Leveraging Student Voices to Explore Career Interest in STEM PhD Programs

Jennifer Claydon & Meghan Bathgate   |    Volume 20 Issue 2  |   

As career landscapes within and outside of academia shift, higher education STEM programs increasingly must navigate assessing student experience and career goals with an eye towards actionable improvements in career preparation for myriad roles. In this study, we aimed to better identify and respond to career interests across four years of graduate students (N=364) as they considered their post-graduation plans at different points in their training. These results revealed students are most interested in pharmaceuticals/biotechnology careers, postdoctoral positions, research-heavy faculty positions, and non-faculty academic roles, though the most notable results are the reductions in degree of career interest between the first and last year of PhD training. Specifically, first year students express significantly higher levels of interest (depth) across more career areas (breadth) compared to graduating students. This work highlights the changing pattern of career interests alongside how a collaborative assessment approach can inform choices in how to best support students.

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