At March 16, DFIR – the Danish Council for Research and Innovation Policy – held its annual conference (DFIR is a national advisory body that advises the Danish government on research, innovation, and higher education policy). This year, the conference focused on the Danish PhD education and asked if the PhD programme truly provides the space and conditions needed for creativity, risk-taking, and genuine breakthroughs. And if it adequately prepares PhDs for working life and careers beyond the university?

Around 2,000 PhDs graduate every year in Denmark, placing us among those with the highest number of PhDs per capita in the OECD. Despite this, there is strong political push by the industry to further increase the number of PhDs. At the same time, only about half of the PhDs with a Danish master’s degree work in the private sector, transitions out of academia have become longer, and many international PhD graduates leave Denmark within a few years of graduation. While the total number of Danish research publications is rising, Denmark’s share of top 10% most cited publications is declining. This is hinting that we are moving towards quantity over quality and towards a lack of space for creativity and genuine breakthroughs in PhD projects. Which is why, DFIR launched its investigation asking whether we really need more PhDs and under what conditions this would benefit research, the Danish industry, and the society as a whole.

At the conference, DFIR presented a set of preliminary recommendations that were based on interviews with 20 people and a survey among 620 PhD students. In short, they argue that the PhD programme should be set free: more flexibility, more openness to risk-taking, more acceptance of different dissertation formats, and a better preparation for careers outside academia. They also underline that the PhD education has value far beyond the university and that this should be acknowledged more clearly instead of giving the impression that leaving academia is a failure or that you were not good enough. The preliminary version of the report can be found here, but for those of you who don’t want to read the report, here are the main recommendations:

• Stronger preparation for careers beyond academia
  Most of us won’t have a career in academia. So, the PhD programme should support the transition to the private and public sectors through stronger links to external actors and improved career guidance.
• More flexibility in the PhD programme
  DFIR recommends loosening the national PhD regulation by
  • more flexible duration (up to four years)
  • fewer mandatory course requirements (only 15 ECTS)
  • a guaranteed minimum of research time (150 ECTS = 2.5 years!), so PhD students have more room for immersion, creativity, and productive failure
  • encourage external stays at private and national research environments
  • enrolment as a PhD first when the degree is awarded (great for all non-EU citizens)
• Greater openness to alternative dissertation formats
  Universities should experiment with broader understandings of what a PhD output can be, including formats such as software, patents, data sets, prototypes, or practice-oriented deliverables, where academically appropriate.
• More differentiated and experimental funding models
  DFIR encourages research funders to experiment with longer and more flexible PhD funding models, including schemes for entrepreneurship and innovation, rather than relying only on the standard three-year model.

Overall, I think these recommendations are a great step forward, and that DFIR is clearly trying to move the discussion in the right direction. But they leave me with a bigger question: what happens now?

Flexibility, creativity, and risk-taking sound attractive. But how will these ideas be implemented in practice, especially here at DTU, where many PhD projects are externally funded, with clearly defined outcomes, and embedded in large collaborations? How do we ensure that increased freedom and flexibility do not lead to more uncertainty, even higher expectations and greater workload?

Whether the recommendations will lead to real improvement depends on issues the report touches on only briefly — and in some cases not at all. In the current version of the report, the guiding principles for the change of PhD programme are the quality of the research and education together with the needs from the private and public sector, not the wellbeing of the individual PhD student. There is still no time explicitly set aside or structures put in place, that enable PhD students to engage meaningfully in democratic participation or to contribute to their research and work environment. Academic freedom and creativity are encouraged in principle, but it remains unclear how this freedom can be realised in practice as long as the most powerful constraints remain largely untouched: funding structures and persistent power asymmetries between supervisors, institutions, and PhD students.

The risk is that we end up with better intentions, more flexibility but the same everyday realities: lack of clarity, power imbalance and stress from unclear expectation alignments, precarious working conditions and a culture that did not change. So, the main questions for me are not whether the recommendations are sensible (I think they are) but whether they will actually change the conditions under which PhD students work and live. Who decides how they are interpreted locally? Who is accountable if flexibility increases pressure instead of autonomy? And how will PhD students be meaningfully involved in shaping the next steps?

The recommendations point in an important direction, but if they really make a difference, will be decided by how we implement them locally. Which is why it is so important to debate these questions openly here at DTU.

If you have experiences, concerns, or ideas, I encourage you to reach out to the national PhD association PAND (pand@phddenmark.dk) or the PhD Association DTU (phdassoc@dtu.dk).
 

Valeska Slomianka
PhD Student