The skills of a Ph.D. are not limited to a single, specific field

As a Ph.D. student, I’ve been looking at the myriads of non-academic and non-traditional positions that are there for us now. Lately, the traditional career track of Ph.D. students is changing. It was interesting to discover how the recipient of the Ph.D., someone who has been traditionally defined as a specialist in a particular field, has now become the exact opposite: a trained specialist with skill sets that could cater to a wide variety of analytical, written and management positions.
The occupations that have become relevant to Ph.D.s include management consultant, writing positions, quantitative analysts and so on. Even industry positions have discarded the traditional association of a Ph.D. as being another cog in a machine, useful only for serving a specialized or repetitive role. Companies have also realized it is more profitable to restructure the Ph.D. role to head individual projects, rather than doing routine experiments on projects decided by the general conglomerate of the company.
The management consultant position is a perfect example of how Ph.D. skills have become transferable, and how Ph.D.s in something as different as the various STEM fields can fit in this position. Management consultants work on the strategy, management and operations of a business. They are essentially the problem solvers, analysts and strategists just like Ph.D.s. The core work of a management consultant is understanding the fundamentals of each of the sections so as to be able to guide and direct them in the most effective way. I often think that a management consultant is someone who is looked to for providing both the innovation and the critical thinking required for any part of the project.
If any graduate student has been reading, I’m sure the management consultant work will resonate very strongly with their own — I know it did with me. The long hours and the undefined work are only the superficial layers of similarity between being a management consultant and being a doctoral student, at least in the STEM fields.
The innovative function of finding the most effective methods with limited resources, data analysis and the use of data to plan a strategy are all things that come naturally to those with a Ph.D., and from what I understand, these are core for managing a business as well.
The skills mentioned above are also useful for positions that require analytical skills, strategic planning and leadership. Leadership is a quality that isn’t intuitively associated with a Ph.D. However, I’ve learned that having to learn from a principal investigator, as well as mentoring other students in lab, gives a graduate student the perspectives of both dealing with upper management and delegating people working with you.
It is time that the traditional perspectives of a Ph.D. change, and that institutions realize they need to develop the analyst, strategist and problem solver in their doctorate students, rather than just developing them as a specialized employee of a certain field.
Understanding and realizing this will only go so far, though, if this is not met with change and action. This change can take shape in the form of courses and workshops at universities which will cater to the characteristics in Ph.D.s that make them so transferable and versatile. Universities have already started offering business and journalism classes to their Ph.D.s. UT needs to get on board with this as well.
Tomer Avidor-Reiss, a professor of biological sciences at UT, once told me that when you graduate with a Ph.D. and get out into the world, you’re not going to be judged simply based on the techniques you know as a doctorate. He told me I was going to be judged on the basis of whether I have the ability to figure out a problem, learn a new technique by myself within a short period of time — essentially, on whether I can take the project handed to me and just make it go. That was a very different, yet real, perspective he had given me.
There is an Academic Leadership Academy workshop that the UT business school holds to educate graduate students about industry and how to succeed outside of academia. Here, Ph.D.s from the mathematics, engineering, biological sciences, chemistry and other such non-business departments are brought in and given knowledge about business, something we don’t otherwise get in our graduate courses.
This workshop is a small step, but a step nonetheless. It is important for UT to integrate non-STEM courses in graduate curricula. It is time UT and other universities realize that they aren’t just molding an expert in a small section of a certain subject area. Rather, they are molding a person who should be able to fulfill various roles in various subject areas.
Maisha Rashid is a Ph.D. student in cancer biology and the IC opinion editor.