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 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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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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01 Oct. 2019How doctorates vary across Europe, from the perspective of doctoral candidates Doctorates across Europe differ in rules about admission and employment, requirements for performance, rules for supervision or doctoral dissertation. What are the strong points and where are the challenges? The Eurodoc survey “Doctorates across Europe” provides some answers. Read more
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07 Mar. 2019Opportunities and challenges of training “triple-helix knowledge workers” in collaborative doctoral programmes Increasing interaction between universities, industry and government – the “triple-helix” model - creates new ways of training knowledge workers to meet labour market demands in the knowledge-based economy. Que Anh Dang and Marta Vizcaya Echano from Coventry University discuss how triple-helix partners seize the opportunities and overcome the challenges of co-constructing collaborative doctorates from their diverging perspectives. Read more
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26 Sep. 2018The value of Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions for research mobility and society Policy makers and university leaders across Europe are currently discussing the proposal for Horizon Europe – the 9th EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation. The level of engagement shows just how important the framework programme is for universities, as it will decide the future funding of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions (MSCA) and other programmes. In this context, this article reflects on the importance the MSCA International Training Networks (ITNs) have had on training the next generation of researchers at Aarhus University in Denmark. Read more
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22 Aug. 2018Doctoral education in South Africa: ambitions and challenges The South African government has expressed its ambition to substantially increase the number of doctoral graduates by 2030. Graduates will be prepared for a world that is more connected in both cultural and economic terms and contribute to the country’s economic development and global competitiveness. However, the current capacity of universities is insufficient to deliver on this ambition and should be expanded, while international mobility brings up questions related to brain drain. Read more