Regulations and practices of structured doctoral education in the life sciences in Germany

Structured doctoral education is increasingly preferred compared to the individual model. Several science policy organisations give recommendations on how to structure doctoral education. However, there is little research on to what extent these recommendations find their way into practice. In our s...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2020-07, Vol.15 (7), p.e0233415-e0233415
Main Authors: Lachmann, Daniel, Martius, Thilo, Eberle, Julia, Landmann, Mareike, von Kotzebue, Lena, Neuhaus, Birgit, Herzig, Stefan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biology and Life Sciences
Colleges & universities
Education
Graduate students
Graduate studies
Labor market
Life sciences
Medicine and Health Sciences
People and Places
Quality control
Regulations
Research and Analysis Methods
Science policy
Social Sciences
Studies
Supervision
Supervisors
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Summary:Structured doctoral education is increasingly preferred compared to the individual model. Several science policy organisations give recommendations on how to structure doctoral education. However, there is little research on to what extent these recommendations find their way into practice. In our study, we first compared European and German recommendations on doctoral education with, second, the institutional regulations of structured doctoral programmes (N = 98) in the life sciences at twelve different German universities. Additionally, we third asked doctoral graduates (N = 1796) of these structured doctoral programmes and graduates of individual doctoral studies about their experience in doctoral education. Fourth, we contrasted the regulations of structured doctoral programmes with the reported experiences of their graduates. We found significant deviations of the reported practices of graduates from the regulations of their organisations, regarding the student admission, supervision and curricular activities of doctoral candidates. The efficacy of structured versus traditional doctoral education should be examined based on reported practice rather than on the respective written regulations.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0233415