Vice-Rectorate for Studies and Teaching, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
Educational Psychology, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Bochum, Germany.
PLoS One. 2020 Jul 30;15(7):e0233415. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0233415. eCollection 2020.
Structured doctoral education is increasingly preferred compared to the individual model. Several science policy organisations give recommendations on how to structure doctoral education. However, there is little research on to what extent these recommendations find their way into practice. In our study, we first compared European and German recommendations on doctoral education with, second, the institutional regulations of structured doctoral programmes (N = 98) in the life sciences at twelve different German universities. Additionally, we third asked doctoral graduates (N = 1796) of these structured doctoral programmes and graduates of individual doctoral studies about their experience in doctoral education. Fourth, we contrasted the regulations of structured doctoral programmes with the reported experiences of their graduates. We found significant deviations of the reported practices of graduates from the regulations of their organisations, regarding the student admission, supervision and curricular activities of doctoral candidates. The efficacy of structured versus traditional doctoral education should be examined based on reported practice rather than on the respective written regulations.
相较于个体化模式，结构化博士教育越来越受到青睐。一些科学政策组织就如何构建博士教育体系提出了建议。然而，对于这些建议在实践中得到落实的程度，相关研究却很少。在我们的研究中，我们首先将欧洲和德国的博士教育建议与 12 所德国不同大学的生命科学领域结构化博士课程的机构规定（N=98）进行了比较。其次，我们询问了这些结构化博士课程的博士毕业生（N=1796）和个体化博士研究的毕业生对其博士教育经历的看法。最后，我们将结构化博士课程的规定与毕业生报告的经历进行了对比。我们发现，毕业生报告的实践与他们所在组织的规定之间存在显著差异，具体表现在学生入学、导师监督和博士生课程活动等方面。结构化博士教育与传统博士教育的效果应该基于报告的实践而不是各自的书面规定来进行评估。
