CORE OBJECTIVES OF A DOCTORAL PROGRAMME
In thinking about the core objectives of postgraduate training in political science, we must distinguish clearly between masters and doctoral programmes. A masters programme is in effect a step on the path to somewhere else, whether this be a career in the public or private sector, or a subsequent period of study leading to a career in the academy. A doctoral programme is the ultimate formal preparation for a career in the academy.
In this very clear sense, a doctoral programme provides the period of training and socialisation that creates the next generation of political scientists. While not every graduate of a doctoral programme will go on to a career in the academy, such programmes must maintain this objective very clearly in view, since they provide the only systematic means by which the profession of political science reproduces itself. While doctoral students who will not go on to become professional political scientists should not of course be forgotten and neglected, every doctoral programme should nonetheless be fundamentally oriented towards generating a new cohort of well-trained and innovative academics. Those running doctoral programmes that do not have this objective, therefore, would do well to consider whether their needs would not be better served by designing high-quality targeted masters programmes.
Ultimately, therefore, the core objective of a doctoral programme in political science should be to contribute to the self-reproduction of the profession by creating the next generation of political scientists.
ASPIRATIONS FOR ANY GOOD DOCTORAL PROGRAMME
We should have three main aspirations for the next generation of political scientists; these should inform the design of any good doctoral programme. First, the next generation of political scientists should be able to stand on the shoulders of the present generation. Second, they should ultimately be able to see further than those who have trained them. Third, they should be capable in their turn of reproducing their own successors. If all of these aspirations are realised, then the profession will move forward.
STANDING ON THE SHOULDERS OF THE PRESENT GENERATION
The aspiration that new political scientists should be able to stand on the shoulders of the present generation implies a straightforward objective. Doctoral programmes should give students the tools with which to master the cutting-edge research literature in their chosen area of specialisation.
For most areas of specialisation within political science, this aspiration can be interpreted in practice as taking students to a level at which they can read, understand and criticise research articles in their field published in the world's best journals. This in turn implies a command
'...it is also hard to escape what for some may be the regrettable conclusion that taking students to the cutting edge of the research literature in their field also implies ensuring that they have a facility to read and deal professionally with the output of English-language journals.'
of the core theoretical and methodological tools for their area of specialisation.
Two of the core concerns for any doctoral programme, therefore, must be high-level training in both theory and methodology. Graduates of doctoral programmes who do not have these at their fingertips are not in a position to master the current state of the art. Since students coming into doctoral programmes are often motivated mainly by an interest in some particular substantive field of study, they do not always appreciate the central role of high-quality theory and methodology in the career they are about to embark upon. It is dangerous, therefore, to assume that students will spontaneously absorb the necessary theoretical and methodological skills as they go along, and more or less essential that these be imparted via carefully designed and well-taught courses of study.
For non-native English speakers, it is also hard to escape what for some may be the regrettable conclusion that taking students to the cutting edge of the research literature in their field also implies ensuring that they have a facility to read and deal professionally with the output of English-language journals. This is an inescapable consequence of the fact that so many research results are published in English.
SEEING FURTHER THAN THE PRESENT GENERATION
The second aspiration that doctoral students should be able ultimately to see further than those who have trained them is more difficult to realise in a systematic way. We must foster a culture of creativity and innovation in any graduate programme, but it is not easy to specify clear rules for doing this.
Perhaps most obviously, students must be exposed, as far as is humanly possible, to a multidisciplinary range of influences. Most major intellectual breakthroughs arise from paradigm shifts that are typically the result of inter-disciplinary cross-fertilisation. In practical terms, all of this implies a self-consciously inter-disciplinary postgraduate curriculum, reinforced by the message that researchers never know in advance when breakthroughs in their own work will arise from the insights developed in related disciplines.
Students must also be encouraged to read and think critically, and not to accept an argument as being good simply because it is published in a good journal. Honest criticism of postgraduate student work should combine rigour with a willingness to reward and focus raw creativity, however misguided this might appear to the reader.
Students must be encouraged to share, discuss and criticise arguments among themselves, arguments deriving both from their own work and from the cutting-edge literature. This underlines the importance of having students not only present their own work on a regular basis but also frequently see prominent academics present their arguments and have these in turn subjected to lively, stern and irreverent criticism.
Above all, students must develop the self-confidence to realise that they each have their own important contribution to make. By the end of their training, they must develop the knack of taking seriously the received wisdoms of the profession as foundations upon which to build, but at the same time not worshipping these as if they have been handed down written upon tablets of stone.
Perhaps the most elusive feat to pull off is the development of a creative and exciting culture of research and innovation in the department concerned, an environment in which lively debate and criticism are welcomed and encouraged. This has a lot to do with the intangible chemistry of any given department. However, one simple rule of thumb is that it depends upon those who train postgraduate students, constantly purging themselves of any notion that they have the last word to say on any given matter and instead recognising, indeed fervently hoping, that their students will ultimately have many more useful words to add.
PERPETUATING THE SELF-REPRODUCTION OF THE PROFESSION
The third aspiration that doctoral students should in turn be capable of producing their own successors puts a different set of objectives under the spotlight.
In terms of technique, the doctoral students being taught must themselves be able to teach in a challenging and effective way. There is far less research and established best practice in relation to university teaching, both at the undergraduate and postgraduate level, than there is in relation to teaching in primary and secondary schools. It is not uncommon, for example, for doctoral students in certain countries to be assigned undergraduate teaching responsibilities with relatively little training on how to do this well. Many of us learned to teach 'on the job', and some, if they are honest, must admit that they never learned to do it very well. In general, we need to take much more care that doctoral students find out how to teach, and more generally how to communicate their ideas to others, in a lucid and effective way. Regular public presentations by graduate students are obviously crucial in this regard, but we need to develop our own ideas about how to foster good teaching practices, and also to take maximum advantage of available training programmes for university teachers.
In terms of substance, the need for doctoral students ultimately to reproduce their own profession means that they must be widely read, as opposed to being narrow specialists in their own primary research interest. Traditional 'apprenticeship' models of postgraduate training in thesis-only doctoral programmes run the risk of producing postgraduates who are considerable experts in some very narrow field, but who know rather little about the broader academic pastures that surround them. The formal training of postgraduate students should thus extend beyond a core of theory and methodology into some of the main substantive fields of the profession. A well-trained postgraduate should be able to teach undergraduate courses in more than one field of the profession, subject of course to the normal preparation that any academic would need to engage in before teaching such courses.
PUTTING OUR ASPIRATIONS INTO PRACTICE
It is worth asking ourselves about the source of the widely held view that a good student is best educated by going from secondary school to a good undergraduate programme in Europe, before moving on to a good doctoral programme in the United States. Without getting into whether or not this is really true for any given student, it remains the case that US doctoral programmes produce some remarkably well-trained and effective political scientists, and that many European students perceive this and seek their postgraduate education on the other side of the Atlantic. The key factor in many cases is that good US doctoral programmes provide well-structured and effective programmes of coursework as a preliminary to a period of thesis research.
The traditional, indeed almost medieval, European model, under which students in effect sit at the feet of a master, learning their trade as apprentices, is a largely hit-and-miss undertaking. Under a brilliant master who has not only great wisdom to impart but also the inclination and ability to impart it systematically and effectively, great things can be achieved. However, this depends upon the serendipity of a fruitful master–student relationship. Failing this, both master and student can be very badly served. Many of the aspirations set out in the previous section are too important to be left to luck, however, and certainly cannot be fulfilled by wishful thinking. They are ends that we must work systematically and self-consciously towards, and a structured programme of coursework, borrowing the best of the US model, can provide an effective environment for doing this.
Training in rigorous research methods, for example, can be difficult and trying for the student and is also a classic area in which we should seek returns from an effective division of labour. For one reason or another, which takes us beyond the scope of this paper, there are relatively few really good political science methodologists in Europe. It makes self-evident good sense to capitalise upon these limited resources by focusing them into systematic coursework programmes in high-quality research methodology. While excellent theorists may well be thicker on the ground this side of the Atlantic, it also remains the case that basic training in theory is best carried out within the structured environment of taught courses. Within the structure of such a programme, furthermore, students can be introduced in a systematic way to a range of inter-disciplinary influences. I may be seen by some to be arguing in a biased and partisan way, but it seems to me to be an open and shut case that the training of doctoral students must take place in a structured coursework environment if we want to develop and reproduce the profession in a systematic and fruitful way. It is this thinking that has informed the new PhD programme at Trinity College Dublin, which has tried to put it into practice by introducing a two-year cycle of coursework that must be successfully completed before full-time thesis research gets under way.
The main obstacles in our way, it seems to me, are financial. The problems we have faced at Trinity, for example, derive largely from severe resource constraints. Again, we can learn from the US as to how best to overcome these. Good US universities in effect heavily cross-subsidise their doctoral programmes from other academic activities, whether this be undergraduate teaching, endowments or research overhead. They do this because they know that the reputation and future of a good department depend heavily on producing a steady stream of excellent PhDs. Excellent PhD graduates reflect well on the department that produced them, with this reputation helping the department in many different ways, including future undergraduate flows, endowments and research income. Good PhD graduates also go out into the profession and, having taken academic jobs, act as recruiters for further high-quality PhD candidates in the future, thereby closing a virtuous circle. It thus makes very good sense, including financial sense, to cross-subsidise an excellent PhD programme, a
'Excellent PhD graduates reflect well on the department that produced them, with this reputation helping the department in many different ways, including future undergraduate flows, endowments and research income.'
lesson that most European universities have yet to learn.
It seems utterly crucial to me, therefore, to face this problem fairly, squarely and very explicitly. We simply must find a solid foundation for the funding of high-quality doctoral education of the type I have set out above, and do this as a matter of urgency. Such programmes must be put at the heart of the university system, not seen as a luxury that can be afforded only if times are good. Before we can achieve this, we must work tirelessly towards creating a sea change in the attitudes of both national and international funding agencies, something that is easier said than done, of course, but something about which we should not despair.
There is one very practical step that individual academics can take to help in relation to postgraduate funding, however. This is to ensure, as far as possible, that their own applications for research funding make provision for the funding of postgraduate students. The more political science moves towards the stereotypical 'hard science' model of having research programmes supported by groups of graduate students, all working on the same general research area and receiving funding as the result of participating in major research projects, the better off we will be. This may well involve more vigorous direction of doctoral students in their selection of topics for thesis research but, as I argue below, this may not be a bad thing.
THE CHALLENGES OF THE JOB MARKET
GRADUATES OF DOCTORAL PROGRAMMES WHO DO NOT INTEND TO BECOME ACADEMICS
It might be objected that everything I have said so far is focused too tightly on future academics, and leaves wilting on the sidelines those graduates who do not want to become academics. There are two answers to this objection. The first is to repeat (again!) that doctoral programmes do indeed represent the primary means by which the profession reproduces itself, and that other objectives must therefore be secondary – doctoral programmes are not fundamentally about vocational education. The second is that the norms and values of, and the skills imparted by, the type of programme discussed above will also be valuable for those whose careers develop outside the academy. In contrast to the more traditional 'master–apprentice' model of doctoral research, which indeed runs the risk of producing people who know a lot about something of little interest to the wider world, the type of programme set out above emphasises critical thinking and analysis, intellectual creativity as well as excellent theoretical and methodological skills. These are all virtues likely to make a doctoral graduate both effective and in demand in a range of high-level jobs in both the public and private sector. While we might have some moral qualms, therefore, about taking onto a 'master–apprentice' doctoral programme a student who has no ultimate intention of being an academic, we need have no such reservations about admitting such students to the type of programme set out in the previous sections. Whether the opportunity cost of their time on such a programme is well-spent is of course ultimately a matter of personal career choice for the student concerned – but such a programme will ensure that this time is valuable in its own right, and certainly not positively wasted.
GRADUATES OF DOCTORAL PROGRAMMES WHO INTEND TO BECOME ACADEMICS
I have already argued in no uncertain terms that the core objective of a doctoral programme should be the reproduction of the profession. This implies the primary job market of interest is the academic job market. I have no more than common sense to offer in relation to this. Most notably, it seems to me that the mentors of doctoral students do have a responsibility to know about supply and demand in the academic job market for different types of specialisation, and should actively seek to direct students into areas of research that will make them marketable. A PhD thesis is meant to fill a gap in knowledge – too often refuge is sought in an arcane gap that is there because nobody has previously been interested in filling it. We do, as postgraduate supervisors, have to have an eye out for the 'next big thing', and for pieces of thesis research that will not only prove the mettle of our students as original researchers, but which have the potential to generate pieces of widely cited literature. This does, I think, often involve pushing students quite vigorously in particular directions, even offering them funding for specific pieces of research that are in demand, rather than being purely responsive to the intrinsic interests of the student. A student who is absolutely motivated and determined to complete a piece of research in which the job market will be quite uninterested should be allowed to continue, of course, but the consequences of doing this should not be swept under the carpet. In short, our responsibilities as mentors of doctoral students include advising them on ways to tailor their thesis research to what we perceive as the future demands of the academic job market.
Beyond this, of course, our responsibility involves training our students really well, according to the principles set out in the previous section. It has not been my experience that a well-trained and able doctoral graduate, researching a topic that others find interesting and valuable, is likely to find it difficult to get an academic job – at least in the medium term.
About the Author
Michael Laver is Professor of Politics at New York University, before which he was Professor of Political Science at Trinity College Dublin. He has held visiting professorships at the University of Texas at Austin, Harvard University, Duke University, SciencesPo Paris and the University of Bologna. He has published extensively on the theory and practice of party competition and on methods for estimating the policy positions of political actors. This work was carried out while at Trinity College Dublin.
