EUA Council for Doctoral Education
The Doctoral Debate
“The Doctoral Debate” is an online platform featuring original articles with commentary and analysis on doctoral education in Europe. Articles focus on trending topics in doctoral education and state-of-the-art policies and practices. The Debate showcases voices and views from EUA-CDE members and partners.
All views expressed in these articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of EUA Council for Doctoral Education. If you would like to respond to this article by writing your own piece, please see The Doctoral Debate style guidelines and contact the CDE team to pitch your idea.
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21 Oct. 2021The road towards structured doctoral education: insights from Ireland Key players in Irish higher education have published a study about the implementation of the Irish National Framework for Doctoral Education. EUA expert Helene Peterbauer provides first-hand insights from the study and makes two recommendations for higher education systems seeking to enhance their post-graduate research provision. Read more
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21 Sep. 2021Researchers should assert their intellectual rights The Rights Retention Strategy developed by cOAlition S can be used by researchers to affirm their rights to their own work and deposit an Open Access copy of their paper in a repository. It allows researchers to reuse and share their work as they see fit, making it immediately accessible to the widest possible audience. Read more
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21 Jun. 2021A framework for collaborative doctoral education within Europe The Bologna Process and the Salzburg principles have inspired European consensus about the aims of doctoral education. However, their implementation has differed widely and international collaboration in doctoral programmes is challenging. This article introduces the ORPHEUS (Organisation for PhD Education in Biomedicine and Health Sciences in the European System) Best Practices for PhD training and proposes a framework for doctoral education that is both sufficiently flexible to allow for diversity and robust enough to allow for collaboration. Read more
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20 Jan. 2021Comparing apples with oranges: the career paths of doctorate holders Numerous initiatives are set up to gain insight into the (non-academic) careers of doctorate holders. Unfortunately, these initiatives use different methodologies, target specific groups and tap into different career aspects, making it difficult to make comparisons across groups, universities, countries and time. This article offers recommendations on how to get optimal insight into doctorate holders’ careers. Read more
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12 Oct. 2020Enabling FAIR research data management through doctoral education Research data management following the findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR) principles has quickly evolved into a major priority of European research policy. Drawing lessons from research in the FAIRsFAIR project, EUA project manager Lennart Stoy reflects on what doctoral education can contribute to this endeavour. Read more
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07 Sep. 2020Towards a global doctorate? Against the backdrop of the Covid-19 crisis, EUA-CDE Steering Committee Member Hans-Joachim Bungartz looks at the world of doctoral education and reflects on the importance of location, the institutional context and local supervision as meetings can be organised online anywhere. This piece briefly depicts the issue and launches a very relevant discussion on global doctorates. Read more
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17 Jun. 2020Blended learning in doctoral education The shift to blended learning may have taken years, but the Covid-19 pandemic has quickly changed the playing field, accelerating the move to online approaches. As Marianna Bevova of the University of Liège explains, this transition is particularly interesting in the field of doctoral education. Read more
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22 May. 2020Doctoral education and Covid-19: the impact on early-career researchers As universities move many activities online in the fallout of the Covid-19 crisis, doctoral schools face unique challenges. EUA-CDE Head Alexander Hasgall discusses the impact on early-career researchers, in particular their doctoral defences, funding, international collaborations, and mental health and wellbeing. Read more
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04 May. 2020German study: most doctoral candidates are satisfied with their situation A new study in Germany aims to map thousands of doctoral candidates in dozens of universities, providing insight into their working conditions, views on supervision, motivation, career goals, and mobility during doctoral studies, as well as possible thoughts on dropping out. As Kolja Briedis from the German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies tells us, the results are better than expected. Read more
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18 Mar. 2020Precarious careers: postdoctoral researchers in the Netherlands The number of postdoc researchers is growing and while they enjoy their work and colleagues, studies in the Netherlands revealed that they experience high stress levels. Christine Teelken and Inge van der Weijden discuss mental health and the main stressors, including lack of academic career prospects, publication and grant pressure, work-life imbalance and lack of institutional support. Read more