Probert_Becoming_uni_teacher_ discussion paper3

Becoming a university teacher: the role of the PhD Professor Belinda Probert October 2014 Discussion Paper 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 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 Contents i Introduction The PhD and disciplinary knowledge .3 Chris M Golde and George E Walker (eds), Envisioning the Future of Doctoral Education: Preparing Stewards of the Discipline (Carnegie Essays on the Doctorate), Jossey-Bass, 2006, p Is the PhD’s disciplinary knowledge too narrow? 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 it 15 Recommendations 19 Recommendation 19 Recommendation 20 Recommendation 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 Office for Learning and Teaching Becoming a university teacher: the role of the PhD iii 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’, 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 Around the same time 26 per cent of people in Australia with a PhD were working as university or TAFE teachers 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 Group of Eight Discussion Paper, The Changing PhD, March 2013, p Ian Dobson, ‘PhDs in Australia, from the beginning’, Australian Universities Review 54, 1, 2012 pp 94–5 ibid., p 97 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 Australian Qualifications Framework, Specification for the Doctoral Degree, 2013, p 63 Paul Boreham, Mark Western, Alan Lawson, Barbara Evans, John Western and Warran Laffan, PhD Graduates to years out: Employment Outcomes, Job Attributes and the Quality of Research Training, University of Queensland Social Research Centre, 2007 Group of Eight, op cit., p 25 Becoming a university teacher: the role of the PhD 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 in 1999 concluded that the ‘training doctoral students receive is not what they want, nor does it prepare them for the jobs they take’.13 As well as developing particular intellectual skills, doctoral study also provides a powerful acculturation into academic life In the US, professor of higher education Anne E Austin undertook a longitudinal qualitative study of US graduate students and socialization into the academic career She noted that: For an extended discussion of this topic see my earlier OLT discussion paper, Why scholarship matters in higher education, 2014 The evolution of ‘teaching and learning standards’ for the sector can be viewed at http://www.hestandards.gov.au/ 10 Edwards et al., op cit., p 21 It is possible that this preference reflects the realistic assumption that research only careers – as opposed to jobs - are rare and generally precarious 11 Edwards et al., op cit., p 24 12 Ernest Boyer, Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1990 13 Chris M Golde and Timothy M Dore, At Cross Purposes: What the experiences of today’s doctoral students reveal about doctoral education, Philadelphia, PA: A report prepared for The Pew Charitable Trusts, 2001, p Office for Learning and Teaching [a]spiring faculty are keen observers and listeners They listen carefully to formal as well as informal conversations with advisors and supervisors They pay attention to casual, off-hand remarks by professors and by more advanced students Aspiring faculty members observe departmental policies (such as the absence of statements about teaching philosophies) and faculty members’ behaviors, including how they allocate their time across responsibilities, their degree of willingness or reluctance to take on various tasks, and their interactions with students.14 Aspiring academics undertaking Australian PhDs are no doubt as observant as their US counterparts This paper begins by looking at how the Australian PhD has evolved It then examines the kind of disciplinary training it now offers as well as any wider preparation for academic work The paper concludes by making recommendations about how we might transform the PhD to better prepare would-be academics for the work they are likely to spend much of their time doing – namely teaching The PhD and disciplinary knowledge There is no single shared view about the purpose of the PhD in Australia This is not surprising since several different groups now have a major interest in the degree From the government’s point of view, funding for doctoral training is primarily about ensuring a growing supply of well-trained researchers to help exploit the potential benefits of the new knowledge economy This is spelled out in the 2011 Research Workforce Strategy, which is designed ‘to position Australia to meet a significant expansion of demand for research skills in future years and higher expectations of our research graduates and researchers.’ 15 Meanwhile, university departments that offer PhD programs are more concerned with sustaining and developing their own research interests, which may be purely theoretical, applied or translational For senior academics, there is often a further intrinsic interest in the long-term health and development of their particular discipline, and for some the more utilitarian need for help in achieving key milestones of their grants, not to mention the extrinsic importance of the dollars that follow successful PhD completions Doctoral students themselves are similarly motivated by both a deep intrinsic interest in scholarly research, and their own career ambitions While Boyer was strongly critical of the narrow nature of doctoral training in the US, he nonetheless saw the dissertation as the vehicle through which all academics could ‘establish their credentials as researchers’ in a particular discipline or field – something that was integral to the profession as whole, whatever aspect of academic work they later chose to pursue, including teaching.16 This thinking is widely shared in the Australian academic community, and underpins the acceptance of the PhD as the current base-level qualification 14 Anne E Austin, ‘Preparing the next generation of faculty: graduate school as socialization to the academic career’, The Journal of Higher Education, 73(1), Jan–Feb 2002, p 11 15 Australian Government, Research Skills for an Innovative Future, 2011, p xiii 16 For a discussion of Boyer’s framework for thinking about scholarship and good teaching, see Belinda Probert, Why scholarship matters in higher education, Office for Learning and Teaching, 2014 Becoming a university teacher: the role of the PhD across all disciplines, even professional and practice based fields such as law, architecture, accounting and fine art.17 Following Boyer’s criticisms of doctoral training in the US and the way it contributed to a narrow definition of scholarship, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, of which he was president, launched a five-year project called the Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate This was designed as ‘an action and research project focused on aligning the purpose and practices of doctoral education in six disciplines’.18 Rather than enquiring into the purpose of the PhD, the project began by offering its own answer to this question: We propose that the purpose of doctoral education, taken broadly, is to educate and prepare those to whom we can entrust the vigor, quality, and integrity of the field This person is a scholar first and foremost, in the fullest sense of the term – someone who will creatively generate new knowledge, critically conserve valuable and useful ideas, and responsibly transform those understandings through writing, teaching, and application We call such a person a “steward of the discipline” 19 This definition is a far cry from the utilitarian purposes behind government funding for PhD enrolments However, while the language is perhaps a little alien for Australian pragmatism, the sentiments probably capture the highest ideals of academic leaders with respect to the training of the future academic workforce They are also applicable to the new cohort of experienced, older professionals undertaking PhDs in order to develop a framework for reflective professional practice in their field, rather than focusing on the field itself 20 Is the PhD’s disciplinary knowledge too narrow? The argument that the PhD prepares graduates to become ‘stewards of the discipline’ needs to be reviewed within the context of both the massive growth of PhD enrolments and university research activity, and what some have called the growing dominance in higher education of abstract theory and criticism over other forms of knowledge and understanding.21 The growth in research activity and its highly competitive nature have led to increasing fragmentation and specialisation British sociologist Gerard Delanty, in his analysis of the university in the knowledge society, sees the institutionalisation of knowledge in specialised sub-disciplines as central to the divorce of teaching from research 17 For example, for positions advertised in June 2014, a PhD (or equivalent) is required for appointment to a Lectureship at the College of Fine Arts, The University of New South Wales, and to a Lectureship in Accounting at RMIT University 18 Chris M Golde and George E Walker (eds), Envisioning the Future of Doctoral Education: Preparing Stewards of the Discipline (Carnegie Essays on the Doctorate), Jossey-Bass, 2006, p 19 ibid p 20 I am indebted to Sharon Bell (DVC Charles Darwin University) for constantly reminding me about the diversity of the contemporary HDR population 21 William M Sullivan and Matthew S Rosin, A New Agenda for Higher Education: Shaping a Life of the Mind for Practice, Jossey-Bass, 2008 Office for Learning and Teaching Research has become over-specialised and often irrelevant to the needs of students Indeed research has become so specialized that academics frequently have lost a sense of the overall significance of their research within their disciplines – knowledge is no longer unitary and coherent and as a result has become diffuse, fragmentary and opaque.22 According to Delanty, there is little opportunity or incentive to contextualise the work Such a generalisation is open to question, especially given the varied ways different disciplines have adapted to the challenge Nonetheless, in the absence of empirical studies of Australian PhD topics, there is widespread concern here about over-specialisation The professionalisation of the academy that took place during the second half of the 20th century, with its deep fragmentation of fields and specialisms, created huge growth in the number of subjects offered, and the broad survey subject began to disappear Challenges to ‘what matters’ grew, leading inevitably to a kind of eclecticism in many fields, particularly the humanities.23 Harvard College, famously, found itself unable to agree on what should make up its traditional core curriculum, with general education requirements giving up entirely on the idea of ‘shared knowledge, shared values, even shared aspirations’.24 This fragmentation of knowledge is something that has come to characterise the fundamental training of Australian academics: Working for a PhD entails doing research that makes a significant new contribution to knowledge Almost inevitably, this will result in a narrow focus One reason for this is the large number of researchers addressing any broad topic, such that a high degree of specialisation may become necessary to ensure the work does not duplicate research conducted elsewhere; another is that an ability to provide new knowledge significant at a broader, strategic level will usually require a breadth of experience that a typical research student is unlikely to possess.25 The assumed relationship between contemporary doctoral research programs and broader disciplinary knowledge is increasingly being questioned, not least by those interested in the quality of university teaching US education academic Ken Bain’s valuable study What the Best College Teachers Do, found that one characteristic shared by good teachers is their interest in the broader issues of their discipline, including its history Bain describes meeting teachers who remember what it was that originally got them interested They not simply call out from their position deep within the ground and ask students to join them on their subterranean mining expeditions They help students to understand the connection between current topics and some larger and more 22 Gerard Delanty, Challenging Knowledge: The University in the Knowledge Society, Open University Press, 2001, p.110 23 It should be noted that in many science disciplines, such as mathematics and physics, there is still wide agreement on the core curriculum 24 Harry R Lewis, Excellence without a Soul: How a Great University Forgot Education, PublicAffairs, 2006, p 62 25 Group of Eight, op cit., p 19 Becoming a university teacher: the role of the PhD Queensland University of Technology has created an even more ambitious development program specifically for doctoral students called Teaching Advantage, aimed at ‘preparing future academics’ Nonetheless, the data gathered by the ACER study of Australia’s current HDR students provides a sobering snapshot of the future academic workforce as one that has not spent time learning how to teach in higher education Their approach to teaching is likely to be based on how they themselves were taught, and on their observations of the current practices of the existing, ageing workforce Yet these graduates will become academics in a world where teaching is being transformed by powerful forces - by technology, by a far greater diversity of students and educational missions, and by growing demands for demonstrable improvements in generic skills and employability Challenges in the new policy environment Current policy developments in Australian higher education are bringing a new urgency to this ongoing debate about the PhD Just when this qualification has become almost the universal requirement for academics, our system of higher education is being transformed Universal participation in higher education will be achieved with a wider range of higher education providers, while many observers are calling for ‘teaching-focused’ universities and polytechnics Academic roles are becoming more differentiated along the teaching-research spectrum, and a wide range of specialists and ‘third-space professionals’ are blurring the traditional boundaries between academics and other kinds of education experts.69 Future growth in higher-education appointments may not be in research-intensive universities but in newer kinds of universities, polytechnics, private colleges and TAFE institutes What role should the PhD play in the preparation of this future higher-education workforce? Should it retain its current form and be required only of those working in research-intensive institutions, or only of those for whom disciplinary research is part of the position description? Or could the PhD be renewed in a more flexible form that would allow it to remain the basic qualification for anyone who are responsible for designing programs of higher education study? Should consideration be given to new more differentiated forms of higher degree? These questions raise related questions about the future of the masters degree by research, which is already losing international relevance in the Bologna framework of degrees.70 Within Australia, has credential creep turned it into just a testing ground for those would-be doctoral students who have not completed an honours year, or who are otherwise unable to provide convincing evidence of their aptitude for the long, hard, solo slog of the PhD? All would agree that higher education teachers need to be able to keep up with developments in their field Yet higher education cannot be reduced to the ‘transmission’ of certain kinds of knowledge (in terms of either quantum or level) It is also about helping students to develop into independent learners in their field, capable of contributing to the existing knowledge of their discipline or field of study – in other words, students who know 69 Celia Whitchurch, ‘Shifting identities and blurring boundaries: the emergence of Third Space Professionals in UK higher education’, Higher Education Quarterly, 62(4), 2008 70 Margaret Kiley, Where are our doctoral candidates coming from and why?, ALTC Report, 2011, p 13 14 Office for Learning and Teaching how to research As Lea and Simmonds argue from the UK experience of HE in Further Education Colleges, ‘the qualitative dimensions to “capturing HEness” are in need of further critical scrutiny’ For them ‘the contestability of knowledge’, linked to institutional and individual autonomy, are the core characteristics of higher education 71 It could be argued, as Boyer did, that the PhD is the way in which the necessary depth of disciplinary knowledge for university teaching is gained, along with an understanding of how new knowledge is created in that discipline But it has also been persuasively argued (including by Boyer himself) that doctoral research has become increasingly narrow and potentially disconnected from the undergraduate curriculum Given the history and evolution of the PhD it is not surprising that we already have serious commentators suggesting that a PhD is unnecessary for those teaching at the new kinds of highereducation provider.72 How then should the required scholarly characteristics of higher education be demonstrated? Many would argue that academic excellence and respect for scholarship should remain the distinctive characteristics of the higher-education environment 73 These standards should not become the preserve of an elite, while lesser standards are established for newer higher-education teachers As the recent MLA review of US doctoral education argues: High intellectual standards can be sustained through creative flexibility (of the curriculum, the dissertation, and career preparation) Adaptable doctoral programs can deliver the desired depth, expertise, scope and credentials.74 Indeed, working as a tutor has the potential to help postgraduate students develop as scholars not just in their discipline, but in terms of taking a scholarly approach to teaching and ‘to all aspects of their academic role’.75 What might be done about the PhD – and who might it There has been much written in the U.S about the need to reform the nature of doctoral programs, but relatively little in Australia There is, however, a great deal of activity within different institutions aimed at widening doctoral training in various ways, with the development of ‘structured programs’ alongside the research work itself 76 This has been driven by a number of factors: the recognition that most PhD graduates will not be able to find ongoing employment as academics or career researchers; the recognition that a 71 John Lea & Jonathan Simmons, ‘Higher education in further education: capturing and promoting HEness’, Research in Post-Compulsory Education, 17(2), 2012, pp 179–193 72 Comment from the Grattan Institute’s Andrew Norton at OLT National Conference, Sydney June 2014 73 The question of how ‘scholarship’ is defined is discussed in my previous OLT Discussion Paper, Why scholarship matters in higher education, OLT, 2014 74 MLA op cit., p 75 Sutherland and Gilbert, op cit., p 76 For a review of these developments in Australia see Margaret Kiley, Coursework in Australian doctoral education: What’s happening, why and future directions?, OLT Final Report, 2014 Becoming a university teacher: the role of the PhD 15 significant number are interested in other kinds of careers; an acknowledgment that many of those who are now interested in undertaking a PhD have not had a sufficiently rigorous preparation in research; and an interest in ‘enabling’ programs that will get HDR students off to a flying start and promote the timely and successful completions that bring much needed funding into departments and schools In response to these pressures some universities have introduced personal training needs analyses for each candidate, and the associated development of a ‘learning plan’, while others have created transferable or generic skills programs of various kinds The Group of Eight discussion paper mentioned earlier identifies 11 generic skills that it suggests should be developed in PhD graduates,77 while others have pointed to the transferability of doctoral-level skills to other contexts Many universities have established institution-wide graduate research schools that focus not just on supporting candidates to completion of their dissertation but on a range of other kinds of professional development Monash University for example promotes the Monash PhD as ‘more than a thesis’ The Monash PhD is one of Australia's first PhDs with career enhancement built into the doctorate It's a PhD that will prepare you for work beyond your degree In January 2013, we introduced a range of dedicated, discipline-specific PhDs Each has been designed to deliver knowledge specific to your field, along with professional development that builds a range of transferable skills desired by employers in industry, academia, government and the community.78 Louis Menand, with his deep knowledge of U.S doctoral programs in the humanities, is sceptical of some of the thinking behind suggestions that the PhD be reinvented as something more practical, and relevant to non-academic work These efforts are a worthy form of humanitarianism; but there is no obvious efficiency in requiring people to devote ten or more years to the mastery of a specialized are of scholarship on the theory that they are developing skills in research, or critical thinking, or communication Professors are not themselves, for the most part, terribly practical people, and practical skill is not what they are trained to teach They are trained to teach people to what they and to know what they know Those skills and that knowledge are not self-evidently transferable The ability to analyze Finnegan’s Wake does not translate into an ability to analyze a stock offering.79 In reality, we know relatively little about the career significance of doctoral education for those who end up working outside higher education or mainstream research We know even less about the personal significance (If, as the Abbott government has suggested, fees are to 77 Group of Eight, op cit., pp 56–7 http://www.monash.edu.au/migr/why-monash/phd/ It is striking how this language has turned the PhD into a series of products or services that are ‘delivered’ to the student who will have their skills built for them 79 Menand, op cit., pp 150–1 78 16 Office for Learning and Teaching be charged to PhD students, we may expect some much more serious thinking about the ‘value’ of the degree to individuals.) What is striking about the graduate research school websites and other reviews of emerging PhD coursework or structured programs in Australian universities is the absence of any reference to professional development in teaching and learning.80 There is almost no evidence that anyone considers PhD programs to have a major role to play in preparing graduates for employment as higher-education teachers, or indeed as the higher-education workforce of the future To suggest that PhD programs need to more than train expert researchers is not to ignore the time pressures that exist for students to complete their dissertations within a reasonable period But it is necessary first of all to review the purpose of the PhD, before evaluating the amount of time that should be spent on the different components of this training.81 It seems unlikely that a one-size fits all approach is going to be useful for anyone The highereducation sector has come to rely on the PhD as preparation for an academic career in which teaching is a central responsibility There is a great deal of work to be done to better understand what doctoral training on a large scale might achieve in preparing the future higher-education workforce As an exemplar of the kind of forward thinking and externally aware review process that is needed in Australia, we have the recent work of the MLA in the US (much of which is relevant to the humanities more broadly) The recommendations of the MLA’s taskforce on doctoral study, articulated with a sense of urgency, reflect its four overarching goals for doctoral education: • • • • Pursue and maintain academic excellence Preserve accessibility Broaden career paths Focus on graduate students’ needs Central to the MLA’s critique of current doctoral programs is its focus on the changing academic job market and employment prospects, and what it describes as the historic ‘devaluation of teaching in the Research University’ 82 In 2005 the chair of the UK Council for Graduate Education concluded a lengthy review of doctoral education in the UK with similar sentiments 80 See for example The University of Melbourne, Monash University, the University of New South Wales, The University of Queensland, Griffith University, and University of Tasmania among others! This is entirely consistent with the rather narrow mission statement of the Australian Council of Deans and Directors of Graduate Research, which is ‘to promote excellence in research training and scholarship and to promote high standards for all higher degree by research programs nationally.’ 81 Australia does well in completion times compared to US and this is important – but not if it leaves students disadvantaged in terms of career preparation 82 MLA op cit., pp 5–8 Becoming a university teacher: the role of the PhD 17 What continues to be absent from the discussion is the doctorate itself and its purpose Why institutions offer it as an award? Why students want to follow doctoral programmes? Why employers wish to employ candidates with doctorates? Why does Government wish to fund the delivery of doctoral programmes? These remain as matters for discussion Perhaps worryingly – place a group which represents each of those perspectives together and ask the question and there will be as many answers as people in the group The key question must be ‘does this matter?’ The answer must be: it does.83 While the PhD represents a qualification defined by a particular level of intellectual achievement, the purpose of the degree may vary greatly by disciplinary area, and the work done by the MLA in its particular field of study (modern languages and literature) needs to be replicated in other disciplinary areas Central to any review of the PhD should be the academic community itself, at the level of broad disciplinary groupings.84 At the university level, the focus might be on developing a ‘curriculum’ associated with each PhD program: ‘one in which a career in the academy is given as much focus as careers outside, and which focuses on the changing underlying technology of teaching’ As one DVC Research describes it, echoing oft-repeated criticisms about attitudes to undergraduate teaching, ‘we need to move the PhD from a relationship that happens behind closed doors to one that openly and properly identifies the characteristics of the incoming students and their desired skills, knowledge and practices at exit point for the jobs they will undertake.’ 85 The scale of this challenge should not be underestimated A provocative 2010 article in The Economist titled ‘Doctoral degrees: The disposable academic’ (and subtitled ‘Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time’), pointed to the rapid growth of PhD graduates across the world and the declining academic opportunities that await them It argued that ‘PhD courses are so specialized that university careers offices struggle to assist graduates looking for jobs, and supervisors tend to have little interest in students who are leaving academia’ 86 What was distinctive about the article, however, was the argument that universities have a material interest in the problem that they have helped create They ‘have discovered that PhD students are cheap, highly motivated and disposable labour’ In the US a ‘graduate assistant at Yale might earn [US] $20,000 a year for nine months of teaching The average pay of full professors in America was [US] $109,000 in 2009’ 87 In Australia, similar 83 Howard Green, ‘Doctoral education in the UK: trends and challenges’, Review Paper prepared for Forces and Forms of Change in Doctoral Education Internationally Conference, CIRGE, University of Washington, September 2005, para 13.9 84 The American Historical Association has recently announced a $1.6 million grant from the Andrew W Mellon Foundation to work with four history departments to reform the PhD curriculum in different ways http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/03/20/historians-association-and-four-doctoral-programs-startnew-effort-broaden-phd#sthash.ck9anA0y.dpbs 85 Feedback on a draft of this discussion paper from Professor Robyn Owens, DVC Research, University of Western Australia, June 2014 The concept of ‘an integrated doctoral curriculum’ is also put forward by Kiley in Coursework in Australian doctoral education 86 The Economist, ‘The disposable academic: why doing a PhD is often a waste of time’, 16 December 2010 (http://www.economist.com/node/17723223/print) 87 ibid., p 18 Office for Learning and Teaching observations have been made about the growing reliance on sessional teachers, many of whom are PhD students The Economist article persuasively suggests that ‘the interests of universities and tenured academics are misaligned with those of PhD students’.88 This is a claim that has been made in the Australian context as well, notably by Professor Rob Castle in his foreword to a major report on the sector’s reliance on sessional teachers: To maintain for permanent staff the ideal of being teaching and research academics, we have had to rely on sessional staff…In many ways the lifestyle of the traditional teaching research academic is totally dependent on the contribution of sessional staff, in the way that Victorian middle class lifestyles were dependent on the domestic servant They slept in the attic, ate in the kitchen and you grumbled constantly that what they did was actually not quite what you wanted But nonetheless, they were absolutely essential to your being and your lifestyle I think this applies equally to many sessional staff today.89 Recommendations Recommendation Clarify the specific role of doctoral programs in preparing the academic workforce of the future In the U.S the Council of Graduate Schools90 and the Association of American Colleges and Universities secured funding for a decade-long partnership to focus on transforming ‘the way aspiring faculty members are prepared for their careers’ 91 Out of this came the Preparing Future Faculty (PFF) programs which ‘provide doctoral students… with opportunities to observe and experience faculty responsibilities at a variety of academic institutions with varying missions, diverse student bodies, and different expectations for faculty.’92 PFF programs are organised by a cluster of different kinds of institutions, from community colleges to research universities, emphasizing how expectations regarding the full range of responsibilities (teaching, research and service) differ in different campus settings Rather than simply accepting the research university’s culture of a hierarchy of institutions, PPF programs are explicitly designed to help PhD students learn about the academic profession ‘through exposure to the full range of professional responsibilities in the variety 88 This is an argument powerfully put by The Economist, op cit Rob Castles, Foreword to A Percy, M Scoufis, S Parry, M Hicks, I McDonald, K Martinez, N SzorenyiReischl, Y Ryan, S Wills and L Sheridan, The RED Report, Recognition – Enhancement – Development: The contribution of sessional teachers to higher education, ALTC, Sydney 2008 90 U.S Graduate Schools are of course totally different from Australian Graduate Research Schools 91 http://www.preparing-faculty.org/ 92 ibid 89 Becoming a university teacher: the role of the PhD 19 of academic institutions – such as liberal arts colleges, comprehensive universities, and community colleges – that may become their homes.’93 Within the context of the rapidly changing Australian higher education system, we might consider what opportunities could be created for doctoral students to learn more about the increasing diversity of institutions and their cultures Recommendation Undertake case-study analysis (by field of study, for example) to test the argument that the PhD has become over-specialised in focus, and to identify ways in which appropriate breadth might be introduced The MLA review acknowledged that ‘an extended research project should remain the defining feature of doctoral education’.94 The implicit assumption that this experience of disciplinary research will provide a foundation for the teaching of the discipline has, however, been widely challenged, particularly in light of increasing specialisation and fragmentation in many fields of study To overcome this, Boyer suggested that alongside specialist research, an integrative component should be included in the thesis that required all candidates to: put their special area of study in historical perspective and that time during graduate study also be devoted to social and ethical concerns In such a program, the scholar should find metaphors and paradigms that give larger meaning to specialized knowledge.95 In the same spirit, the far-reaching ‘Re-envisioning the Ph.D’ project in the US included the recommendation to balance ‘the deep learning of the disciplinary doctorate with the variety of interdisciplinary challenges’, and to produce ‘scholar-citizens who see their special training connected more closely to the needs of society and the global economy.’ 96 In the US the practice of oral examinations can be mobilised to encourage scholarly breath In Australia consideration would need to be given to incentives for integrative work that would not become rigid and burdensome 93 PFF p emphasis added Ibid., p 95 Boyer op cit., p 68 Boyer also suggests that graduate education should pay attention to the scholarship of application, to think about the usefulness of knowledge, and ‘to reflect on the social consequences of their work’, p 69 96 Jody Nyquist and Donald H Wullff, ‘Recommendations from National Studies on Doctoral Education’, Reenvisioning Project Resources, http://depts.washington.edu/envision/project_resources/national_recommend.html This project was supported by a wide range of university leaders and received over $500,000 in funding from the Pew Charitable Trusts 94 20 Office for Learning and Teaching Recommendation Define the ways in which doctoral training should ofer a structured program in scholarly teaching for those committed to an academic career If the PhD is seen as a critical element in the preparation of postgraduate students for academic life, there is widespread agreement that its major weakness is in preparing them to teach Like the MLA review, the Preparing Future Faculty projects assume that employers of academics ‘increasingly also expect new faculty to be excellent teachers’ (as opposed to gradually picking it up on the job), and see teaching as a key area of employment opportunities for PhD graduates This is a position that is strongly endorsed by many other observers of U.S higher education.97 The 2013 annual meeting of the American Historical Association focused on the question of whether PhD programs adequately prepare students for ‘the oldest alternative profession’ of teaching As a history professor from Rutgers University pointed out, ‘her own generation of professors was “raised by wolves” in terms of teaching.’98 Anne E Austin concludes from her in-depth study of how well US graduate programs prepare students to become academics that: all students who aspire to be faculty members should have opportunities to think deeply about teaching (including philosophical assumptions that guide teaching, diverse teaching strategies, characteristics of learners, curriculum development, and the implications of technology for teaching and learning).99 This is a far cry from the notion of ‘teaching skills’ in the Group of Eight discussion paper, or the on-the-job training approach known as ‘sitting next to Nellie’ that is still so common among our HDR students.100 The MLA review also argues for the importance of teaching from several perspectives, including an analysis of the changing academic labour market and the relative decline of tenure track positions in research universities: Given the current structure of the academic workforce and assuming that in the future more positions in the academy are likely to be teaching-intensive, with relatively less of an emphasis on research, it is clear that many of our doctoral 97 Katz, op cit.; Bain, op cit., p 177 Colleen Flaherty, ‘Educator or Historian’, Inside Higher Ed, January 2013, http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/01/07/aha-session-focuses-role-teachingdiscipline#.UO0YIyyLugc.email 99 Austin, op cit., p 21 100 The Dictionary of Human Resource Management describes it as ‘poor-quality on-the-job training where a trainee is not instructed by a qualified trainer but instead is expected to learn how to the job by observing someone who has been doing the job for years (i.e Nellie) Such training is not planned or systematic, but instead is haphazard and variable Although the trainee might glean much of Nellie's expertise, he or she will also pick up her bad habits And although Nellie might well be personable, she does not necessarily have the skills to train others.’ 98 Becoming a university teacher: the role of the PhD 21 programs should be modified to prepare our students appropriately, placing greater emphasis on the development of skills in teaching.101 But whether doctoral students imagine careers at research universities or liberal arts colleges, regional universities or two-year schools, the MLA believes that in all of them, ‘the emphasis on effective teaching will continue to grow, and only those graduate students with strong preparation as teachers will succeed’.102 Within this context, it recommends that ‘pedagogical training should introduce students to the wide range of institutions in higher education, diverse in mission, history and student demographics.’103 Even within researchintensive universities new teaching knowledge is needed for the development of a massive open on-line course (MOOC) in areas of particular institutional research strength More radically still, at Stanford University a new fellowship opportunity has been developed for doctoral students in the humanities and arts, in collaboration with the Graduate School of Education, to prepare graduates for high-school teaching Those who are awarded one of these H-STEP fellowships are promised that they ‘will join a community of scholar-teachers whose rare combination of pedagogical skills and content knowledge will improve student learning.’104 The MLA review also argues that teaching experience develops skills that are also valuable in other kinds of careers: ‘The ability to teach can be understood as an attribute of leadership, and doctorate recipients can use the pedagogical skills acquired during graduate study to become agents of change.’105 A similar conclusion about the wider value of learning to teach was reached at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand After more than a decade of research on the tutor experience, the authors found ‘that a scholarly approach to tutoring has benefits for the tutors…regardless of their future careers.’ 106 As noted earlier, the Australian higher-education system does not have the variety of institutions that characterises the US system, but it is just that variety that successive Australian governments are now trying to introduce Because of this, there are good reasons to reflect on these analyses and recommendations and their possible relevance here Australian universities generally offer formal training programs for higher-education teaching, but we know that few HDR students enrol in these We also know that senior staff place little value on such training when defining their selection criteria for new academics 107 Some observers may be tempted to respond by urging that it become a requirement for PhD students who teach - or who hope to teach in the future - to undertake some sort of formal training in higher-education teaching, even a graduate certificate in higher education Boyer, 101 MLA Taskforce op cit., p Ibid., p 10 103 Ibid., p 16 104 ibid., p.27 In Australia this will seem an unlikely career option, given the history of teacher training at relatively low qualification levels 105 ibid 106 Sutherland and Gilbert, op cit., p 107 Edwards et al., op cit 102 22 Office for Learning and Teaching however, argued that ‘this two-track approach is not desirable.’ 108 The models he recommended all require postgraduate students to learn about teaching within their disciplines, ideally mentored by senior colleagues who are recognized for the quality of their teaching In this scenario not only does the postgraduate student learn most effectively, but the process stimulates wider discussion about teaching where it is most needed, namely within the department or discipline In Australia there would appear to be similarly little support for embedding any formal coursework on university teaching into doctoral programs, for a number of reasons First, there is the widespread belief noted earlier that it simply is not necessary or important at this point in an academic career Second, there is widespread concern about the quality and efficacy of the kinds of programs that are currently offered These views often reflect an underlying belief that the PhD is primarily a research qualification 109 Third, there is a range of views on how best to embed increasing levels of professional development in teaching over the structure of the early career, including the importance of contextualising this training within the chosen discipline.110 Conclusion There has been remarkably little public debate about the PhD in Australia, despite the transformations that are occurring in higher education as it shifts from a system of elite to mass and now universal participation Indeed, there has never been a serious review of the role that this highest academic qualification plays in preparing the academic workforce The challenges facing those who teach in higher education are substantial (such as fewer resources, more diverse students, de-centred disciplines, new technologies and an ageing workforce), yet, the critical early years of academic identity formation involve low grade teaching experiences, and a widely accepted disconnection between research and teaching The long doctoral apprenticeship does not contribute in any systematic way to what Shulman called the two professional identities of the academic, discipline expert and educator.111 Many Australian universities are reviewing their PhD programs to ensure that they include the development of generic skills with a view to improving the employment opportunities of graduates, and in recognition of the mismatch between the numbers of PhD graduates and opportunities for academic employment There is no reason that these reviews should not be widened to include the questions raised in this discussion paper There is a role here for the deans and directors of graduate studies, and equally for professional disciplinary 108 Boyer op.cit., pp 70–1 Over the 25 years since Boyer’s intervention attention has rightly been focused on the wider range of careers now being taken up by PhD graduates, and there seems little sense in requiring all doctoral students to learn about teaching if they are aiming to be a research scientist with CSIRO for example 109 Edwards et al., op.cit., p 77 110 For an interesting summary of the issues see the UQ Promotions arguments against requiring teaching focused academics to complete a Graduate Certificate in HE or similar pedagogy based qualification, Report of the Central Confirmation and Promotions Committee on University Community Feedback from a Teaching Focused Discussion Paper, The University of Queensland, 2013, p 111 Shulman, ‘From Minsk to Pinsk: Why a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning?’, The Journal of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 1(1), 2000, p 49 Becoming a university teacher: the role of the PhD 23 associations, as well as for groups such as the deans of arts, social sciences and humanities, and deans of science At the local level, there are important exemplars of good practice to be found among those dedicated to improving teaching and learning in large-scale team-taught subjects that rely on the labour of postgraduate students This is a debate that needs to bring those responsible for the quality of research and research training together with those responsible for improving the quality of teaching and learning to develop a shared vision for the PhD in Australia Acknowledgements Many people took the time to read drafts of this discussion paper and to provide comments, feedback and criticism, and I particularly wish to thank Sharon Bell, Abby Cathcart, Darrell Evans, Liz Johnson, Kerri-Lee Krause, Robyn Owens, Judyth Sachs and Lyn Yates Thanking them should not be taken to imply that they all agree with the arguments presented here, however; they don’t I would also like to thank Natalie Laifer and Nicci Riley from the Office for Learning and Teaching for continuing to make my secondment a real pleasure References Austin, AE (2002) ‘Preparing the next generation of faculty: Graduate school as socialization to the academic career’ The Journal of Higher Education, 73(1), 94–122 Australian 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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