What comes after a PhD? Findings from the DocEnhance survey of doctorate holders on their employment situation, skills match, and the value of the doctorate

This report presents a career-tracking survey of recent PhD graduates from nine European universities, undertaken as part of the DocEnhance project. The DocEnhance project’s overall aim is to integrate transferable skills development into existing PhD programmes, to improve PhD graduates’ transferable skills, by:

• involving the non-academic sector in developing a more employment- and innovation-oriented transferable skills curriculum for PhD programmes;
• facilitating work-based learning and business-education partnerships through developing PhD courses; and
• tracking PhD graduate career paths.

As the third major element of the DocEnhance project, the career-tracking survey is intended to inform the transferable skills curriculum recommended by the project, as well as the roadmap for making use of the resources developed over the course of the project.