Abstract
Doctoral education in Europe has changed significantly in the last two to three decades. This transformation, visible in the structuring dimensions of doctoral education, appears to indicate a move to a more instrumental approach. This paper aims to determine the prevalence of an instrumental concept of doctoral education in Portuguese universities. It draws on the findings of a 2020 study that focused on how these institutions are adhering to this concept. The study relied on the analysis of the information disclosed by the institutional websites of 118 doctoral programmes, selected to be representative of all the doctoral offer in the country. Findings suggest the existence of a hybrid concept of doctoral education among Portuguese universities, which is revealed by its association sometimes with a traditional concept, other times with an instrumental concept, or with a combination of both. Especially in these two last cases, the influence of academic capitalism and isomorphic pressures is evident.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 255-268 |
| Number of pages | 14 |
| Journal | Journal of Further and Higher Education |
| Volume | 48 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 5 Jan 2024 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2024 UCU.
Funding
This work was supported by the EDULOG, a Belmiro de Azevedo Foundation think tank focused on education, under grant CIPES/EDULOG/2020/22. This work was funded by national funds through Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), I.P., under the project UIDP/00757/2020, DOI 10.54499/UIDP/00757/2020.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Belmiro de Azevedo Foundation | CIPES/EDULOG/2020/22 |
| FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia | UIDP/00757/2020 |
Keywords
- Doctoral education
- academic capitalism
- institutional isomorphism
- transformation
- universities