Vitae have published their 2026 ‘What do researchers do?’ report.
It details the employment outcomes and earnings of recent doctoral graduates.
There are a few figures in there that I think can give us food for thought as researcher developers.
Only 41% of doctoral graduates end up working in higher education, and that number is falling. What’s more, just one in five enters a research role. And of those who do make it into academia, 93% are on fixed-term contracts.
That the job market is precarious isn’t news, of course. But when I see figures like this I’m left wondering the impact this has on researchers themselves *during* their doctoral journey.
Many of them started with a clear picture: finish the thesis, get a postdoc, build an academic career. Somewhere in year two or three, the reality of the job market comes into focus. And when it does, and they decide to leave HE afterwards, the question that follows is a difficult one: “Why am I even doing this PhD then?”.
This is especially acute when 40% of graduates said their doctorate wasn’t required for the job they’re now doing (and 14% said it wasn’t advantageous at all).
This doesn’t just affect career planning. My instinct is that this existential question lands in the middle of the thesis, at the moment when the work is hardest and the confidence is lowest. And that it can have a big impact on things like attrition and satisfaction as a result.
We talk a lot about skills and progression. We talk less about what happens when a researcher’s reason for being there starts to shift under their feet.
And whatever the eventual destination, the thesis still has to be written. For those in the middle of it, getting the PhD thesis structure right is often the difference between finishing and stalling.
But I wonder if there’s any data out there about this? About what impact this exposure to the academic labour market has on confidence in the doctorate itself? If you have any insight please do comment below – I’d love to check it out.
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