Quality and equality in British PhD assessment

Abstract

This paper asks whether doctoral assessment has escaped the regulation of quality assurance procedures. Raising questions about the affective and micropolitical dimensions of an oral examination conducted in private, it explores how current concerns about quality assurance, standards, benchmarks and performance indicators in higher education apply to the assessment of doctoral/research degrees in Britain, and in particular to the viva voce examination. Successful PhD completion is a key performance indicator for universities and an important basis for the accreditation of their staff. Despite the rise of new managerialism, a general preoccupation with calculable standards and outcomes and an emphasis on student entitlements, transparency of decision making and information for ‘consumers’, there still seems to be considerable variation, and some mystification, in how doctoral assessment is conducted and experienced. The massification of doctoral studies and the doubling in number of institutions awarding their own doctorates, post-1992, are both likely to increase product variety still further. In the last decade of the twentieth century, there was a major expansion of doctoral studies and a widening of the types of doctorate that may be undertaken in the UK. Although attention has been given to improving supervision and research skills training here since the late 1980s, the assessment process seems to have escaped the scrutiny, checks and balances currently being applied to other academic programmes. In this paper we wish to explore if and how quality assurance, standards, benchmarks and performance indicators should apply in particular to the viva voce examination. We shall also consider the emotional, affective and micropolitical dimensions of an oral examination conducted in private.