Dr Emma Williams, author of Leaving Academia: Ditch the Blanket, Take the Skills, argues that universities’ greatest contribution isn’t just technology or research breakthroughs, but the highly skilled, adaptable people they produce that can transform organisations far beyond academia.
Working in the university world as a researcher careers expert, I spend my days surrounded by Edtech from LMS online course provision to coaching platforms to attendance monitoring. Much of this is essential in developing students and researchers and many of the platforms arise from higher education or its partners. But after over 30 years in the Higher Education sector, from physicist to development consultant, I see HE’s true gift to the world is not the tech or the breakthroughs but its people.
Super literate, super numerate, problem solving, project managing warriors is my standard description of those involved in academic research. Those undertaking PhDs and postdocs (typically short-term contracts working on a variety of research problems) are the engine house of the UK research infrastructure. The doctorate degree trains bright, sparky people to delve deep into problems with focus, structure and rigor. The postdoc stage demands researchers professionalise these skills often with increased responsibilities for projects and people.
But not everyone wants to pursue the academic career through fellowships, lectureships and perhaps one day the heady heights of professorship. Indeed, with many more researchers than ‘tenure track’ positions, simple mathematics points to these people needing to more into other sectors. With academic research and universities under increasing political and financial pressures, many researchers are having to make the difficult choice of leaving a vocational, passion driven role they have spent years of education attaining. This is a real opportunity for other sectors.
When it comes to moving on, researchers and often the businesses looking to employ them naturally gravitate to technical or discipline specific skills. You want to employ a computer scientist, an early years education specialist or a UX researcher. Whilst you will get someone trained in these disciplines by hiring from the right undergraduate pool, hiring from the PhD plus cohort you tap into a talent pool that has spent at least four years investigating, implementing and refining their discipline knowledge in the pursuit of answering a grand challenge. Far from being ivory tower boffins, the researchers I work with across the UK have been addressing some of our planets most pressing problems using some highly in demand skills.
But the true treasure lies beyond the discipline labels and their technical skills. The training and environments we give our researchers hone those sought after ‘soft skills’. I dislike the term as these are often the hardest won skills that people can bring to the workplace. Academia is not a cushy number and undertaking a PhD is tough. It is a four-year adventure in adding something new to the body of human knowledge, with ups and downs, blind alleys and tough decisions – and that is if it goes well! A researcher builds resilience and flexibility. The latter is especially true for postdocs who move from their own project (PhD) to projects designed by someone else – typically a tenured academic who has applied for funding. Typical contracts last around two years when it becomes time to move project and often location. Our funding model necessitates researchers are quick starters, adept at assimilating information and slotting into new teams.
Along the way, researchers develop outstanding communication skills: writing clearly for publication, presenting to different audiences and translating complex ideas into understandable narratives. To be a successful researcher involves raising the visibility of your research and yourself, building marketing skills along the way. Academic research funding has recently encouraged the active participation and involvement of those effected by research and the wider public. Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE), is a collaborative approach in health and social care research where the public, patients and carers are involved in shaping research questions, design and outcomes to ensure they are relevant and beneficial to their needs. Schemes like these demand not only great communication skills but that researchers investigate and pivot around ‘customer pain points’.
Our universities should be celebrated for bringing together researchers from around the world. Because research, much like innovative business, is disruptive it thrives when there is a melting pot of ways of thinking and experiences. My own training taught me to think like a physicist. Discipline is one dimension but language, culture, gender all cultivate the way we think and approach problems. Researchers collaborate across cultures and disciplines, often coordinating with international teams and juggling competing stakeholder expectations. They learn to manage uncertainty, adapt when data doesn’t play ball and keep projects moving forward in ambiguous and high-pressure environments.
For businesses, this translates into employees who can:
- Analyse complex data and distil it into actionable insights
- Manage projects with shifting priorities and tight deadlines
- Communicate persuasively to a range of audiences
- Approach problems with creativity and evidence-based thinking
- Build resilience in the face of challenge and change
The irony is that many businesses are crying out for exactly these qualities – but don’t always realise that academics already have them in abundance. Instead of thinking of PhDs and postdocs as ‘too specialist’ or ‘too academic,’ it’s time to see them as a high-potential talent pool that has been stress-tested in some of the most challenging professional environments imaginable. It is my business mission to help researchers bring their skills and talents out from under the academic comfort blanket to work in every sector.
If we want to tackle today’s big business and societal challenges — from AI to sustainability, education to global supply chains — we need people who can think deeply, collaborate widely and adapt quickly. That’s exactly what academics do.
So next time you’re hiring, don’t just look at the usual routes. Look to academia. You’ll find brilliant problem-solvers, strategic thinkers and resilient doers who can make a real difference to your organisation.
