More UK PhD graduates looking overseas for positions, study finds

Only four in 10 UK PhD graduates remain in academia just over a year after completing their degrees with many more heading overseas for research jobs than in previous years, a major national poll suggests.

Analysing the job outcomes of 10,690 students who gained a doctoral degree in 2022-23 15 months after graduation – about 45 per cent of all PhD graduates that year – the Careers Research and Advisory Centre (CRAC)-Vitae report concludes PhD graduates “continue to be highly employable” with less than 3 per cent unemployed and 91 per cent working, with a median average salary of £42,000.

However, a minority of PhD graduates remained in higher education, with only 42 per cent of UK-based doctoral graduates working in academia.

Of these, most (23 per cent of all PhDs) had fixed-term university-based research jobs such as postdoctoral research posts, explains the report titled What do researchers do? Employment, earnings and activities of recent doctoral graduates 2026, whose last iteration was published four years ago.

A further 16 per cent of all PhD graduates had university teaching roles, with another 3 per cent in other posts, says the report, which polled graduates in late 2024 about their destinations, the latest report finds.

Those tallies, which show about four in 10 remain in academia, represent a significant shift from previous longitudinal studies, said the report’s lead author Robin Mellors-Bourne, head of research at CRAC.

“We’ve always seen about half of PhD graduates going into higher education – we are definitely not seeing that now,” he said.

“It does seem as if fewer PhD graduates are going into higher education research jobs,” he added, noting that the proportion going into non-HE research roles had risen to 14 per cent, up from 10 per cent in the 2022 survey. Meanwhile, the proportion of all PhD graduates going into university-based research jobs was down from 27 per cent to 22 per cent over the same period.

Many more UK-domiciled graduates had moved overseas for research posts than in previous years, said Mellors-Bourne, who noted 44 per cent of those working outside the UK were in university-based research roles compared with only 22 per cent of UK-based graduates.

“These people started their PhDs in around 2018-19 but are moving abroad to stay in research,” he commented, adding UK science policy has “changed again” with moves to bring talented researchers into the UK.

While fewer PhD graduates remained in UK academia, earnings data for PhDs remained strong, as did satisfaction rates, with only 14 per cent stating their qualification had not been advantageous for their career earnings, and more than 90 per cent stating they used their doctoral skills in their job, the report explains.

In a handful of cases – 3 per cent – doctoral graduates were earning more than £100,000 a year just 15 months after leaving university. “We have the employment data so we can see who they’re working for,” explained Mellors-Bourne, noting these were generally engineering or computer science graduates in their twenties “working for the likes of JP Morgan in the banking world” or older bioscience graduates who “were probably hospital consultants who had done a PhD”.

Even discounting these outliers, however, the careers data suggested “very strong outcomes” with an earnings premium significantly ahead of first-degree leavers, said Mellors-Bourne.

“They might not be working in higher education as much but they are earning good money and using their skills in their jobs – overall, the data tells a good story about PhD outcomes,” he said.