Career development

One of the central motivating factors in taking on a PhD is to enhance career progression and development in existing and new occupations. Career development can be enhanced in several ways. For instance, you can already be in a job and consider this higher qualification as the route to quicker promotion, or specialisation. Or you could have reached a natural point in your career where progression to the next level would be smoother with a higher qualification.

Sallyann Halliday describes howher desire to develop more critical skills through a concentrated period of research was identified as beneficial to her day job as a contract researcher:

I felt that I had hit a ‘turning point’ in the work I was currently involved in as a contract researcher. For me, the motivation for doing a PhD was about being able to explore a topic I was really interested in through in-depth study, to widen my knowledge and develop different skills. I wanted to gain skills in critical thought and writing. Doing a PhD was the path I felt I should take and more importantly one I felt that I needed to go down to develop and progress further in my career (or possibly lead to a change in career focus). I saw it as a form of both personal and professional development.

For others, the desire to ‘be an academic’ meant that the PhD was an inevitable step into becoming a lecturer. Joseph Burridge speaks of how his desire to work in the university setting was the motivation for continually pursuing funding for a PhD:

From the age of about fifteen I was sure that I wanted to pursue a career in academia,largely because of my love of reading and learning. A PhD was always going to be on the agenda, since it is no longer realistic to hope to begin such a career without one. I attempted to get funding immediately after finishing my first degree, but was unsuccessful and had to self-fund a masters degree as a means to demonstrate my seriousness for the next round of funding competitions.Fortunately it seemed to work and I was successful the second time around!

Self-funding a one-year postgraduate course is a popular method of finding out whether further study is the right route. Although this is a financial cost, part-time study is always an option before making a big life change by fully committing to a PhD. However, it is not always the case that a PhD ‘was on the cards’ in a person’s life pathway. Sometimes wider dissatisfaction or a desire for another challenge can prompt enrolment onto a PhD programme.

Motivation to Do Phd

Career development

Lack of job satisfaction

Personal agenda

Research as politics

Drifting In