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Whether the professional development of the researcher is of equal or more importance that the progress of the research can then raise another matter – that of the extent to which postgraduate students have some of the characteristics of employees rather than of customers of the university – and the broader implications of this. The European Council of Doctoral Candidates and Junior Researchers (Eurodoc) has argued that doctoral candidates should be considered employees. Some countries such as Germany and Austria already recognise them as employees and some treat them as neither students nor employees. 75 For example, in some countries PhD students have the status of university employees with respect to some areas of industrial and even human rights legislation. This recognises the often substantial contributions that the students make to measurable university outputs. From a national perspective, what is the balance between the value of the research produced by a PhD candidate and the value of the training the candidate receives? Recognising the hybrid nature of research students – as customers of the university undergoing training provided by the university in the form of work which makes important contributions to the outputs of these same universities – raises questions about the fees that research students should pay universities and the extent to which estimates of the full cost of research training need to acknowledge this research output. Another issue associated with the important role research students play in performing a significant proportion of university research is that research students are also an important source of revenue. Individual researchers, schools and institutions can benefit from attracting larger numbers of research students because this has the potential, or even the direct effect, of increasing their funding. This is true both of domestic students (through RTS funding) and international students who may be paying fees (although many universities also offer fee scholarships to cover the fees of international doctoral students). Qualitative concerns Concerns about PhD training are not just quantitative, relating to the number of doctoral students in relation to the demand for their services. Closely related to the demand/supply issues there are qualitative concerns that the attributes that doctoral students develop during their PhD training are inadequate because they reduce the employability of PhD graduates or do not match the expectations that potential employers have about the attributes that such graduates should possess. These concerns can relate even to the research expertise of doctoral graduates, reflecting in part the changing nature of research and the different management processes and management expectations of researchers in academia and industry. Changing nature of research There is no doubt that research and researchers are playing a growing role in economic development, in improving our health, in managing our environment and across all areas of human activity. However, research is not a static activity and the context in which a growing proportion of global research effort takes place is quite different from that of traditional university research. Research and research processes are themselves changing as a result of technological and other innovation and much university research will reflect this. However, research is also changing because of the changing 75. http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/science/articles/10.1038/nj7401- THE CHANGING PHD PAGE 34
demands of society, governments and businesses and because of the new kinds of research outputs and outcomes they are seeking. If PhD training is to be effective it has to respond to these changes as well as to the more general pressures and demands on national education systems, so that PhD graduates have the attributes necessary to operate effectively in the senior positions they should eventually fill. The problems that governments, business and society need research to address are becoming more difficult. They often take the form of what policy analysts call ‘wicked problems’. These are problems for which there is no single, simple or generally agreed solution and for which any intervention is likely to have multiple effects, some unintended, unwanted and even unpredictable. In many cases this will mean that there is no ‘solution’ to such problems but at best it is possible to manage them. Moreover, these problems do not exist in isolation but are themselves interrelated. Climate change, energy security, population policy, health care issues, education and economics, to name just a few, are not discrete areas of activity but interact with each other, being interdependent and interrelated in many ways. The characteristics of wicked problems stem from their origin in the complex systems within which we live. While it is true that such systems are intellectual constructs, concepts developed to help understand the world, they nevertheless reflect the reality that many parts of our existence are interconnected, often in surprising and unexpected ways. These systems, and the interconnectedness of the challenges and opportunities they present, are becoming more apparent because the rate of change is itself increasing. This means that the consequences of our interventions make themselves felt sooner. Moreover, on a global scale the growing population and its increasing concentration can mean that the consequences of any intervention are much greater than they might have been in the past. The flows of money, people, information and other resources within and across systems are growing (in absolute terms and as a proportion of global activity) and are taking place more quickly. While there are many reasons for this, some of the critical factors (themselves interdependent) include the rapid technological advances in information and communications technology and the ways in which we use such technologies, not least in the financial services sector; population growth and migration; changes in the global economic centres of gravity; and significant increases in investment aimed directly at improving the rate of innovation. Such investments include funding for research but they also include, for example, investments in education, technology uptake or to support the creative industries. Nations now use their level of investment in these areas as measures of their potential competitiveness and to stake their place in the world. How can PhD training respond to the more complex research management environments that today's complex problems demand? One consequence of the escalating complexity of the modern environment is that the knowledge, skills and expertise we need to tackle major (and even minor) problems need ever higher levels of sophistication. Given the speed of change, learning how to learn has become as important as learning how to do other things; and having the skills necessary to acquire knowledge can be as important as what you know. A further change has been that the nature of current problems and the scale of effort that we need to address them frequently require large teams and multidisciplinary approaches. The idea of a single researcher working in relative isolation and insulated from day to day concerns is becoming an anachronism and PhD training needs to reflect this. The model of an individual researcher, no matter how renowned, working with a student apprentice may no longer be viable. In the science and engineering disciplines it is already the case that many research students THE CHANGING PHD PAGE 35
Page 1 and 2: Discussion paper March 2013 THE CHA
Page 3 and 4: Contents Executive summary 5 Introd
Page 5 and 6: Executive summary The modern PhD de
Page 7 and 8: Introduction Nurturing talent is es
Page 9 and 10: China's first PhD programmes in 197
Page 11 and 12: level available. While the AQF reco
Page 13 and 14: These differences are not trivial b
Page 15 and 16: have responded to these changes in
Page 17 and 18: Pressures on and in national educat
Page 19 and 20: consequence of increasing numbers a
Page 21 and 22: esearch training for students under
Page 23 and 24: Why we need PhDs Expectations The c
Page 25 and 26: These figures suggest that almost 8
Page 27 and 28: An American Chemical Society report
Page 29 and 30: conduct current research in a compe
Page 31 and 32: photonics experts, statisticians or
Page 33: The intrinsic value of the work of
Page 37 and 38: go beyond their narrow areas of spe
Page 39 and 40: should possess have changed, expand
Page 41 and 42: qualitative links to the career opp
Page 43 and 44: career-related motivations. Not sur
Page 45 and 46: Coursework One important response t
Page 47 and 48: themselves, they should instead be
Page 49 and 50: The department is currently working
Page 51 and 52: opportunities and other food relate
Page 53 and 54: Conclusion Australia provides effec
Page 55 and 56: Attachment 1 Potential attributes o
Page 57 and 58: • Leadership and assertiveness sk
Page 59 and 60: THE CHANGING PHD PAGE 59

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