‘What happens next?’ Ph.D. Candidates’ and Supervisors’ Perspectives on Career Paths and Choices After the Defense

Abstract

In this short report, we try to give a systematic overview of ‘what happens next?’. Concretely, we collect Ph.D. candidates’ and supervisors’ views on the next career step after graduation. We begin our report with a detailed presentation of the outcomes of existing research studies on this topic, focusing mostly on Ph.D. students graduating from LTH. Then, we discuss how proposed reforms could have a positive impact on graduate education so that it not only includes purely academic work, but also prepares our students for non-academic careers. In particular, we compare different suggestions and findings on implementations of structured career planning support. This is especially relevant for our fields of research (mathematics, engineering and computer science).

After this literature study, we wanted to check the actual results of the above theories. To this end, we conducted oral interviews with 20 Ph.D. candidates from different departments across 11 Universities located in 4 different European countries. Section 2 contains the summary of the interviews we conducted. To complement these results, we also interviewed supervisors about their view of ‘what comes after the Ph.D.?’. These findings are reported in Section 3. The report concludes with a critical reflection on the results we collected.