Should I Stay in Academia? Exploring Career Paths Beyond PhD

Three months left. That’s how close I am to submitting my PhD thesis. The end feels near, yet the uncertainty about what comes next feels overwhelming. Like many PhD students, I’ve always assumed I’d stay in academia—become a professor, run my own lab, and carve out a life of research and teaching. It’s the career path everyone around me seemed to expect.

But lately, I’ve started to question this assumption. Do I love academia itself, or just the idea of it? What other career paths are out there for someone like me? Could my skills and passions translate to a role beyond academia—one that still feeds my curiosity but doesn’t come with the intense pressures of securing funding or chasing tenure?

Starting with Research

As a researcher, I turned to the thing I do best: research. I combed through articles, career websites, and forums to better understand my options. Along the way, I discovered some incredibly useful resources, the best of which came from MIT’s career planning page for PhDs and postdocs.

One tool stood out: MyIDP (myidp.sciencecareers.org). It’s a free, STEM-focused platform designed to help PhD students and postdocs explore career options based on their skills, interests, and values. I’d heard about it before, during a career workshop at UNSW, but I hadn’t tried it until now.

The MyIDP tool asks you to complete a survey, quantifying your skills and interests and matching them with 20 different STEM career paths. For someone like me—who loves data and structure—it was a refreshing way to approach career planning.

What I Learned About Myself

The results weren’t entirely surprising but were definitely illuminating. My top matches were research-oriented careers, with the highest fit being a combined research and teaching role—essentially, a principal investigator (PI) at a research-intensive university.

What made this result resonate was the breakdown of why these careers fit me. Research-related roles, as it turns out, align with what I love most about science: designing experiments, analyzing data, writing manuscripts, giving presentations, and engaging with the scientific community. These are activities I genuinely enjoy, and I can’t imagine giving them up.

Other career paths—like becoming a science writer, a technical specialist, or a public outreach officer—had lower matches. While they sounded interesting, they didn’t align as strongly with my core interests or the skills I most enjoy using.

The Skills Gap

Beyond helping me clarify my interests, MyIDP highlighted a critical aspect of career planning: skills. It turns out that while I’ve built strong research and communication skills (e.g., conducting simulations, analyzing data, giving presentations, and writing papers), I still have gaps—particularly in management and leadership.

Skills like motivating a team, providing constructive feedback, and delegating tasks don’t come naturally to many PhD students. After all, these aren’t areas we’re typically trained in. While I’ve started developing these abilities through roles like mentoring in the PELE program, serving on the PGSOC committee, and leading a social club, there’s still a long way to go.

To bridge this gap, I’m planning to focus on leadership development next term by attending workshops and training programs at UNSW. I see this as a critical step—not just for succeeding in academia but for any role I might pursue.

Clarity and Confidence

After completing this process, I feel more confident about my future. While I’m still drawn to an academic career, the journey of exploring other paths helped me reaffirm why it’s the right fit for me—and identify what I need to work on to succeed.

For anyone else struggling with uncertainty at the end of their PhD, I highly recommend taking time to explore your options. Tools like MyIDP can be a great starting point. They won’t make the decision for you, but they can provide clarity and direction, helping you see where your skills and passions intersect.

So, should I stay in academia? For now, the answer feels like yes. But thanks to this process, I know it’s a choice made with intention, not assumption.