Germany's universities attach great importance to the discussion on reforming doctoral training, especially under consideration of the third cycle of the Bologna Process. The first Research Training Groups (Graduiertenkollegs) were introduced more than 15 years ago. With the Initiative for Excellence, the coordinated doctoral programmes are today being merged to create Graduate Schools (Graduiertenschulen). At the same time, warnings of an overregulation of doctoral training are being voiced. However, only little is known as yet about the effect of structured doctoral programmes on research training conditions and graduates’ careers. This is due to the generally poor availability of information on the situation of doctoral candidates at German universities as well as to a lack of suitable evaluation instruments for assessing the quality of doctoral training.

While several cross-sectional surveys have been carried out in the past to collect empirical data on conditions for doctoral candidates and careers of doctorate holders. Continuous observations result to be a more adequate solution for future research in this field: On the one hand, longitudinal observations make it possible to record individual changes over time and allow more methodologically founded analyses to be drawn. On the other hand, by surveying doctoral candidates on a continual basis, a continuous monitoring service will be provided to the participating institutions, which in turn could be used for evaluation purposes and improving doctoral training.

ProFile focuses on the question how structured forms of doctoral training affect the occupational careers of doctoral candidates. Other forms of doctoral training are used as contrasting cases to highlight commonalities and dissimilarity among forms of doctoral training.

Following this research question, the panel will be created over three stages. The sample will initially be made up of doctoral candidates funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). This includes doctoral candidates from the Research Training Groups (Graduiertenkollegs) and Collaborative Research Centres (Sonderforschungsbereiche).
In the second stage, a sample of doctoral candidates from the Initiative for Excellencewill be added to the panel. One of the project-oriented approaches of the Initiative for Excellence is the promotion of young scientists. By providing research schools, structured doctoral programmes are offered to doctoral candidates as part of the federal state agreement.
In the third phase, the panel will opened up for doctoral candidates from other doctoral programmes (state programmes and other funding institutions) as well as doctoral candidates completing traditional doctoral training without involvement in a structured programme.

ProFile has been designed as a three-wave panel study and will be carried out through online surveys. Besides recording details on the educational biography of participants, the first wave will focus on the conditions of doctoral training, on the supervision provided, on the quality of the teaching, and on the resources made available, plus questions of financing. Once running, the first wave will reflect the situation at the start of the doctoral phase.
Essentially, the second wave will cover the transitional phase between doctoral training and entry into the labour market. The questionnaire will concentrate on academic achievements (participation at conferences, publication activity and final grades), on qualifications, skills and competencies that have been obtained during the training and on personal networks. Additionally, the second wave focuses on the individual’s position in the labour market at the time of graduation.
The third wave will take place around three years after graduation and will aim to analyse the occupational career patterns and the influence of doctoral training on them.

During the research training (between starting and completing the doctorate) additional surveys will be carried out annually to generate information on the specific conditions for doctoral candidates in the form of a programme evaluation. Data will be collected on how satisfied doctoral candidates were with their supervision and with the teaching that was delivered. The evaluation results will be made available to the participating institutions as well as to participating doctoral candidates. Doctoral candidates can opt to request a personal profile that reflects their personal answer pattern in respect of key aspects of the doctoral programme (supervision, quality of teaching, courses and resources made available to them) and compares this with the profiles of the other participants. The long-term plan is to make the data material available to interested researchers as well (scientific use file).

The panel has been given a modular structure in order to consider the specific aspects and special features of various kinds of doctoral programmes. This approach makes it possible to adjust and fine-tune the instrument to meet the various requirements, while, at the same time, allowing it to be used as a population survey which could also address current higher education policy questions in the form of additional question sets.

Contact persons: Kalle Hauss, Marc Kaulisch, Manuela Zinnbauer