Skip to content

Exploring Adviser/Advisee relationship in different countries

CreatingaSocialAcademicSpace3The relationship between adviser and advisees are considered one of the most crucial interactions in graduate education, particularly in doctorate education. While the number of international students that come to the United States to pursue doctorate degrees continues to grow, it is important to better understand  how graduate education operates in other countries and how are the relationships between adviser/advisee to which international students were exposed before coming to the United States.
CIRGE and students organizations of the College of Education at the University of Washington are co-hosting a student panel on adviser/advisee relationships that will solve these questions.

Recent Talks

10/17: Student Panel on adviser/advisee interaction in different countries

11/15: Faculty Panel on adviser/advisee interaction in China

Student Panel: Adviser/Advisee relationship in different countries

panel1
From the right to  the left, the students Weijia Wang (China) from the College of Education, Ricardo Pedregal (México) from College of Engineering, Max Schneider (Ukraine) from department of Statistics, and Francisca Gómez (Chile), from the department of Sociology, participating in the student panel.

The relationship between advisers and advisees is considered one of the most crucial interactions in graduate education, particularly at the doctoral level. While the number of international students that come to the United States to pursue doctoral degrees continues to grow (10% of graduate students at University of Washington-College of Education are temporary visa holders), one key issue that needs to be considered by advisors and student support offices is the experiences that international students bring as advisees in other countries. What are students used to in regards to advising?  Would international students be better off if they knew in advance how similar/different the US culture in graduate education is in comparison to what they have experienced before?

CIRGE and two student organizations from the College of Education (International Educators at the College of Education & Teacher Education and Research Interest Group)  at the University of Washington co-hosted a student panel on adviser-advisees relations in higher education the past October 17th. The panel was composed by UW international graduate students coming from countries such as China, Chile, Mexico and Ukraine, and who are studying at different departments across campus. The event, which was also supported by the Office of Student Diversity and Inclusion of the College of Education, allowed to see differences and commonalities between being an advisee in countries whose educational model is highly influenced by the Confucianism philosophy versus educational models heavily influenced by western cultures.

Being an advisee in the Confucianism model

International doctoral students who obtained their master’s degrees in countries like South Korea and China pointed out that the image of the advisor is very close to the image of a father/mother, which is highly influenced by the Confucianism philosophy. “Professors and teachers in our countries represent an important authority, and everyone recognizes that the relationship between professors/students is a hierarchical relationship. This does not mean that students cannot have their own opinion, but the style is much more oriented to do what professors recommend us to do”, comments Weijia Wang, who is currently a doctoral student in Curriculum and Instruction from China. Soo-Yean, also a doctoral student in the College of Education, commented that her experience as a master student in South Korea was relatively similar. “In our culture, professors are seen more as authorities who are responsible for leading us in a desirable direction”.

In comparison to the experience of being an advisee in the US, international students from Asia posed that one of the main differences between being an advisee in a model of education rooted in confucianism versus a US model  relates to the expectation of “who”  starts the conversation in the advisor/advisee dynamics. Another doctoral student from South Korea who was in the audience added that she was unaware that in order to receive support from the advisers, the student himself/herself is responsible for advocating and reaching out to the advisors. “When I arrived in the States I did not know that I needed to speak up, until after three months of being here, I realized that my  US  colleagues were being offered more research opportunities than me, because they were talking directly with our adviser. This is something that we do not know pretty often in South Korea, because we assume that professors will contact us if there is any research opportunity”, the student commented.

Being an advisee in western countries

Students highlight the uniqueness of their experiences as advisees. Francisca Gómez (at the right in the pic), who studied his master in public policy in Chile, pointed out that her adviser became a close colleague and friend. “I used to discuss not only technical topics with him [adviser], but also opinions about controversial political issues in society”, Francisca adds.

I had a very close relationship with my advisor, and we created a type of relationship where I felt safe giving my political opinion about very controversial topics

From a different perspective, the relationship between adviser/advisee in western European and Latin America countries seems to be more dependent on the role of students. Francisca Gomez, PhD student in the Sociology department at UW and originally from Chile, commented that from the undergraduate level, students in Chile are expected to contact and ask for help to their advisors. “In Chile, students are expected to contact their advisor when they need it. I had a very close relationship with my advisor, and we created a type of relationship where I felt safe giving my political opinion about very controversial topics. It is important to notice that this cannot be generalized. It occurred that my advisor was someone that committed to a similar political ideology than me”. Slightly different, Max Schneider, PhD student at the department of Statistics originally from Ukraine and who conducted his master studies in Germany, explained that doctoral students are the main responsible to contact the adviser to ask for help or to provide support, and although classically the relationship between advisor and advisee has been very hierarchical in Germany, this dynamic changes dramatically across institutions. “I took classes at different universities in Germany while I was doing my master, and it was very obvious that the relationship with the professors changed according to the size and level of prestige of the university. Usually, the level of hierarchy among advisor/advisee was higher at more prestigious universities”.

Ricardo Pedregal, doctoral student in Material Sciences at the University of Guadalajara- Mexico and visiting fellow at UW, commented that his experience as an advisee working with professors in different countries falls into a similar dynamic where students are expected to raise the question and advocate for themselves, but at the same time, these interactions also vary across western countries, institutions, and disciplinary fields. Ricardo, who studied his master in three different institutions in Italy, Poland and France, said that within the same field of study there are aspects of the national culture that shaped his experience as an advisee. “In Italy, every day I would have coffee with my adviser to talk about my research and/other related topics. In Poland, the environment was very kind and welcoming, but the relationship was never as close as an Italy”.

These student voices indicate the advisor/advisee relationship is not only influenced by national (civilizational) cultures, but also affected by institutional characteristics and disciplinary norms. At the same time, their voices call the attention to the existing institutional spaces that allow us to recognize and understand better the background and expectation of students that grew up in different societies.

 

Seminar about Globalization & Education: Creating a social academic space

Group of Students Studying About Global IssuesOrganized by a group of faculty and students from the College of Education at the University of Washington (UW), this seminar is an invitation to reflect on the way global dynamics affect the agenda setting in education worldwide.  The main goal of this seminar is to make visible the intersections between globalization and education which influence the ways in which educators, including those at the UW, are teaching and doing research. At the same time, the launching of the second CIRGE book “Globalization and its Impact on the Quality of Doctoral Education” will be part of this seminar.

Date and Location

Where: Miller Hall – Room 411 – UW Seattle Campus (see map)

When: Tuesday, May 12, 10:00 AM – 1:30 PM

The seminar is organized by the Teaching Education Research Inquiry (TERI) group, the International of Educators of the College of Education (IECE), and CIRGE.

Agenda

10.00  Registration
10.15 – Introduction
10.20  Discussion: Where do globalization and education intersect with knowledge production?
11.15    Book Launch: “Globalization and Its Impact on the Quality of Doctoral Education“, edited  by Maresi Nerad & Barbara Evans.
12.00 – Faculty and Student Panel “Whose knowledge counts (in the field of education)?

 

Presenters

Dr. Vanessa Andreotti, professor of the University of British Columbia  will present about the intersection between globalization and knowledge construction process in Education.  In her talk, she will also refer to the results of her project “Ethical Internationalism in Higher Education in Times of Crises”, which examines how transnational literacy and notions of global citizenship and social responsibility are constructed in internationalization processes of higher education in different countries.

Dr. Matthew Sparke, professor of International Studies, Geography and Global Health at the University of Washington, will comment on the book “Globalization and Its Impacts to Doctoral Education” and its contributions to the field.  Dr. Sparke is author of Introducing Globalization: Ties, Tensions and Uneven Integration (Wiley, Oxford: 2013), and In the Space of Theory: Post Foundational Geographies of the Nation-State (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis: 2005), as well as of over 75 other publications in the field of globalization and education.

Dr. Walter Parker is professor of the College of Education and the Political Science Department at the University of Washington.  Dr. Parker is an expert in the civic development of youth and social studies curriculum and instruction K-12.

Dr. Jondou Chen is an Associated Researcher at the UW College of Education with special focus on the program of Education, Equity and Society.  Dr. Chen  research interests involve the intersection of adolescent, moral, and cross-cultural development as well as neighborhood effects on development.

MJ (Mee Joo) Kim is a Ph.D. candidate in Higher Education at the UW College of Education. She has been working for a 5-institution, 5-year, NSF-funded project that investigated to understand the impact of belonging and other connections to community on academic engagement for undergraduates in science, math, and engineering (STEM). Her current research interest revolves in assessing institutional strategies to embrace global consciousness among college students majoring in STEM disciplines.

Hwayeon Myeong is a M.Ed student in Multicultural Education program at the UW College of Education. She is interested in how multicultural education in the United States can be applied to the education in reunified Korea. She is the founder and the president of The Human rights In North Korea (THINK), a registered student organization at UW.

 

Why to organize a seminar about globalization and education?

Researchers have widely acknowledged that the agenda on education is part of the global and international dynamics. However, this “global” component  become imperceptible when discussions about education focus largely on the United States. Students, faculty and staff of the College of Education at the University of Washington are attempting to articulate a space in which the intersection between global and local education becomes visible. 

“Education is an applied field and we know that our main focus is and has to be local. Along with that, we (a group of students and scholars) are immensely interested in understanding how that local agenda of education is influenced by global dynamics, and that what we do here has an impact for the rest of the world”, explains the PhD student Roxana Chiappa who is one of the organizers of this event.

Gathering faculty, students and the local communities to learn more about and to reflect on educational systems in other countries is the primary goal of this seminar, as well as to have a space to reflect how the ways of teaching and creating knowledge may impose dynamics of power for countries and societies that see the United States as a model in education.

The seminar is organized by the Teaching Education Research Inquiry (TERI) group, the International of Educators of the College of Education (IECE), and CIRGE.

Doctoral students are already fostering collaboration across sectors and disciplines

By Roxana Chiappa

Dr. Beate Scholz is a higher education consultant, CIRGE member and German national. She has spent the last 15 years as a leader and collaborator of cross-national studies and projects sponsored by the European National Sciences Foundation, national governments and universities in Europe, America and Asia. Her multi-national experience working on doctoral programs, innovation plans and talent management projects makes her one of the most highly qualified European expert’s voices to discuss what challenges doctoral education is facing in Europe and how PhD students participate in this process.

The invitation was to identify the most pressing issues for doctoral education and discuss what strategies European universities are implementing to respond to these forces.

Beate Scholz in one of her talks about doctoral education
Beate Scholz in one of her talks about doctoral education

In your opinion, which of these forces will have a considerable impact on graduate education in the next five years in Europe? 

“The first clarification is that when we talk about Europe, we need to be aware that there are different realities across European countries.  There are very small countries, like Luxembourg, where doctoral education is seen as a part and a contributor of the society’s wealth, and there are larger countries like Germany. Small countries are very actively engaged in changing doctoral education because they want to be competitive.  Larger countries and particularly in Germany, but many other European countries as well, are challenged in terms of quality and transparency of the structure of doctoral structure.

In general, there is an increasing awareness about the importance of the quality of education and training. How universities can better prepare the next generation of leaders does not depend uniquely on the quality of the professors. European universities are becoming aware that quality also implies improving the high rate of doctoral education attrition.  In this sense, the idea of having a kind of structure that allows implementing certain coursework becomes very important. Equally, it becomes important to adopt transparent criteria of recruitment, promote international collaboration among universities, and maintain requirements to be formally admitted as a doctoral candidate/student.  These topics have emerged as one of the most pressing issues that European universities are now facing and it will be on their radar, so to speak, during the next five years.

Along this kind of thinking, Germany has launched its “Excellent Initiative” which aims to promote cutting-edge research and to create outstanding conditions for young scientists at universities. Today, there are an increasing number of German universities that are establishing graduate schools and that are assessing their doctoral education processes in order to better prepare the next generation of researchers”.

In this context, Dr. Scholz highlighted the relevance of exposing doctoral students to different experiences of collaboration across sectors and disciplines. She points out that current and future PhD holders are and will be increasingly challenged to solve problems and deal with different environments than former PhD holders.

“I believe that doctoral education in general should be fostering mobility across sectors and disciplines. And when I say mobility, I am thinking of the possibility that exists to collaborate across sectors, fields, and countries.  In work, I aim to increase the flow of doctoral researchers between university, across countries, but also across sectors, that is between university and industry. Todays and tomorrows PhD students need to become intellectual risk-takers. Risk-taking is difficult in the well-trotted path, it requires to look beyond the own path and field, and in this sense, mobility as experiences and interdisciplinary collaboration as a practice is critical”.

What would you suggest for promoting intellectual risk-taking in doctoral education?

In addition to promoting mobility and collaboration across sectors and fields, I really believe that countries and organizations require talent management. People are different, they are talented in different skills; so rather than encourage everybody to study, for instance engineering, we need to understand how people are different from each other, and how they can uniquely contribute to  knowledge production beyond the main streams of academia.

What is the role of doctoral students in the future of these pressing issues?

Increasingly doctoral students find opportunities to collaborate across sectors, in spite of the bureaucratic obstacles established by universities. PhD students are already in ‘bridging’ relationships and, in many cases they challenge the structure and patterns of universities. As administrators and professors, we should encourage students and facilitate those instances of collaboration cross national boundaries and cross sectors if we really want our students to be able to contribute solving the most pressing societal and world issues.

Doctoral Education in Russia: Reforms and pending challenges

By Anya Klyukanova & Roxana Chiappa

In the last decade, the Russian government has been reforming its university system with the goal of increasing its international positioning. In 2013, the government launched the 5/100 initiative to position at least five of the Russian universities into the top 100 universities. This goal relates directly to improving the institutional capacity of universities through strengthening their research capacity, in which doctoral education plays a critical role. In the process, certain universities are attempting to reform doctoral programs by including a structured curriculum, incorporating international advisers in the dissertation process, and sending their doctoral students to spend one semester in a foreign university. These changes have happened at the National Research University – Higher School of Economics (HSE) established in 1992.

CIRGE had the opportunity to interview Dr. Igor Chirikov, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Education (Higher School of Economics, Moscow) and SERU-I Managing Director at CSHE (UC Berkeley), who helped us to illustrate the ongoing reforms and pending challenges in Russian doctoral education.

Chirikov
Dr. Igor Chirikov from the National Research University – Higher School of Economics

To my view there are several challenges for doctoral education in Russia. The first and major one is poor academic market: faculty salaries are generally low (leading universities, such as HSE, are exception), universities tend to hire their own graduates, and the level of faculty mobility is very low. As a consequence, doctoral programs are not very selective. Universities don’t have a large pool of PhD applicants to choose from, prospective students are not highly motivated for their studies. A certain portion of male PhD students just try to avoid military service by enrolling to doctoral program.

Second, there are more and more questions about the quality of Russian doctoral education. Being designed after German apprentice model of pursuing a PhD, doctoral programs in Russia have very limited training component. It is expected that student primarily works on her or his thesis under the supervision of senior faculty member, contributing to the development of particular “school of thought”. Given that universities hire their own graduates, the focus in doctoral education is shifting from the development of good and universal academic skills to socialization and internalization of rules and practices of a particular department or university.

Third, doctoral education in Russia suffers from plagiarism. This is especially true for social sciences and humanities, where professional academic communities are still fragmented and have different views on research ethics and standards. Despite numerous cases of corrupt academic behavior and plagiarism (some of these cases were even covered by media) it is hard to say that the policy of zero tolerance for plagiarism was implemented on national or even institutional levels. The situation is changing, but very slowly.

Fourth, at present doctoral degrees are awarded by the state agency called Higher Attestation Committee (VAK), and not by universities themselves. And technically all degrees are equal to each other: it doesn’t matter where a person did her of his PhD. Such system doesn’t stimulate universities to care about the quality of doctoral programs as their reputation does not depend on the quality of their doctoral graduates.

And fifth there are some unresolved structural issues that decrease the international competitiveness of Russian doctoral education. People with foreign PhDs have certain difficulties in acceptance of their degrees to work at Russian universities. Russia still has two-tier system of Candidate of Science (similar to PhD) and Doctor of Science (similar to German Habilitation) degrees and thus Russian academics have similar problems with recognition of their qualifications abroad. Last year two universities were given the right to award their own PhD degrees as part of the experiment, but in certain disciplines only and in addition to Candidate or Doctor of Science degrees.

2423027_FULL-LND
The National Research University – Higher School of Economics (HSE) in Russia

I believe it is exciting to engage data in the decision-making process in order to improve university services, student and faculty experience. In many Russian universities, the decision-making process isn’t managed well and rectors rely on everything but data: they favor their personal experiences and some expert opinions, but not the data. They don’t turn to university statistics nor do they ask students or faculty about their experiences and views. At the same time leading universities have begun to recognize the value of institutional research. HSE developed a fairly large institutional research office with eight people and we are in the process of improving the quality of our university by supporting its strategy and decision making process. The IR office provides leadership with various analytical reports based on data that we collect and analyze.

In the case of doctoral education, institutional research office assisted in the analysis of doctoral students experience based on university-wide PhD student survey. One of the goals was to understand how we can improve completion rate, which by 2011 was quite low: only around 20% of students defended their dissertation on time (within 4 years). It is a challenge how to shorten the time to degree and at the same time retain the highest quality of our dissertations. The other challenge was to make our doctoral programs more internationally competitive, attract more talents on national and global levels.

How has HSE addressed these challenges?

The major reform of our doctoral programs started in 2010. HSE became one of the first Russian universities to introduce structured PhD program design. All students enrolled in these programs receive sufficient scholarship that allows them not to look for a job outside of the university and focus on their studies (having a full-time job is one of the main reasons to drop out from doctoral program). Then our structured PhD programs include intensive training component: courses in research methodology, academic writing, advanced discipline-specific courses. In addition to that students have the opportunity to work with an international advisor and spend a semester at any university of their choice abroad, to discuss their research finding. The university is covering all the costs.

All these elements might not be surprising for a western scholar or student, who expects to find many of those in any good doctoral program. But for Russian doctoral education the introduction of structured programs is a huge step forward on the way to increasing quality and global competitiveness. Such design creates a very stimulating research environment, increases student engagement and motivation.

In systems where research takes place in universities increasing international positioning in university rankings is normally associated with quality and capacity of research production and thus with doctoral education. In the past, in Russia research was produced in academies. Has this changed? How do you expect that Russian doctoral education will change as result of the 5/100 government plan?

Right. I think doctoral education will change tremendously because universities will become more research oriented. Traditionally, research was done not in universities but in academies of science and many universities don’t have a long tradition of doing research. Now there is a push and support from the government for universities to become more research-oriented and more international. I think this thrust will mean a lot for developing graduate education because developing a research capacity means producing more doctorates. The next step is to develop more transparent and dynamic academic market, provide doctoral graduates with competitive salaries and more opportunities to work at university outside of their own.

“>According to the Shanghai Ranking 2013, two Russian universities appear among the 500 top universities. The University of Moscow is number 79, while the Saint Petersburg State University is located between 301-400. The Higher School of Economics is ranked 501-550 (232 in Social Sciences and Management) by QS World University Rankings.

Assessing the effects of internationalizing policies on doctoral education in Malaysia

By Anya Klyukanova & Roxana Chiappa

“In Malaysia, with the right qualification, almost anybody can get at least some kind a tertiary education”. With this quote, Dr. Roshada Hashim, Director of USIM ‘Alamiyyah International Centre, Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia and former Dean of the Institute of Graduate Studies at the Universiti Sains Malaysia, starts her explanation about the effect of internationalization policies on Malaysian doctoral education.

Dr. Roshada Hashim
Dr. Roshada Hashim

CIRGE had the opportunity to hold an extended conversation with Dr. Hashim, who shed light on the ongoing process of internationalization of doctoral education. Her vast experience as an investigator, formative professors, and top administrator for more than 20 years in Malaysia as well as research collaborator worldwide, makes her an expert voice to elucidate the challenge of doctoral education in Malaysia.

Malaysia ranks 11th in the world in attracting large numbers of international students. The government has been explicit in its attempt to internationalize higher education. How do you see this affecting doctoral education in Malaysia?

We are now seeing an increasing number of international universities opening branches of their universities in Malaysia. Because the government wants Malaysia to be a higher education hub, we have liberalized our educational policy to the extent that universities can open branch campuses here. This resulted in universities from the United Kingdom and Australian  opening branch campuses and we are expecting an even larger number of top universities from other foreign countries to open their branch campuses in Malaysia. Although these branch campuses will initially offer undergraduate programs, it stands to reason that these universities will expand to provide postgraduate programs resulting in an influx of doctoral students coming from abroad to Malaysia, but not just to study at Malaysian universities, but foreign ones as well. The fees charged by the foreign universities are only a portion of what they would pay if they were to study in United Kingdom for example, or their own country, so these are very effective circumstances for many students who want to pursue doctoral degrees. Currently, public Malaysian universities offer a wide range of  doctoral degrees but the presence of the foreign universities will eventually open up more opportunities for students worldwide to come to Malaysia and study.

Quality assurance is a hot topic in doctoral education in these days. What is the quality assurance process at these new universities?

Well, until now, every program has to go through the rigorous standards set by the Malaysian Qualifications Agency and the Ministry of Education. Malaysian students have  an opportunity either to study at government or private universities and would experience the same quality assurance mechanism. The difference is that the price is a tenth in government universities, because education  in government universities is highly subsidized, students pay a very small portion of the fees. Therefore, many students automatically will try to get into government universities, especially because many government universities are mature, very well equipped (and have a good infrastructure), in all, they are more attractive. But having said this, private universities are developing quickly and they are interested in improving their quality standards. Obviously many are well funded and therefore are able to improve at a faster rate than public ones.

Well, from my perspective, I notice a serious problem of unequal quality among our international students. Quality standards differ greatly from one nation to another nation, which, in my opinion, is affecting the success of their graduate education here in Malaysia.  For example, we get a lot of students from developing countries with various quality of skills and knowledge. Although everybody has a Bachelor’s or a Master’s degree, the standards differ so much that when they come to our universities, these students sometimes need to catch up with our standards or they realize that they cannot follow the advance level that we have in our classes. Sometimes their academic qualification and the training they had received at home are not at par with our standards and therefore they have difficulties being admitted into our programs. We have had to take measures to level up the competencies  and I believe it has affected how we take in students and who we take in hence they may have to spend more time to complete their studies. Many universities in Malaysia have a policy to provide education for everyone.  This policy applies not just to Malaysian students but  it applies to all students who want to study in Malaysia, and because of this policy, we have an issue of quality.

  Besides, we also notice that there are students who fulfill the requirements to attend graduate school but lack the required language proficiency. There is a pool of students who have gone through a bachelor’s degree in their home country and since their country has limited opportunities for postgraduate studies, these students have to attend graduate school elsewhere. In doctoral studies, students more often than not have to write a dissertation in English. Therefore, we are now very selective and only take students who have a certain level of English proficiency. It is indeed an unfortunate situation because  it doesn’t mean that if you can’t speak English, you aren’t good enough for a doctoral program. Because of their inability to speak English and to formulate their arguments, we think they’re not smart. So it is very likely that we “miss” good doctoral students. We need to come up with creative solutions to address this gap in our education system.

 

This is one of the entrances of the Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia, where Dr. Hashim works as the former Dean of the Institute of Graduate Studies
This is one of the entrances of the Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia, where Dr. Hashim works as the former Dean of the Institute of Graduate Studies

 Do you see PhD students enhancing international collaboration?

 Definitely. I think that’s how we’ve been surviving all these years. It’s how we’ve been able to improve our network. Many international students are from developing countries and become professors in their countries. Also, a good number of them work later in the ministries of their countries and in turn influence policies. Over the years, we have found that our alumni are  the ones with whom current PhD students connect and start collaboration. A lot of our collaboration is a result having educated them here during their PhD education

Do you think that the influx of international students is affecting the experience for both local student and academic staff, as well as international students and scholars within your universities?

I always tell people here that there is a culture shock on both sides. It is not only the international students who have to adjust to their new surroundings and culture, there’s a culture shock on the university’s side, too. As our universities mature and have more diverse groups of university students, the culture shock affects more of the non academic staff. We, the academic staff, are familiar with the do’s and don’ts of how people from different countries behave. However, the non academic staff have had very little exposure in the past to people from different cultures. We in Malaysian universities need to understand and know how to address people from different cultures. It’s not so much that we expect the international students to adjust to our culture, but that we have to become more knowledgeable about other cultures and adjust to theirs as well.

Overall, international students are welcomed and  accepted by both the university and the community surrounding the universities. The willingness to understand and accept different cultures must penetrate the entire university, including administrators and lecturers/faculty including the local students as well as among the international students themselves, otherwise we are not offering a very good learning and working environment. We need to be willing to give and take and not close our minds. I tell this to the international students and I tell this to our people. International students need to adjust to us, and we need to adjust to them. It is a positive and mutual adaptation process.

Recently, the Malaysian government implemented a policy that aims to educate 200,000 international students by the year 2020, which is projected to boost the economy by about 180 billion USD. The success that Malaysia has been experiencing by focusing on higher education may prove to be a model copied by many other developing economies.

 

 

Doctoral Education in Australia: Lack of academic positions affects interests for pursuing doctoral degrees among domestic applicants

By Anya Klyukanova & Roxana Chiappa

While Australia is one of the more popular countries for international students to receive a postgraduate degree, domestic applicants seem to be less motivated for continuing doctoral degrees at home. Dr. Richard Strugnell, Pro Vice-Chancellor of Graduate Research at the University of Melbourne, summarizes the phenomenon succinctly: “The universities are not hiring – they’re just growing their class size, and as a consequence, there are a lot of PhDs who are finishing their degrees and can’t find jobs in academic positions. Then they try to find a position in their respective field   of the corporate sector or government, but they do not necessarily have an advantage by having a PhD.”  Dr. Strugnell is an expert on doctoral education in Australia. His experience as a professor, lead researcher, administrator and advisory member for Australian and International universities make him an informed voice to elucidate the challenges of doctoral education in Australia.

Dick_Strugnell

How can you explain this phenomenon of the depreciating value of a PhD in Australia?

There are several causes, but I perceive that graduates know early on in their doctoral programs that it’s going to be hard to find a job in Australia. This leads to attrition and low completion rates in some disciplines and to lower and lower domestic supply of PhDs. Twenty years ago, maybe more, it was very common for doctoral graduates from Melbourne to go to the US or Europe for a postdoctoral stay. Then, those individuals remained in these countries and went on to academic careers.  These days, I don’t see students traveling so often. I see students operating under the assumptions that even if they go overseas for a postdoc, when they come back, they will not get an academic position, so they might as well accept that and go straight into some sort of profession here (or try to) and therefore give up the idea of an academic career pretty early on.

CIRGE: Quality of doctoral education has become a hot topic in the United States and in some European countries. What kind of quality assurance mechanisms exist in Australia?  

The process of quality assurance is very different in Australia. For example, doctoral candidates who are about  to graduate submit their thesis in a similar way as candidates at US universities, but the Australian candidates do not have an oral exam and thus, the candidates are not subjected to the in depth questioning that can occur through a viva. The thesis is read by at least two experts in the field who have an opinion about the quality of the doctorate, which is a proxy for the quality of the research and the PhD graduate. The principle is that the thesis is examined and not the student. Therefore, we send the thesis to two or three experts outside of the university and usually outside of Australia.  From a quality assurance perspective, the thesis is being examined by people who have no conflict of interest within the university. In examination settings where internal examiners are used, it is sometimes hard to get fully objective views of the quality of the thesis and you can start to get conflicting views. But this examination process is just a consequence of Australia being a long way from everywhere else. The view was taken early on that since we were so far away and it took such a long time to get here by plane or by boat, then we would examine the thesis, not the student. So that’s a different quality assurance process than the one in place in other countries. In Australia, while we accept there are weaknesses in this process, at the same time, there is reasonable quality assurance, because the dissertation is being assessed by someone  who doesn’t have any relationship with the university.  They read the argument and make an assessment.

The US model of doctoral education appears as a reference for several countries, such as Germany, which is promoting institutional and formative adjustments  in order to provide more structured conditions in their doctoral education programs. How does Australia address this process of creating structured doctoral programs? 

There are tensions around preparation. Our PhD is shorter than the American doctoral degree by two or three years and usually students don’t do as much teaching during their candidature. In many disciplines, they finish their undergraduate studies and jump right away into the research phase. We’re trying to make our students more like US graduates who have more and deeper discipline related coursework in either a bridging Masters program or in the first 1-2 years of the research phase. Employers are looking at the preparation of the graduate, and want to know about the types of experiences student received during the PhD. Was there any further preparation between the undergraduate degree and entry into the PhD program? And when there was not, there is a growing pressure on the preparation pathway to include coursework. Probably that pathway will be extended to have a deeper disciplinary understanding before the PhD candidates begin their research. While we are beginning to extend the process of receiving a doctorate, we do not want it to become as long as the process is in the United States. You can graduate with a PhD in Australia in six to seven years after you have started your undergraduate degree. That rarely happens in the US. So the pressure here is to extend the program and make our graduates look more like US graduates, who may have deeper discipline knowledge gained through coursework or teaching, by adding more disciplinary related coursework. We are harmonizing our model to the US.

International students are important actors in the doctoral education system in Australia.   We have developed strategic relationships with universities in particular countries like China, where China’s undergraduates will come to Melbourne to do their PhDs and then go back to China. There’s good investment from our side into these collaborations. We need a certain number of PhD students because in the Australian research environment, especially in the STEM disciplines, doctoral students do much of the research. This is also different than the US. We don’t have so many postdocs here; we have a lot of PhD students, relatively speaking. If we can’t get Australian students to do PhDs, then we need to get the PhDs from China, India, Europe, and sometimes from the United States. In this sense, international students provide both an important challenge and opportunity for Australian universities: they need to hire more international researchers and professors in order to internationalize our workforce to deal with larger numbers of international undergraduates.

melbourne
Campus of University of Melbourne, one of the most important universities in Australia.

Is the Australian national government addressing any policy in regards to doctoral education?

Well, the government carries out an exercise looking at research strengths every two to three years, in order to see how strong the universities are from a research perspective. This program is called the ERA: Excellence in Research in Australia. This program assesses the research strength of universities by discipline. But then this program doesn’t restrict research training to those universities that can demonstrate a strong research culture. It allows every university to do what they want regardless of the quality of the research and research infrastructure. We think this is an ineffective policy that is potentially bad for the student. It’s hard enough to get a job as it is, but it’s hard to get one when you don’t really know what internationally competitive research looks like.  So the government is certainly interested in doctoral education, but it is not interested enough, in our view. The government should not only take a keen interest in the research production, but it should also be interested in the quality of research, and allow research and doctoral education in only those universities with very good research environments. A good doctoral training program can only happen in a good training environment. We have some places offering PhDs where the research environment is pretty skimpy.

CIRGE: Is the decline of PhDs seen as an important issue? How can this issue be resolved?

To support the increased higher education participation rate, the Australian academic sector needs to grow and there’s no evidence that anyone wants to invest in this country, in growing the academic sector. The federal government wants more students to go to university but they don’t want to spend more money on the universities on a per student basis – the government simply wants the universities to absorb the increasing students numbers with little additional funding and/or to transfer the major financial burden to students.  The Australian government bandies around the fact that university graduates have significantly increased lifetime earnings and therefore should pay more.  What they do not say is that, as a consequence, university graduates pay more in income taxes over their lifetime that more than offsets the costs of their education.

And the other area that needs a lot of work is explaining to potential interested students the value of doing a doctorate and the skills that doctoral students obtain during their training, thus becoming more employable in all sectors of society, be it in academia, or government, or industry. The value of their training needs to be understood both by the PhD candidates and by employers. This is not happening at the moment.

All we can see is that the number of Australian students who are applying is declining. This is a bit disappointing, but at the same time, it raises the question of the role of doctoral education and the value of a PhD outside of the academy.

In a study commissioned by the Australian Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education, which is the department responsible for administering funding for higher education in Australia, 1,200 PhD researchers were surveyed in 2012. It was found that almost all of them enjoyed their work, but experienced difficulties with the employment system. In fact, more than half the respondents indicated that “uncertain job prospects” was the single worst aspect of a PhD career.

See more on

http://www.tossgascoigne.com.au/docs/CareerSupportForResearchers.pdf

Setting International Research Agendas

Forces and Forms of Doctoral Education Worldwide workshops have contributed to develop research agendas among more than 60 experts on doctoral education from the six continents.   This effort, coordinated and lead by CIRGE, has encouraged and generated a multi-national perspective of the issues that are re-shaping the doctoral education around the world.

See in the detail the outcomes of these workshops

Forces & Forms I on  Doctoral Education   – Seattle – United States 2005

Forces & Forms II  on Doctoral Education – Melbourne –  Australia  2007

Forces & Forms III on Doctoral Education – Kassel – Germany  2009

Forces and Forms of Change in Doctoral Education Worldwide and Their Impact on South East Asia- 2010

Doctoral Education: Gender and Family Issues

  • Graduate Women’s Expectations in Doctoral Programs and Beyond: Marriage, Family and Career. Download: