Bologna and bust lead to a boom in doctorates

Spanish universities are processing up to six times the number of doctorates compared to the last academic year, according to research by one of Spain’s leading newspapers, El Mundo.

The study found that 32 universities had registered at least 12,100 theses in the academic year so far, more than during the whole of the last year. In reality the figure is much higher because the 12,100 theses only corresponds to 32 of the total of 50 Spanish state universities that replied or that contributed comparable information to the survey.

El Mundo estimates that if private universities were included, the true figure would be above 20,000 nationally; double normal levels.

The Bologna Process – the drive towards comparability in the standards and quality of higher education across Europe – is thought to have been a key accelerator. Another factor may be the context of increasing unemployment due to the economic crisis.

In 2011, reportedly in response to the Bologna Process, the government imposed the Royal Decree 99/2011 – known as the Gabilondo decree – limiting the completion date of a doctorate to five years, which affected many previous students who were accustomed to taking up to 10 years and more to complete.

This meant that with few exceptions this cohort of students had to present their theses before 10 November 2015 and defend them before 11 February 2016. Any student who missed this deadline would be required to repeat the admission process, and effectively would have to start their studies again.

The context of the economic crisis may have added to the problem. Andrew Richards, a professor of politics at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, who has supervised many doctoral students, told University World News: “The crisis may have pushed more people into the doctorate system, as a means of avoiding the labour market, with the Gabilondo decree significantly increasing the system's output.”

The sudden surge in the defence of theses has led to a bottleneck in which universities have had great difficulty finding sufficient professors to sit on their panels. In one case, a professor sat on 25 panels in two months.

Furthermore, as a consequence of the deluge in demand for bound copies of theses, some publishers have reportedly run out of paper on which to print them.

The universities with large increases in their numbers of doctorates include the Universitat Autònomo de Barcelona (which has doubled the number of theses examined between September and February); the Universidade de Vigo (quadrupled); the Universidad de Valencia (quintupled) and the Universidad de La Laguna, in Tenerife, the Canary Islands, which has processed almost six times the normal number of doctorates.

There is only one university that has processed almost the same number as in 2014-15; the Universidad Pública de Navarra, which has seen 38 students defend their theses.

Quality questioned

The sudden increase in theses processed has raised questions about whether the quality has fallen.

Two ways to measure the quality of doctoral theses are to count the number of doctorates that receive the highest qualification of cum laude and compare it with previous years, or review how many papers are published in prestigious scientific journals as a result of the doctorates.

The study showed that the number of cum laudes has dropped by a few percentage points in a random selection of universities surveyed; but not by enough to demonstrate any significant decline in standards.

Regarding numbers published, anecdotal evidence suggests that some of the doctorates defended are perhaps too locally or specifically focused to have great repercussion in international journals – for example one thesis focused on the professional trajectory of professors in the Universidad de León, another reportedly on the smile of the Mona Lisa.

Some academics argue that the Bologna Process pushed Spanish universities into reducing their degree courses to four years and in order to not lose income, they increasingly encouraged students to continue on to masters and doctorate programmes.

Others, like Javier Ferri, professor of economic analysis at the Universidad de Valencia, argue that professors also have an economic and career incentive to supervise doctoral students. “The more students they manage, the more points in principle they will have to be accredited by the National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation,” he says.

“Consequently, if there are more professors wanting to supervise theses and more students wishing to do them, it is not surprising that the numbers have increased.”