I was lucky enough to secure a lectureship direct from being a doctoral student.  The early 1970s were the last years of the Robbins expansion of higher education and the number of posts was still growing to match the growth in student numbers - both in the new universities that had recently been created (York, Sussex, Essex, Lancaster etc.) and through the expansion of older foundations.  Most of my fellow doctoral students who wanted academic posts similarly moved straight into them - at Keele, Kent, Queen Mary, Newcastle, Loughborough and elsewhere.  But then expansion came to an end, and after 1979 and the election of Mrs Thatcher's government there was retrenchment: I was the youngest lecturer in my department until I was in my early 30s.

The situation today is very different.  The newly completing PhD student rarely gets offered a lectureship.  Much more common is the route that involves a research assistant position - generally on a project devised by someone else - possibly then followed by a postdoctoral fellowship of some kind (which may have the advantage of being on a project designed by the individual concerned).  The lectureship comes up only at the end of some years of this hand-to-mouth existence - if it comes up at all.

This morning I was at a meeting of our Doctoral and Researcher Development Committee - a group charged with enhancing the skills development of postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers, and with their training so that they improve their chances of real career development and the fulfilment of their employment goals.  It is a difficult task.  For many bright young academics the role model they aspire to is that followed by their supervisors - into a full academic job.  Yet in many areas this involves at best waiting to fill 'dead mens' shoes' as there is no expansion taking place.  We have researchers who have been in the same career position for over 10 years, often on a sequence of projects and contracts that does not really lead anywhere.  As someone today said, it is very tough to tell an aspiring young academic that they might be much better off looking for a research career outside academia - or even a career outside research altogether - but we need to be honest enough to do so. The problem is really that we who have made our careers in universities are not best placed to point such individuals in alternative directions - we lack the experience of what other sectors are like.

I have supervised over 20 research students to successful completion, and a number are now employed in a variety of universities: among them Sheffield itself, Kwansei Gakuin in Japan, Greenwich, Southampton, Oxford Brookes, City and elsewhere.  But a number of them have not actually made great use of their research training and high level analytical skills and expertise. I am left wondering whether during their PhD studies more could have been done for them to develop alternative career options.  Many of those students graduated some time ago.  I hope that through the work of today's Committee we can provide a more positive outlook for those of today's research students who will not (or do not want to) enter the academic profession.