Doctoral Education and Skills Development: An International and Historical Perspective

Abstract

Doctoral education has undergone, in recent years, a revolution paralleling changes in modern society. In the last two decades, the world has witnessed a wave of doctoral education reforms driven by government funding cuts, commercialization, rationalization, internationalization, quality assurance, as well as by increasing demands from employers and doctoral graduates to train doctoral students for an ever-changing competitive job market, which goes beyond the walls of academia. With an historical view of doctoral education at international level, and paying special attention to the process of Bologna taking place in Europe, this paper investigates the different models of doctoral education developed, as well as how its initial traditional conceptualisation has evolved and diversified, driven by educational policy and changes to higher education funding, into new models of doctoral education relevant to our current society. It discusses, from an international perspective, how different higher education institutions are approaching the task of equipping doctoral students with transferable or generic skills, as well as specific, in order to educate active and sustainable researchers for the competitive international knowledge based societies of the 21st century.