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This paper aims to investigate existing practices of transversal skills training in doctoral education and provide recommendations for improvement for universities, industry and doctoral students in Europe. The results offer a detailed picture that has implications for the design of doctoral education programs that aim to support transferable skills development and graduate employability.

A qualitative research method was used for this study; thus, data gained from existing literature were the most significant aspect of this study, serving as the key approach to answering the research questions. A literature review approach, which involved synthesizing and analyzing existing literature, was adopted in this study. Essential themes were identified and collected from literature through an inductive coding technique to find answers to questions in this study.

The research highlights the importance of coordinated efforts to improve transversal skills training in doctoral education programs. Universities must adapt their curriculum to meet industry skill requirements and provide enabling support for faculty innovative teaching. Private enterprises must continue to provide training for doctoral graduates employed in the industry because not all skills can be taught and developed in the university. Doctoral students themselves must be intentional about creating industry networks for acquiring transferable skills needed in nonacademic jobs.

In response to industry demands, a university should not be seen as a place where doctoral students formulate a theory about the net ideology of a discipline but as a place for socializing, interacting, arguing critically and developing transferable skills for various careers. The advocacy for transversal skill training in doctoral education positively impacts society, producing doctoral researchers with an innovative mindset. Universities must continue improving existing skill-based training and work-integrated learning practices while seeking new collaboration with various industry sectors.

This study provides relevant ideas for faculty, industry and doctoral students on enhancing the employability of doctoral graduates through the development of transversal skills.

Doctoral students are expected to undertake work-based skills training within their doctoral studies in areas such as problem solving, leadership and team working. The purpose of this paper is to explore student expectations of doctoral training within a UK Higher Education context.

The data for the study were gathered via two focus groups conducted among doctoral students from different faculties in a post-92 UK University. Participants were selected using a snowball sampling approach.

The findings suggest that the expectations of doctoral students are contingent upon their year of study, study mode, perceived fit between training goals and available training, peer recommendations, word-of-mouth (WoM) and the scholarly support they received from their supervisors.

The study suggests a better understanding of students’ segmentation can help Higher Education Institutions deliver training that meets the expectations of doctoral students in a way that result in zero or a positive disconfirmation.

This paper develops and deepens the understanding of the doctoral students’ expectations of work-based skills training and highlights the need for universities to adapt their doctoral training according to the expectations of different student segments.

The purpose of this paper is to present a theoretically-informed analysis of an exploratory study which included a focus on postdoctoral researchers' views of their training needs.

The wider mixed-methods study was focused on post-doctoral career trajectories at a time of ongoing policy interest in doctoral education. Bernstein's theoretical perspectives are used to illuminate the data, particularly his concepts of classification and regionalisation.

Respondents' reflections on their doctoral training showed a much stronger appreciation of training which was based in disciplinary practices, even if these were subject to regionalisation, as opposed to more generic professional skills training.

The small scale and exploratory nature of the study is recognised, as well as the need for more independent research in this area.

The study has implications for the nature of the training provided as part of doctoral education. First, it is argued that this should include more explicit discussion of policy shifts relating to doctoral education. Second, rather than being glossed over in the imposition of generic competency frameworks (conceptualised through Bernstein as a generic performance mode), researcher training should attend closely to the social and cultural base of the skills and practices of different regions of knowledge production, at the same time as recognising these to be fluid and dynamic.

Overall, while recognised as exploratory, the study aims to contribute insights on doctoral graduates' perspectives on researcher training as well as suggesting the usefulness of Bernstein's theoretical framework for understanding the reconstruction of doctoral education in the UK.

This paper compares the learning experiences of full‐time PhD students in 28 Education Departments and 31 Chemistry Departments in British universities. A questionnaire composed of two major dimensions of the learning experiences, supervision and research environment for doctoral students, was distributed to about 2,200 students. It is found that Chemistry departments are seen as offering better doctoral education as perceived by students than Education departments on most counts, especially regarding academic culture of facilitation, intercultural facilitation of research for foreign students and research facilities in research environment for doctoral students. Supervision is perceived to be more satisfactory in Chemistry than in Education especially in aspects of supervisor’s knowledge, supervisor’s research workload, supervisor’s student‐load and supervisor’s helpfulness in finding funding. A theoretical framework of the Teamwork and Individualist research training structures to discuss the possible causes of these findings is offered. It is proposed that disciplinary diversity in effectiveness of doctoral education is engendered by the two distinct research training structures.

Counselor educators graduating from accredited doctoral programs complete training in counseling, supervision, teaching, research, scholarship, leadership, and advocacy. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the valued components of doctoral degree training in counselor education among new graduates.

Recent graduates in full-time counselor education positions were surveyed using the Delphi method to determine which aspects of their doctoral training best prepared them for their current positions.

The participants valued or desired training in teaching, research, supervision, and potential mentorship.

A serendipitous finding of the research was that mentorship, which was not a deliberate training feature, was highly valued by new counselor educators. Further research on which mentorship styles are best suited for counselor educator training is necessary. Continued training in teaching, research, and supervision is also necessary.

Some form of mentoring is desirable in counselor educator training programs to facilitate transition from year to year of doctoral study, as well as to assist transition from the role of student to faculty.

A desire to be mentored by faculty, specifically for students in counselor education doctoral programs, is revealed.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on doctoral students in Germany and the drivers behind their intention to enter an academic career. The aspirations of young researchers after graduating from doctoral training have become an important issue to policymakers in light of the changing nature of doctoral training.

Borrowing from Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behavior, we investigate how attitudes towards a career in academia, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control determine graduates’ intentions to pursue an academic career. We extend the model of Ajzen by measurements of research and training conditions in order to estimate the impact of organizational settings. We analyze a sample of 5,770 doctoral candidates from eight universities and three funding organizations.

We find that apart from attitudes towards careers, academic career intentions are related to research and training conditions at the organizational level. Further, we find that large differences within the field of study and affiliation to a university or funding organization provide substantial explanations.

This paper explores doctoral candidates’ academic career intentions which are an important precondition for the propagation of academic staff. For developers and practitioners in the field of doctoral training, our results yield a good understanding of the relationship between organizational settings at the level of doctoral training and career intentions.

This chapter proposes authentic leadership as a generic competence and an integral part of doctoral education regardless of field of study. The authors explore its potential to enhance the development of doctoral candidates and academics and search for answers to the questions: Can and should authentic leadership be developed as a generic competence in doctoral education? How can it be designed and implemented in a doctoral training module? What would its learning outcomes be? The authors address these questions in the context of doctoral education. They assert that authentic leadership training should be mandatory for all doctoral candidates, and that supervisors should be actively engaged in the development of this underappreciated transferrable skill.

There has been sustained interest in how to support doctoral students through the often-gruelling journey they undertake from enrolment to graduation. Although doctoral numbers and successful completions have been steadily increasing globally as well as in Australia, the quality of student progression and outcomes has been widely interrogated and criticised in the literature that is reported in this paper. The authors’ interest as experienced research higher degree supervisors and research leaders in the creative arts and humanities prompted a research project that aimed to better understand the challenges and breakthroughs involved in completing a doctorate from the perspective of candidates themselves.

This was implemented through an action learning collaboration with 18 students from three Australian universities facilitated by four research supervisors.

The main findings presented in this paper include the necessity for maintaining, brokering and supporting a range of relationships; understanding expectations of research study and embracing the need for agility in managing these; and finally, using techniques to improve personal agency and ownership of the transformative journey of research higher degree candidature. The importance of establishing an understanding of the multidimensional human experience of doing a doctorate and providing appropriate support through enhanced forms of research training emerged as a core finding from this research project.

The relatively small number of research participants in this study and the discipline-specific focus prohibits generalizability of findings; however, the collaborative, action learning method adopted represents an approach that is both productive and transferable to other contexts and disciplines.

Further research might investigate the relevance of the findings from this research to doctoral students in other disciplines and/or institutions or apply the collaborative action learning approach to doctoral training presented here to a range of contexts and cohorts.

Improving doctoral training options to support the multidimensional needs of candidates can better assure the mental and emotional well-being of doctoral students (essential to their continuing intellectual development and sense of agency) through developing sustainable relationships and realistic expectations. This in turn has the potential to address the consistently high attrition rates in doctoral programmes.

This research contributes new insights from doctoral students on the challenges and breakthroughs experienced by them as they pursue original research through formal study and present a novel, collaborative and empowering approach to doctoral training that can be applied in diverse setting.