UKCGE Discussion Paper—
PhD Cohort Programmes

At its meeting on 27 March 2020, the UK Council for Graduate Education’s Executive Committee heard presentations on the subject of cohort-based postgraduate programmes, from two interrelated perspectives:

1. The view from a central (academic-related) service, concerning the practical and ethical implications of cohort-specific activities.
2. The view from a postgraduate student currently enrolled in a UKRI-funded Doctoral Training Partnership, particularly raising questions of equity and inclusion.

There followed a rich exchange of insights and experiences from across the membership of the Committee, culminating in an agreement that the Council should investigate this issue further and report back to the wider community. This memo summarises the key themes emerging from those discussions.

Defining ​‘Cohort’

The Committee discussed the definition of the word ​‘cohort’, what a successful cohort would look like, and how this would map onto other ideas in the current doctoral education discourse such as ​‘culture’, ​‘community’, ​‘consortium’, and ​‘academic citizenship’.

It was noted in the discussion that the funders’ rationale for switching to cohort-based models was rooted in a desire to overcome social, intellectual and professional isolation among doctoral candidates by creating cohesion, collaboration, and a sense of shared experience. It may be that the contours of such isolation have shifted in the intervening years, as discussed below. And isolation may inhere in the very concept of the ​‘cohort’, the etymology of which signifies the condition of being enclosed or marked out by a common characteristic.

This awkward undertow of ​‘apartness’ and ​‘distinctiveness’, with the difficult ethical and practical questions about elitism and disparity of experience which it raises, was a theme of both presentations.

Benefits to the Student

Various benefits of being part of a funded cohort of doctoral candidates were identified. These include:

• The extensive range of opportunities, for example, international conferences, summer schools, and research collaborations;
• The social network provided by the cohort and the related possibilities for peer-to-peer support;
• The professional capital which comes from being on a funded programme.

This connectedness has the possibility to enhance career development and support wellbeing – for those who feel included.

Resource Management

It is acknowledged that many funded cohort programmes deliver excellent training and development. But the Committee also heard that, from an institutional perspective, the requirement to provide cohort-specific opportunities can be challenging in both practice and principle. Here, the Committee considered the specific example of researcher development. When applying for funding, bid writers often draw on the central services which exist in their institutions to support the personal and professional development of their doctoral candidates, in order to make an argument about research culture. Once successful in winning funding, many programmes then feel compelled to run duplicate versions of centrally available courses and opportunities, in order to fulfil the obligation to provide cohort training.

In practice, then, central services are often asked to ​‘come in’ to run near-identical iterations of already existing researcher development activities, repeating them for a discrete subset of doctoral candidates who would, in any case, have been eligible to attend the centrally available versions. This is a practical challenge, and risks being a waste of resource. Moreover, it is unclear in principle whether allocating time to run bespoke activities for specific cohorts of candidates is fair and ethical for services who are often working hard to expand the volume, reach, and accessibility of central programmes.

Elitism and Exclusion

Both presentations identified concerns about the elitism implied, and perhaps engendered, by cohorts. The Committee heard a number of examples of how cohorts are actively encouraged to regard themselves as the ​‘crème de la crème’, which perhaps overlooks broader concerns about the equality, diversity, and inclusiveness involved in funding and cohort selection (see, for example, the Leading Routes ​“Broken Pipeline” report).

In addition, a number of key questions for further investigation were identified:

1. Do cohort funding programmes display a bias towards certain kinds of research agenda?
2. Does cohort funding discourage novel and radical research with non-standard approaches and methodologies?
3. Do some doctoral candidates who are ​‘inside’ the cohort feel excluded, and are they more likely to experience wellbeing issues (see, for example, this UCU report), because they are carrying out research which feels marginal or disprized?

Moreover, it is suggested that some account may be needed of the research questions which have gone unaddressed. Should funded programmes be asked to publish the research topics that they have decided not to fund?

Further Work

It is vital that, as a sector, we build an evidence base to assess the extent to which cohort funding programmes are tackling or perpetuating systemic disadvantage. Such a review should also look at the ways in which the sense of the cohort as being distinct from peer researchers impacts on psychological safety and standing of those who are on the programme and those who are not. And any study should also look at the logistical and ethical implications of delivering cohort-specific training on other central services supporting doctoral candidates.

What the UKCGE Will Do

As a result of this discussion the UKCGE will:

• Ensure that the experiences of the most marginalised postgraduate researchers are voiced in future activities and events, particularly in relation to the UKCGE series on Mental Health and Wellbeing of PGRs
• Conduct research into whether there are biases in PGR funding selection
• Conduct research into the benefits and disadvantages of cohort-training
• Continue to provide advocacy and support for initiatives which seek to create a more equitable and inclusive postgraduate research culture, such as Leading Routes

UKCGE Executive Committee June 2020