The Structured Doctorate and Quality Assurance

Since the mid-1980s, there has been an ongoing discussion in Germany regarding doctoral education in academia, and it has extended not least to the level of national science organisations. The debate is being conducted in contradistinction and critical distance to the “individual doctorate” approach that has been Germany’s traditional model of doctoral education. As it were, structured doctorate programmes have been around for quite some time, a case in point being the postgraduate programs the DFG German Research Foundation has funded for more than 20 years. In conjunction with the excellence initiative, at the latest, and parallel to the academic excellence structures (meaning: graduate schools of excellence), organisational entities have evolved that differ considerably in terms of purpose and title. The nomenclature includes labels such as “school”, “centre”, “academy”, “group”, and “degree program” or “research program”. What all of these approaches have in common is the intention to promote a structured doctorate model on different levels and from various angles. Having outlined the evolution of several structured doctorate models, the essay will move on to discuss issues of quality assurance in doctoral education.