If your vocation is research, you are in luck. The creation of the European Higher Education Area is directly linked to efforts to promote the European Research Area via the new doctorate studies.
A priority instruction has been issued by European institutions to university authorities, requiring them to “redouble their efforts to integrate doctorate programmes into institutional policies and strategies” and to “develop suitable professional career plans and offer opportunities to their new doctorate students and researchers”.
These words encompass the overarching objective of the Lisbon Strategy:
Europe must aim to become a competitive environment, and convert itself into the world’s most dynamic knowledge-based economy, which is capable of promoting a model of sustainable economic development that offers more and better jobs and a greater degree of social cohesion."
Since universities cannot stop promoting their differential value in knowledge generation, as a unique combination of teaching and research, the Bologna Process has placed special emphasis on reforming the third cycle of university education.
Here are the highlights of the most recent details designed to promote doctorate studies, as set out in the London Communiqué (2007):
- Reform of access requirements
- Establishment of transparent supervision and evaluation processes
- Guarantees that those taking doctorates will acquire transferable skills
- Introduction of necessary changes to improve recruitment of those with doctorates
- Improve the status, professional prospects and funding for researchers starting their doctorates.
After the 2005 Salzburg Seminar, Europe’s education ministers gave the European Universities Association (EUA) responsibility for driving forward the reform of doctorates. In 2007, the EUA set up the Council for Doctoral Education in order to promote structured collaboration between doctorate programs and schools in Europe, within the terms included in the London Communiqué.
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