Graduating around the globe
TON DE JONG & ELIANE SEGERS
The Netherlands
Doing your PhD in the Netherlands normally is a full-time four-year enterprise, although the number of part-time trajectories (5 years at .8 FTE) is increasing. In these four years, PHDs do their research and there is obligatory coursework. The amount of coursework gradually becomes smaller over the four years, and normally students follow a program that is offered by what is called a research school. The main research school for educational science in the Netherlands is ICO. At some universities, students also have a teaching obligation (e.g., 10%), but that is not a general rule, and the majority
just concentrate on the coursework and their research. Again, there is much variation, but as a normal rule you could say that a thesis comprises three or four empirical studies that each have been published or are potentially acceptable for an international journal. These papers have been accepted or submitted to international, peer-reviewed journals, with the student being the first author, and the supervisors as co-authors. There is a separate theoretical or introductory chapter that precedes the empirical chapters and a concluding chapter that puts all results into context.
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