The University of Arkansas has been selected by the Council of Graduate Schools to participate in a collective effort to gather and use data about the careers of doctoral students and alumni. Grants from the National Science Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will support data collection about doctoral careers in STEM and humanities fields. The University of Arkansas was one of only 29 universities in the nation selected for the project.

"I am thrilled the University of Arkansas will participate in this important project," said Kim Needy, dean of the Graduate School and International Education. "Learning more about the diverse career pathways our doctoral students and alumni pursue will help give us a better picture of the skills they need to be successful in the workforce. It will also empower our doctoral students and alumni to better understand the career options available to them."

Over the course of the multi-year project, the University of Arkansas will collect data from current doctoral students and alumni with surveys that were developed by the Council of Graduate Schools in consultation with senior university leaders, funding agencies, disciplinary societies, researchers and doctoral students and alumni. The resulting data will allow universities to analyze doctoral career preferences and outcomes at the program level and help faculty and university leaders strengthen career services, professional development opportunities and mentoring in doctoral programs.

Universities will also be able to use the data to communicate the career trajectories of doctoral alumni to current and prospective students, helping them to make more informed selections of doctoral programs.

"Today, universities recognize that Ph.D. students aspire to a wide variety of careers, including academic research and teaching," said Council of Graduate Schools president Suzanne Ortega. "Knowing what your alumni do — and how well they are prepared — is becoming the new paradigm, and our university partners are leading the way for the entire community of doctoral institutions."

The Council of Graduate Schools will study the processes of survey administration and identify promising practices for implementation that will be shared with graduate schools nationally. Universities from across the country will be able to compare their data on doctoral career preferences and outcomes with the national dataset analyzed by the Council of Graduate Schools. 

The first wave of the survey will be sent to doctoral alumni in the fall of 2017, and the Council of Graduate Schools will begin publishing the first wave of survey findings in fall 2018.