Doctoral Education in South Africa

First published in 2015 by African Minds

African Minds

4 Eccleston Place, Somerset West, 7130, Cape Town, South Africa

info@africanminds.org.za

www.africanminds.org.za

2015 Nico Cloete, Johann Mouton and Charles Sheppard

All contents of this document, unless specified otherwise, are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

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978-1-928331-00-1 Print

978-1-928331-07-0 e-Book

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Contents

List of figures and tables

Preface

About the authors

List of frequently used acronyms

Chapter 1

The demand for a doctorate: Global, African and South African contexts

Chapter 2

The demand to increase doctorates

Chapter 3

The demand for improved efficiency

Chapter 4

The demand for transformation

Chapter 5

Improve the quality of doctoral education

Chapter 6

Multiple paths to success

Chapter 7

Incremental change and a paradigm shift

Chapter 8

Policy choices and implications

Appendices

Appendix 1   Data sources and methodology

Appendix 2   Responses to the presentation of preliminary findings from the Study on the Doctorate in South Africa (May 2014)

Appendix 3   Current trends in PhD studies: A review of articles published on the University World News website (2013)

Appendix 4   Government steering of doctoral production

Appendix 5   Additional data on the doctorate in South Africa

Appendix 6   Scenarios that will produce doctoral graduates by 2030

References

List of figures and tables

Chapter 1

Figure 1.1 The rise of the doctorate: Percentage growth in doctoral output (1998–2006)

Figure 1.2 Doctoral enrolments at eight sub-Saharan African universities (2001, 2007, 2011)

Figure 1.3 Doctoral graduates at eight sub-Saharan African universities (2001, 2007, 2011)

Figure 1.4 Masters graduates at eight sub-Saharan African universities (2001, 2007, 2011)

Figure 1.5 Discourses on doctorate production in South Africa

Chapter 2

Figure 2.1 Growth in PhD graduates in South Africa (1920–2012)

Figure 2.2 Average annual growth rate of PhD graduates (1920–2012)

Figure 2.3 Masters and doctoral headcount enrolments (1996–2012)

Figure 2.4 Student enrolments (1996 and 2012)

Figure 2.5 Average shares of the doctoral enrolments in the various fields of study (1996–2012)

Figure 2.6 The distribution of doctoral enrolments by institution type (1996–2012)

Figure 2.7 Distribution of doctoral enrolments across major fields of study and institution categories (1996 compared to 2012)

Figure 2.8 Average shares of the doctoral graduates in the various fields of study (1996–2012)

Figure 2.9 Percentage distribution of doctoral graduates per institution type and field of study with SET subdivided further (2012)

Table 2.1 PhD enrolments per institutional type (1996–2012)

Table 2.2 ‘Top 5’ factors influencing students’ choice of their current degree programmes

Table 2.3 Total number of doctoral graduates per institution (2012)

Table 2.4 Distribution of doctoral graduates per institutional type and field of study (1996–2012)

Table 2.5 Comparison of PhD production in South Africa with a number of selected OECD countries (2000 and 2011)

Chapter 3

Figure 3.1 Comparison of doctoral enrolments and graduates (1996–2012)

Figure 3.2 Percentages of new doctoral intakes who graduated after five and six years respectively (2003–2007)

Figure 3.3 Progress of 2006 intake of new doctoral students after seven years by bands of performance

Figure 3.4 Progress of 2006 intake of new doctoral students after seven years by fields of study

Figure 3.5 Dropout and completion rates of the 2006 new entering doctoral cohort

Figure 3.6 Progress of 2006 intake of new doctoral students at universities after seven years

Figure 3.7 Progress of 2006 intake of new doctoral students at comprehensive universities after seven years

Figure 3.8 Progress of 2006 intake of new doctoral students at universities of technology after seven years

Table 3.1 Number of PhDs and staff with doctorates by university (2011–2013)

Chapter 4

Figure 4.1 Doctoral enrolments by race (1996–2012)

Figure 4.2 Percentage of doctoral enrolments by race (1996–2012)

Figure 4.3 Doctoral graduates by race (1996–2012)

Figure 4.4 Percentage of doctoral graduates by race (1996–2012)

Figure 4.5 Percentage of doctoral enrolments by gender (1996–2012)

Figure 4.6 Graduates by gender (1996–2012)

Figure 4.7 PhD enrolments by nationality: Foreign vs South African (2000–2012)

Figure 4.8 PhD enrolments by nationality: Rest of Africa, international and South African (2000, 2004, 2008, 2012)

Figure 4.9 Disaggregation of doctoral enrolments by nationality (2012)

Figure 4.10 Proportion of PhD graduates by nationality: Foreign vs South African (2000, 2004, 2008, 2012)

Figure 4.11 PhD graduates by nationality (2000, 2004, 2008, 2012)

Figure 4.12 Average annual growth rates by nationality and gender (2000–2012)

Figure 4.13 Doctoral graduates by nationality (2012)

Figure 4.14 South African doctoral graduates by race (2012)

Figure 4.15 African doctoral enrolments by nationality and gender (2000 and 2012)

Figure 4.16 African doctoral graduates by nationality and gender (2000 and 2012)

Table 4.1 Doctoral graduates by race and gender (1971–1979)

Table 4.2 Doctoral graduates by race and gender (1986–1995)

Table 4.3 African doctoral enrolments and graduates from South Africa and the rest of Africa by gender (2000–2012)

Table 4.4 African and white doctoral graduates 1996 and 2012 compared to 30-to-49-year-old age cohort

Chapter 5

Figure 5.1 Responses on supervisor guidance (2000)

Figure 5.2 Selection methods of PhD students supervised, by scientific field (2000)

Figure 5.3 Perceived importance of specified criteria for the selection of PhD students (2000)

Figure 5.4 Percentage of academic staff with doctorates (1996–2012)

Figure 5.5 Extent of agreement with statement ‘I sometimes have to supervise PhD work that lies outside my area of expertise’, by scientific field (2011)

Figure 5.6 Extent of agreement with statement ‘I lack sufficient time to give each PhD student the attention that he/she deserves’, by scientific field (2011)

Figure 5.7 Assessment of the quality of supervision by students (% rated as ‘excellent’ or ‘good’) (2000)

Figure 5.8 How doctoral studies prepared students for the world of work (2009)

Table 5.1 Academic staff with doctoral degrees and ratios of academic staff to doctoral students and graduates (1996–2012)

Table 5.2 Academic staff with doctoral degrees and ratios of academic staff to doctoral graduates by institutional type (2012)

Chapter 6

Table 6.1 Departments selected to explore the quantitative report on the HEMIS data

Chapter 8

Figure 8.1 2030 scenarios: Current (2%) average annual growth rate in student enrolments

Figure 8.2 2030 scenarios: High (4%) average annual growth rate in academic capacity

Table 8.1 Indicators for performance in doctoral production (2012)

Appendix 5

Table A1 PhD enrolments per institution type and broad field of study (1996 and 2012)

Table A2 PhD graduates per institutional type and broad field of study (1996 and 2012)

Table A3 PhDs by race and gender (1996–2012)

Table A4 Countries of origin of the 2012 international graduates

Preface

This book draws on a large number of studies conducted by the Centre for Higher Education Trust (CHET) and the Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology (CREST) over the past decade. In addition to these historical studies, primary research was also undertaken specifically to produce the evidence base for the statistical data referred to in the book. The historical studies focused on a range of issues that affect the growth, efficiency, quality and transformation of the doctorate in South Africa, doctoral supervision, and doctoral tracer studies as well as drawing on studies from the rest of Africa and the world.

Although CREST’s first study on postgraduate studies dates back to 2001 when it did a case study of doctoral graduates at Stellenbosch University, its first major investigation into the state of the doctorate in South Africa began in 2008 when it was commissioned by the Academy of Science of South Africa to conduct five studies on the doctorate: (1) a study on systemic blockages in postgraduate education and training; (2) a statistical profile of doctoral students in South Africa; (3) an employer study; (4) a study on doctoral attrition; and (5) a destination study of doctoral students. These five studies would eventually be integrated into a consensus report (‘The PhD: An evidence-based study on how to meet the demands for high-level skills in an emerging economy’) which was published in 2010 (ASSAf 2010). The CREST reports were the result of a team effort of CREST staff but special mention should be made of the inputs of Nelius Boshoff, Lynn Lorenzen and Rein Treptow.

At about the same time, a series of dialogue sessions and roundtable discussions were organised by CHET with the participation of the Council on Higher Education (CHE) and a number of researchers working on higher education policy issues. These dialogues resulted in two funded projects that became intertwined to form CHET’s first major study on the doctorate in South Africa: (1) ‘The successful cultivation of social science and humanities doctoral scholarship in South Africa’ supported by the Ford Foundation (2009–2011) and (2) ‘Toward national and regional policy dialogues for higher education experts and policy-makers in South Africa’ funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York (2009–2013). Credit must go to John Butler-Adam (Ford Foundation) and Claudia Frittelli (Carnegie Corporation New York) for their systematic support. Both became more than funders – they were valued participants in the project.

Professor Cheryl de la Rey chaired the initial project on the social sciences and humanities doctoral scholarship, first while she was chief executive officer of the CHE and then as vice-chancellor of the University of Pretoria. The project began in 2009 with the following aims:

•To provide a clear typology of PhD training and productivity in South Africa;

•To ensure that reliable and valid empirical data would be collected and analysed to stimulate an informed debate on the future of doctoral training in South Africa amongst higher-education leaders, policy-makers and funders; and

•To include a specific focus on the social sciences and humanities.

One of the first outputs of these two projects was a publication titled ‘A Literature Review on Models of the PhD’ by Professors Johann Louw and Johan Muller,¹ which helped to inform the methodology of the research presented in this book. The findings of this first CHET study were also reworked and written up by Johan Louw (University of Cape Town), with Gillian Godsell (University of the Witwatersrand) conducting the interviews and providing the analysis. Other outputs from CHET’s initial work on the doctorate in South Africa included several seminars and the collection of data that led to CHET’s second major study.

The second CHET study, with support from CREST, was an analysis of the Higher Education Management Information System (HEMIS) database for all records from 1996 to 2012. (For details about classification of fields and the methodology of calculating completion rates and obtaining data on international students, see Appendix 1.) Acknowledgement must be given to Ms Jean Skene, Mr Jacques Appelgryn and Mr Richard Nempandoni of the Management Information Directorate in the Department of Higher Education and Training for their assistance in preparing and providing the data sets for analysis.

A third separate project that provided data and information about the broader context of the South African system was also funded by the Ford Foundation in 2012. The project was titled ‘To develop a differentiation methodology in diversifying the higher education system to meet the needs of society, the economy and students’.² Professor Ian Bunting is the project coordinator and CHET has been an active participant in the differentiation debate in South Africa (and in Africa). This project, initially in collaboration with the Center for Higher Education Policy Studies (CHEPS) in the Netherlands and a group of researchers and institutional planners, produced performance indicators of which doctoral enrolment and graduation growth and efficiency were key components. Data and analysis were discussed at several seminars on the issue and it contributed to the Minister’s 2010 Higher Education Summit³ and the National Development Plan Diagnostic Report (2011).⁴

CREST’s involvement in doctoral scholarship received further impetus when it was commissioned by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) at the beginning of 2014 to conduct a study of the progression and retention rates of South African postgraduate students. The methodology for this study is outlined in Appendix 1. Special mention should be made of the very insightful comments and feedback on earlier versions of the final report of this study by Dr Thomas auf der Heyde, deputy-director general in DST.

Given this wide range of studies separately and jointly conducted by CHET and CREST, it is not surprising that we decided in 2014 to work together to publish a book that would combine the accumulative findings and insights generated by these various studies.

During a seminar in May 2014 entitled ‘The Doctorate in South Africa: Policies, Discourses and Statistics’ (held in Cape Town),⁵ 60 participants met to discuss the conceptual framework of the book (the discourses on growth, efficiency, quality and transformation and their influence on doctoral education in South Africa). The research group also presented selected data and short reports on the qualitative study of departments in the social sciences and humanities, and results from a national survey of supervision practices (see Appendix 1 on methodology).

The research group invited a number of comments from experts who are familiar with the South African higher education context and have themselves been involved in PhD supervision. Professor De la Rey and Professor Badat (then vice-chancellor of Rhodes University) are both former chief executive officers of the South African Council on Higher Education, and Dr Butler-Adam (a former deputy vice-chancellor and the Ford Foundation programme officer) funded this research project. Professor Moja (New York University), Professor Langa (Eduardo Mondlane and University of the Western Cape), and Professors Stensaker and Maassen (University of Oslo) are involved in doctoral education in their own countries and internationally. While the first three commentators mainly focused on the research project itself, the latter four are more concerned with different approaches to doctoral education from different country experiences. This seminar was invaluable to the final conceptualisation of the book and also provided an impetus towards publication. Edited transcriptions of the commentators’ presentations are found in Appendix 2.

The authors have, over the past year, presented the main arguments and findings of the book at various forums in South Africa. We wish to thank all those who gave us feedback and raised interesting issues at these meetings. In particular, we’d like to acknowledge the constructive inputs of Professor Johan Muller, Professor Ian Bunting and Professor Jan Botha on the final chapters of this book.

Finally, our thanks go to Angela Mias (CHET) and Kathy Graham and Marlene Titus (Cape Higher Education Consortium) for their administrative support; to Linda Benwell and Letitia Muller at Millennium Travel for handling all the travel and seminar arrangements; to Karen McGregor of University World News for her ongoing reportage on HERANA projects and meetings; to African Minds and the publishing team (François van Schalkwyk, Fran Ritchie, Philanie Jooste and Jill Sloan) for their support; and to all the staff at CREST – Astrid Valentine, Lynn Lorenzen, Marthie van Niekerk, Milandre van Lill, Nelius Boshoff, Megan James and Rein Treptow – for their invaluable contributions to the studies conducted over the years and for the logistical support in making this book possible.

Nico Cloete, Johann Mouton and Charles Sheppard

October 2015

Notes

1http://www.chet.org.za/papers/literature-review-models-phd

2http://chet.org.za/research-areas/differentiation

3http://www.chet.org.za/resources/higher-education-summit-march-2010-institutionaldifferentiation

4http://www.chet.org.za/papers/higher-education-contribution-npc%E2%80%99snational-development-plan

5http://chet.org.za/files/resources/CoE%20CHET%20Crest%20PhD%20Seminar%2016%20May%202014%20Programme%20FINAL.pdf?download=1

About the authors

Nico Cloete is the Director of the Centre for Higher Education Trust (CHET) (a partner in the DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in Scientometrics and Science, Technology and Innovation Policy [SciSTIP]) and Coordinator of the Higher Education Research and Advocacy Network in Africa (HERANA). He is also a Guest Professor at the University of Oslo, an Extraordinary Professor at the Institute for Post-School Studies at the University of the Western Cape and Extraordinary Professor in the Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology at Stellenbosch University. He has published in psychology, sociology and higher education policy. His latest books are Universities and Economic Development in Africa (2011) and Knowledge Production and Contradictory Functions in African Higher Education (2015).

Johann Mouton is Director of the Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology (CREST) and the DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in Scientometrics and Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (SciSTIP). He is on the editorial board of five international journals including the Journal of Mixed Methods Research; Science and Public Policy; Science, Technology and Society; and Minerva. He has authored or co-authored ten monographs including Understanding Social Research (1996), The Practice of Social Research (2002) and How to Succeed in your Masters and Doctoral Studies (2001). He has also edited or co-edited nine books, published 90 articles in peer-reviewed journals and chapters in books, written more than 100 contract and technical reports and given more than 200 papers at national and international conferences and seminars. He has presented more than 60 workshops on research methodology and postgraduate supervision and supervised 72 doctoral and master’s students over the past 20 years. In 2012 he was elected to the Council of the Academy of Science of South Africa.

Charles Sheppard is the Director of Management Information at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in South Africa. He has extensive knowledge and experience working with post-school information systems and performance indicators, as well as in the areas of higher education planning, higher education funding frameworks and financial modelling. Some of his recent work includes data work for the Report of the Task Team on Undergraduate Curriculum Structure in the CHE publication A Proposal for Undergraduate Reform in South Africa (2013). He also recently prepared a technical paper titled ‘Funding of the South African Further Education and Training (FET) Sector’ (2013) for the Financial and Fiscal Commission.

List of frequently used acronyms

Chapter 1

The demand for a doctorate: Global, African and South African contexts

•Introduction

–Internationally: An increasing number of PhDs?

•Africa needs tens of thousands more PhDs

–Trends in doctoral enrolment numbers

–Trends in doctoral graduation numbers

–Pipeline of graduates against enrolments

–Innovation in doctoral education

•South Africa: More PhDs to solve the quality problem

–Debates and discourse

–Different pressures on PhD production: A framework

–Growth

–Efficiency

–Transformation

–Quality

•Dynamics of doctorate production

•The structure of this book

Introduction

Worldwide, in Africa and in South Africa, the importance of the doctorate has increased disproportionately in relation to its share of the overall graduate output over the last decade. This heightened attention has not been predominantly concerned with the traditional role of the PhD, namely the provision of a future supply of academics. Rather, it has focused on the increasingly important role that higher education – particularly high-level skills – is perceived to play in the knowledge economy.

In a literature review on doctoral studies, Louw and Muller (2014) state that it is common knowledge that the 1990s brought an upsurge of interest in the doctorate. This upsurge has become frenzied in recent years. For example, during 2013 alone, University World News (UWN) published more than 30 articles on the doctorate, covering the need for more or fewer PhDs, the importance of the doctorate in the knowledge economy, competition for talent, international mobility and changing models of PhD programmes, to mention but a few issues (see Appendix 3). In South Africa, the National Development Plan (NDP) (2012) has prioritised an increase in doctoral output from 1 876 in 2012 to 5 000 by 2030. And at a meeting on the doctorate in October 2013, sponsored by the National Research Foundation (NRF) and Carnegie Corporation of New York, there was broad agreement that Africa needs tens of thousands more PhDs in order to renew an ageing professoriate, staff the rapidly expanding higher education field, boost research and generate the high-level skills growing economies need (MacGregor 2013b).

This chapter will provide brief comments on the debates internationally, in Africa, and in South Africa. These comments cover broader policy debates and issues, including the renewed interest in the doctorate. We address international trends first, then recent attempts in Africa to address this issue and, lastly, some South African developments.

Internationally: An increasing number of PhDs?

Probably the most comprehensive global overview of doctoral production to date, ‘The PhD factory’ was published in Nature in 2011 (Cyranoski et al. 2011). Raising debate with the subtitle, ‘The world is producing more PhDs than ever before. Is it time to stop?’, the article begins by reporting that in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, the number of science doctorates grew, between 1998 and 2008, by nearly 40% to some 34 000. The authors noted that this growth showed no sign of slowing: most countries are building up their higher education systems because they see educated workers as a key to economic growth.

During the 1990s, there were indications of a correspondence between the acceptance of the notion of the knowledge economy and society, on the one hand, and the rise of the doctorate, on the other. In 1991, as part of his ‘university-as-the-engine-of-development’ paper delivered at a World Bank seminar in Kuala Lumpur, Manuel Castells (1991) argued that new modes of economic production were increasingly reliant on knowledge and information technology. Knowledge and ‘informationalism’ had become central to globalisation and development (Castells and Cloete 2011). The sources of productivity and competitiveness were increasingly dependent on knowledge and information being applied to productivity. The increasing generation and accessing of knowledge has led to what is now commonly referred to as the knowledge society (Castells 1991) or the knowledge economy (Jessop 2007).

On the one hand, some people still question the notion of the knowledge economy; in recent times, Jessop (2007) described it as a fictitious commodity. On the other hand, the OECD, the World Bank and many governments often use it as kind of ideology to promote certain economic and education policies. Nonetheless, there is a substantial body of evidence about the importance of knowledge in economies linked into the global information society.

Econometric studies carried out during the early 1990s started showing a statistical relationship between diffusion of information technology, productivity and competition for countries, regions, industries and firms (Monk 1989; Landau and Rosenberg 1986; Castells 1991). A decade later, a World Bank calculation showed that the knowledge sector added more value than the business process to a product (Serageldin 2000). This position was taken a few steps further by Schwab (2012), founder of the World Economic Forum (WEF), who, reflecting on the 2012 WEF meeting, suggested that ‘talentism’ is the new capitalism.

Confirming the valuing of talent in today’s global economy, the Mercer Talent Survey shows that chief executive officers understand that talent is a primary source of competitive advantage: whether entering a new market, innovating existing processes, developing a product or expanding service lines, it is an essential element of every core business function (Mercer 2013).

If knowledge and information are the new electricity of the economy, then it is a reasonable assumption that the university – as the main knowledge institution in society – will become increasingly important and that its apex training product, the PhD, will appear on the skills radar (Times Literary Supplement 2013).

A number of initiatives were launched during the past two decades to examine doctoral education and training more closely, with the aim of reforming it in yet-to-be-determined ways. In Europe, perhaps the best-known policy changes are those instituted via the Bologna Declaration of 1999 (Joint Declaration of the European Ministers of Education 1999), with its harmonisation of the higher education landscape, as well as the Lisbon Strategy of 2000 to create a European Research and Innovation Area (Lisbon European Council 2000). In North America, a number of investigations were launched, such as by the United States Council of Graduate Schools’ PhD Completion Project (Council of Graduate Schools 2008), the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation’s Responsive PhD Initiative (Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation 2005), the Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate (Golde and Walker 2006) and the Graduate Education Initiative funded by the Andrew W Mellon Foundation (Ehrenberg et al. 2010). Writing in the mid-2000s, Pearson (2005: 119) described doctoral education as an ‘emergent field of study’ characterised by great vigour and a breadth of interest.

Despite this emerging interest, growth in PhD production is not uniform across the world and there is considerable debate about whether it is an unambiguously positive development. Figure 1.1 tells a differentiated story. Countries that already have high levels of doctorate production (Germany, Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom) have an output that is growing at around 5% or less, while fast-developing countries are growing doctoral output at more than 7%, with Mexico (17%) and China (40%) increasing at astronomical rates. An exception amongst developed countries is Denmark (10%), which adopted a comprehensive knowledge economy development growth path and increased spending on higher education after the 2008 global financial crisis.

Cyranoski et al. (2011) summarise the Chinese phenomenon as follows:

The number of PhD holders in China is going through the roof, with some 50 000 people graduating with doctorates across all disciplines in 2009 – and by some counts it now surpasses all other countries. The main problem is the low quality of many graduates. (Cyranoski et al. 2011: 1)

It is widely known that China’s policy of developing world-class universities is underpinned by its view that education providing for high-level skills is central to economic growth (Shen 2013). Other countries that are following massive expansion policies are Singapore (‘growth in all directions’), which has experienced a 60% growth over a five-year period, and India (‘PhDs wanted’), which is planning to grow much faster than the current 8.5% (Cyranoski et al. 2011: 277). Many Asian countries – but particularly Korea, Thailand and Malaysia – are following radical PhD expansion policies.

Figure 1.1: The rise of the doctorate: Percentage growth in doctoral output (1998–2006)

Source: Cyranoski et al. 2011

While the US is now, for the first time since the 1950s, the world’s second-largest producer of PhDs after China, there is considerable debate about continuing growth. Paula Stephan, an economist who studies PhD trends, charges that it is ‘scandalous that US politicians continue to speak of a PhD shortage […] unless Congress wants to put money into creating jobs for these people rather than just creating supply’ (Stephan 2011, in Cyranoski et al. 2011: 277).

In the US, the proportion of people with science PhDs who get tenured academic positions in the sciences has been dropping steadily and industry does not appear to be fully absorbing the surplus. In 1973, 55% of US doctorates in the biological sciences secured tenure-track positions within six years of completing their PhDs, with only 2% being in a postdoctoral or another untenured academic position. By 2006, this figure had decreased to only 15% holding tenured positions six years after graduating and increasing numbers of PhD graduates taking jobs that did not require a PhD (Stephan 2011, in Cyranoski et al. 2011: 277). Stephan argues that it is a waste of resources to spend money on training students who get jobs for which they are not well matched (Stephan 2011, in Cyranoski et al. 2011).

Hacker and Dreifus (2011) concur that PhD production has far outstripped the demand for university lecturers. They report that while the US produced more than 100 000 PhDs between 2005 and 2009, only 16 000 new professorships became available. Furthermore, the use of PhD students to do much of the undergraduate teaching has reduced the number of full-time academic jobs.

The 2013 Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (Bennett and Turner 2013) covered 122 UK universities and received 4 500 responses and it found that 40% of doctoral students were aiming for an academic career and 27% for a research or professional career outside higher education. The career pathways survey of 2010 graduates showed that 2% were unemployed, 20% were in higher education research occupations, and 25% in higher education teaching and lecturing, with 15% in research not in the higher-education sector and 25% in other doctoral occupations.

The issue is not only oversupply for the academic market but also relevant skills for the non-academic market. The Economist (2010) claims that many organisations that pay for doctorates with research skills have realised that significant numbers of PhD graduates find it tough to transfer their skills to the job market. For example, writing lab reports, preparing academic presentations and conducting six-month-long literature reviews do not translate directly into skills required in the business world, where technical knowledge has to be assimilated quickly and presented in simple terms to a wider audience. In responding to this problem, some universities are offering their PhD students training in soft skills that may be useful in the labour market, such as communication and teamwork. In Britain, a four-year New Route PhD claims to develop such skills in graduates (The Economist 2010).

The position that doctoral training is undertaken either for traditional academic purposes or for commercial labour markets does not take into consideration the fact that the process of doctoral training in the US is integral to the global knowledge economy. For example, the PhD arena in the US is no longer a male-dominated enterprise benefiting US citizens alone. In 1966, US-born white males received 71% of science and engineering PhDs, US-born females earned 6% of those degrees and foreign-born students received 23% (Bound et al. 2009). By the year 2000, US-born white males received just 35% of science and engineering PhDs, while 25% of such doctorates were awarded to females and 39% to foreign-born students (Bound et al. 2009). In 2003, doctorate recipients from outside the United States accounted for 50%