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Almost there Doctor Rox

Yesterday I finally had my viva for my doctorate. After nine years I finally had the very final exam. I am using the word final a lot, I know, because this does feel like the end of an era.

The doctorate has been all consuming for the last 10 months or so, and almost-all consuming for some years before that. There were a few years early on when I almost forgot about it as life – and death – got in the way. It became a bit of gentle reading for time to time, a little break from the horrors of pain and suffering in my family. But the last few years it has become an obsession, as I now think every doctorate must become to actually get over the finishing line. It is many years since I have had weekend or a holiday when I was either working on my doctorate or feeling guilty about not working on my doctorate.

The thesis itself was submitted in May. At 76,000 words and about the same again in the appendices it is the length of a decent size book. I’m still not really sure how I managed to finish it given my job. In fact when I look back I realise I did almost all the writing between mid December 2018 and early May 2019. That seems impossible now. And there were another 40,000 words or so in individual assignments I had to complete as a prequel. It helped that it was something I was incredibly interested in, and very relevant to my role. Otherwise I’d say there was no hope. But it still had to be squeezed in to all the nooks and crannies of my life.

And now those nooks and crannies are empty. This morning I felt suddenly overwhelmed with a glorious feeling of liberty and freedom! This is why the universe is filled with such strange contradictory experiences. You can only feel the full joy of one state when you have also experienced the opposite.

But back to the doctorate. For those of you wondering about how this works, having submitted my thesis the university then appoints two examiners. One from the University of Bath (the internal examiner, who I had not previously met) and one from another university, called the external examiner. As the candidate I am then summoned to a viva which is a live face to face exam, or rather a forensic grilling on any and all aspects of my thesis. My supervisor was allowed to attend, but literally had to sit in the corner silently, just observing.

The door to my exam room
The viva door

The point of a doctorate is to make an original contribution to human knowledge. That means doing your own original research, coming up with new findings, and showing how that fits with existing knowledge and theory. Therefore the examiners – who are experts on the area – can grill you on other work in your subject (you need to be very well read), your research methods, and the logic of your conclusions and arguments.

Mine took over two hours and – armed with only a bottle of water and a copy of my thesis – it was pretty full on. But I have to confess I enjoyed it immensely. The examiners were genuinely very interested in the topic, and I determined rather than being anxious beforehand I would say to myself “This is going to be the only opportunity for me to discuss my thesis in detail with people who will have read the whole thing and are experts in the area.”

Despite that positive self-affirmation, I found no matter how how many selfies I took while waiting in the cafe beforehand I had a slightly maniacal glint of anxiety in my eyes…

wide eyed
wild eyed
Anxious eyed

Despite that expression I was actually looking forward to it – and it did turn out to be great fun. They asked ALOT of questions, and challenged me on various sections, some of which I agreed with and others of which I pushed back on. But I think we all enjoyed the debate.

They then sent me away while they conferred, and called me and my supervisor back after about half an hour or so with the result. So lovely to get the results almost instantly! I was then told I had passed, though they had a few minor amendments they’d like me to make. I think they will only take me a couple of days, and having re-read it on the weekend it I have a few amends myself.

And only a week later I got their official report:

Both examiners were impressed with the overall quality of the thesis and the candidate’s performance during the viva. She provided ample evidence of critical engagement with the subject matter; the discovery of significant new insights into the graduate recruitment process and a significant contribution to knowledge in relation to signalling theory.

Examiners’ report

Lush.

So almost there! I expect it to be made official at the next exam board in September.

By the way, there is no grade for a doctorate. It is simply a pass. I sometimes worry about how our students care too much about actual grades in their undergraduate degree. While it is important to pass – and preferably not just a scrape pass – grades are not important outside the university environment. And here you can see with the highest level of degree you can have – a doctorate – there are no grades at all.

However it is so strange that you do all that work – for me taking almost a decade – for an audience of two! What a funny world academia can be. This is the very reason why I have started this blog, to share what I found out with others. And also because I just found it so interesting and relevant for anyone interested in higher education or in getting a secret glimpse into how people actually get jobs.

For that’s what my research was all about: how do recent graduates actually go about getting a job? What is their experience like? What exercises or tests do they have to do for employers? How do they prove their skills? What extra things do they do to make themselves more attractive to employers? And how do they feel about the whole experience?

Believe it or not there is very little research on this from the recent graduates’ perspective. There is a lot from the employers’ viewpoint, including all the skills they want and don’t always get from new graduates. There are also a lot of books of advice written by career consultants on how to develop “employability skills”. But there is not so much on what modern day job-hunting is actually like, and what graduates actually experience in real life.

I chose this topic for the best of reasons: because I really wanted to know the answer! How can we create relevant experiences and design degrees for students if we don’t know what happens to them the moment they leave university? And the only way to find this out is to have in depth conversations with recent graduates who can describe exactly what it is like. That was my research: in depth interviews with 47 recent graduates where we looked in detail at over 100 job application processes at over 75 companies. The graduates who took part were very generous with their time and remarkably open about the good and the bad of their experiences. I think there is a lot we can all learn from this: future graduates, employers and managers and academics of higher education institutions.

So one of the purposes of this blog will be to share some of these findings and experiences. One thing I will share right now: the graduate job-hunting experience wasn’t what I expected and looked very very different to my own experience of job-hunting when I first left university.

Almost- Dr Rox

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Red flags and the declining graduate premium

In my last post I shared stats from the latest report on graduates and employment from the Department of Education. This is based on the report Graduate Labour Market Statistics 2018 (GLMS 2018). It’s pretty clear that graduates are much more likely to do well in terms of jobs. On average they are paid more, are more likely to get a job, and are more likely to be in what’s called “highly skilled employment”.

That’s the simple take-away. But if you look at the report more closely the picture is not quite so rosy. Here are some red flags to watch out for. Graduates don’t get it all their own way. Non-grads have some advantages too.

Beware of the average

A big warning note in looking at the average salaries is that phrase “on average”. The thing about “average” is that it has a precise definition. It is the exact middle. That means half the people are above it and half are below it. By definition. So while on average young graduates (21-30 years old) are paid £25,500 a year, half are paid less than that. Of course it’s equally true that half are paid more than that!

The truth is that these statistics hide a multitude of variations. They cover all subjects, jobs, locations, industries, and types of employers. There are big variations between studying economics and working for a bank in Manchester, qualifying as a teacher and working in Derby, or graduating in business management and working for a tech start-up in Shoreditch.

This isn’t a report about individual people. It doesn’t tell the story of a single actual person. It’s just data points that have been collected and then subjected to statistical calculations to create more numbers. It doesn’t say anything about you personally. It doesn’t mean this is what all graduates are paid, and it absolutely doesn’t guarantee that if you are a graduate this is what will happen to you. It simply means that if you are a graduate you are in the group of workers who are more likely – much more likely admittedly – to have better employment prospects.

There is a lot more to getting a job and building a career than simply getting a degree.

Graduate and non-graduate salary trends

We’ve just looked at the statistics for 2018. But what happens when we we look at trends over the past three years? Is the picture changing?

Focussing on the 21-30 years age group, both graduates and non-graduates have seen many years of flat wages in this past decade. From 2010-2015 graduates had an average salary of £24,000 and non-graduates £18,000. There was no change for either group for five years. This means no pay rises at all (on average!). This was caused by the recession.

This began to change in 2016, and the wages for both have started to grow again. However, non-graduate salaries are growing faster. This means the salary gap is closing. As you can see from the diagram, in 2010 graduates were paid £6,000 more, meaning a premium of 33% for graduates. In 2017 the gap reduced to £5,000 and a 25% premium for graduates, and in 2018 the difference was £4,500 meaning a 21% premium.

Right now there is undoubtedly a significant graduate salary premium, but it has also undoubtedly reduced significantly over the past three years.

When I first spotted the change in the premium in 2016 I couldn’t tell if it was an aberration or a trend. But after three years it is beginning to look like a trend. If this continued then in another 5 years or so there could be no salary premium for graduates in the 21 years-30 years age group.

Other financial benefits for the non-graduate

So the first benefit for non-grads is that your salaries have risen faster over the past three years. Plus you have two other important advantages when it comes to money:

  • You don’t have to repay any university fees, and
  • You can start full-time work and be earning three years earlier than the typical graduate.

Three years of salary at an average of £18,000 a year is a big plus. Not having a university debt of approximately £54,000 is another plus. If you’re trying to decide about university purely from a financial viewpoint, then this has to taken into account. If you compare two 21 year olds, one who has just graduated and the other who has been working full-time for three years, then at this point in time the non-graduate has the financial advantage.

What does this mean for the graduate premium?

The graduate premium is not just about your financial position at 21 years of age. It is about career prospects as a whole over your life. It includes your future salary prospects. When you look at the GLMS 2018 stats, you find that the the graduate salary premium is much higher in the working population as a whole (graduates are paid over 40% more than non-graduates on average). This suggests that the gap between graduates and non-graduates grows as they get older. And this difference has remained pretty constant over the past three years. Graduates catch up!

It is also important to consider the chances of being employed or unemployed. The stats show that graduates consistently have a much higher chance of being employed, and a lower chance of being unemployed.

But the biggest – and I think the most important – difference between graduates and non-graduates is in highly skilled jobs. Graduates are much more likely to have highly skilled jobs, and this has been the case for many years. In my view this is the cornerstone of the graduate employment story. Highly skilled work leads to higher salaries, even at the very start of your career, better promotion prospects and future salary rises, and better employment rates.

Although employers sometimes complain about graduates lacking skills, these stats show that employers see graduates as highly skilled and are much more likely to choose them for highly skilled jobs. And they will pay more for them.

However, a final word of caution. This is only “on average”! 57% of young graduates have highly skilled jobs. But 43% do not! Nearly 20% of non-graduates have highly skilled work – and without the debt or the loss of three years full time work. You can do very well as a non-graduate.

But if you are going to study a university degree, and your future career and earning capacity is one of your main reasons, then make sure you do everything you can while at uni to increase the chances of getting a highly skilled job when you graduate,

Because based on these stats 43% of you won’t make the cut.