Careers › Education
How to become a Academic / University Lecturer
Researches and teaches at university level – in almost any subject, from physics to history.
This needs more than the degree
This isn’t one fixed pipeline like the other careers here: it’s an undergraduate degree in any field (physics, history, engineering, law – whatever you want to research) followed by Honours, a Master’s and usually a PhD. Realistically that’s eight to ten years past matric, and unlike a professional qualification, there’s no guaranteed job at the end – academic posts depend on research output and funding, not just finishing the PhD.
What does a Academic / University Lecturer actually do?
More about this career
Splits time between teaching students and original research in their field, plus the less visible work of publishing papers, supervising postgraduate students and applying for research funding. You become an academic in a subject by first becoming genuinely expert in it through postgraduate study – a physics professor did a physics degree then a physics PhD, a history professor did the equivalent in history. Permanent university posts are competitive and often follow years of shorter-term postdoctoral research contracts first.
Where this degree can take you
- Postdoctoral Researcher
- Research Scientist
- Research Institute Fellow
- Subject Specialist / Think-Tank Researcher
This is our general description of the role and related jobs, not from an official source – it’s here to give you a fuller picture, not as a careers-counselling guarantee.
Subjects that usually help
- Whatever subjects suit the field you want to research - e.g. Mathematics and Physical Sciences for physics, English and History for a humanities subject
This is our general guidance about which school subjects suit this career. It is not an admission requirement and not from an official source – the real requirements are on the degrees below.
Where to check this yourself
- The subject requirements on the degree pages below
- Your school’s guidance teacher
Degrees that lead here
We haven’t captured a verified degree for this career yet. It’s queued for the next data pass – we only publish a programme once we have it from an official source.
Are your marks enough?
Put your subjects in once and we’ll check them against every degree above – scored each university’s own way.