Researchers (Higher Education Studies Group)
New Book
The Development of the PhD Degree in Britain, 1917-1959 and Since: An Evolutionary and Statistical History in Higher Education
by Renate Simpson
Published by Edwin Mellen Press in the Autumn of 2009. The publication comprises two parts: a history of university debate and legislation about the nature and practice of the PhD from its inception in 1917, followed by a statistical summary and analysis of doctoral students first registering between 1917 and 1959.
Publisher's information and orders: http://www.mellenpress.com/mellenpress.cfm?bookid=7739&pc=9
Orders from individuals (£34.95 incl p&p)
The statistical work is based on a study of student records of a representative sample of 9,606 students from the universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh, Imperial, LSE, Manchester, Oxford and UCL. The sample comprises nearly half of all doctoral students at these Universities, which in turn registered about one half of the doctoral students at all UK universities during this period. The information includes the subject studied, place of earlier degree, age, sex, part-time/full time/staff status, date of first and last registration, and outcome of studies. Together these data allow questions of duration of studies and completion rates to be investigated for different student characteristics, as well as study of how these relationships changed over the periods before, during and after the second world war.
By the time of publication, it is hoped that this web page will be extended to include a database of the anonymised individual data records, to allow further research from them.
Renate Simpson’s ‘How the PhD came to Britain: A century of struggle for postgraduate education’ was published in 1983 by the Society for Research into Higher Education.
Renate Simpson may be contacted at Flat 23, 12 Tavistock Place, London WC1H 9RD.
- Data owner:
- cheri webmaster
- Last updated:
- 24/8/09