Doctoral students’ attitude towards their subject and scholarship
Learning in a course system is quite different from acquiring knowledge in a doctoral education scheme without courses.
In the more structured model, research opportunities and available methods are presented to PhD students in a much more
systematic manner. Courses can provide a good overview for the individual doctoral student, together with specific advice on
how to carry out research and how to avoid certain pitfalls. Doctoral courses can be of great value in particular for early PhD
students and we know from our own and other PhDs’ experiences that such courses can be very helpful in facilitating access
to what, at first sight, may appear to be extremely complex topics of study.
While under the unstructured scheme of PhD education doctoral students were often limited to the education provided
and (sometimes very narrow) views conveyed by their supervisor, doctoral courses, at least in principle, can offer broader
perspectives and higher quality teaching by experts. Hence, the individual doctoral student potentially could experience
more diversity in the current setting. However, owing to the somewhat limited available selection of (mostly quantitative)
courses and course instructors, there is a significant risk that such courses will systematically serve to restrict the
philosophical and methodological approaches that doctoral students are willing to contemplate for their own PhDs. What is
absent from the course programme remains largely invisible to them. Potential doctoral students who would like to pursue