, although I know I should be concentrating on writing up my thesis and getting it submitted on time, I have been somewhat distracted recently by thinking about what I’m going to do when it’s all over. It’s a difficult balancing act, finishing the piece of work that will allow you to move on to the next stage whilst simultaneously looking for that next opportunity, but I’m sure it’s one that most people working in research, at all levels, are familiar with.

I’m lucky in one respect in that I’m sure that I want to stay in academia. But it’s very disheartening to read endless articles about the surplus of PhD students and the bottlenecks that occur at each stage of the academic pathway. In fact, I think I’ve yet to read an article that promotes any positives of an academic career, although, as far as I can see, there are many. Perhaps because I’ve worked elsewhere I can definitely see that the grass isn’t greener. Yes, being a female academic with children is difficult but then so is being a professional female with children in any industry. The flexibility of academia can actually be a real advantage. The freedom of managing your own time and research and doing something you love shouldn’t be easily dismissed either.

The dreaded PhD surplus

I’m also lucky in that my PhD supervisors have been fabulously supportive and have found me funding that will allow me to analyse the cancer data that I didn’t have time to look at for my PhD and to write up any remaining papers from my thesis. It also looks hopeful that other funding will then become available to allow me to stay on at Newcastle and also write a Fellowship application so I can quickly move on from the temporary Research Associate (RA) route. And, unlike a lot of younger researchers who come straight in to a PhD after their undergrad degree, I have no illusions about how research and academia works. I don’t want to go down the endless RA-jobs route and although I’m not wholly convinced I have what it takes to be a ‘research leader’, I’m going to give it a go.

I know how things work as, in an irony that is not lost on me now, my previous job before my return-to-research mid-life crisis was as the Career Pathways Scheme Manager, a scheme that was being developed to help support researchers in their career management.

In this, a survey of RA attitudes to career development found that the majority of researchers did not want to become research leaders or academics, they just wanted to continue as RAs on a project, but without having to look for a new job every 3 years or so. The idea of the scheme was to develop a ‘third way’ so that the choice was not just between following the Fellowship-to-academic or RA paths but to offer a third option of becoming a Team Scientist, a specialist in their field, who was not an academic but held a permanent post. It was an admirable idea from Newcastle University but it didn’t take long to see the major flaw in the scheme as, apart from in a couple of cases, there was no funding for these posts.

I’m not sure what the answer to all this is. Without a system-wide change in the funding structure for research all the issues are going to remain. I fully understand why RAs who are constantly changing job and location become disillusioned and leave research. There’s undoubtedly a lot of stress and pressure. And yet, with optimism still intact, I’m prepared to give academia a go…