Rethinking the Doctorate (Again)

In 1990, Ernest L. Boyer wrote an influential piece1 titled "Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate", which offered a vision of an enlarged meaning for the word "scholarship" (Boyer, 1990). This was based on many of the issues he saw at the time in higher education, and over 30 years later, reading his work, things have not seemed to have changed much.

But, I have some hope. In the development of Global UniversityONE, there is the opportunity to shape what the doctoral programs will be. And this brings the ability to build on Boyer's vision. It also allows building on the work of lots of other valuable research, such as that published in the International Journal of Doctoral Studies . Further, it will set the stage for developing each of the earlier stages of an education system, which is the ultimate goal of the Education SystemONE project.

Boyer posited four forms of scholarship that should be practiced by all the professoriate: ?○ The scholarship of discovery ?○ The scholarship of application ?○ The scholarship of integration ?○ The scholarship of teaching

To make tangible this philosophical foundation, the doctoral degrees from Global UniversityONE (and its partner universities), will have four primary components:

1. To demonstrate competency in the scholarship of discovery, the doctoral students will conduct original and significant research that concludes in the publishing of a doctoral dissertation. This will be done by all doctoral students, including those going through a professional doctoral program, although professional doctorates may opt for doing applied research, and also the research for either type of doctorate will usually be connected with the doctoral project (see below).
2. To demonstrate competency in the scholarship of application, the doctoral students will develop and manage a project of sufficient size and rigor to demonstrate their ability to apply what they have learned. Further, in line with the Education SystemONE philosophy that postgraduate education must be focused on giving, this project must have benefit to the world. The project and the research should generally have tight synergy.
3. To demonstrate competency in the scholarship of integration, the doctoral students will work with one or more researchers or other professionals from different disciplines, to support research and/or a project being conducted by them, so as to help expand the knowledge of the doctoral student and better integrate their discipline with the whole. This may be part of their project, or it may be separate, depending upon what is appropriate and desired by the doctoral student.
4. There will also be a demonstration of the scholarship of teaching. While today, it is considered traditional for doctoral students (and doctoral graduates) to do research as the primary component of their degree, this is in fact not the original focus. Doctorate comes from the Latin "docere", and this meant to teach. And teaching is also a critical aspect of the doctoral student giving back to the world. It also, will be a way that Global UniveristyONE can offer full scholarships to students in the developing nations that are providing the supervision to the doctoral students. This is because, the teaching by the doctoral student will be for masters students from that country, who are receiving the scholarship.

Further, prior to entry into a doctoral program, there will be an examination of the student's mastery of the disciplinary knowledge, because if someone has the title of "Doctor", then society has a reasonable expectation that they are an expert in their general field, and have broad knowledge of it. Although, sadly the structure of many doctoral programs, does not make this the case.

Next will be the work to refine these ideas, and make them tangible with how the curricula will be structured. I have reached out to several potential partner universities, to find one more that will be the right fit for collaboration on this, so that we can start a very small pilot cohort in 2023, and a fuller cohort by 2024.

Works Cited

Boyer, E. L. (1990). Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate. Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching Princeton, NJ. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED326149

Footnotes

1. According to Google Scholar it has been cited 15,547 times in scholarly works as of January 4, 2022.