Doctoring the knowledge worker

Abstract

In this paper I examine the impact of the new ‘knowledge economy’ on contemporary doctoral education. I argue that the knowledge economy promotes a view of knowledge and knowledge workers that fundamentally challenges the idea of a university as a community of autonomous scholars transmitting and adding to society's ‘stock of knowledge’. The paper examines and then dismisses the proposition that professional doctorates are the principal vehicle through which ‘working knowledge’ is incorporated into doctoral education. While professional doctorates may have been tactically useful for universities, there are broader transformations in doctoral education that transcend the professional doctorate/Ph.D. distinction. I argue that as doctoral education adopts the practices of ‘self’ pertinent to the knowledge economy, the ‘subject’ of doctoral education shifts from that of the ‘autonomous student’ to that of the ‘enterprising self’.

Notes

University Graduate School, University of Technology, Sydney, PO Box 123, Broadway NSW 2007. Email: [email protected]