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Keywords
Management, Research, Students, Supervisors
Abstract
Argues that generic research on leadership and management has much to offer those responsible for the academic supervision of research students, particularly PhD students. The analogies between the two "supervisory" roles are clear and the qualities and benefits of good supervisory practice can easily be transferred from corporate to academic arenas. Uses a conceptual framework, the competing values framework modified for academic supervision purposes, to illustrate the capabilities required of the PhD supervisor in the current tertiary environment.
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Introduction
The role of the PhD supervisor (supervisor) is becoming more complex and challenging in the changing academic environment (Acker et al., 1994; Conrad, 1999; Delamont et al., 1997; Pearson, 1996, 1999; Pearson and Ford, 1997; Lett and Slack, 1993). The basis for the finding of universities has changed considerably in the last decade (Committee, 1999). Previously, Australian universities received the bulk of their funds from government. Now they need to generate some 40 per cent of their funding from other sources (Committee, 1999), such as entering into partnerships with business, selling courses overseas and providing more university places for international students who pay full fees.
Not only is government funding decreasing, but the basis of the funding is also changing with a greater percentage of government funds being linked to the completion rates of research students (Committee, 1999), where ten years ago funding was based mainly on numbers of students taking up courses of study. In these circumstances, supervisors face competing demands: not only are they experiencing unprecedented financial pressure from strategies that link university funding to postgraduate completion rates, but they must also simultaneously nurture outstanding academic performance.
In addition, supervisors must now supervise more research students than in the closing decade of the last century. In 1989 there were 14,751 research students (DEETYA, 1998) studying in Australian universities; ten years later there were 25,000 Commonwealth funded research places (Committee, 1999), an increase of nearly 60 per cent.
Nearly two decades ago when Witt and Cunnungham (1984, p. 19, author's emphasis) stated that: Doctoral supervision should not...