A recent survey suggests that Norway boost its efforts to
internationalise PhD education and includes the recommendation that for
PhD dissertation evaluation, at least one member of the three-member
committee should be drawn from outside Norway.
A June
report,
PhD Education in a Knowledge Society: An evaluation of PhD education in Norway,
maintains that Norway’s PhD education system is of a high quality,
being well funded and well organised and offering “very good working and
learning conditions for PhD candidates, as well as good career
prospects”.
The report was published by the Nordic Institute for Studies in
Innovation, Research and Education (NIFU) and commissioned by the
Research Council of Norway on behalf of the Ministry of Education and
Research.
It argues that since the previous similar evaluation in 2002, “Norway
has taken a definitive step towards becoming a standardised PhD
education system with a strong focus on monitoring quality and
efficiency”.
Among the report’s key recommendations is “improving practices in
international recruitment at the PhD level, and finding ways of reducing
the administrative burden of international recruitment of PhD
candidates”.
The report continues: “Norway needs to be thinking more broadly about
how the internationalisation of PhD education is occurring and how it
should be promoted – with a focus that goes beyond concerns for outward
mobility and longer stays abroad.”
More foreign input into PhD evaluation
At the same time, the country is pushing to include more foreign academics on its PhD evaluation committees.
The NIFU report details how the researchers sent out a survey
questionnaire to the members of PhD evaluation committees who are from
outside Norway. The objective was to map how highly these ‘external
members’ judge the quality of the country’s PhDs.
In the survey, which had a response rate of 79%, members were asked
their opinion of the quality of PhD dissertations recently assessed.
Those surveyed were asked to rate quality in terms of a number of
different factors: originality; depth and coverage; theoretical level;
methodological level and skills in written presentation; contribution to
the advancement of the field; and external (applied, societal, cultural
or industrial) relevance. There were five response options, ranging
from 'excellent' to 'poor'.
Overall, 20% of the respondents rated the survey elements ‘excellent’,
with a further 40% rating them ‘very good’ and 25% to 60% evaluating
them as ‘good’.
The quality aspect that was ranked highest was skills in written
presentation, as either ‘excellent’ or ‘very good’ by two-third of the
evaluators, followed by depth and coverage listed by 65% and originality
by 60% in the excellent-very good category.
When broken down according to PhD dissertation evaluators from different
regions, interesting patterns emerged from the survey responses: North
American evaluators gave the Norwegian PhD theses better ratings than
their European colleagues, who in turn were more positive in their
responses than members from the other Nordic countries.
On how the thesis evaluated contributed to the advancement of the field,
48% of the Nordic evaluators said ‘excellent’ or ‘very good’, compared
to 64% of those coming from the rest of Europe and 68% of those from
North America.
When broken down according to academic field, PhD dissertations in the
natural sciences and the humanities got the strongest ratings, while
those in the social sciences, and agriculture or veterinary medicine,
were ranked beyond average. Theses in engineering or technology and
medicine or health received very high scores among the North American
examiners.
The majority of the survey respondents said the assessment procedures
were rigorous and fair to the candidate, but also more time-consuming
than in other countries. In Norway a joint examiners’ evaluation report
is required before the doctoral defence, which is not the case in most
other countries.
Need for internationalisation in PhD education
In arguing the need for internationalisation in PhD education to be
reconsidered, the NIFU report points out that “the world of science and
academic labour markets are increasingly global”.
The report states that in Norway currently about 33% of PhD graduates
are not Norwegian citizens, and in the areas of natural sciences and
technology 73% of PhD programme units report having a majority of
international PhD applicants, reflecting “increased opportunities for
internationalisation in PhD education”.
The report concurs that the increasing international recruitment that is
being seen in Norway at the PhD level is positive “but poses short and
long term challenges for the higher education institutions”.
The report specifies: “Recruitment procedures and quality control of PhD
applicants is important, as is the integration of international PhD
candidates and finding efficient ways to promote international
experiences for all Norwegian PhD candidates.”
One of the concerns raised by the NIFU report is the issue of “critical
time” for the research training part of the PhD, and “the risk that too
many and too diverse a set of demands are being placed on the PhD
period, in a way that has negative long-term consequences for the
development of science”.
The report concludes in this regard that: “Better integration between
the master and PhD levels and further training in the post-doc period
are international trends which might help to address such challenges in
Norwegian PhD training.”
