Eurodoc speech

Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a great pleasure for me as the new President of Eurodoc – The European Council of Doctoral Candidates and Junior Researchers [and me as outgoing President] – to speak here at this conference.

We would like to address our special thanks to the organisers – especially the representatives of the European University Association and the University of Lausanne as host of the convention – for giving us the opportunity to speak on behalf of the European federation of national organisations of young researchers.

Eurodoc is representing doctoral candidates and junior researchers in the form of a federation of national organisations. This means one national organisation of doctoral candidates and junior researchers per country can apply as a member to give their doctoral candidates a voice on the

European level.

We have 32 members, each member sends two delegates to the Eurodoc council. We have six workgroups on the main fields of discussion: Career development, Mobility, Gender Equality, Surveys and two internal workgroups.

Eurodoc was accepted as a partner in the Bologna process, to be able to represent there the voice of doctoral candidates and draw attention to the main issues. Apart from that Eurodoc is a partner of EC, EUA, Euroscience, ESOF and many other organisations that consult Eurodoc on questions in doctoral education and also on distribution of information at the doctoral level. So talking about Networking later here – Eurodoc is such a network that is filled with life. In fact it is living.

We were asked to give our view for Europe’s doctoral researchers on the six issues raised by the workshops. To reflect on what has been done and what the future prospects are.

As we have only limited time, let us start with the first one:

Status quo:

The role of supervision in doctoral programmes and for the individual doctoral candidate can be looked upon as one of the most important factors in doctoral education. However, supervisors work differently in each country (even within each university, faculty or department). According to "Gathering of Evidence and Development of a European Supervision and Training Charter", Eurodoc 2004 (information gathered by Eurodoc delegates), even the literal meaning of the word "supervisor" has a wide range of meanings. They could be directors, promoters, guides, instructors and so on. In each country in Europe, the standards for supervision are different, so the expectations of doctoral candidates are also different. Additionally supervision agreements are currently not used to a wide extent in Higher Education Institutions within Europe.

Vision for the future:

Eurodoc recommends to develop common (or minimum) standards for supervision, to find ways of evaluation of the standards on the country, university and programme level. Here some framework conditions could help: e.g. supervision agreements and offers to train supervisors. Supervision agreements can be seen as an important tool usable for setting standards. Due to this they should include skills development, responsibilities of doctoral candidate and supervisor and a timeline for the

doctorate. A performance review of supervision, making the task of supervision a recognised task for the staff, the promotion/HR development, creating workload models for supervisors and evaluation of dedicated time are possible ways to address the development of quality in this field. Many of the visions mentioned here have already been structured in "Supervision and Training Charter for Early Stage Researchers" (Eurodoc, 2004).

We suggest to start working on a best practice paper for supervision agreements that contains the experience collected. It would be a pleasure for us to work with you together on such a paper, which could help us all to get more comparable supervision situations on doctoral education throughout Europe.

Research careers

We had a brief look into, what has been done so far.

Status quo:

European level as well as (Eurodoc) instruments and guidelines on research careers state to that we want to:

• elaborate on enhanced and more visible career prospects,
• But what has been done so far?
• sustainable career development systems at all career stages (regardless of contractual situation and of the chosen R&D career path),
• Where do we find them?
• treatment of early stage researchers (ESRs) as professionals
• Are we really doing this?
• improvement of the recruitment methods and career evaluation/appraisal systems
• Yes, we are working on it, but where exactly are we?
• aim for gender balance at all levels of employees, equal opportunity policy at recruitment and at the subsequent career stages
• How far are we today?
• equal treatment, selection and evaluation committees with adequate gender balance and
• inform all researchers on these provisions and arrangements

Let’s start to put all this to work!

The status quo is that not much has happened concerning the development of these new instruments and guidelines.

So what is the “Vision for the future”?

Eurodoc recommends developing clear guidelines and strategies for the purpose and content of the doctoral education. To reach this, a clear institutional strategy has to be developed: the importance of career development concerning the offered structures and programmes are important factors, but also the individual perception of the researchers on how the career perspectives at the single higher education institution are:

- Can I really become a professor?

- How realistic is it?

- Are they taking care of me?

Cooperation with external partners (Industry, NGOs, etc.) should be developed to give doctoral candidates the possibility to enlarge their skills and make them employable. However, the importance of fundamental research should not be forgotten. A first step of enhancing career prospects would be to give access to research training and career advice to all doctoral candidates and in the sense of lifelong learning also to postdoctoral fellows and principal investigators, especially concerning skills development.

A second step would be to develop new career structures and transparent development mechanisms for all, which qualify the researcher for a job within or without academia, ideally connected with a personal coaching programme. A more holistic approach coming from the institutional level is asked.

Status quo:

Internationalisation is strongly connected with mobility, but what internationalisation should encompass in doctoral education might be unclear in many universities. Although internationalising higher education institutions is one of the key strategies nowadays, many higher education institutionsare not working to remove recognised obstacles to mobility, as well as having no clear procedures for recognition of mobility. International activities can be:

• international projects with partner universities,

• encouraging stays abroad within doctoral programmes,

• supporting European and international joint doctoral programmes and cotutelle arrangements,

• offer funding for internationalisation

Vision for the future:

Eurodoc recommends to foster internationalisation by increasing mobility through offering portable grants, social security and mobility of pensions, as well as internationalisation in the doctoral education by, for example:

• stays abroad should be available for everybody (could be both research stays, attendance at conferences, courses etc.) - obstacles for shorter stays abroad have to be identified and removed,

• use of new technologies, such as using teleconferences, e-learning etc.

• organisation of international workshops, conferences and summer schools and PhD courses

• recruitment of more international staff (obstacles to this should be identified and removed)

Research assessment and doctoral education

Status quo:

The core component of doctoral training is the advancement of new knowledge through original research. It is essentially 'training by, not training for research'. Research Doctorates should be clearly discerned from other types of postgraduate education. Each country (sometimes even each HEI within a country) has different ways to evaluate research (if they do so at all besides potential mandatory reports to financial bodies). Talking about research assessment from the doctoral candidates’ and

junior researchers’ perspective, means talking about measuring research. As research work consists of original ideas and creative work the question is raised on how and if research in doctoral education can be assessed and developed at all. ECTS can not be seen as a measure for research work: The proper assessment for the result of the doctoral process is the quality of the research work as evaluated by peer review, not the performance in coursework. The European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) is not an appropriate measure for the scale and complexity of core research work (though it is applicable to transversal skills components). This is where we are now.

Vision for the future:

From our point of view a more holistic approach is neccessary! Eurodoc recommends developing standards and procedures of research assessment that take into account the creativity of research work. Measures as peer review systems and citation indices have to be used with care, if implemented as measures for quality of doctoral research. Assessment in doctoral education from a Eurodoc perspective means evaluating the implementation of standards and goals in doctoral education that have been set on the European level. Documents issued by different stakeholders like the Charta & Code help to familiarise the national institutions with the goals that have been set. However, before an evaluation of these standards can take place on the institutional level the HEIs have to implement theses goals at least partially and by this make them their own objectives. After implementation of these standards on the national, the university and the institutional level it comes down to the lower layers in the organisational structure – the department/the graduate school, the doctoral programme. Here, standards on evaluation of skills and experience of researchers can be developed, as well as the assessment of an added value of a doctorate and the expectations and outcomes of doctoral programmes and duration of the doctorate. After setting the right criteria, the process of evaluation should lead to improvements on the programme level as well as a feedback to all other levels of the institution, if necessary to improve the quality of the higher ranked processes. Don’t forget who is in charge of the research! That’s the professors. So this is why an assessment strategy should start on the highest level of the institution.

Collecting data on doctoral programmes

Status quo:

There is a lack of comparable data on doctoral programmes and the doctorate within Europe. Some outcomes from national surveys, or surveys only on some topics can be found. However, these are only focusing on some areas of the doctorate and not giving information which provides a "general overview" on the situation of doctoral programmes and doctoral candidates in Europe. Making decisions and recommendations without having data showing the real status quo complicates the situation. This is even more deteriorated by the diversity and the direction of structural and organisational reforms in Europe which have taken place in the last decade. A need for more systematic information has been acknowledged for some time. Currently some institutions are doing surveys on the European level to improve the situation. Some institutions are collecting information on the level of the doctoral programme to be able to improve the quality of their programmes. It is questionable whether this is the right approach. What does time to degree tell us about the quality of the research work done?

What about the future?

As there is an obvious lack of contact data of the doctoral candidates in some countries and even in those where doctoral candidates have to register, they disappear from the system after some years (as we have heard here).

In fact Eurodoc has been working on a survey to provide comparable data on the situation of doctoral education in Europe. Right now we are running the first Europe-wide survey of this kind. This survey could be conducted regularly as a panel to produce some long term analysis of the situation, the improvements and the drawbacks. Apart from that, it is questionable which data should be used in surveys on the institutional level. Only talking about quantitative data like number of courses or credits taken, time to degree etc. does not say much about the research quality of the doctoral education. Taking into account how research can be evaluated and which positive and negative effects arise from e.g. peer reviews, have to be taken into account. A negative effect of counting the publications could mean a shift towards a publication overload in the doctorate and a shift away from the skills development part that also has its importance.

So we have to be careful about what we survey and which effects are likely

to be produced by this.

The role of networks in European doctoral education

Status quo:

Networking can be seen as one of the key competences of researchers. Due to this fact, Higher Education Institutions are encouraging young researchers to become active in all kinds of research and social networks. Networks are implemented on the level of doctoral programmes, the HEI- level, national and international levels, they can be field specific or interdisciplinary. Networks ensure the possibility to share knowledge, research and find connections; key reasons to establish a network. Networks offer the benefits of sharing experience and best practice. To foster networking on the doctoral level it is important to have some financial means available .

Vision for the future:

In an increasing global world with greater competition, Europe needs to build a collaborative environment and share knowledge across borders in order to stay competitive. For this to become true networks need to be established. It is therefore vital that doctoral candidates get a chance to meet and network with other doctoral candidates and other researchers. This will also intensify the quality of their own research due to knowledge transfer and improve their social skills.

However, as it is always a process to start networks the most important factor can be seen in the formation period of these networks. Giving incentives to doctoral candidates to improve the networking skills can be seen as a facilitator of their motivation. However, these incentives should not only be financial means, but personal help, service and contact with the institution, as financial incentives may destruct the intrinsic motivation. It is essential that Higher Education Institutions take up this opportunity to fully involve young researchers into the process.

There is still a lot of work and Eurodoc is committed to keep working on these issues.

http://www.eurodoc.net/