The career aspirations and expectations of geography doctoral students: establishing academic subjectivities within a shifting landscape

Abstract

The PhD forms a watershed period where candidates' professional identities are formed, and their career aspirations and expectations are developed. Yet little is known about Australian geography doctoral students' career aspirations and expectations. Drawing on findings from a 2016 survey of those students, the paper establishes that while a majority of students aspire to work in academia, many also feel quite pessimistic about their prospects of being able to do so. The paper argues that the uncertainty and anxiety that many Australian geography doctoral students feel about their future careers is the product of a wider cultural shift that is occurring in relation to the purpose of the research doctorate. Geographers need to critically engage with these changes and the academic subjectivities they are producing to ensure that, as a discipline, geography continues to make a positive contribution to the careers of the individuals who undertake these degrees.

Why do a PhD in geography? A sympathetic response to ‘the career aspirations and expectations of geography students’

“…This commentary has presented a few key considerations about how, collectively, we shape the future of the academy, with regard to geography research degrees more specifically. Best available data support the key arguments presented by Dufty‐Jones () and the sentiments voiced by the geography PhD candidates she surveyed: that student numbers are up, academic job prospects are poor, and longstanding trends are unlikely to change in the near future. These factors may be understood more clearly by viewing them not as standalone circumstances but as related aspects of the neoliberal project of higher education across Australian universities.…”

“…Ratios of students to full‐time equivalent academic staff have increased from 18.1:1 in 2001 to 20.7:1 in 2013 (Universities Australia ). Compounding this change is a greater emphasis on research productivity, diverting resources away from mentoring, pastoral care, and teaching, and leading to high‐level debates about the fundamentals that underpin contemporary higher education pedagogy (Dufty‐Jones ; Gillen et al ., ).…”

“…Theoretically, such a gloomy assessment of the state of play should deter aspirants from pursuing a career in academia. However, as Dufty‐Jones () contends, most PhD candidates in Australian geography programs are intent on pursuing an academic career. This article seeks to elaborate upon the seeming contradiction alluded to in Dufty‐Jones's article, providing evidence to buttress her argument that the status quo of the geography PhD merits deeper scrutiny with regard to broader cultural shifts and the changing nature of the higher degree.…”

Negotiating tensions, creating connections: The NZGS early career research network

“…Second, New Zealand universities require substantial overhead payments on most externally funded postdoctoral fellowships, more than doubling the salary cost of including postdoctoral fellowships in grant applications (Griffin, ; Nicholls, ). A growing sense that an academic career is only for a lucky few accompanies uncertainty regarding alternative options (Dufty‐Jones, ), as well as a sense that once individuals “bail out” of an academic career path there is little prospect of ever going back.…”

Doctoring knowledge or acknowledging doctors?

“…Simply instructing candidates on what to do or produce under institutional pressures for research outputs presents a technocratic rather than deep learning process (Peseta, ) and contributes to a learning experience very different from doctoral becoming and one that can be damaging to the candidate and the production of future academics (Caretta et al ., ). Subjectivities are ongoing in their formation, despite the fact that strong neoliberalising discourses in the current university sector contribute to PhD candidates experiencing “duelling meanings of what it is to be an academic”; that is, the collegial academic who shares knowledge for public good or the individualised academic who trades knowledge to secure a career ambition (Dufty‐Jones, , p.10; Caretta et al ., ). Indeed, “academic” is a name for a position and function rather than a descriptor of the self, and the university itself is now simply another workplace housing a knowledge worker—a critical message to convey to aspirant academics.…”