The doctoral journey should be difficult. But only intellectually

Doing a doctorate – alongside making contributions to knowledge – can be a life changing experience but the system as it stands is far too heavily geared around unconstructive gatekeeping.

The ongoing negative implications of this, through the unrepresentative demographics of the academic workforce and how it refracts into a lack of inclusion in our university cultures, are immense.

UKRI’s new deal for postgraduate researchers is a welcome step, but there are arguably still far too many unnecessary barriers that could and should be abolished, clarified or lowered.

Untangling this all of this requires more than tinkering, and for a lot of things to be significantly changed.

Getting in

There’s no particular shortage of doctoral places in the UK – universities want and need people to do them because the future of academia and research depends on it, doctoral completions are incentivised through policy (e.g. REF environment scores), and doctoral folks are fun and constructive to have around and work with.

There are different doctoral options, too: structured/professional programmes consisting of courses and a project, the “traditional” single project/thesis one, as well as other variations such as those that consist of collections of papers, or performance-based work. There are, then, different strokes for different folks.

The tricky bit is locating and accessing the right one, and funding it. To do a project-only based doctorate in particular you need to find supervisors in the right area with the expertise and the willingness – and the capacity, which is increasingly hard – alongside a very well-honed project idea.

In fields where the project is designed by the researcher themselves, academics receive a lot of out of the blue requests for supervision. I get a few a week; it’s so common that I have a template response that I paste and tweak. Quite a few of them aren’t even remotely in my areas of expertise (which is on my university profile), so they’re wildly speculative.

That’s not the applicants’ fault – they seem not to know that their best bet is to target people whose work is close to their proposed project rather than go for an email scattergun approach. Some people ignore them but I invariably tell them and wish them well; hopefully it saves them (and other academics) time in the long run.

Finding people is not easy, either, unless you know (how) to trawl department pages, look up publications, and so on; FindaPhD is useful but geared towards scholarships and pre-designed projects in particular, which doesn’t fit with structured programmes or the Arts and Social Sciences in general.

Let’s say you find someone (or apply speculatively anyway – I did). The research proposal forms the central part of the formal application, and is supported by the other requisite pieces such as prior qualifications, personal statement, English capabilities where applicable, and references.

There is no shortage of guidance out there about what a research proposal is supposed to contain, on university web pages and generally scattered across the interweb. But even with this, to get one really good is hard, and very few people (nobody?) can compile a great proposal without a fair amount of help.

Pretty much all of the 200-odd proposals I’ve reviewed in the last few years had promise, but most were slightly or sometimes very under-developed. Very few were already really good – which they have to be if they’re going to be in with a chance of funding. Ideally, and in the interests of equity we could work with them and help them develop them further, but we very rarely have the capacity.

Money money money

When it comes to funding, domestic fees aren’t too bad (I still favour a fee-free system from undergraduate upwards, for the record) while those for overseas visitors are extortionate. Then you have living costs to factor in, an issue which has recently become more pressing.

The scholarship system is, quite frankly, parsimonious. There aren’t enough of them – particularly now under straitened times – and what is available is absurdly competitive. In order to have a chance, you have to have a stellar application, which includes a really sharp proposal and high scores against whatever other criteria they are judged on, which varies by funder.

Even our current ESRC scholarships, which have expanded their criteria beyond raw track record (which favours some disciplines over others) and look for potential, still tip the balance towards the kinds of people who can accumulate the right kinds of experience. And, surprise surprise, these largely appear to be the same people who were supported and able to submit excellent proposals and applications anyway.

The new system is better, but it doesn’t seem to widen access as it should do, which in turn maintains that narrow pool of future academics. If you are lucky enough to get the funding, the “package” of fees and subsistence is based on the assumption that you don’t have any other major responsibilities, that you can (and want to) live in shared accommodation, which isn’t cheap, either.

This seems to reflect the idea of ‘young’ doctoral students rather than as colleagues, which they are in many other places. I look at some elements of doctorates in other countries which come with a salary, and a pension, and wonder why we’re so far from that.

For those coming from overseas with scholarships from their own countries, these may not cover a decent standard of living now that costs here are so high. Side jobs may not be available and can detract from your studies, so there’s a limit as to how many hours you can work. This is also a closely policed legal limit if you’re on an international visa, assuming there are enough opportunities there.

Getting through

Once a doctoral researcher starts, the clock is ticking.

Whether you’re funded or self-funding, you’re under pressure – and so is your university – for you to get through in good order. This is usually three years (or 3.5 with some funders) with up to one unpaid, aka “writing up”, year to finalise and submit the thesis – during which you still have to pay for your own living costs and so on.

Three years is a long time, but research is a slow process. Any changes in your plan, or wrong turns, participant recruitment issues, pandemics, extra work, or additional activities, these slow you down. You’re also expected to cram a lot in. Whereas some time ago having a doctorate (or sometimes not even having a doctorate) was enough to enter academia, this is no longer the case.

Because of the large numbers of people with PhDs or equivalent coming through the system, and even before the currently shrinking state of UK higher education, it has become an arms race where the certificate alone won’t suffice. You now need the degree and other things – ideally teaching and research experience, some kind of service/leadership, and funding and publications, public engagement, and so on. Requiring more in a time frame which remains unchanged is an excessive ask.

Alongside this, supervision is an incredibly important part of the doctorate and has a profound impact on how it all goes. It is also hard, not least because it requires deep engagement, academics are as a rule overworked, and the time allocation for PhD supervision can be around two hours a month.

I can’t properly read a chapter and provide decent feedback, and/or have a follow-up supervision if it’s needed, within that time. Reading a full draft thesis and doing the feedback takes me two days – that’s two thirds of the year’s workload allocation eaten up in one go.

This means that to supervise well, nicely, inclusively, takes more time than “they” give you, and varies from person to person. Some supervisors may be less obliging, and workloads aside, there is a power dynamic there which is easily abused, physically or academically.

The physical should be an absolute no-no, but it’s been seen by some as a grey area – two consenting adults etc – but if your thesis/visa/career depends on your progress, it’s not an equal space.

Intellectual power relations may play out in less obvious ways. The academic system in any country is based on particular scholarly cultures. This is fine at one level as there needs to be a sense of what is expected, how research is done, written up, and so on.

But at the same time, those cultures have blind spots, preferences, ways of writing and working that have their merits but are not the only or best way of doing things. Because many of these are taken for granted, particularly within disciplines, supervisors can inadvertently (or knowingly) impose things – authors, conceptual tools, methods, journals – on researchers who may not want them, they may not fit, but they feel obliged to adopt them.

This particularly impacts those from marginalised groups, domestic or international, and the call to decolonise doctorates should be heeded with some urgency.

Sometimes we don’t know we’re doing it, but some people neither know nor care, while others know and don’t care. This imposition can also run into supporting (or doing) supervisors’ work, organising conferences or books, teaching, which can be good experience, but if it’s unpaid it’s likely exploitative and takes time away from their own doctorate.

Getting out – and beyond

Finally (sort of) there’s the viva, where you “defend” your thesis “against” two academics. I’ve written about this here, and there is a massive range of possible questions, for which you can never be fully prepared.

In the UK the viva is part of the doctorate in that the candidate’s performance can impact what happens next – fail, resubmit, major changes, minor changes, no changes. (I don’t like the term corrections, it implies errors rather than areas for strengthening.) A solid thesis is perhaps unlikely to fail, but there is a likelihood that fluffing the questions could lead to more work on the final submitted version.

Because of this, there is a lot of pressure on the viva – years of really hard work funnelled into a 90-minute to two-hour conversation. The term defence also suggests an antagonism which is unnecessary, and horror stories abound; some might claim that this an appropriate rite of passage, but it shouldn’t be anything other than collegial. I always try to make vivas as kind as possible – still digging into and exploring the thesis – but as more of a critical and engaged discussion to make the candidate as comfortable as possible.

Particularly for those who suffer in these kinds of situations, there should be alternative options. I examined a PhD from South Africa recently which involved writing a report – I never met the candidate. Some countries have a public defence where the degree is already conferred/passed, so there is less pressure on the performance itself.

If you pass that viva, the final version gets submitted and approved, and the academic world should be your oyster. However, the competition for jobs is as hard as the competition for funding, and the availability of work which is full time and permanent seemingly dwindles by the year.

Seven or more years of academic training and too many people face part time, fixed term contracts that don’t cover the hours needed for the job. (Of course permanent positions don’t suffer from this lol.) You’ll hopefully be okay, assuming that you’ve managed to accumulate the right kinds of credits on your CV, and you’re publishing from your thesis, have teaching experience etc.

Applying for jobs is an art form, too, that takes practice. You’re always firing somewhat into the dark, even if you meet all of the criteria. Hopefully, something will eventually stick – “your job” will come along, but of course the system is designed by and for white, able, middle class, straight men, and recruitment is skewed that way.

As for other routes, there should be good ones – it’s not to say that all doctorate holders should go into higher education at all. A lot of those in STEM (science, technology, maths, engineering) don’t, but the pathway between arts, humanities, social science doctorates and the non-uni-based careers is less clear, in part because the research we do is less evidently transferrable or applied.

There’s a fair bit of academic debate around this, and we’re possibly not very good at articulating what a doctorate confers in terms of broader capabilities, and as such employers may not know, either.

So, there’s a lot to be improved. The solution is more of many things – more kindness, more time, more inclusion, more money, more jobs. Just more! It remains to be seen whether UKRI’s “new deal” work is really in a position to deliver this and if other funders and universities themselves follow suit.