Part-time Doctoral Research Students:
What the Research Says
Professor Emma C. Murphy
(emma.murphy@durham.ac.uk)
UK Council for Graduate Education
Meeting the Needs of Part-time Research Students
Thursday 11th October 2007
British library, London
Not to be quoted without the author's permission
Part-Time Doctoral Students: What the Research Says
"A [more] mundane description would be as a self-imposed sentence of
unremitting hard work for five or six years. It is already becoming part of my
life - pervading most aspects of it and impinging on personal time and
space. There is a clear need to reappraise priorities and review accepted
patterns of work and home life".1
Part-time students are often the poor-relations of doctoral study. It can be argued
that UK HEIs have, like their counterparts elsewhere, over the past fifteen years
or so, redefined the doctoral research agenda around a stereotype of the young,
full-time, home student who is being prepared for employment in the knowledge
economy.2 However, as the figures below show, part-time students make up a
significant proportion of the doctoral research community. The figures also show
that they are a community "at risk", with relatively high drop-out rates and taking
a proportionately longer time to complete when they do.
Research in Australia has made a still more worrying case, demonstrating that
part-time students rate their own research experience significantly lower than full
time students. (Only 45.5% of part-time research students on-campus and 42.2%
of part-time doctoral students off-campus rate their overall experience as a PhD
student as satisfactory or very satisfactory. This was compared to 62.1% of fulltime students. Grant Haman concluded that: "Even allowing for differences in
maturity, the results...... raise major concerns about the value derived from the
major investment in part-time PhD study" ).3
This is disturbing news since part-time registration is increasingly common, not
least as new variants of the doctoral programme have come on stream such as
professional or vocational doctorates, yet little research has been done on the
experiences or needs of part-time as opposed to full-time students which can
explain the problems of retention and completion, and there is little evidence of a
consensus regarding what constitutes best practice in meeting their needs and
providing the support needed to assist them in completing their programmes
successfully.
Much of what research does exist focuses on relatively small-scale studies of
social science students. (There appears to be very little on science students,
perhaps because part-time study is more common in the social sciences and the
arts). The research is usually based on open-ended questionnaires of part-time
students as part of a larger cohort of students, on interviews or on individual and
personal accounts. It concentrates on a number of themes, which I have tried to
explore a little below, but it undoubtedly offers us a rather dismal picture of
current understanding of, and provision for, their doctoral experience.
The Statistics
In January 2005, HEFCE published a report entitled PhD Research Degrees4
which summarized entry and completion findings as follows:
Entry to PhD programmes
Progress directly from first degree or Masters
From a different HEI
Did not qualify UG or M level year before
Full-time
35%
27%
38%
Past-time
12%
9%
78%
The starting cohort
Full-time
No.
%
No
Part-time
%
Home
EU
Non-EU
8,153
1,619
3,900
60%
12%
29%
3,946
316
589
81%
7%
12%
All
13,672
100%
4,851
100%
Around three quarters of part-time doctoral students have taken at least one
year's break from study before beginning their programme.5
Alterations in mode
18% of those who start as full-time change to part-time
11% of those who start as part-time change to full-time
Completion rates
Degree awarded in 2000/2001
After five years of study
After seven years of study
Full-time
57%
71%
Part-time
19%
34%
Activity rates
Start mode No.
Full-time 13,672
Part-time 4,851
% completed
71%
34%
%completed or active
82%
62%
Compared with FT students, PT are less likely to complete within 7 years and
more likely to withdraw within 7 years.
"Significant and material differences in the rate of PhD completion are found
for differences in financial backing, by student domicile, by age on entry, by
previous qualifications and by subject, as well as by mode. The following were
shown to be associated with higher rates of completion:
a)
b)
c)
d)
Students with financial backing, particularly from Research Councils,
charities or the British Academy
Students from overseas
Younger students
Students following programmes in the natural sciences
The low completion rates for part-time students are due in part to the fact that
So Are Part-time Doctoral Programmes a Good Thing?
For universities
Funding Council performance-based funding privileges programmes with high
completion rates, and support for part-time research students is less easily
accommodated within standard time-tables/semesters. However, the current
emphasis on research for the knowledge economy and 'The innovation agenda'6
has resulted in a diversification of research degree formats, demanding a much
closer relationship between the research process and the workplace, and the
proliferation of vocational and applied doctorates which operate on a part-time
basis. Part-time degrees can therefore offer a growing income stream, as well as
a source of innovative and applied research input.
And for the part-time research students?
In 2005 Diana Leonard, Rosamunde Becker and Kelly Coate, all of the University
of London, were motivated to produce their own study of why people do
doctorates. They had noticed that what little research existed was usually based
on stereotypes of research students as young people, with little work-experience,
who studied full-time and was often limited to students financially supported by
the various funding councils (which perhaps accounted for the limited profile).
Like government policy, these research studies often assumed that the students
intended to continue their working lives as researchers (hence, the increasing
currency of the term "young researchers"). The three academics, however, did
not feel that this stereotype matched their own experience of research students.
"In our own institution, a graduate college within the University of London,
those who start a doctorate have always had at least one job before
undertaking a research degree and are mainly in their 30s and 40s. They may
be wanting to get, or have recently moved into, an academic job, but they
may equally prefer to remain as senior teachers and managers in schools and
colleges, or in NGOs, or as policy-makers, or to work as freelance
educational consultants. Doctoral enrolment is increasing generally in the
UK, but it is fields with a strong vocational element and/or which recruit midcareer professionals who study part-time, such as education, business and
management, social policy and administration, social work, and law, which
are the main growth areas in the social sciences. Education is the most
rapidly growing field of all: The number of completions in it increased 232%
from 1994-95 to 2000-01, while growth was slow in pure disciplines such as
economics, sociology or geography"7.
In their survey of former doctoral students at their own institution, most of whom
were home students who studied part-time and were more "mature" than the
general stereotype mentioned above, they found that the vast majority of
students had found the experience of doing a doctorate worthwhile for reasons to
do with personal and intellectual development more than for economic or
vocational purposes. The current government policy focus on preparing doctoral
graduates for employment was not an issue for these students, all but one of
whom were either employed within a year of completing or were out of the labour
force for personal reasons. Most had been in full-time employment whilst
studying and there was a limited direct benefit from gaining their doctorates on
their employment status, although there were considered to be some intangible
ways in which the degree advanced their career prospects.
At what cost?
The costs of studying for these part-time, mature students was varied and could
be measured in a number of ways, none of which will be surprising.
"Part-timers had to fit in their research alongside their jobs and family
commitments, with resultant loss of leisure and their families not seeing
much of them, for a median or 7-10 years. This is reflected in some of
their comments on the day-to-day things they relished in the year after
they completed."
"I caught up on all the things I had not done for years, like taking the
children on trips and putting photographs in albums.”
"I looked at the ceiling a lot and took a long holiday and watched
cricket."
There were clear costs in terms of relationships: as the authors of the article
pointed out, for those students - both men and women - with children, the 7-10
years taken to do the doctorate represented most of those children’s childhood
and adolescence, during which the pressure of the doctorate on the parents and
children was constant. "Half the respondents (three-quarters of the men and twoin-five of the women) had children living at home while they were studying and
one in ten women mentioned they had responsibilities for elderly or sick relatives"
(p. 142). Only a third said that their doctoral study did not have an impact on their
family and friendships and a third did suggest (n.b. the authors had to "interpret"
answers to the open-ended questionnaire in this regard) that their family and
social relationships had been negatively impacted. For many the experience was
lonely, isolating and a source of tension for a prolonged period.
"Since 1995, I have spent many nights burning the midnight oil, when I
know I have to be up next morning to get my daughter ready for nursery
and do a day's work. I have sacrificed all the hobbies I once enjoyed, and I
no longer paint, read novels or take part in amateur dramatics. Although I
try not to let study encroach on weekends, there have been Sundays when
I have guiltily left my family to their own devices, while I spent a day in my
office, working on the PhD. I have fought to balance my research with my
paid work (which also involves evening working) as well as with (more
importantly) ensuring that my daughter does not suffer as a result of my
wish to study".8
On top of this, of course, were the financial costs. Four in ten were fully selffunded throughout their study and many more were partially self-funded. About a
third received (limited) financial help from employers. Some students started with
support from one source which ran out, and then sought other sources, often
going for long periods with no support. Finance for many was a constant worry
and many experienced a substantial drop in their living standards.
The only extensive research done on the financial aspects of part-time
postgraduate study in the UK that I could find dates back to 1992, when the
ESRC commissioned a report for its Training Board. That report9 found that in
1988/89, 48% of part-time postgraduates were recorded as self-supporting, 14%
were supported (at least in part) by their local authority, 8% by university
employment and 7% by industry or commerce. The remaining 24% received
support from a range of funding councils, authorities, departments, charities and
other organizations. These figures included taught postgraduates and are likely
to have altered significantly since then due to changes in government policy,
funding structures, employers' attitudes and programme availability. But we don't
really know how! (The average part-time student fee then was just £613 which
gives some idea of the scale of change!) What is unlikely to have changed is the
proportion of part-time postgraduates reporting financial hardship (51% of women
and 39% of men). The single greatest priority for financial support for part-time
research students was help paying fees. Research students were twice as likely
to report a loss of earnings as a result of their study and their total annual study
costs were considerably higher than part-time taught postgraduates. More parttime PGR reported hardship than PGT (57% as opposed to 44%), although this
was not considered to be a major reason for considering dropping out.
Pressure on time is, without doubt, one of the biggest costs for part-time doctoral
students. Initially, the six-year period of registration can seem like a life-time (and
can actually be quite off-putting for potential doctoral candidates), but - as one
part-timer has pointed out - the reality is that part-timers actually may have less
time to work on their research than full-timers. (Frank Wareing actually calculated
that he would be able to work the equivalent of one-and-a-half "research days" a
week for the duration of his study and that, in reality, he was due to complete a
PhD in "just over a year and a half).10
Universities commonly have institutional 'rules' (formal or otherwise) which define
full-time in terms of number of hours per week the student is expected to work on
their research project, with part-timers being designated a proportionately lower
number of hours per week11. In fact, part-time students rarely work in hours-perweek but rather in blocks of time which they put aside for their research (and
which they frequently have to negotiate with their employers). Brief periods of onsite work with the HEI are useful, offering uninterrupted focus and 'time on task',
as well as networking opportunities and face-to-face time with supervisors.
Pearson and Ford quote one student as follows:
"From personal experience, I feel the major flexibility issue for many parttimers is simply that of negotiating adequate 'blocks' of time with one's
employers (or other commitments) to make real progress on the work! I do
know that I benefit enormously from brief periods on-site in the remote
university where I'm doing my PhD. This is partly because I can speak to my
supervisors and partly because there's a good library and I don't have to
negotiate elaborate and fiddly external student arrangements for library
support, but mostly because I have some uninterrupted time".
Monash University, in Australia, incorporates residential blocks into the
compulsory component of a part-time PhD. However, universities which do so
need to consider some of the implications for part-time students such as the need
to defray travel expenses and the need to make available accommodation.
Another aspect of time is the way in which part-time students relate to full-time
students in comparable fields of study. As Wareing says:
"Self-comparison with full-time postgraduates working in the same field may not
be helpful. Interestingly, I have already begun comparing my progress
unfavourably with that of a full-time colleague researching in a cognate area.
Cognitively, I know that I shouldn't be at the same point for several more
months, but affectively, I cannot help getting anxious. I am trying to tackle this
issue by keeping a research diary to catalogue actual progress against planned
objectives."
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Is it ultimately worth it?
Of Leonard et al's sample, 11 of 89 students said that they were not sure in
retrospect that it was worth having done a doctorate. Most of these were among
the younger of the students and attributed it to their vocational expectations not
having been met. Those who were most unhappy with their experience were
women in their 30s and 40s who had been juggling full-time jobs and families
with their study and who found it difficult to match their limited time availability
with institutional opening hours and other access issues. Although some women
noted that the experience of doing a doctorate (particularly the viva and the
demand for revisions to the thesis) had actually dented their self-confidence,
there was surprisingly little complaint about supervisors.
Research Training
It is interesting that half the respondents to the questionnaire did not think
research methods training worthwhile since compulsory classes were considered
to slow down thesis completion time, because they require traveling often over
quite long distances, and because they see them as narrowing doctoral study to
vocational arenas when their reasons for study are more concerned with
personal and intellectual development. As the authors of the study conclude:
'Most [part-time] research students would benefit not so much from courses on
time-management - they are already skilled in it - as from universities
changing some of their practices to suit 'time-poor' students".
Instead of assuming that students have both financial and domestic support,
universities and funding councils should consider that an increasing proportion of
doctoral students are the domestic and financial support for others, and therefore
they require to be supported by funding councils and universities themselves.
Finally, the authors recommend that universities reconsider the compulsory
nature of research training classes for doctoral students which are geared
towards the employment needs of young full-time students but which only extend
an already prolonged study experience for more experienced and alreadyemployed part-time students.
A study undertaken in Australia, by Robyn Barnacle and Robin Usher, may shed
further light on research training issues for part-time doctoral students in the UK.
They questioned the assumptions underlying the Australian research training
agenda (which they are argue was never empirically proven) that PhD graduates
did not possess the communication, interpersonal, presentational and leadership
skills which were required by employers. This presumed (again) that doctoral
candidates were invariably young, recently graduated, studying full-time, and
inexperienced in the world of work.
"HDP candidates are thought of as cloistered within the walls of the
university, isolated from workplace issues, pressures, and practices and
undertaking research programmes that do not enable the acquisition and
development of skills required for working in a knowledge economy and
contributing to innovation".13
Part-time doctoral students challenge both parts of these assumptions: for a
start, their age and employment profile differs significantly from those of full-time
students and secondly, the growing availability of part-time professional or workplaced doctorates bridges the divide between academic and work-based
practice. Barnacle and Usher showed that almost half of all non-international
HDR candidates in Australia in 2000 were enrolled part-time and, furthermore,
that in those fields with a traditional association with professional work
(Education, Business, Law, Social Work, Architecture etc), the majority of
enrolled candidates were part-time and in their forties. In 2002, J. Taylor
demonstrated that in the UK too there are similar significant and growing
numbers of part-time students in 'applied' subjects such as Medicine, Dentistry,
Social Studies and the Humanities. Such students cannot be automatically
considered to be lacking the relevant work-place skills around which the current
research training agenda is based. Nor can we assume they share a common
skill set. Nor can it be assumed that they are doing research for their degree
programme which is unconnected with their work-place activities. Indeed, the
Australian study showed that professionals undertaking research part-time were
doing research that was productively related to their work activities (89% of their
survey sample). One comment from a part-time doctoral student is particularly
striking:
"[We are] coming to university for the research experience and the
Connection with ideas. So then it's silly to try and model the research
experience more on the workplace skills because that's what we're trying
to get away from...The university provides something that the workplace
doesn't. So the more you make the university like the workplace, maybe the
less attraction the university would have".
From their interviews, Barnacle and Usher concluded:
"Research degrees are undertaken [by part-time students in employment] in
order to engage with ideas, to enhance knowledge, and to obtain the added
confidence that comes from the experience of doing, and knowing how to do,
research. The university is understood as a site where critical distance from,
and reflection on, workplace practices and issues can occur, as well as
providing a valuable source of ideas for application within professional
practice".
The study further found that the part-time doctoral students recognized specific
skills developed in the workplace which could be utilized in research and
equally research-based skills which could be utilized in the workplace. The
synthesis of the two skill sets was key to their (positive) experiences, and the
function of the research programme, from their point of view, was to acquire
the latter (i.e: research-derived skills), not to develop work-based skills they
already had. The obvious conclusion from all this is that research training
programmes developed for the supposedly "typical" full-time doctoral student
cannot and should not simply be re-packaged for part-time candidates. Work
needs to be done to evaluate the diverse skills which part-time students are
already bringing to their research, to recognize their expectations for skills
acquisition within their doctoral research programmes, and to match the two
distinctively for part-time students. This is likely to become more important as
part-time doctoral student numbers increase and as their own profile
diversifies.
The Training Needs Analysis can to some extent resolve this issue in terms of
determining the existing skills profile of the student and identifying areas for
further development. However, once a need for skills development has been
identified, we encounter the problem of delivery of training. Since part-time
students are rarely situated on or close to university campuses and since many
of them are employed full or part-time, a number of problems arise which
cannot be resolved by simply resorting to distance learning or electronic
provision. Participants at a UKGrad Good Practice Workshop on Supporting
Part-time Students held in Kings College London in May 2005 agreed that
hard skills (those which are essentially factual and objective and could be
learned from a text) could be delivered by electronic Distance Learning
arrangements but that soft skills (those which are reflective and subjective)
were better suited to face-to-face interactions. A mixed or "blended learning"
training programme was most suited for research students and it was
considered inappropriate to rely on one style for full-time and another for part-
time students. (They recommended developing a taxonomy of skills from the
JSS, deciding which were hard and which soft skills, and devising a training
programme accordingly).15
Part-time doctoral students also need account to be taken of their own limited
capacity for fitting training into their research schedule. Courses which may be
taken simultaneously by a full-time student may have to be taken sequentially by
a part-time student, even one who resides close to campus. How this
sequencing is "fitted in" to the research programme as a whole needs to be
considered by supervisors, while institutions need to adapt to the periodic rerunning of courses and modules to accommodate diverse student populations.
Research Culture
There has been some research done examining part-time doctoral students'
access to research culture, by which we mean the shared values, beliefs,
experiences, narratives, networks and organizational ways of doing things of a
particular research community.
One of the biggest problems for part-time students, and one which David Kember
et al identified as being largely responsible for both high attrition rates among
Hong Kong doctoral students and the low university status accorded to them, was
the absence of a sense of belonging. With part-time students in general, they
found that sense of belonging was not a dichotomous variable but was more a
spectrum along which students would locate themselves. Students were most
likely to feel a sense of belonging to a peer group or cohort, or to the teaching
staff, but less so to a department, and least of all to a university. A significant
number felt they had no sense of belonging to peer group (11/49), staff (15/52),
department (11/32) or university (32/50). Given that most research students are
unlikely to attend any formal classes as part of their programme, it was not
surprising that research students were thus the most unlikely post-graduates to
develop a sense of belonging. Developing a sense of cohortness can therefore
assist part-time research student retention. A sense of belonging was most likely
when staff were perceived to be approachable and concerned to develop a
rapport with the students. Facilitating opportunities for staff (other than the
supervisor) to interact with part-time postgraduates is crucial to developing good
and reassuring communications and enabling this sense of belonging. The study
also found that initial contact was crucial, including orientation programmes. It is
worth remembering that research students begin their programmes at varying
points throughout the academic year and that repeat orientation or induction
meetings need to be arranged periodically to cater for late starters. Since a sense
of belonging is more likely to develop towards smaller units, departmental
inductions or enrolments are also more useful than university or faculty-wide
inductions. The issue of accessibility to resources was also raised by the study.
When students are dissatisfied with the access to library, leisure or IT facilities, for
example, or when they feel their access is restricted compared to other types
of students (for example, by unfavourable library opening hours) they feel
unvalued and have a negative sense of belonging. Across the various factors
encouraging a sense of belonging, the importance of human interaction was
paramount. The researchers acknowledged that "It might be argued that these
are contrary to the philosophy, which guides part-time courses offered through
flexible, distance or open learning. These tend to minimize meetings so as to
allow students freedom to study when and where they choose" (p.340), but
making sure that the option of supportive human relationships is available seems
significant in ensuring retention and completion of part-time research students.
It is important to note from the start that what is meant by research culture differs
in different disciplines and most specifically between science and non-science
subjects. The sciences favour a model of research teams, where critical mass of
student body is a considered a primary consideration in determining that culture
and where supervisor-student relationships are cemented through regular
laboratory contact as much as through formal supervisory meetings. Even
publishing is more often a joint exercise. In Social Sciences and the Arts, the
process of doing a dissertation is generally a more autonomous experience, yet
even here part-time students are unlikely to have the same experience as fulltime research students.
Rosemary Deem and Kevin Brehony studied doctoral students' access to
research cultures, including peer cultures, research training cultures and the
cultures within academic discipline, in two universities. Although both were "old"
universities, with extensive research training programmes and a diverse research
student population, their operations differed widely. One university (Hillside) ran
most of its research training on one afternoon and evening a week, had no
distance learning and no specialized second-year courses. The other university
(Woodside) had a wider range of courses, delivered through various modes
(including weekly meetings, residential courses and distance-learning) and
offered specialized courses in the second and further years of doctoral
registration. At Hillside the research training was the responsibility of a single
member of staff while Woodside operated a faculty-based graduate school.
Hillside located research students in a dedicated space whilst Woodside based
students in their departments.
Whilst both universities encouraged a sense of belonging to a student community
amongst social science research students, this was difficult to sustain beyond the
first year.
"Once plunged into data collection, data analysis and writing, there are fewer
opportunities to meet other students. For part-time student this is an even bigger
problem than for full-time students. Indeed, some of the latter may have used
distance-learning packs, and thus not benefited from the social aspects of faceto-face tuition with others".16
Part-time students often have no office space at university and spend very little
time in their institution, except for seeing their supervisor and using the library or
IT facilities. "Their social life rarely involves other students or academics."17
Research training can provide access to more social contacts, but full-time and
part-time students often find they have little in common with each other: they
have different motivations and patterns of study, part-time students have other
commitments, and getting the timing right for social events that include both
groups can be difficult.
The marginalisation of part-time students from their institution becomes symbolic
as much as real. Part-time students feel discriminated against when the reality of
their limited access to facilities and their exclusion (albeit not deliberate) from
departmental and social events becomes apparent. They may fail to develop
social relations with staff or to integrate with academic networks and thus
become insecure about their ability to develop an academic identity. Despite
differences in the research culture (competitive at RAE high-scoring Woodside,
less so Hillside where departments were not as research active and there were
more international students), part-time students felt marginalized and excluded
from both institutions.
When it came to research training cultures, part-time students were often found
to be resistant to what they saw as the compulsory learning of a range of
methods not necessarily relevant to their field of study (remember - their
motivation is different from full-time students). Full-time home students could be
equally resistant but for different reasons: they often felt they had covered the
material in undergraduate courses, their supervisors had not always bought in to
the culture of research training, and myths had evolved around the purpose and
structure of the courses. The main value of RT courses for part-time students
was perceived as being the opportunities they provided for social and peer
networking, offering the closest parallel to the laboratory research group.
Part-time research students also found academic cultures within their own
disciplines and department difficult to access. They were often unaware of their
potential role in and membership of academic societies and departmental
seminar groups. Communication with departments was often poor but equally
part-time students, motivated more by personal development interests than
academic ambition, were often unmotivated to explore such avenues. Part-time
students did benefit from informal reading groups and student-focused self-help
groups:
"...the reading group is very useful as it builds confidence...The group helps
me to get used to the technical language of my subject and learn fresh
approaches...It is very important to build social networks, essential for new
ideas, references, to find out what others are doing and the intellectual
bouncing of ideas...it is also important as being part-time I often feel very
lonely in my work".
In sum, the researchers found that part-time students have particular difficulties
accessing peer and academic research cultures. The permeability of the peer,
research training and academic research cultures was not always recognized by
the student, who saw the research training component as fundamentally a
different part of their experience. Here, part-time students could benefit from the
social networking aspects but were largely unconvinced of its overlapping
relevance with their peer and academic relationships.
A different approach to the research culture issue comes from research done by
P.R. Smith in a medium-sized western US university.18 The research focused on
the research culture among doctoral students and staff in a college of education
and found that two research cultures developed. The first was a vocational
culture, which developed among part-time doctoral students and staff in the
education administration department. This culture emphasized skills, training,
processes and procedures. A second, more academic culture, developed among
instructors in the common core subjects and emphasized traditional academic
research. The department was characterized by a competitiveness between
these two cultures, which could pit part-time students against some academic
staff and full-time research students.
Supervision
The topic which is may be most problematic is the role of the supervisor(s). As
the student population becomes more diverse, and many move off-campus
physically or virtually, 'traditional' approaches may be inappropriate or
inadequate for the task. Other strategies - course teams, group supervision,
residentials and the national schools- are providing alternative or complementary
approaches.19
When it comes to supervision, it can be argued that the meaning of 'part-time' is
changing. The more traditional supervisory model was once relatively easily
adapted from the full-time to the part-time student's needs. However, when parttime supervision takes place at a distance (perhaps overseas), maybe
electronically, perhaps within the workplace or within a complex collaborative
arrangement, both the operational and the pedagogical aspects need to be
reconsidered to ensure that they are fit for purpose.
Pearson and Ford have argued that the 'traditional' model of supervisor and
student in which the student features as a younger apprentice to an older
'master' remains deeply entrenched in the discourse and that "the need to
consider alternative models, structures and strategies for supervisory provision,
and to recognize the actual presence of these alternatives, is now more urgent".
Supervision practice needs to adopt a flexibility to match the requirements of
diverse doctoral programmes and modes. Supervisory teams (as envisaged in
the Code of Practice) and research training are just the start here. Pearson and
Ford envisage mixed-mode supervision (including both face-to-face and distance,
ICT and resource-based, an opening of research education to include multiplesite delivery, electronic student-to-student resources (listservs, bulletin boards
and chat rooms), workplace learning, academic staff mobility, inter-institution
student mobility, credit transfer, enhanced intra-institutional mobility,
teleconferencing, video-conferencing, group supervision etc.
Flexible approaches to supervision are already being utilized in some
professional and work-based doctorates. The traditional supervisory relationship
("essentially privatized and personalized") is frequently viewed as inappropriate
when students are already experts in their own right, when they may be older
and more practically experienced than their supervisors, and when work-place
supervisors also have to be included in the supervisory process. Janne Malfroy's
study of two professional doctorates in Australia20, demonstrated the benefits of
distributing responsibilities between primary supervisor, administrative officers
and broader supervisory panels. Students who were both employed and studying
simultaneously often exhibited an expectation that they would be closely guided
and instructed by their supervisors, becoming frustrated by supervisors'
expectations of autonomous research. Students also exhibited an initial "awe" of
academic supervisors, a belief in their inherent “intellectual superiority" which was
reinforced by traditional supervisory practices, but which would cause tensions
when set against supervisor expectations of autonomous research. In both
programmes studied, supervisory "seminars" or research groups were arranged
which brought students and staff together in informal settings to air their various
problems, frustrations, and experiences. This process de-emphasised the
traditional student-faculty hierarchy, reassured students that their experiences
were not unique and that their voices were valuable and contributing, and
reinforced the sense of belonging to a research community. One programme
studied held a more formal doctoral school, which lasted for five days every
semester, and which was described in a course document as:
"...to create a culture and environment in which critical reflection on the
doctoral work-in-progress can develop and to provide scholarly input in
areas of research, policy, consultancy and collaboration and publication."
The seminars were designed to build a sense of cohortness amongst the
students and emphasized reflective practice. A number of supervisors would be
involved, although some were not so positive about the experience, feeling that it
"pooled ignorance" by emphasizing this cohortness rather than independent
research.
Another type of doctoral seminar was the PhD Night, held monthly between 6pm
and 9pm, open to doctoral researchers from both the doctoral programme in
question and other programmes. The meetings were informal (held over pizza
and wine) although there were definite agendas to the meetings. Reponses were
mixed: some attendees thought that they were valuable places to mix with other
doctoral students, to consider philosophical and research-related issues, and to
compare these experiences. One supervisor remarked:
"I wished I'd been through a process like this, instead of the one I'd been
through… the interesting dynamic was that 50 per cent of the people in the
room had come from busy work lives... they were coming in to here from a
workplace and bringing those workplace experiences with them, they weren't
just bringing a bookish academic perspective."
This was in contrast to his own experience of "a monoculture… and they were all
"like" people, real clones... in a sense it was stifling."
PhD students who participated attributed enormous influence to this research
group, as a positive and intellectually stimulating environment - described as a
powerful pedagogic practice "which recognized a broader conceptualization of
doctoral education, and in particular the importance of collaborative knowledge
sharing environments and collective models of supervision".
Others felt they were too informal, reduced to mere "chat".
A number of Australian universities have initiated structured arrangements for offcampus students, with varying degrees of formality and frequency, and multimodality. For example, student discussion groups and seminars are sometimes
held through video-conferencing. PhD enrolment can be managed through "splitsite" arrangements which allow students with a supervisor at one institution to
attend research seminars and training groups at another. Enrolment may equally
be flexible in terms of changing periodically between full and part-time status.
Annual and periodic postgraduate workshops/forums are arranged which bring
part-time research students from within and between institutions together to
discuss their work, methodology and ideas. These are organized through regional
forums and university consortia. Funds are offered to support part-time research
students wishing to participate in such workshops elsewhere and clear
information is provided to employers who are supportive of the doctoral research
that the students need periodic time release to participate in these events.
Rethinking the 'norm'
It is perhaps worth ending where we started it, with Margot Pearson and Lys
Ford's comments on the Australian example. They argue for a ditching of
conventional 'dual-mode' thinking which posits a 'traditional' or 'normal' PhD
against part-time, unconventional or newer variants and which inadvertently
attributes greater significance or substance to the former. The reality is that
doctoral studies come in a variety of equally valuable, relevant and flexible
formats.
If we take this view, then the doctoral research process needs to be revised in its
entirety - with reconsideration of everything from institutional and operational
policy, supervision pedagogy, research training, the development of research
cultures at various levels, and the way we distribute what financial resources we
have for doctoral support.
Part-time doctoral research students bring invaluable skills, maturity and
experience. They offer a bridge to the workplace and a highway for bringing
knowledge and innovation into university research. They offer crucial income
generation opportunities and they offer new dimensions to the experience of fulltime research students when they are able to interact. They are themselves an
increasingly diverse community, representing numerous challenges to
conventional notions of what a doctorate is, who does it, why and how. If they are
such an asset, it is time we responded to the challenge.
1
Frank Wareing, "A PhD in just over a year and a half, in Nicole Greenfield (ed), How I
got my postgraduate degree part time, School of Independent Studies, Lancaster
University, p.4-5.
2
Robyn Barnacle and Robin Usher, "Assessing the Quality of Research Training: The Case of
part-time candidates in full-time professional work", in Higher Educational Research and
Development, Vol. 22, No.3, November 2003, pp. 345-358.
3
Grant Harman, "Producing PhD Graduates in Australia for the Knowledge Economy" in
Higher Education Research and Development, Vol. 21, No. 2, 2002, p.181.
4
Higher Education Funding Council for England, PhD Research Degrees: Entry and Completion,
HEFCE: Bristol, 2005.
5
Will Naylor, presentation to UKGrad London Hub Good Practice Workshop, Kings College
London, 18 May 2005, summary available from UKGrad website.
6
T. Evans argues that part-time doctoral programmes allow research and the work-place to be
combined, enhancing innovation and meeting (Australian) economic needs. T. Evans, "Part-time
Research Candidates: Are they producing knowledge where it counts?", in Higher Education
Research and Development, Vol. 21, No. 2, pp. 155-65, 2002.
7
Diana Leonard, Rosamunde Becker and Kelly Coate, "To prove myself at the highest level: The
benefits of doctoral study" in Higher Education Research and Development, Vol. 24, No. 2, may
2005, p. 136.
8
Caroline Gatrell, "Mission Impossible: Doing a Part Time PhD, (or getting 200% out of 20%)
- Is it Really Worth It?" in Nicole Greenfield (ed), How I got my postgraduate degree part
time, School of Independent Studies, Lancaster University.
9
Malcolm Tight, "Part-time Postgraduate Study in the Social Sciences: students' costs and
sources of finance" in Studies in Higher Education, Vo. 17, No. 3, 1992, pp.317-335.
10
Frank Wareing, "A PhD in just over a year and a half, in Nicole Greenfield (ed), How I
got my postgraduate degree part time, School of Independent Studies, Lancaster
University.
11
Margot Pearson and Lys Ford, Open and Flexible PhD Study and Research, Centre for
Educational Development and Academic Methods, The Australian National University, 1997,
pp.45-6.
12
Wareing, Op.cit, p.4.
13
Robyn Barnacle and Robin Usher, "Assessing the Quality of Research Training: The Case of
part-time candidates in full-time professional work", in Higher Educational Research and
Development, Vol. 22, No. 3, November 2003, p349.
14
Taylor, "Changes in Teaching and Learning in the Period to 2005: the case of postgraduate
education in the UK", in Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, Vol. 24, No. 1,
pp.53-73.
15
Roger Linford of De Montfort University presented such a taxonomy as used by his university for
part-time students).
16
Rosemary Deam and Kevin Brehony, "Doctoral Students' Access to Research Culture- are
some more unequal than others?" in Studies in Higher Education, Vol. 25, No. 2,2000, p. 154.
17
Ibid., p.155.
18
P.R. Smith, "A meeting of cultures: part-time students in an Ed.D. Programme", in International
Journal of Leadership in Education, Vol. 3, No.4, October 2000, pp.359-380.
19
Margot Pearson and Lys Ford, Open and Flexible PhD Study and Research, Centre for
Educational Development and Academic Methods, The Australian National University, 1997,
p.X.
20
Janne Malfroy, "Doctoral supervision, workplace research and changing pedagogic practices",
Higher Education Research and Development, Vol. 24, Issue 2, May 2005, pp.165-178