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Tracking postdocs’ job moves benefits individuals, academia and society, say James Howard and Fiona McBride
Every now and then, headlines sound a klaxon about mass exoduses of early career researchers from academia. It’s common to hear talk about how most postdocs don’t end up in permanent academic posts.
However, we don’t really have a clear idea of the numbers involved or, crucially, where researchers go. The picture is incomplete, and methodological differences can make it impossible to knit the pieces we have into a more cohesive whole.
Researchers are internationally mobile, funding for efforts to track careers is often tied to specific policy objectives, and data are often siloed to a specific institution or nation.
Here be dragons?
There are efforts underway to collect more comprehensive data on research careers. One, the Research and Innovation Careers Observatory, a joint initiative by the European Commission and the OECD, aims to be the premier source for reliable data and information on careers in research and innovation.
The observatory is a huge, difficult and worthy undertaking—but collecting and sharing human stories is just as important.
As the adage goes, you can’t be what you can’t see. The idea of the single path**,** passing through PhD and postdoc to a permanent academic job, still has a strong cultural hold within academia, with a lingering perception that departing the narrow track to academic success is tantamount to failure or giving up on research.
Examples of others who have thrived in different ways can combat that perception, giving inspiration, information and reassurance to those unsure where to go next.
Many routes to success
That’s why Prosper, a sector-wide model for postdoc career development, funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), has been tracking the careers of postdocs who participated in our pilot postdoc career development cohorts at the universities of Liverpool, Manchester and Lancaster.
Since the cohorts ended in March 2022 and February 2023, we’ve done this via formal surveys and via online information-gathering from public sources such as LinkedIn. We’ve also told these researchers’ stories in case studies.
Remarkably, by 2024 we found that 28 per cent of the 127 participants were working in roles beyond academia. Destinations include the Met Office, the European Commission, a charity working to improve outcomes for disadvantaged pupils, artificial intelligence research, the satellite agency Eumetsat and the Department for Transport. Several have built their own businesses, with one securing a major international contract for sample-management software.
This diversity is testament to the richness of talent and skills—including entrepreneurship—in our postdoc community, and to how attractive postdocs are to all manner of organisations.
In the coming months, we’ll be revisiting some case studies of former participants to learn more about their transitions and how they’ve been developing.
There are other great examples of this sort of individualised career tracking. They are being run by universities, both individually (including Cambridge, Glasgow, Oxford, Queen’s University Belfast and University College London) and collectively, as well as by the British Academy and Royal Society.
Most studies of postdoc careers take a snapshot at one point in time, in contrast with Prosper’s longer-term tracking. However, the common thread that emerges across all of these efforts it that a single fixed career outcome for postdocs is simply a myth.
Regardless of discipline, postdocs go on to thrive in a variety of contexts and sectors, and often remain involved in research or research-adjacent work in a range of forms beyond academic institutions.
Cross-pollination
The cross-pollination of talent and skills benefits everyone. As Frances Burstow, UKRI’s director of talent and skills, puts it: “More people switching between academia, business and government is key to the UK’s position as a world-class research and innovation nation.”
In some senses, academia is becoming more like other sectors, where once-unconventional sector-hopping careers have become commonplace, and the idea of the job-for-life has faded.
This is a good thing. A web of research careers that sees individuals moving between sectors gives the researchers themselves more choice and scope for thriving, helps academic institutions attract funding, talent and collaboration, and helps research bring its insights and benefits to wider society.
The world beyond academia isn’t a dark, foreboding forest—it’s a place of possibility and opportunity, especially to someone with skills built during a career in academia. But to really drive this home, we still need a better map.
James Howard is director of the Academy, University of Liverpool and principal investigator of Prosper. Fiona McBride is a senior researcher developer at Prosper.
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