What's up, Doc?
(March 1st 2009) How do PhD students get their title? How do they work and what do they think? These are some of the questions being posed by the European Council of Doctoral Candidates and Junior Researchers. Every graduate is invited to reveal more about his/her intimate working conditions in an online survey, reports Melanie Estrella.
Within Europe, there are many ways of achieving a Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy) degree and ways of emplying the title to start a career in research or industry. The current poll (running from December 9th, 2008 to April 30th, 2009) attempts to grasp the differences of the various European graduation models and the future outlooks for brand new postdoctoral researchers.
A comparison of the distinct European Ph.D. procedures may eventually help to optimize the training and research situation of doctoral candidates, hopes Karoline Holländer, president of the European Council of Doctoral Candidates and Junior Researchers (EURODOC). "We invite all graduate students to participate in the survey and thus actively engage in the Bologna process."
The online query, containing questions regarding background, career path, funding, training and supervision, working conditions, academic work, mobility, future prospects and socio-demographic indicators, can be completed within 30 minutes. It can be accessed via the link
http://thesis.rapidrabbit.de/index.php?id=eu-survey.
The form was generated in cooperation with the International Centre of University Research (INCHER) at the University of Kassel, Germany, and further assisted by THESIS, the German Interdisciplinary Network for Graduating Students and Graduates. 29 out of the 32 countries in EURODOC, from Austria to the Ukraine, have participated in the survey, and other countries are also welcome to join.
The initiators of the enquiry hope to rally around 100,000 participants by forwarding it to members of the local country networks for young researchers. "There exists no precise numbers of graduate students within Europe", remarks Holländer. "Based on estimations there are about 100,000 doctoral candidates alone in Germany." The survey will be evaluated as soon as it is completed and its results will be presented in the autumn.
EURODOC was founded in 2002 and represents the interests of junior scientists in ongoing political debates on research and education in Europe. One of the main goals of the organisation is to further improve the quality of doctoral training as well as the standard of research. Another focus is to promote equal employment opportunities for all young European researchers once they have accomplished their PhD theses.
