One of the most toxic traits of academics is to assume that a Ph.D. is supposed to lead you to a tenure track position. It's not. Besides the fact that nothing adequately prepares you for a TT job, framing non-academic jobs as a failing or an alternative career is incredibly counterproductive. 🧪

Many fellow PhD students and I are quite keen to explore alternatives but there is far less information on them. Academics and what goes on in their lab is constantly presented or discussed, while people entering industry tend to fall off the map. I wish there was some way to bridge that gap...

I did become a tenured academic after a PhD (in UK), but we all knew the majority would not. No one suggested it was a failure, and most ended up in industrial R&D. Later I swapped from academia to industry. My grant ‘purpose’ was training in advanced methods of research, not becoming an academic.

One of the biggest missing aspects from PhD educations: budget management. Another big one is departmental / University admin org structures. I broke these down for postdocs mostly rather than students.

Another is the framing of a student leaving a PhD program as failing rather than deciding that path is wrong and taking another.