‘They want more of everything’: what university middle managers’ attitudes reveal about support for off-campus doctoral students

ABSTRACT

Advances in technology and a shifting demographic of post-graduate students have resulted in a larger than ever number of off-campus PhD students. These students tend to be less satisfied than their on-campus counterparts with their candidature experience. Improving the current situation requires effort from multiple university stakeholders, including academic middle managers, who play a role in allocating resources and setting research training agenda. However, with the intensification of academic workload, academic managers might not view the support of off-campus PhD students as a high priority. This study investigates the attitudes of middle managers in a large Australian university concerning the provision of training and support to off-campus PhD students. The findings reveal that a complex interplay of discourses hinder the provision of support to off-campus PhD students. Implications for practice are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Distance PhD students
• off-campus PhD students
• support for distance PhD students
• academic middle managers

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to express their appreciation to Ms Rachel Leembruggen for her research assistance, and to the anonymous reviewers for their useful feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The current study is in fact part of a larger research project investigating the feasibility of research writing groups run via videoconferencing (see Kozar & Lum, 2013, 2015).

2 HDR is a broad term used in the study institution to apply to Master of Research, Master of Philosophy, Doctor of Philosophy and professional doctorate programmes.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Macquarie University’s Innovation and Scholarship Program 2013.