Roundtable on Doctoral Education Held at the XXVI April Conference
The roundtable was chaired by Nikita Smirnov, a Junior Research Fellow at the Centre of Sociology of Higher Education. Among the HSE participants were Svetlana Zhuchkova, an Academic Director of the Doctoral School of Education, Evgeniy Terentev, Head of the Institute of Education, and Ksenia Zaitseva, a Research Intern at the Centre of Sociology of Higher Education.
The roundtable also featured contributions from leading international scholars, including Jean-Claude Ruano-Borbalan (Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, France), Juan Li (Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China), Chuanyi Wang (Tsinghua University, China), and Yuxuan Wang (Tsinghua University, China).
Firstly, Svetlana Zhuchkova and Evgeniy Terentev outlined the key external factors driving the increased differentiation of doctoral training programmes. The profile of doctoral students is changing. Programmes are now attracting candidates from previously underrepresented groups, including individuals who have not studied for a significant period of time and those who are combining doctoral studies with full-time employment and family responsibilities.
On the other hand, they argue that the current structure of the labour market is creating a 'bottleneck' in academic career paths and encouraging graduates to pursue careers outside academia. At the same time, both the state and the business sector are demonstrating an increasing demand for highly qualified specialists in light of technological developments.
Then, international and Russian researchers presented findings from empirical studies of labour markets for doctoral graduates. Drawing on evidence from China, Juan Li and Yuxuan Wang demonstrated that demand for PhD holders is concentrated in the IT and high-tech sectors, where a doctoral degree is often a prerequisite for senior roles. In contrast, Ksenia Zaitseva and Svetlana Zhuchkova identified a different pattern in Russia, where the leading sectors employing PhD holders are medicine and education, based on data from vacancy aggregator platforms.
Towards the end of the discussion, Jean-Claude Ruano-Borbalan emphasised the potential dangers of becoming too focused on external incentives. He noted that adapting doctoral programmes to labour market demands could restrict universities' autonomy in designing curricula.
As training models become more diverse, issues of inequality and information asymmetry intensify, and the signalling function of a doctoral degree weakens when its value depends not only on the university, but also on the type of programme”, Evgeniy Terentev added.
The roundtable was held as part of the joint research project “Transformation of Doctoral Education in China and Russia”, implemented by the HSE Institute of Education and the Institute of Education at Tsinghua University.
