Research and education form competing activity systems in externally funded doctoral education

ABSTRACT

Several authors have described how the formalization of recent decades has steered doctoral education towards structured curricula, more managerial control and new models for supervision. Largely absent from these accounts, however, is if and how doctoral education has been affected by the concurrent changes in research governance, in particular by the ‘projectification’ of research. For this study, we were interested in the convergence of educational formalization with research projectification around doctoral education in the context of highly competitive, externally funded research in medicine and health sciences in Sweden. Using Cultural-historical activity theory and constructing activity systems for education and research, respectively, we were able to identify several contradictions and tensions, both within and between systems, that were consequences of adaptations to the abovementioned formalization and research policy changes. The contradictions were manifested in the tying of doctoral students, and their education, to their supervisors’ research projects, grants and future prospects, and in students being deprived of opportunities for learning and developing independence. Supervisors were torn between supervision and project management while doctoral students had to balance being students and project members. Our analysis provides a system level explanation to previously reported pedagogical and ethical challenges in STEM doctoral education.

KEYWORDS:

• doctoral education
• doctoral supervision
• activity theory
• research projectification
• educational formalization

Introduction

In the last decades doctoral education worldwide has attracted a growing political interest and, as a result, efforts to monitor, control and change doctoral education have intensified on institutional, national and supranational levels (Bartelse & Huisman, 2008; Elmgren et al., 2016; Kehm, 2006; Nerad, 2014). This interest can be linked to the strategic role given to doctoral education for national and regional economic, scientific, technological and social development. As a consequence, doctoral education in many countries has been reformed and restructured in order to, among other things, strengthen students´ rights, improve supervision and other forms for support, lower attrition, increase transparency and predictability, and provide more generic skills training. Many of the authors reporting on these changes (for example, Byrne et al., 2013; Kehm, 2020; Nerad, 2020; Taylor et al., 2021) conclude that doctoral education, consequently and as intended, has become more orderly and moved away from the older model of master-apprentice towards modern forms for supervision and educational scaffolding.

However, much less attention has been given to the consequences for doctoral education of the last decades’ changes in policy and governance of research. Although doctoral studies, as a result of the abovementioned educational reforms, have become increasingly constructed as education, doctoral students are nonetheless also junior researchers, writing their theses in active research environments with active researchers for supervisors. Therefore, doctoral education is likely to have been affected also by the changing realities for research.

Changes in research governance and organization that are of particular interest to this study are the increased use of performance-based funding schemes (Auranen & Nieminen, 2010; Hicks, 2012) and the concomitant emergence of ‘academic capitalism’ (Slaughter & Leslie, 1997), i.e. ‘market and market-like behaviours’ (ibid p. 11) of universities and individual researchers alike. For an academic career today, a steady influx of funding, won in competition through project proposals and CVs listing high-impact publications and successfully completed research projects, is often necessary. Many researchers therefore find themselves in research groups that function as ‘quasi-firms’ (Etzkowitz, 2003), comprised of one (or more) principal investigator and a number of other senior researchers, postdocs, and doctoral students collectively working on joint projects while simultaneously drafting proposals to fund future research. Ylijoki (2016) argues that this development, or ‘projectification’, ‘challenges and reshapes research practices and ideals’ (ibid p. 7) and is associated with a specific temporality, ‘project time’, that is grounded in a project logic and distinct from the ‘process time’ inherent to research (ibid).

The projectification of research is very likely to have had consequences also for doctoral education. Such consequences could be expected to be particularly pronounced in STEM¹ since doctoral students in these disciplines traditionally research and publish together with their supervisors and hence are linked to their supervisors’ projects and, by extension, an economy of publications, research proposals and future grants. STEM accommodates approximately 55 percent of the total number of doctoral students in the EU, and more than 70 percent in Sweden and Denmark (Eurostat, 2021).

As academics and doctoral supervisors as well as educational developers working with doctoral students and supervisors in STEM, we have observed for many years problems and tensions that appear to be related to research projectification, on its own and in combination with educational formalization. For example, doctoral students often present themselves in terms of their roles within their supervisors’ projects rather than as belonging to, or being students of, a discipline or a research field. Indeed, they often express dissatisfaction with courses and other curricular activities that are not directly relevant for their projects. Correspondingly, many experienced supervisors, who supervise doctoral students within the context of their own externally funded research projects, have described to us how meeting demands in both research and doctoral education has become increasingly difficult, and that these demands often are conflicting. From our vantage point, the large Swedish doctoral reforms of 1998 and 2007 have resulted in better economic conditions and less vulnerable situations for students, but we have seen little of the intended changes in pedagogy, supervision and curriculum. Instead, the interaction between supervisors and students, and the lived curriculum of doctoral education, appear to us to be less dictated by educational regulations and more by the demands for research production in current STEM research.

These observations compelled us to initiate a study at our (at the time) own faculty, a faculty of medicine at a leading research-intensive university in Sweden, in order to better understand the consequences of the last decades’ educational formalization and research projectification for doctoral education in STEM¹. To make sense of this complex educational practice, which is deeply embedded in research and situated at the nexus of two changing policy fields, we turned to Cultural-historical activity theory. By conducting an activity systems analysis, we could approach our research object in a holistic way and combine interviews with doctoral students and supervisors with rich data on previous and current regulations, organization and praxis.

In what follows, we will first describe the general formalization of doctoral education and then the projectification of research in STEM. After this, we will introduce the theoretical framework for our analysis before turning to the convergence and historical consequences of educational formalization and research projectification for Swedish doctoral students, supervisors and doctoral education in STEM. In the process, we will justify an analytic construction of four interrelated activity systems and describe a number of anticipated features of their constituent elements. Then, after a brief description of the local activity setting for our study, we will arrive at our research questions, data, analytical approach and ethical considerations.

Formalization of doctoral education

Several authors have reported on the reformation and restructuring world-wide of doctoral education. In many countries, e.g. Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom, changes began as early as the nineties with government commissions investigating the efficiency and relevance of doctoral education in relation to national goals, in particular the provision of a skilled workforce for the knowledge economy. Such commissions typically stressed the need to professionalize doctoral education through increased monitoring, managerial control, improved supervision and new forms for support, and also advocated a reorientation of the doctoral curriculum towards more transferable skills (Andres et al., 2015; Byrne et al., 2013; Gudmundsson, 2008; Haraldsson, 2010; Nerad & Heggelund, 2008). In some countries, for example Sweden (Haraldsson, 2010), this was accomplished through legislation, while in other countries ‘softer’ techniques were used, such as accreditation, funding schemes, frameworks (such as the ‘Vitae Researcher Development Framework’ in the UK or the ‘Researcher Skill Development Framework’ in Australia), and pedagogical and ethical guidelines for supervisors (Andres et al., 2015; Byrne et al., 2013; Elmgren et al., 2016; Vitae, 2011; Willison & O’Regan, 2007). Byrne et al. (2013) argue that a main vehicle for the establishment of a more managerial culture in European doctoral education was the introduction of doctoral schools. This development can partly be attributed to the Bologna process (and subsequent European and national policy-development), in which doctoral education was constructed as the ‘third cycle’ of Europe’s higher education area (EHEA) and the European Qualifications Framework (EQF), but also to global drivers such as professionalization and quality assurance agendas (Andres et al., 2015) and the collection of data and performance indicators (particularly visible in Europe through the European union’s ‘Open Method of Coordination’), as well as other forms for soft governance, such as benchmarking, audits, and discipline-based evaluations and certificate schemes (such as ORPHEUS in biomedicine and health sciences).

As a consequence of these changes, doctoral education has seen the introduction of formalized curricula (often including transferable, or generic, components), individualized study plans or ‘contracts’ between candidates and supervisors, rules and guidelines, mechanisms for internal control and monitoring (of both candidate progress and supervisor professionalism), new forms for educational middle-management, and courses and/or certificates for supervisors (Byrne et al., 2013; Kehm, 2020; Taylor et al., 2021).

The projectification of research, particularly prominent in STEM, and its effects on doctoral education, is however largely absent from these reports. An exception is Elmgren et al. (2016), who discuss the convergence of educational formalization and research projectification in a Swedish context. By positing doctoral education as a boundary object (Bowker & Star, 1999; Star & Griesemer, 1989), shared by several and sometimes disjunct policy fields, the authors describe a development that has resulted in a shift in power and responsibility for doctoral education, away from the traditional professoriate towards, on the one hand, faculty boards, study directors, heads of departments and administrators, and on the other hand, successful individual researchers, or research groups, and various research funding bodies (p. 61). The relative influence exerted on doctoral education from these two loci of control is correlated to the local relationship between faculty-controlled and external funding (Elmgren et al., 2016, pp. 44–61). From this reasoning follows that doctoral education in STEM, due to its strong dependence on external funding, could be expected to be shaped less by educational formalization and more by individual supervisors and their projects, something which has been confirmed by Uller (2016) in the natural sciences.

Projectification of research and doctoral education in STEM

It has been argued that the growth of STEM research has been accompanied with the development of a form of ‘hypercompetition’ that suppresses creativity, cooperation and risk-taking (Alberts et al., 2014), something which is likely to also affect doctoral education. Important contributions to our understanding of experiences of supervisors and doctoral students in competitive STEM environments can be found within the field of valuation and evaluation studies (Lamont, 2012). Fochler et al. (2016) explored how junior researchers (doctoral students and postdocs) in Austrian life sciences attributed worth in relation to their practice. The authors concluded that the evaluative repertoire of these researchers narrowed with their gradual socialization within their field, to a ‘regime of valuation in which the worth of individuals is defined by their ability to succeed in competition based on productivity in terms of acquiring internationally accepted and transferable tokens of academic quality, that is, indexed publications, grant money and recorded citations’ (p. 196). Most postdocs in their study regarded this dominant regime as a ‘quasi-natural order without alternative’, and those who criticized it saw no alternatives. In another article, Fochler (2016) introduced the term epistemic capitalism, ‘the accumulation of capital, as worth made durable, through the act of doing research’ (p. 924), i.e. publications and grant portfolios, to describe researchers’ entrepreneurial self-management.

Sigl (2016) describes how modern conditions for research in the life sciences, in particular the project format, structurally links the epistemological uncertainty of research to the social uncertainty of the researcher. Research decisions are therefore not motivated solely by epistemic considerations but also by considerations related to careers, continuity of employment, and private life. The inherent unpredictability of research, in which so many countries and regions invest for the sake of the knowledge economy, is to a large extent carried by individual researchers (rather than by their institutions), who constantly have to assess, select and balance risks (ibid.). Although not discussed by Sigl, this risk management and balancing act is likely to encompass also the selection and supervision of doctoral candidates.

Several studies of doctoral education and supervision in STEM suggest that supervisors are, knowingly or unknowingly, struggling with combining supervision with project and career management. Löfström and Pyhältö (2015) described how supervisors in the natural sciences had difficulties integrating supervision with research group leadership. In their article, the authors also described ethically problematic behaviour, for example supervisors who gave their students excessive workloads or tasks outside their thesis projects in order to secure future funding (ibid.). Several authors have suggested that the pressure to publish and meet demands of funding bodies may lead supervisors to be over-directive (Deuchar, 2008; Sampson & Comer, 2010), and Wichmann-Hansen and Herrmann (2017) could conclude from a survey to 1690 doctoral students in Denmark that external funding pushed supervisors in the health sciences to be more directive.

Other authors have reported on precarious situations for doctoral students and postdocs (many of which function as co-supervisors) in competitive STEM research environments (Cyranoski et al., 2011; Herschberg et al., 2018; McAlpine, 2016; Schiermeier, 2005; Triggle & Miller, 2002; Åkerlind, 2005). Recurrent themes in these texts are the disproportionate, compared to future work opportunities, enrolment of doctoral students, and that future prospects of students are subordinated to research production and senior researchers’ careers. Furthermore, Vekkaila et al. (2012) reported on science students experiencing a loss of ownership of their doctoral research, and Pyhältö et al. (2009) described how experience of community membership varied from junior researcher to student to ‘cheap labour’ (p. 226).

In conclusion, the formalization of doctoral education and the projectification of research are two ongoing processes that, although arising from disjunct policy fields (Elmgren et al., 2016), are most likely to interact in complex and consequential ways. In order to study the consequences for doctoral education in STEM we have turned to Cultural historical activity theory.

Theoretical framework: cultural-historical activity theory

Cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) is ‘a cross-disciplinary framework for studying how humans purposefully transform natural and social reality, including themselves, as an ongoing culturally and historically situated, materially and socially mediated process’ (Roth et al., 2012). Activity systems analysis is one of several methods associated with CHAT, and builds on Engeström’s (1987) activity systems model (Engeström, 1987, 1996, 2001) visualized in the following figure (Figure 1). Central in this model is the subject, who is attempting to bring about change (the object) in order to reach an outcome, and also the object itself, which is the reason why individuals (in one way or another) participate in the activity (Kaptelinin 2005). Within the model are also the mediating tools/signs and the community as well as the rules and distribution of labour, which can be both explicit and implicit (Engeström, 1987).

Figure 1. Engeström’s activity systems model (Engeström, 1987).

In activity systems analysis, the unit of analysis is the activity system (Cole & Engeström, 1993; Engeström, 1987, 1993), but often several, interacting activity systems have to be constructed in order to understand complex and situated practices (Engeström, 2001).

Activity systems can be constructed by combining data from a broad range of sources relating to the activity and its elements and their relationships, both from the perspective of an observer and from the view of participants in the activity, such as subjects and members of the community. Furthermore, activity systems analysis allows researchers to approach such complex data in a manageable way, and to represent the activity, and results from the analysis, in a comprehensible and illustrative manner (Yamagata-Lynch, 2010).

A central feature in activity systems analysis is to identify contradictions. Through contradictions tensions can arise, which in turn can lead to, and explain, changes in activities. Engeström defined four levels of contradictions: within constituent elements of an activity, between those elements, within the activity as a whole when a new or changed object is introduced, and between interlinked activities (Engeström, 2015).

Through activity systems analysis researchers can gain a better understanding of human activity in its collective and cultural-historical contexts, and also interpret how changes within such contexts, via systemic contradictions and tensions within and between interlinked activity systems, affect those activities and their outcomes over time (Engeström, 1987, 1993, 2015)

Activity systems analysis has previously been used in studies of doctoral education, albeit only to a limited extent and not in relation to our research questions. Hopwood and Stocks (2008) studied the teaching experience of doctoral students and found contradictions in the activity system for teaching development. A new program for doctoral students who wanted to develop as teachers relieved some of these contradictions. Beauchamp et al. (2009) used activity theory to construct a protocol for studying contradictions in doctoral students’ experiences of different roles. They found that students were subjects in several different activity systems, including family. Pratt et al. (2015) analysed case studies of how students pursuing professional doctorates learned about their professional practice, and discussed how the students’ various practices and relationships in different spaces affected their engagement in their doctoral studies. Granata and Dochy (2016) compared semi-industrial and academic doctoral education and found both similarities and differences between the two activity systems. We have been unable to find studies using activity systems analysis in relation to doctoral education in medicine and health sciences. However, it has been used to identify systemic contradictions and tensions to explain developments in the context of undergraduate medical education (de Feijter et al., 2011; Reid et al., 2021).

After having decided to use activity systems analysis, we discussed which activity systems should be constructed and included. We arrived at four highly intertwined activity systems: one system each for education and research, respectively, for each of the subjects of doctoral student and supervisor. Under the next two headings we will describe the historical development of Swedish doctoral education, focusing on STEM, and the particular activity setting for our study. In the process we will justify our choice of systems along with several anticipated features of their elements, which in turn provide the basis for our research questions and analysis.

Swedish doctoral education in STEM

The history of doctoral education in Sweden begins in 1969. Up until then, the Swedish doctorate had not been constructed as education. Instead, it was an intra-academic qualification (‘doktorsgraden’ in Swedish), akin to present-day higher doctorates in the UK and Germany’s Habilitation, and could hence be understood as a particular instance of the activity of research. The higher education (HE) reform of 1969 replaced the older doctoral degree with the four-year educational degree of today, ‘doktorsexamen’, and marked the beginning of the activity of doctoral education. Subsequent HE reforms have incrementally formalized doctoral education to its present state (for an overview, see Brodin et al., 2019; Elmgren et al., 2016). The most relevant consequences of this formalization are that:

• all doctoral students, since 1998, are guaranteed full funding for four years of study

• the majority of doctoral students today are employed through 4-year doctoral studentships

• universities are to provide all other required resources

• individual study plans and two supervisors (of which one is main supervisor) are mandatory

• supervisor training is compulsory

• all doctoral programmes have syllabi, based on the national degree descriptors (expressed as learning outcomes), outlining the educational process (including coursework).

In activity system terminology, this has led to the introduction of new rules that, in turn, regulate other elements and their intra-system relationships. Formalization has resulted in:

• new actors, roles and responsibilities, e.g. educational management, study directors, heads of departments, main and co-supervisors (rules regulating community and distribution of labour)

• curricula, including coursework and degree descriptors, and individual study plans (rules related to object, outcome, tools, community and distribution of labour)

• the legal conceptualization of students and supervisors, respectively, their relationship, and the doctoral research project in educational terms (rules related to subjects, tools, community and distribution of labour).

These changes could potentially be understood as adding to a previous (pre−1969) activity system of (junior) research, or as replacing such a system altogether with the activity of doctoral education. However, for the candidate/student as subject we have instead chosen to construct two systems: one for the activity of research and one for the activity of education. The reason for this is the changes in Swedish research governance and funding (Benner & Sörlin, 2007; Öquist & Benner, 2012) that have taken place roughly parallel to the formalization of doctoral education, and that effectively have locked doctoral students in STEM to their supervisors’ research and externally funded projects (Elmgren et al., 2016; Uller, 2016).

Before the 1969 reform, those who aspired for the doctoral title were typically either contracted as teaching or research assistants at departments (often temporarily) or had employment elsewhere (health, or other public, sector, or industry), and would write their thesis in parallel with this work. Supervision (‘handledning’ in Swedish, made up from the words for hand and leading) existed but was neither guaranteed nor formalized. Instead, this form for support (and support altogether) would primarily be given reactively to those perceived to be particularly promising and, potentially, in line for becoming the next professors (Brodin et al., 2019). Although supervisors and candidates could research and publish together, as they do today, it was not a prerequisite: candidates mainly used their spare time for research, or time bought with personal research stipends, and this time was theirs to use as they saw fit, while supervisors could choose to engage, or not, in research collaborations with the candidates without this having any major consequences for their own research or career. Professors neither had to fund the candidates’ nor their own research, and time and resources for the latter was automatically allocated to them through their professorships. However, these circumstances would change after 1969, slowly at first and more dramatically later.

Through progressive reforms, the economic conditions for doctoral students improved and doctoral education consequently became an increasingly costly affair for universities. However, as the HE sector was expanding and received more funding for research and doctoral education, the number of doctoral students grew, which also lead to more associate and assistant professors becoming supervisors. In 1998, in a decade characterized by general cuts to the HE sector, full funding of doctoral students became mandatory, leading to a sharp increase in costs for doctoral education. Sweden had also a few years earlier embarked on a new competition-based strategy for research, which entailed increasing the proportion of external to floor funding for research and doctoral education (Benner, 2001), stabilizing at a ratio of circa 60:40 overall in the next decade. Most of this external funding was (and is) directed towards STEM² and in order to be competitive, STEM faculties have tended to use much of their direct government floor for research infrastructure, co-financing strategic research proposals, and recruiting successful researchers, instead of directly funding research and, importantly, doctoral students. As a consequence, both doctoral students and their supervisors became increasingly dependent on the supervisors’ external project grants.

These developments did not only change the circumstances for the activity of (senior) research, it also led to the embedding of doctoral students, and their education, in this activity: to research and publish together was no longer just an option – it became a prerequisite. Today, choosing to fund doctoral students with external project grants means, for supervisors as well as for their doctoral students, to simultaneously engage in the activities of doctoral education and (the supervisors’) research. Therefore, we have arrived at the four activity systems previously mentioned.

The activity system of education, with the supervisor as subject, is expected to have largely the same features as the system of education with the student as subject. The previously described educational legislation (rules) applies also here, and regulates other elements and their intra-system relationships, such as the roles of supervisors and students (community, the distribution of labour and tools), and curriculum and individual study plans (object, outcome, tools, community and distribution of labour).

For the activities of research (with the student and the supervisor as subjects, respectively) we anticipate features of elements and intra-system relationships relating to:

• demands from funding agencies (rules related to outcome)

• faculty regulation and praxis for research (rules related to community, distribution of labour, tools)

• demands from publishers (rules related to object and outcome)

• disciplinary norms and expectations (rules relating to tools, distribution of labour, object and outcome)

• project plans (tools relating to rules, community, distribution of labour, object and outcome)

• research group composition and hierarchy (community relating to distribution of labour, rules, tools, object and outcome).

Next, we will present the particular activity setting for our study, before arriving at our research questions and presenting our data and analytical approach.

The setting for our study: a faculty of medicine and health sciences

The study was undertaken in a faculty of medicine and health sciences in a large, comprehensive research-intensive Swedish university. As subject areas, medicine and health sciences are diversified and include: clinical medicine in close contact with the clinical practices; biomedicine sharing methods and research paradigm with the natural sciences; health sciences that have evolved from research traditions within behavioural sciences. However, the same rules for research funding, careers and promotions, and for doctoral education apply at the faculty. The dependence on external funding is very high and such funding, obtained in competition, provides the main economic foundation for research (and researcher careers) and doctoral education. Of the total number of doctoral students in medicine and health sciences in Sweden, almost one fifth belong to the present faculty.

At the time of this study, research and doctoral education comprised 80 percent of the faculty’s economic turnover. Three quarters of the funding for research and doctoral education came through external grants. There were six departments, loosely connected to disciplines within health sciences, experimental medical science and clinical sciences, each with 120–400 employees. At each department there was a head of department and a deputy head for doctoral studies. The next level of organization was the research groups, each led by a principal investigator (PI).

A total of 1100 doctoral students were enrolled, two thirds of which were part-time students who also worked in health care, the majority being physicians. Their studies were partly financed by their employer but supervisors were expected to provide complementary funding through external grants. The remaining third were full-time students with salaried studentships or international scholarships (for four years of full funding).

Enrolment began with a prospective supervisor presenting a plan for a doctoral project, including funding arrangements. Part-time students were admitted through an individual agreement with their health-care employer whereas full-time doctoral students were admitted in open competition but on recommendation from their supervisors, who financed the doctoral studentships through their external research grants. For these students, the main supervisor was also the PI, second in line to the head of department and leading the research group, thus representing the employer. For both full- and part-time students, the project plan was used as a basis for the student’s individual study plan, further linking the student to the supervisor’s research project. At the faculty, mandatory courses were few (approximately 25 ECTS credits) and focused on statistics, reference management, ethics and research communication. The theses were compilation theses, with supervisors and sometimes other doctoral students and co-workers as co-authors of the compiled articles. A minimum of four manuscripts, including two published articles with the doctoral student as first author of at least one, should be compiled for the thesis.

Research questions

Our overarching research question is:

• What are the contradictions emerging between the activities of research and education in externally funded doctoral education?

To answer this question, we also pose two sub-questions:

• How are the various elements of the activities of research and education constructed in doctoral education from the point of view of doctoral students and supervisors?

• What contradictions and manifest tensions can be identified in these activities?

Data collection and analysis

The rational for constructing the four activity systems, and the anticipated features and relationships of their constituent elements, has already been given above, and the data used for this step is described in rows 1–4 of Table 1. Already at this point we could begin to identify potential contradictions in elements as well as in and between activity systems. Structured interviews with five local leaders of doctoral education (row 5) confirmed our initial analysis and provided more details by clarifying local praxis, in particular the application of rules. The leaders also described and gave reasoned accounts for tensions, which added to our preliminary identification of contradictions.

Table 1. Data collection and analysis.

Data origin	Type of data	Use in this study
Meeting supervisors in workshops	Oral: not documented	Initial idea of two activity systems for supervisors: research and education
Meeting doctoral students in workshops	Oral: not documented	Initial idea of two activity systems for doctoral students: research and education
National and local regulations for doctoral education	Text: legal, policy, websites	Features and relationships of elements in activity systems for education
National and local policy for research and research funding	Text: policy, websites	Features and relationships of elements in activity systems for research
Structured interviews with five leaders of doctoral education (in departments or research schools)*	Transcribed interviews	Clarification of features and relationships of elements in all four activity systems, in particular the local application of rules
Semi-structured individual interviews with nine doctoral students (45–70 min)*	Recorded and transcribed interviews	After thematic analysis: Features and relationships of elements from subjects’ view, manifest tensions
Semi-structured individual interviews with ten supervisors (40–70 min)*	Recorded and transcribed interviews	After thematic analysis: Features and relationships of elements from subjects’ view, manifest tensions

Note: * Conducted by author LS.

To add to and verify our construction of the four systems and to gain further insights from the experiences from participants in the activities, we conducted interviews with doctoral students and supervisors (rows 6 and 7). A selection of 10 doctoral students from clinical medicine, health sciences and biomedical sciences were invited and all accepted (although one interview had to be cancelled). The selection included both full- and part-time students, men and women, different undergraduate degrees, and Swedish and foreign nationalities. For ethical reasons we did not interview the supervisors of the participating doctoral students; instead, we invited supervisors from other research groups. Several did not answer our emails, and those that accepted the invitation were probably a positive selection since they were willing to spend time talking about doctoral education. The ten supervisors included men and women from different research fields and with different extent of experience. Interviews were based on semi-structured protocols focusing on the process and conditions of doctoral education. Doctoral students were asked how they developed their competencies, what was important and challenging, and what their supervisors’ roles were. For supervisors, the focus was on their roles for doctoral student development, what else students needed and what were challenges.

Interviews were subjected to deductive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Transcripts of interviews with students and supervisors, respectively, were read several times with our research questions and anticipated activity systems in mind. Transcriptions were then coded by author GE as short, descriptive sentences that later were sorted under our deductive themes and allowed us to go back and forth to the full transcripts. As deductive themes we used the basic elements of the four activity systems, guided by the anticipated features we had identified in the previous steps (rows 15). Codes were referred to themes and their underlying meaning was used to understand what the themes/elements meant to the interviewees. This stage allowed us to finalize the construction of the activity systems and their intra- and inter-system relationships. Contradictions were either identified from this construction directly, for example the contradiction in rules between the legislation and the local praxis for individual study plans, or from the manifest tensions emerging from the analysis of interviews with students and supervisors. All authors studied all data sources, and all interpretations were discussed until we agreed on the findings. The authors of this article all have doctorates and academic backgrounds in STEM: in biology (AS) and in medicine (GE and LS), respectively. Authors AS and GE have transited to the field of education and have worked for more than two decades with educational development. Both have been involved in courses, workshops and development work related to doctoral education and supervision, in STEM as well as in other subject areas. All three authors have functioned as supervisors for doctoral students.

Ethical considerations

Permission to conduct the study was granted by the Regional Ethical Review Board (Dnr 2013/568). Doctoral students are vulnerable in their dependence on their supervisors. We therefore decided to interview doctoral students and supervisors from different research groups. All participants signed an agreement of participation and were informed that they could withdraw at any time. All names were coded at transcription and all material has been stored on a password-protected university server. Printed transcripts were kept locked in. Quotes used to illustrate results have been slightly rephrased in translation, and we have decided not to use individual identifiers (student 1, 2 etc) with quotes to further protect the interviewees’ identities. We have also removed any reference to gender. All participating students had graduated before this article was written.

Results

As previously described, four activity systems were identified. These systems were highly intertwined and existed simultaneously with several elements in common, for example individuals, research projects and methods, that had different roles, functions and meanings in the different activity systems. In the following sections, each system will be presented in isolation before we turn to inter-system relationships.

Under the headings for each of the individual systems we will first address our first sub-question by presenting short, descriptive narratives (Braun & Clarke, 2006) summarizing the various elements and their intra-system relationships from the point of view of the subjects in the systems. We will then turn to our second sub-question and present the contradictions and manifest tensions we have identified and illustrate these with representative quotes. For each system, we will end with a short summary of contradictions and tensions.

The last heading addresses interrelationships, contradictions and tensions between systems and sets out to answer our overarching research question on the contradictions between the activities of research and education.

Education – subject: student

The subject of this system, the doctoral student, engaged in the activity of doctoral education with the object of a doctoral degree. The outcome of the activity was a qualified career: within academia, health care or the private sector. Tools for learning were the research project, supervision and feedback, but also reading, attending courses, attending and presenting work at seminars and conferences, and teaching. The research group, comprised of the main supervisor and the cosupervisor, and often of other doctoral students, postdocs and senior researchers too, constituted the main community. To varying extent also doctoral students and researchers outside the research group, both nationally and internationally, could be included. For part-time students, community also included colleagues in their clinical settings. The division of labour was negotiated with the main supervisor.

The most prominent tool was the project, to which the student was tied and dependent on as a consequence of a number of faculty rules. Firstly, externally funded projects were used to finance doctoral studentships, and the project owners were generally appointed as main supervisors. Secondly, and contrary to the legal requirement to use the national learning outcomes and the general study syllabus to design individual study plans, the faculty’s practice was to use the supervisors’ project plans as templates for students’ individual study plans (a contradiction in the element of rules). The original design of the project, including its questions and theoretical framing, methods, and ways of analysing data and reporting results, therefore had a strong mediating effect on the activity of education. This mediation was modulated by the division of labour throughout the project and, in particular, by the role given to the student. Thirdly, the final examination was almost entirely based on the articles compiled in the thesis (also a local rule, see above for details), which further tied the student’s education and learning to the project and its output, i.e. the published articles.

The tool of supervision and the division of labour was affected by the faculty rule of having the main supervisor, in the capacity of project owner, to select the second supervisor. This created tensions, visible in students’ descriptions of having a second supervisor that functioned more as another project member than as a supervisor, or as a ‘just on paper’ supervisor, assigned for formal reasons but not taking active part in the supervision or the research.

Several other contradictions were identified within this system, and many of these led to tensions. As local rules tied students to their supervisors’ projects, it was difficult for them to achieve the broad and generic national learning outcomes for the degree (rules relating to the object) and hence narrowed the potential outcome to careers similar to their supervisors’. For example, the practice (rule) of enrolling students after the projects had been designed, often at the beginning of data collection or analysis but sometimes even at later stages, contradicted the requirements of the national learning outcomes to develop scholarly independence and ability to identify and formulate research questions.

I have three supervisors and it was decided in advance that they were to be my supervisors and what I was going to write about. So, they had prepared a lot before I was hired and I didn’t send in a research idea or anything like that³

(D)

I had a meeting with [researcher] who asked if I was interested in being here, and I sort of thought that was exciting so I accepted … We started with a meeting where my project was explained to me

(D)

A similar tension-generating contradiction could be observed when students described being given delimited tasks and roles within projects, or being held back by their supervisors from taking on responsibility within the projects, suggesting limitations in, or limited access to, the element of tools

Sometimes I feel like I am some kind of laboratory technician doing routine things and not being allowed to think outside the box or even understand why we do things the way we do them

(D)

Interestingly, while some students were critical and worried about such a situation, others saw it as more of a trade-off for contributing to relevant research.

Maybe I learn something, but what I think is more positive is that my research leads to improvements for patients … how we deal with patients clinically is more important than my potential learning

(D)

I expect to learn more about research in general and about [laboratory] methods, but it is more about wanting for my results to actually mean something

(D)

While the relationship with the supervisors typically was described as important, several interviewees remarked that their supervisors either were too directive or too busy with matters relating to funding and other research projects.

[My supervisor] is not here very often anymore. When [my supervisor] is here, the door is open and I can just step in if I want to, but [my supervisor] has very much to do, especially since we have a shortage of money and [my supervisor] has to write grant applications

(D)

Tension also arose from contradictions between the division of labour and tools, were the former restricted students to access other tools than the project, for example non-compulsory courses or teaching. Such access had to be negotiated with the supervisor, who often prioritized the project.

[Coursework and teaching] are not really prioritised in this group, and something I think I would have to do on my free time

(D)

Such circumstances, along with the faculty’s rule to base the doctoral degree almost entirely on produced articles, suggest that students predominately developed specialized and project-related competence rather than the broader competence outlined by the formal learning outcomes.

Contradictions were hence plentiful and could be identified as consequences of the local application of rules relating to the individual study plan, funding of studentships, selection of supervisors and examination. These rules created contradictions in the division of labour, which in turn created contradictions in the tools, especially in the project and supervision, and in the students’ opportunities to fully utilize them. These contradictions caused important tensions relating to the students’ engagement with both the tools and the object (the degree, as defined by its broad learning outcomes), and presented a challenge for attaining the outcome (a qualified career within or outside academia)

Research – subject: student as junior group member

The activity in this system was research and included many tasks typical for research groups in medicine or health sciences: data collection, analysis, discussing results and taking part in writing up manuscripts. The subject, the student, functioned here as a junior group member and engaged in the collective activity of research with the object to become a competent researcher. Also in this system the main tool was the research project, through which the junior group member obtained the competence and publishable results needed for the object as well as the outcome, a career in research. Other tools were project-meetings, seminars and conferences. The community was primarily comprised of the research group, but members of nearby groups were sometimes mentioned as important for advice on techniques and methods. The interviewees described interacting with junior and senior researchers also outside the local research community. The most dominant rules were the demands associated with a career in research: to produce high quality publications and successful grant applications. The division of labour within the research group was decided by the main supervisor, who here functioned as the PI. Project work was facilitated and led by the supervisor/PI through regular project meetings and interviewees described gradually taking on more responsibility with time. The PIs were described as both role models and project leaders, with a strong influence on the course of action, and for the quality and feasibility of the project, and how it evolved over time.

Some of the tension related to the tools (projects) and division of labour described in the previous system were relevant and revealed contradictions also in this system. For example, the lack of opportunities for scholarly development, which interviewees described as a result of them being constrained to working in their PI’s project (and to particular tasks therein), and students being actively restrained by their PIs revealed contradictions between the division of labour, the tools, the object of becoming a competent researcher, and the rules that determine successful research careers. As described earlier, some interviewees were troubled by this relative lack of freedom while others were not.

I think I have to ask for permission too much. I have worked [in my health profession] and been independent, and it is strange that now I have to ask for permission to do things

(D)

Still, most students/junior group members were confident that partaking in the research projects would help them develop sufficient competence for a future career in research. However, the respondents’ descriptions of what research and being a researcher entailed ranged from elaborate to naïve (with the mastering of laboratory techniques being an example of the latter). Another tension was expressed by interviewees who described becoming discouraged from pursuing research careers by observing the burden upon their supervisors of grant applications and securing tenure.

It is really hard to get funding to be tenured … in worst case, I guess, I will have to do something completely different

(D)

An interesting contradiction, which was the opposite of having a co-supervisor that only functioned as another project member (as described for the first system above), was when one of the two supervisors had no real role in the research project, but was included in the project to meet demands of seniority or to guarantee the funding of the student. As such arrangement included being given the status of co-author for the group’s articles, it contradicted ethical rules in research.

On the whole this system was rather harmonious, with only few contradictions. However, tensions existed in cases when particular supervisors, in their role as PIs managing externally funded research projects, kept their project group members in too tight reins (division of labour) in order to produce the results needed for high-impact articles and future funding (rules).

Education – subject: supervisor

In this system, the subject, the supervisor, engaged in the activity of education with the object of facilitating the student’s development of the competencies needed for the outcome: a future independent and confident researcher. The tools were the different components of the research project, including writing and presenting, course work, and the supervisor’s support and feedback. Interacting with other researchers was considered an important aspect of the community. The most important rule in this system was the responsibility of supervisors to finance their doctoral students. Other rules were the national and local regulations for doctoral education. Division of labour was an important task for the supervisors and entailed assigning roles and responsibilities to all, including the students who also should be active in these discussions. Supervision was an important tool and supervisors stressed the importance of acting as role models to their students and considered supervision important both as an academic task and for their own personal development. Except for the courses, supervisors were also responsible for most of the other tools, and for creating opportunities for students to engage with these, which included giving tasks and roles within the project. The faculty’s courses were considered relevant and important, and teaching was mentioned by some as important for the personal development of their students. The community of other researchers was considered important not only for students but also for the supervisors themselves. Several mentioned having mentors from whom they could seek support. Co-supervisors were often selected for competencies that were needed for the student’s research project.

Contradictions related to the local adaption of legislation (rules) could be identified, for example the faculty’s choice to use the supervisors’ project plans as templates for the individual study plans (rather than the general syllabus and the degree descriptors), the convention that supervisors handpicked both students and co-supervisors, and that supervisors in effect also were their students’ employers. For the supervisors, these contradictions did not appear to be associated with any tensions. However, the all-important local rule requiring supervisors to finance their doctoral students stood in stark contradiction to several other elements and gave rise to significant tensions. Having to secure funding for their doctoral students, and also (to varying extents) for themselves and other group members, meant that supervisors more or less constantly had to worry about future grants. Writing successful research proposals was time consuming and hence took time away from supervision. Prospects for future funding, as well as the supervisors’ careers, were also highly dependent on effective and successful realization of the supervisors’ current research projects and therefore effective project management was essential. This, in turn, was a source for tensions as it came in conflict with supervision and the supervisors’ conceptualization of what students needed to do in order to develop independence (rules, distribution of labour, tool, object, outcome).

The opportunities to make decisions are kind of taken away from [the doctoral students] when it is already decided what has to be done, but it can’t be done differently with the grants … I can’t afford it … there can be a problem when I have to answer for what we did and how we thought

(S)

I think it is absolutely crucial to grind through this process a couple of times … the whole process: identify a problem, try to answer the questions, do the actual experiments, compile the data, write the article, send it in, get it published. It is sort of a cycle. Then you run it again a couple of times … and finally they feel that they themselves can start a cycle like this.

(S)

[To become a researcher] is a process that takes many years, and to a large extent comes from working in the group … the work and the progress, becoming independent and starting to believe in oneself … to take part in the group’s work and see the whole picture

(S)

The local rule of a minimum number of publications in the thesis was problematic as the co-authored publications were of crucial importance for the supervisor’s career. This could force the supervisor to be more directive and even to take over the writing process at times (distribution of labour, tools).

… .I think that it has become more and more difficult with the rules from the university and the faculty, and the challenges of getting financed and keeping your own career going with publications. And publications are not enough, they have to have a certain quality to keep you on track

(S)

It is still such large emphasis on the number [of articles] … For me to be able to proceed forwards it is not the number but the quality

(S)

Another contradiction causing tensions was that supervisors generally stressed that students benefitted from interacting with a wider community of researchers, while also acknowledging that it was difficult for them to provide their students access to communities outside their project groups.

I have a small [research] group, and something I really miss is group meetings … I try to encourage [my doctoral students] to talk to other students here … people have their meetings in their groups and with a very small group you lose something …

(S)

The contradictions found in this system, relating to the distribution of labour, the students’ access to the tools, and the object, to a large extent stemmed from the faculty’s rule of tying student funding and study plans to the supervisors’ research grants and projects, respectively. These contradictions generated problematic tensions between the supervisors’ aspirations to help their students develop the skills necessary to become independent researchers and the supervisors’ needs for research output and future grants.

Research – subject: supervisor as principal investigator

As subject in this system the supervisor was a research group leader, a PI. The object was the production of quality research with the outcome being qualifications, future grants and a successful career. The tool was the research project, including its funding and project plan, regular project meetings, methods, datasets and apparatuses. Rules in this system were those that governed research, grants and careers. The community was the research group that also included doctoral students as project members who, through the division of labour, performed much of the work. Both students and other group members, sometimes also including the co-supervisor, were selected for their ability to contribute to the project.

Some previously mentioned contradictions existed also in this system. Local praxis (rules) allowed supervisors, contrary to national law, to handpick persons they already knew and could trust as project members. Another local organizational feature meant that supervisors, as research group leaders, in effect were acting as the employers of students and often of co-supervisors and other group members too. These contradictions between local and national rules were not understood as to give rise to tensions. Instead, the combination of simultaneously having the role of employer, PI, and supervisor allowed for effective project management and a hierarchically ordered group where increasingly experienced members could supervise and lead the work of novice members, such as new doctoral students/junior group members.

Supervisors, as PIs, provided funding, leadership and support for all project members, including students. Project management was instrumental to the outcome and included the recruitment of doctoral students that could work effectively and contribute to project success.

… if you want a career and eventually become a professor, it is necessary to be a supervisor

(S)

We do not get grants from the Research Council to do education, we get them to do good research

(L)

[The students] should be hard-working and honest.

(L)

To me, it is about getting the research done … because you cannot do everything on your own, and then it is perfect that they drive it further. And if they have ideas on their own, to help, it expands the competence – you cannot do it all on your own

(S)

We could not identify any tensions in this system

Interrelationships between the four activity systems

Simultaneously engaged in the activities of education and research, the subjects experienced tensions and sometimes incongruity within their roles. Doctoral students were also junior project members while supervisors were also PIs, and these subject positions were reinforced by the different and partly contradictory rules and distributions of labour present in the activities of education and research, respectively, and by the differences in the objects and outcomes of the four systems.

Students/junior group members thus had to develop the competencies required for the degree and become competent researchers while at the same time contribute to the research production of the research groups. Correspondingly, supervisors/PIs had to help their students in their development while simultaneously manage their projects and their own careers. Both students and supervisors reported being torn between these dual expectations. Leaders too were aware of such tensions.

Is the role of the supervisor to teach the doctoral student to become a good researcher … or is it more important to get high impact publications … that is a difficult question

(L)

The main tool in all systems was the project. In the two systems of education, coursework was also present and students described reading and teaching as important for acquiring knowledge in the broader field and to be able to pursue a career as academic teachers. However due to the need to produce high-impact articles, opportunities to engage with such tools were limited.

… already from the beginning it was clear that I would not be allowed to teach or to take the course on teaching and learning, and that I had to focus on the four-year employment and deliver …

(D)

With the project being the most prominent tool in all systems (and the only tool in the system of research with the supervisor as subject), it was clear that it had a strong mediating function on the activities of both education and research. But the function of the project as a tool was also mediated by the division of labour, which in turn could be related to the different rationales, objects and outcomes of the four activity systems, illustrating the two-way mediation between tools and activities. For example, when supervisors described gradually handing over more and more responsibility for the project to their students, it reflected the project as a tool for expanding student competence. But when students and supervisors described supervisors restricting students’ access to the more complex tasks within the project, for the sake of efficient research production, its potential as a tool for learning was reduced. This, again, reflected tensions between the systems.

It happens that supervisors and doctoral students have different expectations … it happens that doctoral students feel that they are being exploited

(L)

The objects in three of the identified systems related to student learning and competence. When students discussed the object and outcome of doctoral education, they generally described a broader competence than when discussing the object and outcome of research. In the latter case the main focus was on developing research competence, which also resonated with supervisors’ reasoning on the object and outcome of doctoral education. In the fourth system, research – supervisor as PI, the object was instead research production. This contradicts the other systems (and particularly the system education – student) and was strongly reflected in our interviews with students and supervisors, who often described it as problematic and/or a necessary consequence of the practice of funding doctoral education with external research grants and of the general conditions for competitive research. It was clear that this system was dominant and had forced adaptations that caused contradictions within the other systems.

[The doctoral student’s role in the project] is firstly to generate data, and secondly to be an apprentice really … someone experienced who takes on someone unexperienced, by working together. So, first data and then learning

(S)

Everything starts with money … or an excellent research idea and a research proposal, and in that proposal, it is specified what has to be done and who should do it and that can include the employment of doctoral students

(L)

Within the objects of the four systems, one common denominator could however be identified: the published articles. These were important for the outcomes of all four systems: compiled in the thesis that would entitle the student to the career-unlocking degree; listed in the student’s/junior group member’s CV for future opportunities in research; indicative of the successful supervision of an independent researcher; and necessary for the supervisor’s/PI’s career and future opportunities in research. It was hence not student learning and competence, but the published articles that formed the bridge between the objects of the four activity systems. This was enforced by the local (educational) rule to use mainly the thesis, which should contain a minimum number of articles, in the examination of the student. The strong focus on producing articles was reflected in all interviews. The production of publishable results was often described as being a simultaneously non-negotiable necessity and a source of problems for both student development and supervision. This necessity conflicted with reading, taking courses, teaching, attending seminars and conferences, or engaging in the more advanced aspects of the projects. Paradoxically, the need to produce high quality articles sometimes even meant that students were not allowed to take part in their writing.

[The supervisor] did not allow me to write … I think [the supervisor] felt pressure to publish something in order to get money and couldn’t wait for drafts to go back and forth … I wanted to write it myself but [the supervisor] started and then…

(D)

… because one has to produce … in projects [with] long periods of data collection, it has to be written at some point and sometimes one’s money runs out and then one has to write most of it oneself. That is how it has often played out for me

(S)

Figure 2 summarizes the four activity systems and their interrelationships. The main source of intra-system tensions within the two educational systems and the system of Research – student as Junior group member, respectively, was contradictions within the rules (between national educational law, rules for research and funding, and local rules and praxis). As described above, no intra-system tensions could be identified in the system of Research – Supervisor as Principal investigator. The main sources of inter-system tensions were contradictions between: 1) the subject positions of student vs junior group member and of supervisor vs principal investigator; 2) the rule of efficient research production in the system Research – Supervisor as Principal investigator and the resulting division of labour and access to tools in the three other systems; 3) the object of the system Research – Principal investigator, i.e. research production, and the objects of the three other systems. Figure 2 also illustrates how the published articles, as a common denominator within the objects of the four systems, links the activities of research and education in the current setting.

Figure 2. Four activity systems of doctoral education identified at a faculty of medicine and health sciences (systems on the right side are laterally reversed and the middle white rectangle, ‘published articles’, represents the common denominator within the objects of the four systems).

Discussion

In this study we have used CHAT to analyse doctoral education in the context of externally funded project-based research. Our results show contradictions and tensions that can be related to the projectification of research in conjunction with the formalization of doctoral education. Several of the phenomena that we have identified in the interplay and relationship between students and supervisors confirm previous research on doctoral education in STEM, for example difficulties in combining supervision and research group leadership (Löfström & Pyhältö, 2015), supervisors being overly directive (Deuchar, 2008; Sampson & Comer, 2010; Wichmann-Hansen & Herrmann, 2017), students given subordinated roles in research groups (Pyhältö et al., 2009) and students not being in charge of their doctoral research (Vekkaila et al., 2012). Here we have shown that such problematic phenomena can, at least partly, be understood as systemic. Previous system-oriented research on doctoral education has shown how funding insecurity is a challenge for both students and supervisors (Cornér & Pyhältö, 2019; Jones, 2013; Pyhältö, Toom, et al., 2012; Pyhältö, Vekkaila, et al., 2012). Our study shows that also the source of funding, and the conditions with which it comes, can create system-level challenges. External funding of doctoral education hence can be a mixed blessing.

Several of the contradictions in the two educational systems and in the system of Research – student as junior group member could be explained by the need to alleviate tensions and potential contradictions within the system of Research – supervisor as PI. One example is the relative impotence of the broad and complex national learning outcomes (rules) in the systems of education. Had these conscientiously been allowed to affect the practice of doctoral education in any major way, for example by mandating that doctoral students should have more freedom in the design and execution of the projects, severe contradictions and tensions would result in the system Research – supervisor as PI. Instead, as we found, the Swedish Higher Education Ordinance’s learning outcomes were of very little practical importance and were in fact hardly known by our interviewees. The dominance of the fourth system can be explained by the fact that it is the supervisors’/PI’s externally funded research projects that is the financial and intellectual basis for the other three systems, and that the object of this fourth system, the published articles, is vital not only for the supervisor/PI, his or her career and the future of the group, but also to the objects and outcomes of the other systems. Failure of the fourth system would therefore have a detrimental effect on all systems. It should be noted however that the subjects’ commitment to the ethos of doctoral education, and to some extent also the educational rules, appeared to partially counteract the dominance of the fourth system, albeit with internal system tensions and subjects experiencing conflicting expectations and obligations as consequences. The latter could be conceptualized as a form of role strain, i.e. an inbuilt tension within a single social role (Goode, 1960), that Elmgren et al. (2016, p. 53) has suggested to be common for supervisors in externally funded doctoral education.

We can shed more light on the strong presence and dominance of the system Research – supervisor as PI by turning to the historicity (Engeström, 2001) of the activities of research and doctoral education at the present faculty. As previously described, the projectification of STEM research in Sweden began to accelerate in the mid-nineties as a consequence of the government’s strategy to create more competition among researchers (by gradually increasing the ratio of external to internal research funding), and coincided with the national educational reform of 1998 that required faculties to fully fund their doctoral students. As a response to these changes, the present faculty (along with other STEM faculties in the country) decided to put the main burden for financing doctoral students on the main supervisors/PIs. As a consequence, students became firmly tied to their supervisors’ projects, research groups and research output, while supervisors’ careers and prospects for future funding in turn became tied to their doctoral students. This double tie was further strengthened when the faculty decided that individual study plans (that became mandatory in 1998) should be based on supervisors’ project plans, which emanated from their externally funded research projects. Because of changes like these, doctoral student numbers at the present faculty (and at other STEM faculties in the country) could be kept high (and even grow) in spite of doctoral education becoming a very expensive affair for faculties following the 1998 reform. These choices made it possible to enrol large numbers of doctoral students and to produce large quantities of research, which in turn allowed the faculty to grow and become more competitive in research and in relation to external research funding.

The contradictions between the system of Education – Student and the system of Research – supervisor as PI could be understood as a form of balancing act of the faculty: to remain competitive in research while at the same time live up to legal requirements for doctoral education. However, the real balancing act is left to the supervisors, who have both legal and moral imperatives to support their student’s development whilst at the same time have to manage their projects, and to the doctoral students, who are expected to develop the broad competencies depicted in the national learning outcomes whilst simultaneously work in their supervisors’ projects.

The more harmonious systems of Research – Student as Junior group member and Education – Supervisor appear to reflect the older relationship of master and apprentice, or mentor and mentee, which stem from a time when the doctorate was an internal qualification route for becoming a researcher, rather than a regulated form of education. Before the reforms of the nineties, doctoral students could work on their own projects, or collaborate with their supervisors, without this work necessarily being hardwired to their supervisors’ careers and present and future funding. The outcome of such work, the articles, could to a larger extent be the result of the doctoral students’ own ideas, project designs (and re-designs) and writing than it can today when the outcome has become of crucial importance to the supervisors. Our point here is not to romanticize the past: also before the 1998 reform doctoral students were dependent on their supervisors, for example for getting temporary employment (as teachers or assistants), stipends to fund their studies, or help with their projects. Such dependencies created power-asymmetries and made students vulnerable. The present situation, with full funding as a non-negotiable right and supervisors being pressured to engage with students’ work for sake of their own careers, could be understood as reducing this risk. But in combination with the extensive research projectification, the 1998 reform created new problems and tensions for both students and their supervisors.

Undoubtedly, the faculty’s doctoral students are better off economically today. And because they are so strongly linked to their supervisors’ projects and funding, they are more or less guaranteed to be participating in high-quality research alongside experts at the frontier of a field. But these circumstances also give rise to supervisor (and student) role strain and create tension between supervision and effective project management, with the latter not necessarily providing the best opportunities for doctoral students to learn and to become independent researchers and academics.

Limitations

There are several limitations of this study. The number of interviewed supervisors and doctoral students was rather low and more participants could have resulted in richer results. Several of the supervisors invited to the study did not answer invitations, or declined, which may have resulted in a selection bias. The authors’ own background in doctoral education have inevitably affected the interpretation of the results. More researchers taking part in the analysis could have contributed with other perspectives. The study is confined to only one country and within this country to only one university and one faculty. This has allowed a deep contextualization but also potentially limits the relevance to other countries and research contexts. Therefore, we have been careful in describing the national and local context, as to make it possible for readers to conclude to which extent our findings could be relevant also in other settings.

Concluding remarks

With this study, we have provided a picture of present-day doctoral education that contrasts with the more orderly education described by many authors (for example, Bartelse & Huisman, 2008; Byrne et al., 2013; Gudmundsson, 2008; Kehm, 2020; Nerad & Heggelund, 2008; Nerad, 2014, 2020). The effects of research projectification on doctoral education – counteracting many intentions of last decades’ educational formalization – are unlikely to be unique to Sweden and to STEM. Several countries have had similar policy development as Sweden, and projectification of research is a world-wide phenomenon and not restricted to these disciplines. But since doctoral education is highly individualized and deeply embedded in research, the effects of projectification and educational formalization are likely to be moderated by contextual factors and disciplinary traditions, and hence have to be studied with such circumstances in mind.

What, then, can be done to improve conditions for doctoral student learning and supervision in competitive, externally funded research? Firstly, both supervisors and students can be made more aware of existing contradictions and potential tensions in externally funded doctoral education, and of the challenges of integrating supervision with efficient project management. Secondly, faculties can make sure that supervisors are not also employers of their doctoral students (and of their co-supervisors), and that project plans are not used as study plans. Thirdly, faculties can strive to decrease their dependence on external funding for doctoral education, to untie doctoral students from supervisors’ projects and careers (and vice versa). However, without external funding, the number of potential doctoral students would decrease dramatically and the overall research output (to which doctoral students contribute greatly) would be reduced. It would therefore be very difficult for a single faculty to make large changes to its funding of doctoral students without also losing its competitiveness. For this reason, we believe that the systemic contradictions and tensions we have identified, and related to the convergence of two different policy fields (education and research), need to be addressed at the national level.

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the doctoral students, supervisors and leaders who willingly shared their experiences of doctoral education with us. We also want to thank the two anonymous reviewers who gave valuable feedback on our first manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. We include medicine and health sciences in STEM because many of the fields of study that are found within faculties of medicine and health sciences in Sweden (and in e.g. Norway and Denmark) are in other countries instead found in faculties of science (and hence categorized as STEM). Medicine and health sciences in Sweden are, along with science, technology and engineering, highly dependent on external funding for research and doctoral education, and accommodate around a third of Sweden’s total number of doctoral students.

2. As a consequence, circa 75 percent of Swedish doctoral students today are found in STEM, which can be compared to 55 percent of the doctoral student population in EU−27 (Eurostat, 2021). Of these 75 percent, 33 belong to medicine and health sciences (UKÄ, 2022). Swedish universities and their faculties decide themselves on how much of their research funding should be distributed to doctoral education and how many students should be enrolled each year.

3. D denotes doctoral student, S supervisor, and L leader. In order to protect interviewees’ identities, we have not used individual identifiers (student 1, 2 etc).