Universities are renovating the formats and configurations of their doctoral programs to become more international, collaborative and attentive to labor market needs. In a competitive global setting doctoral programs compete to attract students, promote international partnerships, engage with industry and provide students with the social capital…

Undergraduate research is touted as a high-impact educational practice yielding important benefits such as increased retention and notable learning gains. Large-scale studies describing benefits of mentored research programs have focused primarily on outcomes for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) undergraduates. The Students…

This article draws on the concept of structural lag to expand the notion of transitions in higher education contexts beyond linear and age-differentiated. Research reported here responds to scholars who are taking theories of transition into conceptually new landscapes. Using a rhizomic data analysis of a doctoral research project, the idea of…

Many studies indicate that knowledge and knowledge production are the main predictors of social development, welfare and the ability to face the future with confidence. It could be argued that knowledge production is mainly carried out by universities. This study compares 1266 scientific research projects (SRPs) completed by faculties of education…

Essay-writing is generally viewed as the primary learning activity to foster independence and analytical thinking. In this article, we show that independent research projects do not necessarily lead to critical thinking. University-level education on conducting independent projects can, in several respects, counteract enhanced analytical skills.…

Expectations around success in academia vary, and early career academics often receive conflicting messages about what they should concentrate on to achieve promotion or tenure. Taking a social constructionist approach, this paper considers the constructs of objective and subjective career success in academia and shares the perspectives of early…

The purpose of the present investigation was to examine how a collective knowledge-creation-oriented approach to doctoral education is being adopted in research within the field of education. The authors interviewed nine leaders of national centres of excellence in science research and 12 education professors whose research communities cultivate…

Doctoral supervision has attracted significant attention from higher education bodies over the last 15 years, stimulated by shifts in educational and socio-political contexts including what supports the knowledge economy and the stakeholdership of students. This paper conceptualises work worlds through Heideggerian discourse and presents…

This research extends our understanding of research productivity by examining features of managerial practice and culture within university departments. Adopting a robust comparative research design, capturing both interview and survey data sourced from multiple stakeholders from New Zealand universities, we seek to identify factors associated…

During this past decade the level of interest in building research capacity has intensified in Australia and internationally, with a particular emphasis on the development of postgraduate research students, but also extending to undergraduate research experience. This study investigated the student experience across a diverse range of fourth-year…

The world science scenario has observed, in recent years, an important transformation. With the advent of fairly complete publication databases and the improvement of the Internet a number of world university rankings were created, with a clear bias towards research universities. Also, a new field of scientometrics has been developed, and recent…

Research supervisors' different ways of experiencing their supervision of doctoral students are analysed in terms of the students' questions and problems as they relate to the supervisor's research, and what consequences this connection, or non-connection, to the supervisor's research has for supervision and the role of supervisor. Thirty…

The article illustrates how the South Africa-Netherlands Research Programme on Alternatives in Development (SANPAD), a doctoral research preparation programme for candidates on the African continent, evolved from an aid programme to an exemplary model of innovation, namely SANTRUST, an ownership-driven partnership within the framework of…

The National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education (1996) chaired by Lord Dearing envisioned a university sector central to the UK's knowledge-based economy. With successive government support the university-business partnership ideology has been put into practice. Widening participation has increased in emphasis over recent years, providing…

This article describes higher degree research supervisors' experiences of supervision as teaching. While research education is considered central to the higher degree research experience, comparatively little is known to date of the teaching lenses adopted by supervisors as they go about their supervision. We worked with 35 supervisors engaged in…