Graduating around the globe
ERNO LEHTINEN & SANNA JÄRVELÄ
Finland
Finnish universities’ doctoral degrees are equivalent to a PhD, but the titles vary according to disciplines. For example, in educational sciences the title is kasvatustieteen tohtori (doctor of education), officially translated in English as PhD in Education. Doctoral studies in Finnish universities have been in transition during the last 20 years. When the first author of this article earned his PhD in the beginning of the 1980’s, doctoral studies were based on the personal relationship between the supervising professor and the doctoral student. Doctoral studies
were solely focused on writing the doctoral dissertation. Particularly in humanities and social sciences, formal training was underdeveloped. In the late 1990’s, the Ministry of Education started to fund national doctoral programmes. Some of them were organized within one discipline and some were multidisciplinary. Funding allowed the doctoral programmes to hire full-time doctoral students and organize courses. In addition to the full-time positions, there were also part-time doctoral students who had permission to participate in the courses organized by the programme.
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