The changing environment for doctoral education in australia: Implications for quality management, improvement and innovation

Although there has been considerable institutional attention to quality management and improvement in Australian higher education, concerns about the quality of doctoral education persist. This paper argues that addressing these concerns will require a shift in perspective. The conventional view of doctoral education which assumes an on-campus, full-time student experience, with socialisation arising formally and informally through interaction with the supervisor(s) and other academics in a university department, and which prepares the candidate for academic or other full-time research work, is increasingly recognised as problematic. The rapid growth in candidate numbers is associated with a more diverse doctoral student population, and increasingly flexible patterns of research and study. These trends are likely to continue as they are in response to major changes in the higher education environment and changes in patterns of research activity. The argument presented is that addressing concerns for quality management, improvement and effective innovation demand the development of a research-based wholistic conceptual framework for doctoral education which integrates all aspects of the doctoral education experience, and a focus on constructing and evaluating doctoral programmes in their particular organisational settings and physical locations.