The outcomes of doctoral education: An institutional study

This study sought to establish baseline data on the outcomes of doctoral education at a private, urban university. Through the use of a survey instrument developed by the researchers, Ph.D. and Ed.D. recipients from 16 departments who had graduated between 1963 and 1984 were contacted. Three primary areas were examined: (1) the impact of doctoral education on career development, (2) the perceived influence of the institutional values on graduates, and (3) the frequency and type of research/scholarly activities engaged in during and after graduate school. Data provided by 707 respondents to the 168 item survey were analyzed by department, by degree, and by four general academic fields, and a number of indices were developed. The main thrust of this paper is the development of the instrument and indices, and the preliminary comparison of four fields with the indices.     

Student socialization in interdisciplinary doctoral education

Interdisciplinary approaches are often seen as necessary for attacking the most critical challenges facing the world today, and doctoral students and their training programs are recognized as central to increasing interdisciplinary research capacity. However, the traditional culture and organization of higher education are ill-equipped to facilitate interdisciplinary work. This study employs a lens of socialization to study the process through which students learn the norms, values, and culture of both traditional disciplines and integrated knowledge production. It concludes that many of the processes of socialization are similar, but that special attention should be paid to overcoming organizational barriers to interdisciplinarity related to policies, space, engagement with future employers, and open discussion of the politics of interdisciplinarity.     

Political transformation and research methodology in doctoral education

This paper examines the relationship between political change and epistemologies and methodologies employed at doctorate level. It does so by analysing the range of topics, questions and methodologies used by doctoral students at the University of Pretoria’s Faculty of Education between 1985 and 2005—a time-frame that covers the decade before and the decade after South Africa’s historical transition to democracy in 1994. During this period the composition of doctoral students at that faculty changed from being largely white and male to a more diverse population in terms of gender and race. A crucial shift took place after 2000 with the arrival of a Black dean who sought to introduce a transformational shift. The paper makes use of Karmon’s notion of epistemic environment, which refers to the way knowledge is conceptualised at institutional level. The data shows how the authoritarian and regulated epistemic environment that shaped the conception of knowledge at the faculty until 2000 created doctoral dissertations that aimed to correct and guide the society but lacked critical discourse and relevance to South Africa’s political, social and educational context. While the transition to democracy in 1994 produced merely semantic changes, if any, the strong internal initiative to change the research culture from 2000 onwards has managed to shift basic notions of truth and knowledge and the understanding of the role and nature of research. This movement was, however, constrained by the institution’s long-established epistemic environment.     

Growth and diversity in doctoral education: assessing the Australian experience

The major growth of doctoral education in recent decades has attracted attention from policy makers and researchers. In this article we explore the growth of doctoral education in Australia, its impact on diversity in respect of the doctoral population, shifts in disciplinary strengths, institutional concentration and award programs. We conclude that there has been both change and continuity in the provision of doctoral education with extensive variation at the level of practice in what is a reasonably stable system featuring continuing hierarchical institutional diversification. The limitations of available data and issues for further research, policy and practice are discussed.

Economics of corruption in doctoral education: The dissertations market

This paper addresses the issue of “dissertations for sale” in Russia. The tasks of this anthropological study include establishing the problem of corruption in doctoral education, identification of the dissertations suppliers, study of the specific services they offer, analysis of their prices on different services, and generalizations of findings in the context of the educational system. All of these tasks address the supply side of the dissertations market. This paper identifies a total of 169 firms that offer dissertations for sale in Russia. It concludes that the cost of the dissertations market extends far beyond its monetary expression. Fake doctorates undermine the credibility of real, earned doctorates, and erode the gold standard of quality in research and scholarship.     

Three constructs of institutional identity among international doctoral students in Australia

Postmodern institutional interactions in Australian universities, among students and staff, entail negotiation of identity, legitimacy, and ‘social capital’. For many international students, this happens in an additional language and culture, in English. The case study presented here profiles four international non-English speaking background Ph.D. students in an Australian university, observes their out-of classroom departmental interactions, and uses a sociocultural perspective of second language in use to map their approaches to the negotiation of institutional identity. Two focus group interviews with the participants illustrated how, despite similarities among the participants in the beginning as newcomers to a Western university, students chose different pathways for integration, engagement in institutional interactions, and identity construction. The discussions highlight the role of agency and intentionality in participation and learning through interaction which leads to a critique of the ‘international student' as a label that underplays student agency.     

‘Timescapes’ in doctoral education: the politics of temporal equity in higher education

ABSTRACT

In the twenty-first century, the politics of higher education in Australia and around the globe have become dominated by neoliberal agendas of efficiency, profitability and managerialism. This has fundamentally altered the ‘timescapes’ of higher education. In the case of doctoral education, doctoral candidates and supervisors are subjected to increasing time pressures and required to produce a wide variety of outcomes in very short timeframes. These managerial agendas of efficiency and speed impact upon all doctoral candidates and supervisors but present particular practical and epistemic difficulties for Indigenous, migrant, refugee and international students. In this article, I illustrate how fast doctoral timescapes encourage assimilationist pedagogies that have been shown to be especially detrimental for Indigenous, migrant, refugee and international doctoral candidates. Drawing upon a complex array of theoretical resources that investigate Lefebvre’s rhythm analysis and other authors’ notions of epistemic time and the ethics of time, this article argues for a reconceptualization of doctoral timescapes in order to promote a politics of temporal equity in doctoral education. This especially involves making space for epistemic, lived and eternal temporal rhythms in doctoral education policy and practice.     

Deconstructing the skills training debate in doctoral education

The pressure being placed on universities to deliver skills training for the workplace has generated considerable debate. This paper deconstructs the broader employability discourse in which the debate is embedded in order to draw out its formative implications for skills training during candidature. The paper argues against erection of a deficiency model in the context of skills training of higher degree research (HDR) students, and that the employability discourse is essentially reductive. It obscures whole areas of HDR knowledge production, thus skewing skills training towards the perceived needs of science students; the significant contribution made by research education developers to skills training of HDR students; and employer responsibility for workplace skills training. Notions of skills transferability, best practice and embedding are all shown to be problematic in that they lack discriminative power. Finally, the paper demonstrates that HDR students do value skills training at the institutional level despite prevailing uncertainty.     

The transformation of doctoral education: a systematic literature review

Higher Education - Framed by a wide range of factors, doctoral education has undergone a deep transformation, especially in the last two decades. The aim of this systematic literature review was to...     

Spacing Herself: Women in education

This article is concerned with the problematic status of the female self, seen from the perspective of women in education. Studying women's autobiographical writings, the author uses a genealogical approach to interrogate the historical and cultural conditions of the construction of the female self. The article looks specifically at those practices women have used to act upon themselves and create a lifestyle of their own, technologies of the female self. Space is important in women's attempts for self-assertion, and the explorations of this article focus on the ways women in education have been striving to negotiate space of their own, within and beyond gendered social structures and dominant discourses of womanhood.     

Putting doctoral education to work: challenges to academic practice

Professional doctorates designed to meet the needs of particular groups (education, nursing, business, law, etc.) have been established, and the PhD now encompasses a wide range of academic pursuits. However, the combination of the PhD and designated professional doctorates does not exhaust the range of doctoral‐level education. Is there a particular role for a doctoral‐level qualification for those who do not wish to follow the academic path of the PhD, or the designated path of existing professional doctorates? This paper argues that there is such a need, and identifies and explores some of the issues to be faced in addressing such a need. The paper focuses on three challenges for academic practice in doctoral education arising from this. First, the impetus for new forms of doctoral education is considered and what this implies for the diversity of current provision. Second, the target population for new professionally orientated doctorates is examined, namely ‘new knowledge workers’, those who operate in areas not covered by specialized doctorates and those who wish to negotiate transdisciplinary programs. Finally, the paper examines issues universities face in meeting the needs of new populations of doctoral candidates, particularly the need to develop new academic cultural practices.     

Personal study planning in doctoral education in industrial engineering

The duration of doctoral studies has increased in Europe. Personal study planning has been considered as one possible solution to help students in achieving shorter study times. This study investigates how doctoral students experience and use personal study plans in one university department of industrial engineering. The research material consists of a questionnaire study and personal study plan forms submitted by doctoral students. The results show evidence concerning the usefulness of personal study planning in doctoral education in industrial engineering and reveal differences across student groups. This study highlights the situation-dependent character of personal study planning and confirms that the implementation of personal study planning requires time and effort in order to change the culture of individualised studies.     

改进而非创新:安大略博士教育的另一种选择

知识经济的迅速发展,对传统哲学博士的培养提出了挑战.许多国家已经作出了反应,开始灵活适宜地发展专业博士学位.在加拿大的安大略省,发展趋势则表现为改进传统的哲学博士学位教育而不是发展新的专业博士学位.作者结合博士生自己的评价,追溯了这种倾向的经济、政治、历史和社会的原因,着重介绍了多伦多大学的安大略教育研究院历史悠久的教育博士学位发展状况.该学位的注册人数近年来一直在下降,而同时期改进的哲学博士学位由于其灵活性和国际声誉则更受欢迎,更适应社会的需要.     

20世纪90年代以来美国博士教育的问题与改革

美国博士教育虽处于国际顶尖水平,但随着其社会经济的发展及政治需求的变化,到20世纪90年代,美国博士教育出现完成学位时间长、博士生辍学率高而导致博士教育高损耗现象,其原因是博士教育培养目标与社会需求不协调、资金不足、课程质量低劣和就业指导缺乏。对此,大学和博士教育研究机构采取了相应的改革措施。     

The role of research education coordinators in building research cultures in doctoral education

The development of cultures of support has become important in programmes for the preparation of research students. The paper draws on in-depth interviews with 21 research education coordinators from Australian and UK institutions to identify the strategies that they use to build research cultures and integrate research students into them. Students’ research cultures are not always linked to departmental research cultures more generally. Local contexts and conditions and staff (including supervisors’) attitudes are found to be critical in how research education coordinators respond and what is considered possible in order to ensure that research students are involved in research cultures.