Natural resources management Food security Climate change adaptation
Higher education enhances knowledge and skills, supports innovation and comes with positive gains for sustainable socio-economic development. Moreover, higher education widens the career opportunities of graduates. Doctoral degrees have been originally conceived for careers in academia. However, there is a significantly increasing labour market for doctorate holders beyond academia, principally due to the scarcity of employment opportunities within academia. This study uses qualitative methods employing literature reviews to synthetize some of the core debates on this topic. It highlights some of the main challenges and identifies strategies for higher education institutions to facilitate the career success of their graduates in the context of doctoral education. Doctoral education needs to be adapted to address employability beyond academia. This includes streamlining the teaching of transferrable skills. Furthermore, greater collaboration between government, academia and industry in the framework of the triple helix model or public-private model is needed. This will help in addressing push and pull factors of employability whilst enhancing the softs skills of graduates, whilst equipping graduates with workplace skills. Such measures will help address the challenge of skill/labour market mismatch. Furthermore, developing entrepreneurship skills of doctoral candidates can help graduates create their own employment upon completion. Ultimately doctoral education develops flexible and multi‐skilled individuals who enrich society. Supervisors have a critical role to play in the process whilst personal development planning needs more attention in doctoral training. The study contributes to the debate on doctoral graduates’ integration into the labour market and some strategic interventions for navigating these challenges
