The pedagogy of good PhD supervision

Abstract

During the last decade, the scope and scale of higher education have changed dramatically in which internationalisation, often confused with globalisation, has led to more extensive pattern of activity and collaboration. Whilst internationalisation of higher education have paved the way for higher education institutions (HEIs) to attract good quality international students to accumulate economic and intellectual capital, it has also introduced some unanticipated challenges for the HEIs. One such challenge is the lack of academics' willingness to undertake postgraduate supervision. Such dilemmas have become increasingly inevitable in many universities in the UK given the increasing postgraduate enrolments conjoined with the introduction of teaching excellence framework and limited number of academics willing to take up supervisory roles. Against this background, the main contribution of this paper is to identify the factors affecting academics' choice to opt-in/opt-out of the supervisory role and offer a balanced approach to match the student (protege) expectations.