Cronshaw, S, Stokes, P and McCullough, A (2021) Mothers doing doctorates part-time – why do we make it harder than it needs to be? Global Focus: The EFMD Business Magazine.

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Abstract

If universities really want mature students with families to succeed they’ll need to completely rethink the traditional image of the “doctoral student”. Widening access isn’t enough, say Sue Cronshaw, Peter Stokes, and Alistair McCulloch. Doing a PhD is hard. It’s hard even when everything goes right with your research project and it’s hard even when everything is set up to support you through three years of full-time study. Put simply, it’s hard because it involves an intensive period of what has been called the ‘highest learning’ and because it involves mastering the advanced knowledge and skills necessary to be welcomed into the relevant disciplinary community. It’s hard because learning and managing a long term-project is hard. But doing a PhD is even harder if study is undertaken on a part-time basis (completion rates for part-time PhD students are woefully low), and if there are social and personal barriers that have to be overcome in addition to the requirements of high-level research learning and research writing. Because public and institutional policy and institutional process are designed largely on the basis of the stereotypical “traditional” student (young, full-time, and without dependents), studying as a “non-traditional” student may not be easy.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Doctorate; Mothers; PhD
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman L Education > LB Theory and practice of education > LB2300 Higher Education
Divisions:	Business & Management (from Sep 19)
Publisher:	EFMD Global
Date Deposited:	21 Oct 2021 08:32
Last Modified:	19 Apr 2022 14:30
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/15675

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