Research workforce strategy – career support for researchers
Researchers in Australia face many hurdles in establishing a stable career in their chosen field of research.
To inform policy development, as part of the Australian Government’s Research Workforce Strategy, ACOLA was charged with exploring options to meet one of the priorities: that researchers are ‘supported to meet individual career needs and objectives’. An aspiration of the Strategy was that researchers in Australia have clear and equitable pathways for career progression.
The project complements earlier work by the Research Education Experience Workshop (December 2009) and the Research Career Pathways Roundtables (January/February 2010).
The study comprised a national on-line survey, a series of workshops and written submissions.
The Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education funded the project, which is now complete.
Final Report
Career support for researchers: Understanding needs and developing a best practice approach is available in the downloads section top right. The report was prepared by Toss Gascoigne and Associates for ACOLA Secretariat Ltd, November 2012.
Links & Publications
- Article in The Conversation: Australian researchers held back in struggle for jobs, funding.
- Follow up article in The Conversation: Are PhD graduates expecting too much?
- ABC Radio National Big Ideas, broadcast on Monday 8 April, Too Many PhDs? Listen or download the audio.
- Australian Science Communicators blog post Mixed views on whether Australia is producing too many PhDs.
