Employers ‘undervaluing’ PhD skills, research boss warns

Julia Buckingham says employers do not understand PhD students’ “broad range of transferrable skills”

Businesses and other employers outside of academia are undervaluing the broad and valuable skills of UK PhD graduates, one of the country’s leading research and higher education experts has suggested.

Julia Buckingham, who is the former vice-chancellor of Brunel University London and current chair of the Institute of Cancer Research, told a House of Lords Science and Technology Committee meeting that there was a “great deal to be done with employers, who I am not convinced necessarily understand the broad range of transferable skills gained by those who have done a PhD”.