Creating Postgraduate Collaborations Forums CPC Supervision Development Course Module 1 Module 1, Session 1: Introduction to national contexts

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  • Wil Hout
    Moderator
    Post count: 16

    Below are some responses to issues that were raised in the chat when I presented the national context of postgraduate education in The Netherlands. The most salient comments related to the involvement of the supervisor in assessment and the importance of course work.

    Involvement of supervisor in assessment
    In the Netherlands it is quite standard, I believe, for supervisors to be involved in assessment of Masters thesis, usually next to one other assessor, who is usually in the same department. MA regulations are set at the level of the Masters degree programme.
    PhD regulations are much stricter, also because these are centralised at the university level. This means there are variations across the 14 Dutch universities, but not within universities. At some Dutch universities, supervisors are a member of the PhD committee that assesses a PhD dissertation, but not at all universities. At universities where supervisors are on the PhD committee, though, the membership of that committee is constituted in such a way that supervisors will always only have a minority share of the vote.

    Course work
    Course work requirements have become more important at Dutch universities, because it is recognised that PhD graduates need to have certain skills – not just research-related skills but also all kinds of transferable skill, because PhD holders are increasingly trained for non-academic jobs.
    Course work is also part of the trend to apply quality assurance mechanisms to PhD training. In part, this is surely a response to earlier practices where PhD training was implemented in a master-apprentice relationship. It is also a response to the increase in the number of PhD enrolments in universities, which requires a greater degree of standardisation and transparency as to what PhD students have learned.

    Patrick Onyango
    Moderator
    Post count: 9

    Wil,
    This is a very helpful summary. There are two issues I needed to raise. One, one of the issues we are grappling with is what these “transferable skills” are? Also, is it really the case that we are training, especially at PhD level, for the job market? If we are then how do we deal with the ever fluid and non-trivial matter of relevance–given that the job market is pretty much in flux.

    Second,although we have re-introduced coursework in our PhD programmes here in Kenya, we have pretty much kept the PhD programme duration the same, a minimum of three years. In addition, we have kept the requirement that one has to publish at least two papers from their thesis research to earn a doctorate. Well, there is no doubt that in such an arrangement something will have to give and right now what will definitely give is the rigor of the PhD process.

    Do you, Wil, or anyone else have any thoughts on how to navigate these challenges?

    Many thanks.
    Patrick

    Wil Hout
    Moderator
    Post count: 16

    Hi Patrick,
    Thanks for the questions.
    With regard to the research-related and transferable skills, I think I should have been more precise. I used ‘research-related’ here as shorthand for ‘related to academic research’ — hence with an emphasis on theory-driven forms of research. What we see increasingly is that PhD training includes modules on not specifically academic research skills, which can be used if PhD holders start working for different types of research organisations, which are into applied or policy research. Such skills would include project management or financial management. Next to this, PhD have modules on more generic skills, such as ICT skills, research communication, et cetera.
    In relation to your second point, there is certainly a trade-off involved in the introduction of course work into PhD programmes. I have also witnessed that in PhD dissertations submitted in The Netherlands. I think there are increasingly two ‘tracks’ that are taken informally by PhD students. The first ‘track’ is that followed by people with a more instrumental take on the PhD — they use the PhD as an additional qualification on the job marktet. The second ‘track’ is taken by PhD students with an explicitly academic interest and career perspective. The PhD dissertations produced by the latter group tend to be more academically orientated and possess more of the ‘rigour’ that you are referring to. Most probably the publications that you require from your PhDs would differ in depth and quality if you see the same divergence in Kenya as I see in The Netherlands.
    Best regards,
    Wil

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