University Positioning and Changing Patterns of Doctoral Study: the case of the University of Bath

Abstract

The study examines the changing nature of doctoral study in higher education in the context of significant global changes in higher education. From its origins with Humboldt, the trajectory of doctoral study is traced through the traditional Ph.D, the extended 'American model', to the professional doctorate. A university case study charts how these global changes impacted on a specific UK university as it attempted to position itself in the changing market for doctoral study.

The determinants of university strategic positioning: a reappraisal of the organisation

“…Naudè and Ivy (1999) illustrate how 'newer' UK universities use marketing services to identify alternative niches and differentiate themselves vis-à-vis 'traditional' universities. Jamieson and Naidoo (2007) outline how an English elite university, as a result of its strategic evaluation of external challenges, decides to position itself by broadening the portfolio of doctoral education. Lastly, a group of empirical studies analyse strategic plans (Brandt 2002;Strike and Labbe 2016;Morphew et al 2018), mission statements (Hartley and Morphew 2006;Bevelander et al 2015;Leiber 2016), branding activities (Opoku et al 2008;Furey et al 2014;Çatı et al 2016;Rutter et al 2017) and institutional images (Ivy 2001) in order to investigate how universities leverage on external constraints and opportunities eventually building unique profiles.…”

Professional Doctorates and Careers: the Spanish case1

“…According to these, universities have changed from training a selected group of people to having to face massification problems and from being knowledge-generating institutions to becoming institutions that train people to deal with their daily work problems (Gibbons et al, 1994). As Jamieson and Naidoo (2007) stress, it would be surprising that doctoral education were to be unaware of these changes. The excess supply of people with higher education has led to its 'being devalued' in the labour market and has created the need to incorporate an extra 'requirement' in master and doctoral education where students have command of some knowledge in the former and innovate in the area of knowledge in the latter.…”

“…The remarkable growth in the number of doctoral candidates and in the variety of research fields in Europe and the US has made the professional university career less accessible for students who are looking for a job outside the university. In this context, traditional doctoral education directed towards university teaching proves to be insufficient (Crosier et al, 2007) This idea is also developed by Jamieson and Naidoo (2007) who find the emergence of two doctoral models because of labour market pressures. The first is the American model developed by more than 30 US universities and supported by their government.…”

Comparative Review of Education Doctorates in Three Countries

“…Continual advances in transportation, communication, and related infrastructure such as the Internet, drive globalization, and further the interdependence of economies and cultures. In this digital era and increasingly integrated world market (Salmi, 2000) technology advances the pace of learning, with knowledge changing at an accelerating rate (Haggans, 2015;Jamieson & Naidoo, 2007). Haggans indicates that the digital transformation is altering every aspect of universities.…”