Analysis of the PhD assessment process (2022)
Report analysing the doctoral programmes offered at Catalan universities between 2018 and 2021 based on the results of these courses' first accreditation processes published.
All Catalan universities include doctoral programmes in their educational offer. In total, there are 254 doctoral programmes in the Catalan university system. By field of knowledge, although there is a wide range and all five branches of study are covered, 70% of the programmes are concentrated in the specific fields of Biological and Earth Sciences, Philosophy and History, Law and Politics and Industrial Technologies.
The programmes have an enrolment of almost 17,500 students, of which more than 50% are women. A total of 92% of doctoral students are enrolled in public universities and 30% in Health Sciences programmes. Every year, some 2,000 doctoral theses are defended at Catalan universities.
In the period 2018-2020, AQU Catalunya assessed 71 doctoral programmes at seven Catalan universities for accreditation, 54% of which were rated as excellent.
The elements that determine doctoral programmes' progress towards excellence are included in dimensions 4, "Quality of teaching staff", and 6 "Quality of results", which are specified as follows:
- The teaching and research staff (PDI) of the programme have accredited research activity, with sexennials (or equivalent), competitive projects and quality scientific contributions.
- The doctoral theses are based on a planned topic in accordance with the research or knowledge transfer lines or groups to which the teaching staff belong.
- The doctoral theses and the scientific results derived from them demonstrate a high level of education and meet the requirements of the required level of qualifications very well.
Furthermore, conditional ratings are observed in the quality of the training programme and the effectiveness of the Internal Quality Assurance System.
The main requirements identified during the assessment have to do mostly with issues related to the implementation and effectiveness of the doctoral schools' Internal Quality Assurance System (IQAS), with some mismatches between the validated report and the actual development of the programmes, and with shortcomings in public information. These defects can be attributed, in most cases, to the doctoral schools' relatively short time in existence (they were created by Royal Decree 99/2011) as centres that bring together and structure the offer of third-cycle education.
La acreditación de los programas de doctorado de las universidades catalanas, 2018-2021 (2022) [Spanish]