PhD Progression: Creating Workforce-driven Flexible Credentials for Doctoral Students

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The role of doctoral education in the United States workforce has been shifting for several decades. The number of PhDs awarded steadily increased while the percentage of tenured faculty shrunk dramatically. Consequently, the vast majority of Ph.D. degree recipients will not go on to a tenured position but instead will pursue a variety of career paths outside of academia and in a wide range of sectors, including industry, non-profits, and governmental agencies. To supplement existing Ph.D. programs by equipping graduate students with the complex knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary to be successful professionals in various careers, the project team has created and piloted a micro-credentialing training program: Ph.D. Progression. By completing Ph.D. Progression badges, Ph.D. students can gain skills in key areas such as communication, management, self-awareness, research, and teaching towards serving effectively in a diverse, inclusive, and global professional landscape. The digital badging system included in Ph.D. Progression also allows students to monitor their progress and demonstrate directly to employers the outcomes from the time they invested in their professional development. This NSF Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) award will support the expansion of the Ph.D. Progression content to be widely accessible with newly integrated perspectives from the workforce through the creation of a consortium of academic and non-academic institutions.The project aims to increase the number of Ph.D. Progression badges and integrate workforce perspective and assessments directly into badge content. The project team will also create mentoring circles and sponsored internship opportunities for students. Students will work on short projects with industry professionals to apply their learning and gain hands-on professional mentorship. These activities will allow students to interact with employers during their academic training and learn to communicate effectively with them. In addition, students will get a sense of the diverse identities, backgrounds, experiences, and expertise within the STEM Ph.D. workforce. These interactions will also increase the value of the credentials to both the workforce and students. Reaching these goals will involve establishing partnerships with industry, universities, and other Boston University offices. Therefore, the project team intends to use and evaluate a consortium operating within an Equitable Collaboration Framework to involve all these partners equitably in the implementation and management of the project. Through analysis of data collected from students, industry partners, and trainers, the project will generate and disseminate knowledge about: a) how academic institutions can enhance Ph.D. student preparation for a broad range of careers through self-paced badges, and b) how professional development and doctoral program improvements are informed by emerging workforce needs and shifting job markets. Data sources include: enrollment (pre-) and post-completion surveys, badge activities and assessments, Ph.D. student annual exit survey data, post-graduation job market outcomes, participant interviews, and employer interviews and surveys. Project findings will help answer questions about student motivation, industry engagement, learning outcomes in the proposed training model, employment outcomes, and participant and employer perceptions of career preparation. The Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) program is focused on research in graduate education. The goals of IGE are to pilot, test and validate innovative approaches to graduate education and to generate the knowledge required to move these approaches into the broader community.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.