*UPDATE: THE LATEST SET OF DATA WAS RELEASED BY THE COALITION FOR NEXT GENERATION LIFE SCIENCE ON JULY 1, 2018. SEE MORE BELOW*
Where do PhDs and Postdocs Go?
For potential graduate students and postdoctoral researchers to make informed decisions about their science and their careers, they need to have all the facts at their disposal. One metric that is needed is data on the career outcomes of previous graduate students and postdoctoral researchers at programs and institutions. There have been calls for decades for this data to be made available, but while data on undergraduate, law school and medical school alumnae have been available for some time at many institutions, the research enterprise has dragged its feet in getting such metrics available for academe.
However, there seems to be a turning point under way, in the gathering pace of those looking to share outcomes.
Rescuing Biomedical Research recently convened a consortium of stakeholders to discuss Improving transparency in Ph.D. Career Outcomes.
While the discussion has focused mainly on graduate students, groups such as the Coalition for Next Generation Life Science are also committed to releasing postdoc data, and released the first set on July 1st 2018. While this all has a very biomedical flavor to it, there is hope that these principles are easily applied to all fields.
The first data release from the Coalition for Next Generation Life Science from Feb 1 2018 can be found here and includes:
- Admissions and matriculation data of Ph.D. students
- Median time to degree and completion data for Ph.D. programs
- Demographics of Ph.D. students by gender, underrepresented minority status, and citizenship
The second data release from July 1 2018 can be found by insitution here and includes:
- Number of postdoctoral researchers
- Demographics of postdoctoral scholars by gender, underrepresented minority status, and citizenship
- For some institutions, length of postdoc and career outcomes.
Some interesting aspects of this data are discussed in this blog post.
The resources below are an effort to combine all of this information together, along with resources on the discussion about career outcomes data. Below you will find resources listed by institution – if your institution isn’t there and you know of data, please contact info@futureofresearch.org to let us know, and we’ll gladly add the information in here.
Groups that have been working on this issue include the Association of American Universities (AAU), the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), the Graduate Career Consortium (GCC), the Coalition for Next Generation Life Science, the NIH Broadening Experiences in Scientific Training (BEST) Consortium, the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) and Rescuing Biomedical Research (RBR).
Questions to consider asking when visiting institutions:
- What is the doctoral completion rate?*
- What is the time to degree?*
- (For Life Sciences programs) Is this institution planning on joining the Next Generation Life Science coalition, pledging to make PhD student career outcome data publicly available? nglscoalition.org, CNGLS@JHU.EDU
Joshua Hall at UNC Chapel Hill is also keeping a list of programs dropping the requirement for the Graduate Research exam or GRE – you can see that list here.
*Section 403C of the NIH Health Reform Act of 2006 (P.L.109-482) requires that institutions receiving NIH-funded training grants report these statistics to their graduate program applicants. Please email info@futureofresearch.org if an institution you are contacting is not co-operative.
U.S. Institutional Career Outcomes Data
This list is not exhaustive and will be updated as we receive information – please contact info@futureofresearch.org with any updates or comments.
Schools vary by data presented/standard of data presentation. Note some schools report across all fields, whereas some only report for biomedical fields.
Members of the Coalition for Next Generation Life Science (CNGLS) are marked with 
CANADA
University of British Columbia
PhD Graduate Career Outcomes: Data.
University of Toronto:
10,000 PhDs project, on PhD alumni from 2000-2015: Data.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Cornell University
Biological and Biomedical Sciences (PhD): Data.
CNGLS Feb 1 data: PhD Admissions, Completion, Time to degree, demographics: Cornell University Graduate School.
CNGLS Feb 1 data: PhD Admissions, Completion, Time to degree, demographics: Weill Cornell Graduate School
Duke University
Graduate School (Masters): Data.
Graduate School (PhD): Data.
CNGLS Feb 1 data: PhD Admissions, Completion, Time to degree, demographics: Data.
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
CNGLS Feb 1 data: PhD Admissions, Completion, Time to degree, demographics: Data.
Johns Hopkins University
CNGLS Feb 1 data: PhD Admissions, Completion, Time to degree, demographics: Data.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Graduate School (PhD): Data.
CNGLS Feb 1 data: PhD Admissions, Completion, Time to degree, demographics: Data.
Mayo Clinic
Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences (PhD): Data.
Princeton University
The Graduate School Career Outcomes (PhD): Data.
Stanford University
All fields (PhD): Data.
Tufts University
Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences (PhD): Data.
University of California San Francisco
Graduate Program Statistics (PhD): Data.
Paper on Postdoc Career Outcomes in PLoS Biology.
CNGLS Feb 1 data: PhD Admissions, Completion, Time to degree, demographics: Data.
University of Chicago
Biosciences (PhD): Data.
University of Iowa
Graduate School (PhD): Data.
University of Maryland Baltimore County
CNGLS Feb 1 data: PhD Admissions, Completion, Time to degree, demographics: Data.
University of Michigan
Rackham Graduate School (PhD): Data
CNGLS Feb 1 data: PhD Admissions, Completion, Time to degree, demographics: Data.
University of North Carolina
Biological and Biomedical Sciences Program (PhD): Data
University of Pennsylvania
CNGLS Feb 1 data: PhD Admissions, Completion, Time to degree, demographics: Data.
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Graduate School (PhD): Data.
CNGLS Feb 1 data: PhD Admissions, Completion, Time to degree, demographics: Data.
Vanderbilt University
Biomedical Research (PhD): Data
Washington University in St. Louis
The Graduate School (PhD): Data
Wayne State University
Graduate School (PhD): Data
Paper in PLoS One: “Visualization of gender, race, citizenship and academic performance in association with career outcomes of 15-year biomedical doctoral alumni at a public research university”
Weill Cornell/Rockefeller/Sloan Kettering
Tri-Institutional MD-PhD program: Data
Yale University
Biological and Biomedical Sciences (PhD): Data
Statements and Resources
CNGLS
The Coalition for Next Generation Life Sciences website is here. We issued a statement on the Next Generation Life Sciences Coalition here and we will issue regular updates as data is released by the coalition. Their paper on the rationale behind the coalition, “A new data effort to inform career choices in biomedicine” was published in Science in December 2017.
RBR
The effort spearheaded by Rescuing Biomedical Research, “Improving transparency in Ph.D. career outcomes” describes outcomes of a meeting of stakeholders, examples of the kind of data that individual institutions could collect, and how aggregate data could be presented. There is also a thorough discussion of taxonomies to be used in presenting career outcomes information.
NIH
A paper, “Visualizing detailed postdoctoral employment trends using a new career outcome taxonomy” has been published in Nature Biotechnology, describing standard taxonomy and visualization methods to provide postdocs with tools to critically evaluate career prospects.
CGS
The Council of Graduate Schools issued a statement on career outcomes reporting and has also issued a report, “Articulating Learning Outcomes in Doctoral Education“.
Johns Hopkins
Johns Hopkins recently released a report on the biomedical enterprise which among other issues lays out the context for the desire to increase transparency in academia.
AAU
The Association of American Universities Data Exchange may be a place to watch for possible data updates.
Non-U.S. Institutional Resources
Below are resources from Non-U.S. institutions and from scientific societies:
British Society for Immunology
A wealth of data on a survey of the membership: Data.
European Science Foundation
A report of data across a number of European countries: Data.
Netherlands Centre of Expertise for Doctoral Education
Which grass is greener? Personal stories from PhDs about their careers within and outside of academia: Paper.
University of British Columbia, Canada
Graduate Outcomes (PhD): Data.