Although an increasing percentage of PhD-holders in the Netherlands will continue their careers outside academia, we have little insight into their further career progress. To develop a better understanding of how this group constructs and justifies a successful career outside academia, we conducted in the period 2016-2017 semi-structured interviews with 47 PhD graduates from all disciplines (humanities, social and beta sciences) who have elaborate experience working outside academia. Drawing on a multi-career perspective, we studied the motivation of the PhD holders when making such career transitions. The findings from the interviews demonstrated the main motivations of PhD holders, which are strongly associated with different but related types of careers.

We used the three-type career model developed by Glaser and Laudel, consisting of a) the organizational, b) community and c) cognitive careers. In our data analysis we identified a range of arguments for not staying in academia or being attracted towards a further ‘outside career’. We reconfigured these arguments along four dimensions:

1)    In academia, respondents felt distanced from real life and were, in their current profession, appreciating the practical impact of their research, for example the societal and practical relevance of their work (relations to society, community)

2)    Respondents disliked the competition in academia and the performance orientation but enjoyed their current multidisciplinary cooperation towards a common goal (relation to colleagues, community)

These first two dimensions refer to the relationship of the respondents with society and with their colleagues consequently referring to the community career type.

3)    Individualism and loneliness were typically experienced in academia, whereas respondents continued to enjoy their professional autonomy and intellectual stimulation in their current work. This third dimension refers to how the respondents relate themselves to the content of their work, therefor this concerns the cognitive career type.

4)    Respondents disliked the lack of stable career perspectives in academia but enjoyed their current option for competence-based development and personal growth. This fourth dimension refers to the personal development of the respondents, and their organizational career.

 Thus, whilst discontinuation of an academic career may easily hold a pejorative connotation, the analysis of the PhD holders’ motivations revealed important possibilities in pursuing a career elsewhere. Overall, from our study we can conclude that whilst a major gap may exist between careers in academia and ‘the corporate world’, shifting careers between these worlds is not as complicated as commonly believed.

To answer our research questions, we interviewed 47 post-PhDs, 20 females and 27 males, the average year of graduation was 2008. The respondents are all currently working outside academia, mostly in the private sector. Recruitment of respondents occurred through our own networks by means of a snowball sample. Ultimately our sample comprised a broad range of informants from a variety of backgrounds. Twelve respondents have a background from the social sciences (soc), six are from humanities (hum), and 29 have a science background (sc). The largest subgroup of our respondents involves males with a science background (Msc) = 21, and 8 female respondents (Fsc). The other categories are: (fe)males with a humanities background (Fhum= 4, Mhum=2) or from the social sciences (Fsoc=9, Msoc=3). Our study uses a typically retrospective perspective. We requested the post-PhDs to look back upon their previous pre- and post-Phd careers during in-depth interviews. The interviews were carried out in a semi-structured manner, with help of a topic list. Analysis of data involved a three-step process, since we used 1) open and 2) closed coding and 3) selective coding (Boeije, 2012). We combined several data sources, interviews were carried out by three different researchers, each of them had a slightly different perspective but we (re-) analyzed all the interviews jointly. The interviews were coded to find a universe of different motivations for career steps. Then the codes were joint into ‘codetrees’, whereas eventually the four dimensions emerged, which will be presented in the findings. To distinguish between individual respondents’ labels are used to provide background information of the respondents: number, gender and discipline (for example R20Msc).

Looking at the data reveals several interesting developments: What appeared as remarkable in our research is how much the respondents generally enjoy and appreciate their current profession. They do so for several reasons, whereas certain typical features of academic culture, which were previously disliked, have been altered into a more appealing constellation. Other aspects, such as the content of their work, the opportunity to use their analytical skills or problem solving capacities have remained, but in a more appealing setting. Loneliness and hypercompetition have been replaced by multidisciplinary or team-based collaboration, output based performance indicators are substituted by process or portfolio type of assessment, temporary contracts and insecure prospects by a tenured contract with ample attention for competence based learning. In general, the respondents sacrifice their professional autonomy easily for more job security, clearer perspectives and meaningful work, with a clear societal and practical contribution. In short, the transfer from academia towards other sectors resulted in a better balance, between the cognitive and community career, whereas several of the elements of academia (organizational career) have been replaced by a more constructive and appealing constellation making their work situation more attractive.

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