A joint ‘grammar’ to manage power, representation and expectations in UK doctoral education

Aliandra Barlete, University of Edinburgh

The authors invite for a very timely conversation which seems innocent but in fact opens Pandora’s box: what to change in the doctoral training to address the crisis of higher education (HE) in the UK, and add a special interest in the framework of the politics of representation.

The invitation reaches aspects that don’t often concern universities’ senior management: it highlights that the crisis of higher education is not only about institutions, political economy and the workings of the system. It is also a crisis of the development of early career researchers during the most crucial point of first immersion into the academic profession: the doctoral programme. Although I would argue that doing a PhD does not mean a direct route into the academic profession, many of those brave enough to venture it do consider this as a career option.

To offer a contribution with ‘how’ to overcome this issue, I will build on my experience of almost 20 years as a higher education researcher in many countries, also on my recent experience of being a PhD student in the UK.

The relationship between the crisis of higher education and the training of doctoral students is very complex and has been much debated within the higher education community (for a recent example, see Aarnikoivu (2020). It is also widely understood that producing changes in higher education is quite difficult, and it has been since the first understandings of universities as organisations emerged, including the classic work of sociologist Burton Clark back in 1983.

Nonetheless, the provocation builds on the need for a fairer politics of representation within PhD programmes. It invites to consider a step even further from institutional discourses of growth, prestige, accumulation, global positioning, often depicted in the largely neoliberal UK HE system. Representation, from the way I see it, touches on the dynamics of the many ‘who’s in HE: who gets those few academic jobs, who makes decisions about the curriculum and activities and their contents, what networking circles get created and who gets to access them, who gets a bit of the (always short) funding, whose interests get to the top of the agenda in departmental meetings. Equally importantly, representation speaks as clear about who does not get to engage, who does not get that job post, funding, opportunities.

Whereas I would disagree with the suggestion of the end of the academic profession (assuming it is the one which is dying in the title?), I do agree that a discussion about representation within doctoral programmes is necessary and overdue. I have two main reasons to think so. First, because placing a discussion about power and representation can invoke graduate programmes to reconsider how to fulfil their universities’ social justice role. It should unveil the manifestations and shortages of diversity of ideas, theories, bodies, histories, perspectives into the many HE spaces, both formal and informal. Second, because the skills of identifying issues in and of representation, including presenting arguments for change, is a key aspect of the academic profession. Early career academics must acquire these skills to make a difference in their future workplace, should they wish to continue in academia.

I am, however, not naïve about the reasons such ideas can be seen as utopias. These socially just goals end up hijacked by much of the UK universities’ race to secure or to compensate for ever scarce governmental funding as well as for the global competition for talent and prestige. Who gets to produce the knowledge for the knowledge economy in higher education? Yes, that’s right: the outcome of neoliberal policies is greatly felt at the departmental level, with academic staff overwhelmed with the attempt to hold the fort (standing, if possible).

In a system such as the UK, where self-study and self-organisation at the doctoral level is expected, it creates a wide mismatch of expectations inside the departments which run PhD programmes. On the one hand, students may expect support to be ‘knowledge makers’ (borrowing from the authors) and look up to mentors to support the transition into an academic profession. On the other, institutions assume that PhD students will be independent and create their own knowledge; that is to say, departments also expect students to act as ‘knowledge makers’, but out of their own initiative. How to make these two ideas meet, in harmony and in agreement? I believe there is room to create a joint ‘grammar’ in which both parties get to set their expectations about the representation and training right. As such, they can open the floor for improving doctoral programmes. Perhaps a few conversation starters could be:

- What conditions are on the table to do either, or both?

- What space do departments provide for all doctoral students to act as knowledge-makers on an equal footing?

- Who can be a mentor in the view of the department and of the students? Are supervisors expected to do mentorship, or are students expected to find one — and where do you find them?

- How are the many voices represented in the group/department? How do these unseen voices wish to be seen and how can the community respect and support such a view? What needs to be done/learned/taught for this to happen, and who is going to take charge of this new exercise of meaning-making?

My knowledge of the politics of representation is still developing, but my reasoning benefits from my familiarity with the dynamics of higher education. Given the awareness of the difficulties in producing change in HE (overall, not only in the UK), I also believe that a call for shared responsibility for the politics of representation has a higher chance of success if starting from the bottom and then pushed up. Here I understand the ‘bottom’ to be the closer-knit spaces of knowledge makers: research groups, or PhD programmes, and then departments. If understanding representation to be how meaning is made and shared, then it is safe to assume that meaning-making activities would imply in close dialogue that is mostly contextualised and localised.