By Kim Rahn
Doctoral degree holders at Seoul National University (SNU) had fewer employment opportunities last year than those with a master’s degree.
This is the first time for the employment rate of graduates of doctoral programs to be lower than that of master’s programs since the school began collecting the data in 2000, it said Monday.
According to an SNU survey conducted in June 2011, 70.3 percent of students who finished their doctoral courses in August 2010 or February 2011 landed jobs. Even including those who afterward continued to study or joined the army to complete their mandatory military service, the percentage remained at 70.8 percent.
Among those who obtained a master’s degree, 72.5 percent of students succeeded in getting jobs.
Lee, a 34-year-old SNU student on a doctoral course in the humanities, has one semester left before she completes the course, but worries that she may become one of the jobless.
“Slots to be professors are very limited. I’m looking to get a job, but I heard companies these days don’t want people like me: I am as old as a director-level employee but without any work experience,” Lee said.
“A doctoral degree in the humanities is apparently not impressive to companies which value practical skills more highly,” she added. “I sometimes think I should have stopped studying when I finished my master’s, I should have sought a job when I was younger.”
Lee’s remorse is not groundless: For the last 10 years, the employment rate of doctorate holders showed a considerable drop from 87.9 percent in 2002. During the same period (2002-2011), that of master’s degree holders remained in a fixed range, hovering just between 70.4 percent and 74.8 percent.
“With the nation experiencing severe unemployment, companies shun jobseekers with high academic backgrounds. This has affected the SNU doctorate holders,” a school official said.
“More and more number of students is obtaining doctorates than before and there are people who obtain the degrees overseas and come to Korea for jobs, so the competition for an already limited number of positions is getting fiercer,” he added.