New Doctorates in Security Meet Growing Demand for Advanced Education

The University of West London's new Professional Doctorate in Policing, Crime and Security, launching this April with a one-off 'early-bird' fee of ￡2,250 (plus inflation) per year for home and EU students, responds to the growing demand for such courses among security professionals keen to take their education to the next level and inform the evidence-base for security practice.

Professional doctorate programmes are an increasingly popular form of advanced academic study, designed to meet the needs of specific professions, and now making up almost 10 per cent of doctoral enrolments in the UK. They began to emerge in the UK in the 1990s, driven by growing demand among professionals for higher-level academic qualifications and increasing engagement in continuing professional development. There has also been growing emphasis by government, industry and universities on promoting educational routes that are better tailored to the needs of practitioners and the wider economy.

'Prof docs' are targeted at experienced practitioners working in a professional context, placing an emphasis on developing 'researching professionals', as distinct from the more traditional PhD route which is intended to develop professional researchers. Such programmes develop candidates' capacity to make a significant original contribution to professional practice through research, and their outputs not only contribute to the body of knowledge in their disciplines, but also have the potential to make a substantial impact on practice.

A growing number of security practitioners in the UK and around the world now hold professional doctorates, while the range of options for those interested in pursuing a doctorate continues to expand. I am collaborating with senior colleagues in my new workplace, the University of West London, to launch a Professional Doctorate in Policing, Crime and Security this April with a much-reduced 'early-bird' fee of ￡2,250 (plus limited inflationary increases) per year for home and EU students (rising to ￡3,250 p.a. for the September intake and thereafter), and invite expressions of interest. The fee for international candidates joining us in April is ￡6,500 per year.

We follow in the footsteps of the University of Portsmouth, where I developed and led the Professional Doctorate in Security Risk Management (winner of the Security and Fire Excellence Award 2016 for 'Contribution to Standards in the Security Sector') before moving to UWL this year, and London Metropolitan University and Liverpool John Moores University which, respectively, offer programmes in Policing, Security and Community Safety, and Policing, Security and Criminal Justice, under broader degree titles. Other courses are on offer in the UK and elsewhere focusing on Criminal Justice or Policing, while some in the sector have opted for a Doctorate of Business Administration or Professional Studies. Whatever the degree title, however, the structure and content are more or less the same, because the focus is building research skills to a professional standard rather than subject-based teaching.

In the UK, such doctorates are typically undertaken part-time, should relate to the candidate's area of work, and take 4+ years to complete. The teaching is typically delivered in short blocks, rather than on a weekly basis, to accommodate candidates travelling from a distance including overseas. Applicants usually need to have a strong master's degree (merit level or international equivalent and above), and it helps if the master's study included social research methods training and a dissertation. Prof docs are more structured than PhD programmes, with the first two years being focused on developing advanced research and academic skills through a series of assessed modules, while the remaining period is devoted to a supervised 40,000- to 50,000-word project of the student’s own design. More structure means more support both from tutors and peers, as candidates study alongside a cohort of fellow professionals, and early assignments with extensive guidance and feedback enable significant early progress, so that completion in four years is achievable (compared with the 6+ years it normally takes to complete a PhD part-time).

The value of a professional doctorate is best expressed not by the academics like me who run the courses, but by those who have chosen to pursue one. In 2013, Dr Michael McDonagh spoke to me about the reasons why he decided to study for a doctorate, and what he hoped to get out of it. Michael described wanting a 'fresh challenge' after enjoying his master's studies, liked the fact that a prof doc provided a 'robust framework of attendance', and found studying alongside other professionals with related interests 'an absolute pleasure'. On the impact of his studies on his professional life, Michael reported that it 'provided me with both the knowledge and practical research/analysis skills to translate academic and legal material into a viable product that I believe will make a real difference to policing and our communities'. Such programmes have produced important research to inform practice, such as the studies of Dr Michael Gilbert and Dr David Rubens, the first candidates I supervised to completion on the Portsmouth DSyRM programme, whose research focused respectively on the professionalisation of counter-fraud in UK central government, and the management of hyper-complex crises.

At the University of West London, we are proud to be able to contribute to the expansion of doctoral educational opportunities for security, policing and criminal justice practitioners both at home and internationally. Our brand new programme begins next month, and the first year is structured around three 3-day workshops over the coming year, supported by online seminars in between. In accordance with the evolving COVID-19 situation, the university has closed down all campus teaching and moved to online delivery, and the prof doc team are now working on an alternative distance learning schedule for the first workshop on Friday 17 to Sunday 19 April, with the remaining workshops timetabled for 26 to 27 June, and 2 to 4 October. Most of our supervisors will be drawn from the UWL criminology team, where we are especially strong in the areas of security, policing, counter-fraud, counter-terrorism and countering organised crime. The University is located in easy reach of central London, the M25 motorway and Heathrow Airport.

If doctoral study might interest you, please feel very welcome to get in touch with me. More information, including details of how to begin the application process, can be found here, and you can commence your application any time. In due course, we will ask you to send us a CV, a brief outline research proposal, a masters certificate and transcript and a copy of your masters dissertation, and seek to match you with a potential supervisory team who will be involved in your interview, which can be conducted by telephone or Skype.

We look forward to launching the programme and thank you for reading. Please spread the word and help us support the development of new 'researching professionals' (or 'pracademics' as some graduates like to call themselves!) and their ground-breaking security research.

You can read more about professional doctorates in the UK here.