‘Minimum offer’ needed in ‘Wild West’ of doctoral study

UK universities should be required to advertise what teaching opportunities and career support will be available to doctoral students who hope to move into academia, says a study that has revealed huge differences in the assistance available to PhD candidates.

Based on interviews with PhD graduates who had recently submitted their thesis, researchers from Brunel University London and Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) identified “significant diversity” in the support from supervisors provided to doctoral candidates, with those from “less privileged backgrounds” most likely to miss out.

In one case, a PhD graduate explained that her requests for help from her supervisor had been routinely ignored, leaving her in tears, with contact limited to a single monthly meeting.

Another said they had been reluctant to ask their university about their likely contact with supervisors because they felt “lucky” to have been accepted on a funded PhD.

To combat the “inconsistencies and inequalities in the support provided to early career researchers”, the study calls for a “minimum offer” from universities in terms of research methods training, access to professional networking and support towards publication.

Kate Hoskins, a reader in education at Brunel, co-authored the British Academy-supported study with her Brunel colleague Ellen McHugh and with Marie-Pierre Moreau, a professor of education at ARU. She said universities should be much clearer about the level of support available during their doctorates.

“Our findings suggest universities are not providing clear information to PhD students on what support will be available to them,” said Dr Hoskins, who said some candidates likened the PhD supervision landscape to the “Wild West” given the lack of information on what might available to them.

“We have so much regulation and descriptive information when it comes to undergraduate degrees and master’s level courses, but there doesn’t seem to be that same guidance when it comes to PhDs,” she added.

While not every PhD student wanted to enter academia after graduation, that route was clearly one that many intended to pursue and should be supported to do so, continued Dr Hoskins, whose team interviewed 26 PhD graduates and six supervisors from a variety of UK universities for the study, “Precarious transitions? Doctoral students negotiating the shift to academic position”.

“To get an academic post, you need to have teaching experience or have some publications in the pipeline. Universities want to know that you can hit the ground running, so it’s important to have these things on your CV when the job market is tight,” noted Dr Hoskins, who said the study highlighted the “variance” of support on offer to students.

“Some supervisors did really well on this front – students spoke about the great support they received and the provision of teaching opportunities; but others didn’t get this,” she added.

Poor support was often linked to staff turnover, continued Dr Hoskins. “When a supervisor left, or got sick, someone would come in, often not from exactly the same area, and things would be difficult,” she said, calling the national picture “mixed”.

“Not everyone who starts a PhD will want to teach undergraduates or publish in scholarly journals. But our project focused on those candidates who had stated they wanted an academic career, and we found huge variance in what was available to them,” said Dr Hoskins. “That is why an institutional ‘minimum offer’ should be the way forward.”

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com