Evidence-Based Development of Doctoral Education: The Landscape of Doctoral Students' Experience Research

Abstract

Regular surveys of doctoral students on their career trajectories, satisfaction with the program and the learning process, with the organization of supervision, etc. are widespread in leading foreign universities. The results of such surveys are used to improve programs and assess the effect of the introduced measures. In Russia, however, there is a lack of empirical data on the doctoral students’ experience, which makes it impossible to identify and address the reasons for the low performance of the Russian doctoral education observed over the past few years. To support the discussion about the need for such monitoring surveys in Russia, this article presents the results of an analysis of open information from the websites of about 150 foreign institutions that organize doctoral student surveys at the national, cross-university, and institutional levels. The presented review shows how actively doctoral education data collection takes place in the USA, Canada, Australia, and the UK, where there are one or more large-scale projects stimulating the collection of data from several universities, and how the results of such research are used by universities, employers, and applicants. On the example of topics related to the motivation for entering doctoral programs, to the career trajectories of doctoral students, and to the organization of supervision, it is discussed how the described research practices can be used for the evidence-based development of Russian doctoral education.