How can the full range of doctoral study in the UK be best described? What are the key features that are driving change to the system? What are the implications of current initiatives and the increasingly international context of research degree study? This book covers the differing kinds of doctorate award that exist currently and discusses critically issues that arise from the ways in which related forms of doctoral study are organized and assessed. It focuses on doctoral study, in all its forms, in the higher education sector in the United Kingdom, while being contextualised within an international dimension. Drawing on both quantitative and qualitative data, the book focuses on the diversity in doctoral study. It examines the current state of the full range of doctoral awards, describes them, and then critically analyses tensions that exist. For example, it assesses the definitions and relations between different kinds of doctoral award, the pedagogy that surrounds them and the examination phases of each. The book also offers suggestions of ways to resolve the tensions associated with different forms of study and indicates possible future directions. Doctoral Study in Contemporary Higher Educationis an essential text for those who manage, fund and deliver education at doctoral level.

Doctoral education is of prime importance worldwide. In many countries, there is severe shortage of doctoral degree holders, while in others there is an oversupply in many fields. There is a global debate on the best ways of providing doctoral training. To illustrate global trends, the book analyses the current realities of doctoral education with the help of case studies based on fourteen countries and one continent. It includes an overview of the state of the literature on doctoral education as well as an analysis of doctoral education from a historical perspective with a detailed comparative discussion. Trends and Issues in Doctoral Education: A Global Perspective also examines the challenges and ideas of current and proposed reforms in doctoral education.

This book explores and compares the systems of doctoral education in twelve higher education systems, consisting of four systems in East Asia, four in Europe and four Anglo-American systems. The emphasis placed on doctoral education and training has increased dramatically in many higher education systems in response to the global competition for highly skilled human resources to serve the needs of knowledge societies. Doctoral education is a key element within the research and development infrastructure, and doctoral students support university research and represent the next generation of the professoriate. While doctoral education has received considerable attention within national higher education systems, there has been surprisingly little international or comparative research on the structure of doctoral education and the nature of contemporary reforms.

This book attempts to re-imagine the purpose of the doctorate, which has historically been used to prepare leaders who will work to improve the sciences (social and physical), humanities, and professions, while articulating curriculum as a living shape where students, faculty, and institution melded in a humanist and creative process. This idea, seriously eroded by the explosion in doctoral degrees between the early 1970s (20,000 doctorate per year) and last year (to over 46,000)—and an explosion in doctoral and research universities that has created a crossroads for the doctorate in America. We believe the value of a doctorate is Intellectual Capital, and are particularly interested in encouraging reflection as an important characteristic of a successful quality doctoral program. We posit that a “good doctoral” experience fosters active engagement in reflection on all elements of our work—the intellectual, advisory, and pedagogical work of faculty, curricular opportunities, as well as the intellectual of the doctoral candidates through an avocation that drives research and theory in our fields. Specific issues raised in this edited volume include comprehensive analysis of programs, rethinking evaluation and programmatic coherence, doctoral degrees beyond the discipline, subject, and field, and implications of individual identity. Along with authors’ chapters, we paid attention to encourage reflection as an important characteristic of a quality doctoral program; positing that “good doctoral” experiences foster active engagement in reflection on all elements of the doctoral experience, including program and curricular issues, personal relationships, work, and the creation of a community of scholars.

This book discusses how teaching and research have been weighted differently in academia in 18 countries and one region, Hong Kong SAR, based on an international comparative study entitled the Changing Academic Profession (CAP). It addresses these issues using empirical evidence, the CAP data. Specifically, the focus is on how teaching and research are defined in each higher education system, how teaching and research are preferred and conducted by academics, and how academics are rewarded by their institution. Since the establishment of Berlin University in 1810, there has been controversy on teaching and research as the primary functions of universities and academics. The controversy increased when Johns Hopkins University was established in 1876 with only graduate programs, and more recently with the release of the Carnegie Foundation report Scholarship Reconsidered by Ernest L. Boyer in 1990. Since the publication of Scholarship Reconsidered in 1990, higher education scholars and policymakers began to pay attention to the details of teaching and research activities, a kind of ‘black box’ because only individual academics know how they conduct teaching and research in their own contexts.

By fixing the PhD, we can benefit the entire educational system and the life of our society along with it.

This book, the second in the projected three-volume Forces and Forms in Doctoral Education Worldwide series sponsored by the Center for Innovation in Graduate Education (CIRGE) at the University of Washington, invites readers to listen in as nearly thirty distinguished scholars and thought leaders confront urgent questions about doctoral education in a globalizing world: • How are research doctoral education and the research PhD degree evolving in different national contexts? • How do researchers in the early stage of their careers assess the value of doctoral education? • What are the challenges of using international demographic data from existing PhD programs to analyze trends in doctoral education? • What can happen when regional issues intersect with the need to evaluate doctoral education and ensure its quality? • Which quality-assurance model has been gaining favor in PhD education, and what challenges does it pose? • What accounts for conflict between national interests and international collaboration in doctoral education? • Is there empirical evidence of globalization’s impact on doctoral education and the labor market for PhD graduates? This follow-up to Toward a Global PhD? (University of Washington Press, 2008), the first volume in the series, includes case studies illustrating global trends in the structure, function, and quality frameworks of doctoral education, and it develops a conceptual framework linking globalization to trends in doctoral education while showing the particular history that has led to the convergence of a number of practices in one or more countries.