Abstract
Amid heightened positional competition in the graduate labor market, doctoral graduates’ progression into non-academic employment has become an emerging focus of concern. Drawing on the concept of possible selves, this exploratory study examines how doctoral graduates envisage and plan for their post-graduation careers outside academia in the context of China. The study presents the narratives of two PhD holders from the field of Social Sciences and graduated from universities of varying reputational statuses, both of whom had made the decision to enter non-academic employment during their doctoral journeys. The analysis demonstrates marked differences in the scope of graduates’ envisioned future careers and their perceived abilities to realize them along the lines of privilege and disadvantage associated with institutional hierarchy, which in turn shaped their strategies of responding to the intensified job competition. In doing so, the paper sheds light on both the material and affective dimensions involved in graduates’ construction and negotiation of envisioned future careers, and provide insights into how this is shaped by institutional hierarchy that enables or constrains the ways post-PhD career possibilities can be imagined. With that, this paper seeks to contribute to the broader discourse on doctoral employment and offers implications relating to post-PhD career planning.
Author Information
Sangge Qi, University of Turku, Finland
Comments
Powered by WP LinkPress