Doctoral Education in Europe: Trends, Issues, Challenges

1. Doctoral Education in Europe: Trends, Issues, Challenges The 21st Century Doctorate – sharing European developments Thomas Ekman Jørgensen 18 March 2011 Scotland House, Brussels

2. The revolution in European doctoral education

3. What is the revolution about? • All about institutional responsibility • ’De-privatisation’ of doctoral education • Providing institutional framework (doctoral schools) • Embedding in overall strategies • Taking account for where the institution is (capacity) and where it wants to go (capacity building and development of mission)

4. Salzburg Basic Principles • The basis for the reforms • Original ten principles from 2005 – outcomes of an EUA-led project and a Bologna seminar • The doctorate is research-based • Importance of institutional strategies • Diversity • Included in the Bologna Bergen Communiqué 2005

5. The EUA-Council for Doctoral Education (CDE) • What it is: • Part of the European University Association (EUA) • 850 universities and rectors’ conferences in 47 countries • Developing evidence-based policies • Advocating these policies • Promoting development of universities as institutions • The CDE is a membership service focused on doctoral education • Development of doctoral schools • Doctorate-specfic policy development

6. The Council for Doctoral Education • Geographical distribution of members (20 UK – 1 Scottish, 1 Welsh)

7. CDE activities Stakeholder dialogue - EU and global Recommendations and policy development Membership activities - Workshops, newsletter, networking

8. Trends • Professionalisation of management – moving from building programmes to implementing institutional structures • The German (DFG) example of ’research training groups’ (since 1990) and ’graduate schools’ (2005) • Research training groups focuses on research environment and training options • Graduate Schools (the excellence initiative) includes ”Convincing models of selection, qualification and supervision” as well as ”professionel management” and ”alignment with institutional strategies”

9. Trends II • Implementation of internal procedures • Supervision (rules and/or guidelines) • Data collection (national and institutional systems) • Taught courses (transferable skills/discipline-specific training) • 49 % in TRENDS V, 72 % TRENDS 2010 • Collaborations with international and/or non-university sector partners

10. Issues: Salzburg II • 5 years of rapid implementation of the Salzburg Principles, need to gather the experiences • Policy document based on consultations with CDE members • Main points from the document: • The doctorate is and must be research based • Space for individual development • Autonomy for the institution to choose mission and strategy and to set up the appropriate structures

11. Challenges • Many different levels of progress with different challenges • Autonomy: increasing political attention leading to new legislation – temptation to over-regulate • Over-structuring: institutions focusing too much on taught courses and micro-management • Under-structuring: ’window-dressing’ – each professor gets a ’doctoral school’ • QA: Finding doctorate-specific QA procedures and indicators that take into account research environment and institutional structures

12. ARDE (Accountable Research Environments for Doctoral Education) • New EUA-CDE project looking at QA in doctoral education’ • Survey on external and internal procedures, indicators and ongoing reforms (launched February 2011) • Focus groups meetings (fall 2011, spring 2012) • Workshop September 2012: part of the EUA-CDE ’Doctoral Week’ at Karolinska Institute Stockholm

13. Thank you for your attention