ABSTRACT
Part-time doctoral students are not exceptions, unusual or aberrations in UK universities or in many universities internationally (China is a notable exception). Green (2008: 50) reports that of those commencing postgraduate research degrees (masters and doctorates) in the UK academic year 2002-3, about one-third were enrolled part-time. Similar proportions can be found in most ‘developed’ nations (see, for example, Evans et al. 2008). In education, the proportions are often reversed in such nations, with about twothirds being enrolled part-time. Despite the significant proportion of part-time doctoral students, there is a strong tendency for people in universities, government and the media to think and write of doctoral students as people who are in their mid-20s and studying full-time in a laboratory or library somewhere on-campus. In the UK, the mean age of commencing doctoral students is nearly 30 years and for part-time doctoral students in education it is about 42 years. Contemporary circumstances suggest that supervising doctoral candidates in universities is likely to include a significant proportion of part-time candidates, especially in professional disciplines such as education. For the purposes of this chapter, part-time students are those who complete their doctorates principally or wholly as part-time enrolees. Typically, they are mid-to late career and working in a profession or workplace that will influence both their candidature and their topic. Of course, there are some whose family, personal, health or other circumstances necessitate or dispose them to undertake their doctorates as part-time candidates. Part-time students tend to be concentrated in the professionally related disciplines (education, health, social and behavioural sciences, IT, business). This chapter explains the ways in which part-time students’ various qualities and cir-
cumstances can be marshalled to good effect by supervisors to help them produce good doctorates that are of significant benefit beyond academe. It considers the approaches that supervisors can use to help candidates enhance the ways their employment and doctoral study work for each other. It discusses the ways in which planning and monitoring the five to six years’ part-time study helps increase the benefits and reduce the effects of workplace, family and other pressures on doctoral life. This chapter presents a sequence of strategies that supervisors may adopt with part-time doctoral students to position themselves for a successful future. Such strategies include: establishing productive and effective supervisory relationships; planning the times and spaces for study; helping
candidates select a topic and research design that blends with their work or other circumstances; identifying and planning for research dissemination and publication that is effective for their work and other contexts; and helping to form productive relationships with other doctoral candidates.
