Will the doctoral education review produce any new ideas?
The Norwegian government has appointed a nine-member expert group to analyse how a revised future doctoral degree can benefit “the whole of society” and ensure that doctoral education is “relevant”, according to the Ministry of Higher Education and Research. Not all of Norway’s academics support the group’s mandate.
“In 20 years, the number of people taking a doctorate has more than doubled. At the same time, it is uncertain how well this growth meets the need for development, value creation and competence, both in academia and in the workplace.
“We need a comprehensive assessment of what future doctoral education should look like in order to meet it as best as possible, and we are ensuring that now,” said Minister of Research and Higher Education Sigrun Aasland in a statement on 2 February.
Meanwhile, the number of research fellows studying for a PhD is declining, an article in Khrono reported. In the peak year of 2021, universities in Norway entered into 1,120 new doctoral agreements financed from their own budget. In 2024, this fell to 840. If externally funded research fellow positions are included, the number has decreased from 2,085 to 1,595 – a decrease of almost 25%, according to the report.
“In Norway, there has been a record number of doctoral degrees awarded in recent years, but in the future the arrows will point in the opposite direction. In 2021, there were just over 6,300 fellows at Norwegian universities and university colleges, including private ones. In 2025, there were 700 fewer, close to 5,600,” the report noted.
The Khrono report said there will likely be fewer in the future.
“The Norwegian University of Science and Technology, the Arctic University of Norway (UiT), the University of Stavanger and the University of Oslo also have a significant decrease in the number of agreements entered into, while the Norwegian University of Life Sciences and the University of Bergen entered into more agreements financed from their own budgets in 2024 compared to 2021,” the Khrono report said.
The expert group, headed by Professor Silje Haus-Reve from the University of Stavanger, includes eight doctorate holders and has a detailed mandate.
It has been asked to provide specific recommendations to government, research institutions and the private and public working world on measures that can strengthen the quality and relevance of doctoral education. It is to submit its report to the Ministry of Education and Research by 1 March 2027.
The expert group has also been tasked with assessing the current framework for doctoral education and its overall contribution to society and advising on specific measures to organise future doctoral education so that researcher competence benefits society in the best possible way.
The group have been asked to make assessments and recommend measures separately for health, social sciences and humanities, and technology and natural sciences.
With regard to internationalisation, the group is tasked with assessing the extent to which Norwegian businesses outside academia facilitate the recruitment of international employees with a doctoral degree and possible measures to strengthen any weak recruitment capacity.
It will also assess the need for measures to strengthen the ability of Norwegian academic communities to recruit national candidates for research education.
According to its mandate, the expert group will “assess the need for research expertise across the breadth of working life, as well as instruments to promote cooperation and co-financing between academia, private industry and the public sector”.
It will also assess “the academy’s need for researchers in the academic communities” with an emphasis on “the need for a good balance between employees in recruitment positions and permanent academic staff”.
Outside the box
Professor Yngve Troye Nordkvelle at the University of Inland Norway, whose work has focused on “professional doctorates”, said he was eager to see if the expert group will “step outside the box” when it comes to its mandate.
“I am eager to see what the expert group will think about the mandate and if they dare to take steps outside the box. I fear that the world of ideas here will be quite narrow and that too few voices from outside academia will be engaged.
“The fact that a social economist from the University of Stavanger is leading the group, I think, will be a pretty good warning sign of a conventional investigation,” he said.
Nordkvelle said conventional PhD courses tend to be “communication-heavy”.
“Student activity is writing papers, and that’s it. In social sciences, almost all the courses are the same – and equally miserable,” he noted.
He said it was worrying that PhD studies have not been critically evaluated to a greater extent. “For example, the industrial PhD was evaluated a couple of years after its establishment, while six or seven candidates were in the pipeline.
“As far as I know – not since Wittek and Prøitz wrote a very critical evaluation of the experiences of candidates and supervisors in doctoral programmes in Sweden, Denmark, and Norway in 2020 have any extensive evaluations been published.”
Internationally, there was also very little explicit research on the effect of PhD education. “A critical report from University College London suggests this,” Nordkvelle said.
He argued that his research in the field of “professional doctorates” (in the UK/USA/Australia) indicates both acknowledged and unrecognised problems in the candidates’ practice that “should be the starting point for the research process”.
“The candidates work from their company/business and are admitted on more liberal criteria than a five-year master’s, study in cohorts and document in wider genres than the conventional ones. I will present a paper this summer on how it is that Norwegian authorities seem to know so little about this PhD alternative and are so terrified to engage in it,” Nordkvelle told University World News.
“The Underdal Committee [headed by Professor Arild Underdal in 2018], investigating the structure of career patterns in academia] proposed such a scheme.
“If this committee can see beyond the edge of its own pond, there might be something to be found in the UK. Here they have 70 higher education institutions offering 320 professional doctorates – or to the Dutch universities that are aggressively investing in professional doctorates,” Nordkvelle said.
Strengthening practice
He said a fundamental criticism of today's doctoral programmes is that they are primarily self-initiated by the institutions. “These curiosity-driven projects are in practice based on assumptions by people who have never been in the labour market or business outside academia.
“The professional doctorate in the UK was established precisely to propose solutions that the mandate of this committee is focused on,” he said.
According to Nordkvelle, a professional doctorate requires “a looser collar and a longer chain from the research institution, dissociating itself a little from the conventions and the fear-mongering attitude that universities have”.
He said the two degrees currently in existence (public/industry) tend to lead doctoral students into academia, rather than strengthening practice, a suspicion of his that is supported by Prøitz and Wittek’s research.
“I am curious to see how far the expert group dares to stretch, for example, in relation to industry organisations or, say, the emerging professional schools,” he noted.
Nordkvelle said the point was to “trigger resources” in the world outside universities to engage in research and research education.
What was needed was a “more liberal” funding scheme, a greater willingness to accept an alternative approach and recognition of the valuable knowledge of people in the field of practice, he said.
Concerns over downsizing
Karl Henrik Storhaug Reinås, president of the Association of Doctoral Organizations in Norway, said the association had been concerned by the “rapid decline” in the number of PhD and other temporary positions offered by Norwegian higher education institutions.
“Since a peak of 2,250 new PhD employees at Norwegian public higher education institutions in 2021, we are already down to 1,760 new PhD positions in 2024, the lowest in 10 years. Thus, there are almost 500 fewer people who get the chance to take the highest education and degree in Norway in the space of just three years,” he noted.
He said such downsizing was “deeply concerning” because it prevented recruitment into research and made Norway worse off in the global competition talent market and in terms of knowledge preparedness and innovation capacity.
Reinås said the “great visions” from Norwegian politicians about the knowledge and research needed to meet global challenges stood in contrast to the government’s downsizing of recruitment into research.
He said measures taken in 2023 by then minister of research and higher education Ola Borten Moe, which removed the national dimensioning targets for PhD positions in Norway, were experienced by the academic sector as a way for politicians to sidestep direct responsibility for the decline in PhD positions.
“Instead, the decrease in general basic funding to the higher education sector means that the institutions have to cut their budgets where it hurts the least,” Reinås said.
“Temporary research positions have an end date, which means that if you do not announce new positions, higher education institutions will soon be able to save money on ended contracts.
“However, this is rather shortsighted, as we will soon be in danger of losing research talent, and we will produce less research benefiting society, in addition to having less capacity to teach students,” he added.
Reinås argued that because graduate numbers are a measure for the amount of funding from the government, and PhDs are often important for laying the foundation for applications to external funding sources through different grants and councils, higher education institutions were in danger of being worse off economically when PhD and other recruitment positions were cut.
“The current Labour government is also very concerned to highlight that temporary positions have been reduced (marginally) since they took charge in office.
“However, almost all reduction in temporary positions in higher education is due to the downsizing of PhDs and postdoctoral positions, which is essential for our common research future,” he said.
Reinås said the focus on completion of PhDs within three to four years was based on unrealistic expectations.
“If we look at the numbers of PhDs that have defended their thesis after seven years of starting the PhD, almost 80% completed their research education. The 20% who may never finish will usually nevertheless have gained a lot of useful knowledge and competences that can contribute to society, or they have been headhunted, for example, by industry before completing their PhD,” he said.
Beyond research institutions
Reinås said positions outside of universities and research institutes were also valuable when it came to securing Norway’s economic competitiveness.
For example, he said, Norway had established different schemes involving a public sector PhD and a business PhD, where a variety of organisations and firms can have privileged access to the research process through their employees.
“This will offer a closer connection between researchers and the field of data and context around the research, as well as tailoring the research to the knowledge and development needs of the particular organisation.
“It will, on the other hand, be crucial to secure the researchers’ autonomy and integrity, which usually is possible when you have binding contracts that secure funding regardless of the research results,” Reinås said.
He added that doctoral candidates taking public sector or business PhDs also have better job security, and this offered a promising path for the development of the PhD research fellow position in Norway.
“However, this potential has not been utilised sufficiently, and the slight increase in public sector and business PhDs does not make up for the significant decline in the PhD and recruitment positions at the Norwegian higher education positions.
“Thus, the new expert commission needs to take into account the importance of a larger investment in recruitment positions overall and increase the attractiveness of research education.
“It is also important not to look at the internationalisation of the research sector in Norway as a problem but as an opportunity to strengthen the international competitiveness of research in Norway on the global scene.
“To achieve this, we need to have a larger focus on how we can make the conditions and regulations for staying in Norway after a PhD better, so Norway will be more attractive to researchers from abroad and be perceived as a welcoming and inclusive research- and knowledge-based nation,” Reinås said.
Sceptical of mandate
Senior Researcher Anders Torgeir Hjertø Lind at NORCE research, who is chair of the Norwegian Organisation for Early Career Researchers, said his organisation is sceptical of both the mandate and the composition of the expert commission.
Hjertö Lind told University World News the expert group “lacked representation of early career researchers – a demographic so often neglected in academia – affirming our need to speak out.”
He noted: “Additionally, we see a precarious lack of broad disciplinary representation in the group, particularly from the softer sciences, as well as more holistic perspectives on what science is and should be in society.”
Hjertö Lind said the group’s mandate was “hardlining the ideas of human capital and economic utility, mirroring ideas of technological solutionism”".
“This approach runs the risk of relegating – and thus degrading – research and doctoral studies to the production of knowledge for economic benefit alone, rather than living up to ideals and principles of academia as formative, independent, ethically moderated and democratic arenas.”
Professor Bjørn Stensaker, from the University of Oslo’s Department of Education and the university’s former vice-rector for education, said: “The reduction in the number of PhDs in Norwegian higher education is a direct consequence of tighter budgets at universities.
“In a situation where a university needs to balance its budget, the easiest way out is to reduce the number of temporary PhD positions funded internally. Thus, we run the risk of having fewer PhDs educated in Norway in the future.
He noted: “At the same time, most PhDs in Norway are found in the areas of medicine, health, science and technology – often funded externally.
“The end result of this situation is that we risk ending up with an even more dominant position for these subject areas, as they will continue to have a relatively steady stream of funding, while the individual university will struggle more to allocate PhD positions to subject areas not having external priority.
“In the long run, this will have implications for the disciplinary breadth found in Norwegian higher education. This is another challenge that has to be addressed.”
An empirical question
Professor Silje Bringsrud Fekjær, who is the acting pro-rector at Oslo Metropolitan University and author of the book PhD: A Guide (in Norwegian), said the discussion on PhD education “often starts by assuming that we are educating too many PhD candidates with the wrong competence”.
She said: “A popular story claims that we are providing them with a researcher education which they will not be able to utilise after graduating. I hope that the committee acknowledges that this is an empirical question and that claims on the PhD’s working life must be backed by research.
“Judging from the current studies (NIFU and Statistics Norway), the main story about our PhD candidates is that they very seldom end up unemployed, and that a relatively high and stable percentage of them will have jobs where research is an important part.”
She said surveys of PhD candidates tend to indicate variations between fields and that among those who do not work in research, many of them never aimed for a research career.
“For example, both medical doctors and candidates from the private sector often pursue a PhD but have their career plans outside of academia,” she said.
“My advice for the committee would be to base their recommendations upon empirically based facts about the working life of our PhD candidates, not upon loose assumptions without empirical backing,” Bringsrud Fekjær said.