The Future of Doctoral Research

Challenges and Opportunities

Anne Lee, Rob Bongaardt, Anne Lee, Rob Bongaardt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780367858476
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000330595
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

This book explores the future of doctoral research and what it means to be involved in all stages of the process, providing international insights into what's changing, why it's changing and how to work best with these changes. It looks at the key issues that have been thrown into sharp relief by crises such as world pandemics.

Drawing on work from outstanding authors, this book shows the ways in which the doctoral process has altered the supervisor/supervisee model and the challenges that now need to be managed, and demonstrates the importance of aligning all the stakeholders, systems and processes to ensure a successful future for doctoral education. Bringing together a range of perspectives, innovative practices and rigorous research, this book tackles topics such as:

• how doctoral research changes in keeping with the global expansion and transformation of doctoral education programmes
• the significant influence funding bodies – be they charities, governments, businesses or non-governmental agencies – can have on doctoral research
• the extent to which doctoral research penetrates daily life and vice versa
• how to encourage and embed an ethical approach to research, as well as university responses to external challenges

Uniquely international and bringing together the many stakeholders in the research business, this book is essential reading for all doctoral supervisors, candidates and anyone involved in designing or organising research programmes for early career researchers and doctoral students.

Chapter 9 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

PART I

Doctoral research in the changing university

We see a global expansion in the number and types of doctoral education programmes, as explicated by the first chapter in this book by Whittington and Barnes. Universities around the world respond in their preferred ways to academic, professional and societal needs, demands and challenges. Doctoral research is an important constituent of this response; it provides the research output to answer a diversity of calls. Authors in Part I underscore that this has consequences for doctoral education. Endorsing a global perspective, Manathunga, Qi, Bunda and Singh invite doctoral candidates, supervisors, and university and government education policy-makers to think seriously about the need for equality of all the world’s knowledge systems and dialogue between all epistemologies. The doctoral researcher is not a mere shackle in the research output chain. Bengtsen stresses that research education must adapt to the diversity of demands on research lest the doctoral researcher forgoes career options and, not least, a sense of existential and social meaning after obtaining the PhD degree. The agency that doctoral researchers display during the doctoral studies therefore needs extensive nourishment. Applied teacher training is particularly needed, as pointed out by Atkinson and Slatta. Teaching and research are not a zero-sum game; the two are reciprocal. The capacity to integrate research in teaching and utilise teaching settings for research is a transferable skill. The development of transferable skills is best scaffolded by structural units within universities – graduate or research schools as well as third-space professionals who interweave the realities of research and management. Nerad and Bai explicate the structure of American Graduate Schools to show how this can be realised. Porter adopts the VUCA acronym – volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity – to characterise doctoral research and education, which, in the wake of global developments, demands a post-formal mindset to flourish in. With such a mindset a person more easily adapts to a variety of settings whilst maintaining personal integrity and the capacity to deliver coherent work – academia’s VUCA should be met with agile agency.

1

The changing face of doctoral education

Kate Whittington and Sally Barnes

Today, the PhD is a well-recognised doctoral award considered largely as research training. Originally doctorates were based on the needs of a specific discipline and were recognised as a badge of excellence largely for teaching (Jones, 2018). They have subsequently moved towards a degree that confirms research experience and skill (Noble, 1994; Park, 2007) and are widely considered the starting point of an academic career. In this chapter we will start with a discussion of the evolution of the PhD over the centuries to what it is recognised as today, before considering the challenges facing doctoral education and the question of its future role.

Conceptual and theoretical issues

The doctorate is one of the highest levels of academic degrees awarded. However, the doctorates of 2020 are markedly different to those from previous centuries (Noble, 1994; Park, 2005; Boud and Lee, 2009). In the Middle Ages the doctorate was achieved through a long apprenticeship with a master teacher. It was the only type of doctorate available until the early 1800s when universities based on both teaching and research were established and moved the focus of a PhD towards research.

There are several issues that relate to the changes that have occurred to the model of PhD study, variation in the types of awards available and their purpose. One of the key issues concerns the sheer number of PhDs that are awarded globally. The original conception of the PhD as an apprenticeship model has moved towards a model that can often include course work and requirements to publish and/or teach and to meet disciplinary norms. Professional doctorates have more recently emerged as an alternative to the PhD (Zusman, 2017). Today we see professional doctorates in a range of disciplines, in a variety of cultures. Like the PhD, these newer doctorates vary enormously. Each of these issues will be discussed below.

A short history of the proliferation of the doctorate

The shift of the award of a doctorate from teaching to research excellence occurred in 1810 when Wilhelm von Humboldt established a new type of university in Germany (Berlin) that was based on both research and teaching. From its establishment, this university offered a PhD based on research (Noble, 1994; Park, 2007; Burquel, 2015). Up to this point the PhD was seen as a necessity for teaching at degree level (Noble, 1994), with graduates being expected to be able to teach a wide variety of subjects. However, as the award shifted towards a research focus, academic staff began to specialise in their research endeavours and to focus their teaching on areas related to their research. This research-orientated doctorate spread across Europe and the world (Table 1.1) and the encompassing of both research and teaching is the basic premise of the majority of academic posts today.

TABLE 1.1Illustration of year when research doctorate programmes were introduced, or first awarded, across a range of countries

Country		University		Year		Additional Reference
Germany		University of Berlin		1810		Noble (1994) and Park (2007)
Paris		Paris-Sorbonne		1811
Netherlands				1815
Switzerland		Zurich		1833
USA		Yale		1861		yale.edu/about-yale/traditions-history
India		Calcutta		1877		Sen (2015)
S. Africa				1899		Herman (2015)
UK		Oxford		1917		Aldrich (2006)
Ireland		Dublin		1924
Russia		Not stated		1934		De Witt (1961)
Australia		Melbourne		1948		Dobson (2012)
China				1983		Zhuang (2007)

In 2017 over 300,000 doctorates were awarded globally (see Table 1.2), and significant variation in the number of awards made in a year exists between countries and hence regions of the world (Figure 1.1).

FIGURE 1.1Illustration of the relative contribution different continents and their constituent countries make to the global award of doctorates

When comparing data over time, it is apparent that there is a growth of doctorates awarded with an approximate 75% increase in total awards between 2005 and 2017 (216,740 compared to 383,824, Table 1.2). Interestingly, the growth of doctorate education is variable between countries and regions of the world. Significant expansion is especially noticeable in developing countries such as China (110% increase from 2005 to 2017) and Mexico (283% increase from 2005 to 2017). In contrast, the USA’s number of doctoral awards only increased by 33% over the same time period, although it is important to remember that the actual number of awards made by the USA is significantly higher than the next highest doctoral provider, China (71,042 compared to 58,000 respectively) (Falkenheim, 2018). This expansion of doctoral education in China followed policy changes to higher education in 1999, and in 2015 over 74,400 doctoral students had been recruited (Majumder, 2014; Shen and Chen, 2018), suggesting the number of awards may well pass that of the USA in coming years. These trends strongly suggest that the dominance of Western countries in providing doctoral education for a global market is changing.

TABLE 1.2Numbers of doctorates awarded annually per country in all fields of education

Year	2005	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017
Country
United States	53,140	57,407	59,814	62,276	65,020	67,438	68,923	69,525	71,042
China	27677^+	48987^+						55,000	58,000
Germany	24,287				27,707	28,147	29,218	29,303	28,404
United Kingdom	15,778	18,756	20,076	20,438	25,896	25,020	26,636	27,366	28,143
Russia	31,760	33,203	32,718	...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• Foreword by Ronald Barnett
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: The global knowledge economy
• PART I Doctoral research in the changing university
• PART II Collaborations and funding
• PART III Doctoral researchers’ perspectives
• PART IV Doctoral supervisors’ perspectives
• PART V Ethics and accountability
• Conclusion: The future of doctoral research in the light of experience
• Index