Universities can improve their PhD completion rates by using metrics to assess the performance of supervisors, a conference has heard.

Richard Russell, a former pro vice-chancellor for research operations at the University of Adelaide, told the Third International Conference on Developments in Doctoral Education and Training that, while everyone knew academics who ¡°should never have been allowed to supervise PhDs¡±, institutions that tolerated this were ¡°failing in their duty of care¡±.

At the event, organised by the UK Council for Graduate Education, Professor Russell explained how leading research universities in Australia¡¯s Group of Eight had agreed to require the formal training and registration of doctoral supervisors as long ago as 2004-05. More recently, Adelaide had realised that it ¡°needed to optimise candidatures to hold our levels of funding and scholarships¡±.

All supervisors were therefore assessed on their number of past students, current ¡°load¡±, and an index designed to capture ¡°outcomes versus opportunities¡±. The university was keen to reward supervisors for "timely" completions, other completions and "student rescues¡±, when someone about to abandon a thesis was persuaded to stay on. It wanted to penalise non-completions and withdrawals owing to dissatisfaction with supervisors, but to remain neutral about early withdrawals, student-initiated withdrawals for non-academic reasons and failed rescue attempts.

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The result, Professor Russell said, was a much more effective system for classifying and tracking the performance of supervisors. This has led to problems being addressed earlier, the removal of ¡°totally unsatisfactory supervisors¡± and an 8 per cent increase in timely completions.

Staff have bought into it because they can use the results to support applications for promotion, and the university can demonstrate ¡°the efforts made to reduce unnecessary wastage¡± when ¡°arguing for additional scholarship support¡±, according to Professor Russell, who said that behaviour such as ¡°dragging failing students out¡± until their scholarships run out is no longer seen as appropriate.

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Delegates to the conference, held at Stratford-upon-Avon on 4 to 5 April, also heard from David Bogle, head of the graduate school at University College London, who spoke on behalf of the League of European Research Universities. Universities¡¯ goal, he said, must be to create doctoral graduates who were ¡°creative, critical, autonomous intellectual risk-takers¡± and could act as ¡°drivers of their professional development¡±. With skills development now ¡°the cornerstone of the modern doctorate¡±, institutions should start thinking of the candidate as the central ¡°product¡± and the thesis as just an important piece of supporting evidence, Professor Bogle said.

The conference ended with a presentation by David Uribe, head of the European University Association¡¯s Council for Doctoral Education. At a time when only ¡°4 per cent of doctoral holders end up working in academia¡±, he stressed the importance of ¡°rais[ing] awareness among doctoral candidates of the importance of recognising and enhancing the skills that they develop and acquire through research¡±.?

matthew.reisz@timeshighereducation.com