Professionalising the PhD: from institutional discourses to career support practices in universities

Abstract

Universities are increasingly urged to adapt their doctoral programmes to better prepare graduates for a variety of careers. While the acquisition of skills transferable to other employment sectors is theoretically promoted, in practice doctoral programmes often remain focused on research training. To understand this tension between discourses and practices, a thematic analysis was conducted on a corpus of institutional documents relating to PhD students' training and career support in the European context. Our findings show that, despite the emergence of professionalising discourses, a traditional vision of the doctorate remains dominant and tends to shape the career support practices in universities.