Higher education needs to rethink who contributes to research and doctoral education. Professional services staff with doctoral qualifications and research expertise remain systematically under-recognised as potential contributors to research supervision and knowledge production. This oversight is no longer sustainable.
At a time when universities face mounting pressures on supervisory capacity, research delivery and doctoral student support, failing to utilise this expertise represents a structural inefficiency that risks undermining both student experience and research resilience.
The visibility and recognition of professional services staff has long been contested across the sector. Although the workforce has moved beyond being framed as “just admin”, professional services contributions remain inconsistently recognised in institutional structures and are frequently absent from statutory workforce reporting. While consultation has taken place to address this gap, structural recognition alone will not resolve the deeper issue: universities continue to define research contribution primarily through academic contracts rather than demonstrable expertise or qualification.
State of play
There are signs that this approach is beginning to shift. In its most recent Centres for Doctoral Training call, UK Research and Innovation actively encouraged the inclusion of Professional Research Investment and Strategy Managers (PRISM) in bids. This signals growing acknowledgement that research development, strategy and delivery are collective endeavours requiring expertise across professional boundaries.
Yet this recognition has not translated into widespread inclusion of professional services staff in doctoral supervision or formal research leadership roles.
This exclusion has tangible consequences for doctoral students. Restricting supervisory teams to academic staff limits access to broader institutional, professional and sectoral knowledge. Professional services staff working in third space roles frequently hold specialist expertise in areas such as research governance, funding strategy, doctoral training design and sector policy, alongside their own personal research expertise. Including these perspectives within supervisory teams would strengthen doctoral training by providing students with a more realistic understanding of research ecosystems and career pathways beyond traditional academic roles.
For institutions, the failure to draw on this expertise creates avoidable pressure on academic supervision capacity. Increasing doctoral enrolments, combined with escalating teaching and administrative workloads, have stretched supervisory models to their limits. Universities cannot continue to expand doctoral provision while relying on an increasingly constrained academic workforce. Professional services staff with doctoral-level expertise represent a credible and underutilised solution to this challenge.
A question of recognition
However, institutional barriers remain significant. Academic workload allocation models, while imperfect, at least provide formal recognition of supervisory workloads. In contrast, professional services roles are typically operationally driven and reactive, leaving little protected time for research or supervisory activity. Without structural change, participation in doctoral supervision or examination will continue to rely on personal goodwill rather than institutional support.
My own experience illustrates this tension. I recently externally examined a PhD in New Zealand, completing the thesis review outside working hours and undertaking the viva at 8pm UK time. While professionally rewarding, this model is clearly unsustainable as a sector-wide approach. Participation in doctoral education should not depend on individual flexibility or privilege. If professional services staff are to contribute meaningfully to research supervision, universities must formally recognise and resource this activity.
The sector now needs to move beyond recognising the existence of research-active professional services staff, and implement practical mechanisms to support their participation. There are three immediate areas where change is both possible and necessary.
First, universities should expand eligibility criteria for doctoral supervision and examination to focus on expertise, experience and qualification rather than contractual status. Many institutions already include external practitioners and industry experts within supervisory structures. Applying similar principles internally would represent a logical and evidence-based extension of existing practice.
Second, institutions must develop workload and career development frameworks that formally incorporate research and supervision pathways for professional services staff. Without protected time and progression routes, engagement will remain inconsistent and dependent on individual managers or institutional goodwill.
Third, sector bodies and regulators should ensure that professional services research contributions are captured in workforce data and research reporting. Without robust data, the scale and impact of professional services research activity will remain invisible, limiting the development of evidence-informed policy and workforce planning.
Supporting professional services staff to disseminate research is also essential. As joint editor of the journal Perspectives: Policy and Practice in Higher Education, I regularly see innovative research and practice emerging from professional services colleagues across the UK and internationally. This includes work on doctoral assessment, student wellbeing, research development practice and organisational change. Encouraging publication not only strengthens institutional knowledge exchange but also reinforces the legitimacy of professional services scholarship as a core component of the higher education research landscape.
It is important to acknowledge that not all professional services staff will wish to engage in research or doctoral supervision. Expanding participation should therefore focus on enabling opportunity rather than imposing expectation. However, where interest and expertise exist, contractual boundaries should not act as structural barriers to contribution.
Untapped resource
The longer-term challenge for higher education is cultural as much as structural. Universities continue to operate with deeply embedded distinctions between academic and professional identities. While these distinctions have historical and organisational value, they increasingly fail to reflect the collaborative nature of contemporary research environments. Moving towards role definitions that prioritise expertise, contribution and collaboration over contractual classification would better align institutional structures with the realities of modern research practice.
Higher education has successfully professionalised professional services roles over the past two decades. The next stage of this evolution must involve recognising professional services staff as research partners, supervisors and leaders in doctoral education. At a time when the sector faces intensifying resource constraints, expanding doctoral provision and increasing expectations around student experience, universities cannot afford to overlook a highly skilled and motivated workforce already operating within their institutions.
Unlocking the research and supervisory potential of professional services staff will not resolve every challenge facing doctoral education. However, it represents a practical, achievable and evidence-based step towards strengthening research sustainability, improving student experience and building more collaborative institutional cultures. The sector should act now to ensure that this potential is recognised, supported and fully realised.
I see no reason why professional services staff with doctoral qualifications and who have kept abreast of their subject expertise cannot be involved in supervision. As mentioned, the biggest hurdle could be workload allocation, but not insurmountable.
Thank you for the interesting article and its important message. There should also be better recognition for the professional services teams that provide vital doctoral training, support and financial guidance. Examples include Doctoral Training Partnership teams across UKRI, doctoral colleges and department PGR teams. The work of these teams goes well beyond “admin” and requires specialist experience and skills, particularly in the current financially constrained sector environment.
If you want to work on the academic side of things, you can just apply for an academic job.
Here here.
This article overstates its case and glosses over what doctoral supervision requires. Supervising a PhD is not simply a matter of having subject expertise; it depends on experience designing original research, publishing, engaging in peer review, and, typically, developing and sustaining a research agenda within a disciplinary community. It also usually involves prior supervision experience.
On that basis, the claim that professional services staff are an “untapped” pool of supervisors is not substantiated. Holding a PhD alone is not sufficient preparation for taking on the intellectual and pastoral responsibilities of supervision.
This is not to dismiss the valuable contributions professional services staff already make to doctoral training. But those contributions are complementary, not interchangeable with academic supervision. Expanding supervisory eligibility without addressing differences in role, training, workload allocation, and accountability risks weakening, rather than strengthening, doctoral support.
I’d argue that if the staff member has been through the process of doing a doctorate themselves (and I do think that’s a crucial ‘if’), then that places them well to supervise in their subject area as long as they undertake some training about supervision – regardless of their role. So I think I’m agreeing with the thrust of your point, Joanne.
At some universities, even Teaching Fellows who are on academic contracts face a battle to be allowed to supervise. I fit this description. Within days of my viva being passed, I had loads of requests from staff to join supervision teams. Then the reality of the red tape involved hit and it became a slog to actually get onto supervision teams. Though I was allowed to join some, there remain ongoing challenges about the extent of involvement and responsibility that someone at my level can have.
Thanks for a thought-provoking article.
First “they” want to allow PS staff to support students, then teach, then apply for grants and now it’s supervise PhDs. All alongside another job, some of which are vital to the running of another university, some which are distinctly not. All of this on less pay than academics. PS staff have called for and some universities are committing to introduce promotion frameworks for PS staff similar to academic staff (concurrently to promotion and recruitment freezes for academic staff).
What are academics to actually do in the university of 2026 and beyond? I might be indulging in the slippery slope fallacy but where does it end? The removal of the academic from the university? Research and teaching no longer seen as core business of the university, since people can do those as parts of other jobs?
I feel increasingly devalued as an academic. It seems anyone with a degree (and sometimes not) can do my highly specialised job.
Of course, the converse has happened as well where tasks that PS staff used to do are now done by academics.
Inputting exam marks or module choices into the university systems? In my department, now done by academics (although PS staff still have to push a final button). Counselling of distressed students, now in reality done by academics (since the PS staff whose job this is have a waiting list from here to eternity). Costing of grants, done by academics (although again PS staff still get to push the final button on this). The list goes on….