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Becoming a University Teacher: the Role of the Phd Becoming a university teacher: the role of the PhD Professor Belinda Probert October 2014 Discussion Paper 3 Office for Learning and Teaching Discussion Paper Series This report has been commissioned by the Australian Government Department of Education and prepared by Professor Belinda Probert. The views expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of Education. ISBN 978-1-74361-799-1 [PRINT] ISBN 978-1-74361-800-4 [PDF] ISBN 978-1-74361-801-1 [DOCX] With the exception of the Commonwealth Coat of Arms, and where otherwise noted, all material presented in this document is provided under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/au/). The details of the relevant licence conditions are available on the Creative Commons website (accessible using the links provided) as is the full legal code for the CC BY 3.0 AU licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/au/legalcode). This document must be attributed as Belinda Probert, Becoming a university teacher: the role of the PhD, Australian Government Office for Learning and Teaching, October 2014. Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 1 The PhD and disciplinary knowledge .......................................................................................... 3 Is the PhD’s disciplinary knowledge too narrow? ....................................................................... 4 The PhD as apprenticeship ......................................................................................................... 7 The PhD as preparation for teaching ........................................................................................ 10 Challenges in the new policy environment .............................................................................. 14 What might be done about the PhD – and who might do it. ................................................... 16 Recommendations .................................................................................................................... 19 Recommendation 1 ............................................................................................................... 19 Recommendation 2 ............................................................................................................... 20 Recommendation 3 ............................................................................................................... 21 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 23 Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................... 24 References ................................................................................................................................ 24 Becoming a university teacher: the role of the PhD i This paper is part of a series of interrelated discussion papers being prepared for the Office for Learning and Teaching (OLT) by Belinda Probert. The first discussion paper, Teaching Focused Academic Appointments in Australian Universities (2013), examined the causes behind the growth of teaching focused appointments and their impact on the quality of teaching and learning. The second discussion paper, Why scholarship matters in higher education (2014) asks how we should understand the requirement for all higher education teachers to demonstrate scholarship, whether in a Technical and Further Education (TAFE) institute, private college or university. It provides a critique of the way in which ‘scholarship’ has come to be interpreted in Australian higher education, arguing for a return to Boyer’s conception as a starting point. This discussion paper, Becoming a university teacher: the role of the PhD, focuses on the evolution of the Australian PhD and its role in preparing graduates for teaching in higher education. The last discussion paper will be a review of current approaches to quality assurance and quality improvement in higher education teaching and learning. 2 Office for Learning and Teaching Becoming a university teacher: the role of the PhD Introduction In the years immediately following the Second World War, Australian universities began to enrol their first graduate students into Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD) programs. In 1950 eight PhDs were awarded; by 1960 this number had risen to 97. Since then growth has been fast, particularly after the formation of the unified national system of universities in the early 1990s. In 2010 the number of PhDs awarded was 6053, bringing the total number of Australian PhDs awarded at that point to more than 65,000.1 The original ‘push’ for doctoral education appears to have come from the science disciplines, with the aim of providing the kind of high-level training offered in Europe and the US and considered necessary for an academic career.2 However, by 2009 PhDs in arts were being awarded almost as often as those in science (26.7 and 27.3 per cent respectively), and large numbers were also being awarded in engineering, health and business/commerce (12.1, 13.8 and 7.7 per cent).3 The ages of PhD students enrolled in 2010 suggest they have become a very varied cohort in terms of career stage, with over 40 per cent being 35 or older, and almost 10 per cent being in their fifties.4 The PhD, with its requirement to produce ‘significant and original research outcomes’,5 has become the defining qualification for Australian academics, with all universities working to maximize the proportion of staff with a doctorate. An academic job is also the goal of the large majority of PhD students. In 2007 over half of all the PhDs who were between five and seven years after graduation from the Group of Eight universities were working in the field of Education and Training, mostly in higher education. 6 Around the same time 26 per cent of people in Australia with a PhD were working as university or TAFE teachers. 7 Despite this, the relationship between current forms of doctoral training and the demands of academic work, and particularly the work of university teaching, has been subject to remarkably little scrutiny. As government policy moves to increase the role of non-university higher education providers there has been little debate about what the professional expectations for all 1 Group of Eight Discussion Paper, The Changing PhD, March 2013, p. 9. 2 Ian Dobson, ‘PhDs in Australia, from the beginning’, Australian Universities Review 54, 1, 2012 pp. 94–5. 3 ibid., p. 97. 4 Daniel Edwards, Emmaline Bexley and Sarah Richardson, Regenerating the Academic Workforce: The careers, intentions and motivations of higher degree research students in Australia, ACER, 2011, p. 17. 5 Australian Qualifications Framework, Specification for the Doctoral Degree, 2013, p. 63. 6 Paul Boreham, Mark Western, Alan Lawson, Barbara Evans, John Western and Warran Laffan, PhD Graduates 5 to 7 years out: Employment Outcomes, Job Attributes and the Quality of Research Training, University of Queensland Social Research Centre, 2007. 7 Group of Eight, op. cit., p. 25. Becoming a university teacher: the role of the PhD 1 higher education teachers should be.8 If ‘scholarship’ is a critical dimension of higher education teaching, how should this be demonstrated?9 Some TAFE higher education providers believe that their staff who teach in the last year of bachelor degree programs should work towards a doctoral qualification in order to develop the requisite scholarly capabilities. Others have suggested that new entrants to the higher educational market for whom disciplinary research is not part of the institutional mission would have no need of teaching staff with PhDs. While there has been little critical analysis of the relationship between the PhD and careers in higher education, there has been much greater interest in the potential value of the PhD for careers outside academia. This has been stimulated by the fact that the number being awarded has now far outstripped the number of academic and research positions available, leading to debate about whether doctoral programs should be enriched with content designed to better prepare graduates for employment in industry, for example. Many would argue that the Australian PhD is too narrow and out of touch with the challenges and opportunities of the twenty-first century. If we wish to motivate our best and brightest students to continue their studies to the highest level it needs to be transformed. The purpose of this discussion paper is to provoke sector-wide reflection and debate about the role of the Australian PhD in preparing aspiring academics to become effective higher education teachers. While the number of research-only university positions has been increasing substantially over the last decade, most higher degree by research (HDR) students believe that ‘an ideal academic position would involve a balance of teaching and research responsibilities’.10 Despite the career objectives of most PhD students, there has been little study of the PhD’s effectiveness beyond a narrow research training.11 This contrasts with the US, where there was discussion about the shape and purpose of the PhD even before Ernest Boyer famously pointed to its failure to prepare graduates for teaching in the early 1990s.12 More recently a national US survey of doctoral students from 27 universities
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