The role of doctoral education has been traditionally to prepare people for academic jobs. Yet, this has changed since the beginning of the 2000s due to the rapid increase in the number of PhD graduates and the growing influence of neoliberal economic policies. For instance, the number of graduates increased by 56% across the OECD countries between 2000-2012 (OECD, 2014), while the number of doctoral students doubled between the early 1990s to mid-2000s in the UK (Halse, 2007). But, as the number of positions in the academic labour market has not been growing to the same extent, its capacity has become no longer sufficient to absorb the majority of doctoral graduates (Cuthbert & Molla, 2015). Meanwhile, the growing influence of neoliberal economic policies, especially the knowledge-based economy discourse, has also encouraged the non-academic market orientation of doctoral graduates. Here, doctoral graduates are perceived as the “most-skilled labour force”, and their employment beyond the academic market -especially in the STEM disciplines, is promoted (Shin, Kehm & Jones, 2018; Molla & Cuthbert, 2019). Overall, the relationship between doctoral study and future employment in the academic market has been weakened.

Here, the efficiency of the traditional form of doctoral education in preparing graduates for a non-academic career has been loudly discussed and criticised. Studies argue that this model only prepares for an academic career and promotes a narrow set of skills that are only valued in the academic job market (Manathunga, Pitt & Critchley, 2009; Gokhberg, Shmatko & Auriol, 2016). Consequently, different policy responses have been suggested, which were later welcomed by many parts of the world. The loudest reform debates and actions have been made around the “skills” discourse. It is argued that doctoral study should be reconfigured by integrating skills students can utilise in a broad range of job settings after graduation (Solem et al., 2013; Acker & Haque, 2017). In addition to the skills policy, practice-oriented doctoral programmes that offer more collaboration with the non-academic labour market were introduced to produce functional knowledge that can be put into a practical context and collaborations with industry and the world of work (Hancock & Walsh, 2016; Jones, 2018).

Although these policy responses can be beneficial at some point to strengthen the link between doctoral study and future employment at the institutional level, the personal level relationship remains largely overlooked. It is known that doctoral graduates have more diverse career motivations and interests than before (Seo et al., 2020). Yet, there is limited knowledge on what shapes these diverse career motivations and interests, which is the area of investigation that has great potential to provide in-depth knowledge on doctoral students’ future career preparation.

Therefore, this study aims to answer:

1- How do doctoral students makes sense of embarking on a doctoral study for a future career?

2- How do doctoral students perceive the value and contributions of doctoral education for a future career?

Studies on individuals’ future career perspectives tend to assume a straight line between skills that individuals have or pursue and the best-matched positions for those skills in the labour market. Yet, this research investigates the issue more comprehensively through in-depth explanations of how they construct their future career goals and prospects. Here, a processual rather than possessional perspective, i.e., conditions and experiences that shape their future career aspirations rather than focusing solely on the skills and attributes they have (Holmes, 2013), fits better with research aims. Therefore, this research will utilise the notion of identity, specifically, the dynamic view of identity: ‘identity-in-action’ and ‘identity-under-construction,’ (McAlpine & Amundsen, 2018) as a theoretical lens.

This study overall aims to shed light on how doctoral students construct their future career prospects and goals. Accordingly, the best-matched approach to generate knowledge can be interpretivist methodology, as it allows to “see things through the eyes of respondents and participants” (Gibbs, 2007, p.7) and to shed light on the subjective construction of identity formation (Cohen, Manion & Morrison, 2012; Schwartz-Shea & Yanow, 2013). Subjective construction here refers the constructivist view of social reality, which is accepted by interpretivist methodology (Neuman, 2014). In detail, the constructivist view deems social reality constructed through interactions and interpretation of things and shaped by personal experiences, and the environment/context individuals are living in (Eriksson & Kovalainen, 2008). This study utilises qualitative semi-structured interviews with 30 doctoral students in a research-intensive UK university. Interviewees were employed by the answers to the prior survey, which was applied in the same setting for a larger project. The aim here was to employ interviewees with the soundest potential to provide rich and saturated data from various disciplines, classes and ethnicities. Accordingly, interview method was utilised to elucidate the experiences and perceptions that shape participants' perspectives and positioning to capture in-depth explanations. Here, interviews were initialised by asking more general questions, e.g., “how/why you decided to pursue a doctoral study", and were followed by more specific questions to dig into the experiences shaping their future career perspectives and positioning. The thematic analysis approach was utilised to analyse data. This approach allows for sweeping across the data through interlinked steps of the procedure and enables to generate analytical themes through rigorously probing patterns of shared meaning or prevalent/key issues (Braun & Clarke, 2019). These analytical themes will potentially provide rich and thick explanations of how doctoral students' future career perspectives and positionings interplay with sociocultural and contextual factors. Here, the rationale and focus were combining semantic and latent themes to decouple the contextual factors that shape their future career perspectives, beyond what participants say.

The study's initial results present that embarking on a doctoral education fits with doctoral students’ future career understandings in numerous ways. Three main forms of motivations were observed here: academic, intrinsic and utilitarian. Accordingly, the value and contributions of PhD differ by where individuals find the meaning and motivation to embark on. The contribution of the doctoral experience on human capital, e.g., academic and soft skills, is appreciated by each participant. But those who embarked on a PhD through intrinsic motivations loudly appreciate the acquisition of soft skills, i.e., skills they can utilise in non-university settings, while enhancing the academic skills aspect is valued most by those who started a PhD for academic motivations. Nonetheless, the career utility aspect and symbolic value of the degree are appreciated most by those who embarked on a PhD for utilising the benefits of the credential and diploma. Overall, three types of identities that doctoral students negotiate during the degree for future careers emerge from the initial data; purists, activists and instrumentalists. Yet, each form of identity is not assigned to certain types of motivations and perceived values, as they are interchangeable. For instance, an activist may embark on a PhD by instrumentalist motivation, e.g., using the credibility of the degree to sell the outdoor education course to industry. But the underlying motivation here is making a real impact on the issue they are passionate about. Last, a certain extent of the relationship between identities and ethnicity can be seen. For instance, international students, specifically Asian students, mainly stand on the ground closer to instrumentalist identity.

Acker, S. and Haque, E., 2017. Left Out in the Academic Field: Doctoral Graduates Deal with a Decade of Disappearing Jobs. cjhe 47, 101–119. https://doi.org/10.7202/1043240ar Braun, V., Clarke, V., 2019. Reflecting on reflexive thematic analysis. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health 11, 589–597. https://doi.org/10.1080/2159676X.2019.1628806 Cohen, L., Manion, L., & Morrison, K. 2007. Research methods in education. 6th Edition. Routledge. Cuthbert, D., Molla, T., 2015. PhD crisis discourse: a critical approach to the framing of the problem and some Australian ‘solutions.’ High Educ 69, 33–53. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-014-9760-y Eriksson, P., & Kovalainen, A. 2008. Introducing Qualitative Methods: Qualitative methods in business research. London: SAGE Publications Ltd. doi, 10, 9780857028044. Gibbs, G. R. 2007. Analyzing Qualitative Data, Sage, London. Gokhberg, L., Shmatko, N., Auriol, L. (Eds.), 2016. The Science and Technology Labor Force. Springer International Publishing, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27210-8 Halse, C. 2007. Is the doctorate in crisis?. Nagoya Journal of Higher Education, 7, 321-337. Available at: http://dro.deakin.edu.au/eserv/DU:30035159/halse-isthedoctorate-2007.pdf Hancock, S., Walsh, E., 2016. Beyond knowledge and skills: rethinking the development of professional identity during the STEM doctorate. Studies in Higher Education 41, 37–50. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2014.915301 Holmes, L., 2013. Competing perspectives on graduate employability: possession, position or process? Studies in Higher Education 38, 538–554. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2011.587140 Jones, M. 2018. ‘Contemporary trends in professional doctorates’, Studies in Higher Education, 43(5), pp. 814–825. doi:10.1080/03075079.2018.1438095. Manathunga, C., Pitt, R. and Critchley, C. 2009. ‘Graduate attribute development and employment outcomes: tracking PhD graduates’, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 34(1), pp. 91–103. doi:10.1080/02602930801955945 Molla, T., & Cuthbert, D. 2019. Calibrating the PhD for Industry 4.0: global concerns, national agendas and Australian institutional responses. Policy Reviews in Higher Education, 3(2), 167-188. https://doi.org/10.1080/23322969.2019.1637772 OECD. 2014. Education Indicators in Focus. Who are the doctorate holders and where do their qualifications lead them? Paris: OECD Publishing. Retrieved from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/22267077. Schwartz-Shea, P., & Yanow, D. 2013. Interpretive research design: Concepts and processes. Routledge Seo, G., Ahn, J., Huang, W.-H., Makela, J.P., Yeo, H.T., 2020. Pursuing Careers Inside or Outside Academia? Factors Associated With Doctoral Students’ Career Decision Making. Journal of Career Development. https://doi.org/10.1177/0894845320907968 Shin, J. C., Kehm, B. M., & Jones, G. A. 2018. Doctoral Education for the Knowledge Society. Cham: Springer. Solem, M., Kollasch, A., Lee, J., 2013. Career goals, pathways and competencies of geography graduate students in the USA. Journal of Geography in Higher Education 37, 92–116. https://doi.org/10.1080/03098265.2012.729563