From Dream to Reality: a Colloquium on Doctoral Studies and Starting the Professiorial Career

A Highly Successful FQPPU colloquium on doctoral studies and starting the professorial career

From all over Quebec recently hired faculty, along with more experienced colleagues, students about to complete their doctorates, sessional lecturers and a few administrators, welcomed and discussed with a great deal of interest and enthusiasm the themes addressed by the 14 guest speakers at the colloquium on March 22 and 23, 2007.

The participation of some one hundred people confirmed the relevance of this event. It marked a new milestone in the FQPPU’s long-standing concern about and research into the renewal of professors in Quebec universities.

Inspiring Presentations

Guy Bourgeault (Université de Montréal), colloquium honorary president, first stimulated the debate by asserting that the university is not an imposed model. Despite numerous constraints, including its incredible bureaucratization, it is a space of great freedom. Yet, this freedom, which allows for audacity, is often cited as a reason for inaction.

Jean Nicolas (Université de Sherbrooke) has conducted one of the few quantitative studies on the training, supervision and professional integration of doctoral students. In his view, the problem is not due to a shortage of PhDs, but to their overspecialization that is often not attractive to private sector employers, the enormous attrition rate (40-45 percent do not complete their doctorates) and the length of doctoral studies (five and a half years on average). His team has developed a special training session offered to doctoral students.

Philippe-Olivier Giroux (Conseil national des cycles supérieurs, FEUQ) discussed the impact of the type of supervision on the success of doctoral students. Their integration into a research group leads to a higher graduation rate within a shorter time period, whereas the attrition rate is higher and studies are longer among students who are isolated (which is often the case of those in the humanities and literature).

Garth Williams (Public Knowledge Canada) drew a picture of doctoral studies in Canada since 1900. Despite the presence of universities from coast to coast and an exponential growth in research and doctoral studies programs from 1980 onwards, in 2001, 92.7 percent of doctoral students were still concentrated in Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia and Alberta. Over half of the students were in Montreal (21.2 percent), Toronto (19.7 percent) and Vancouver (9.7 percent).

Claude Trottier (Université Laval) addressed the need to better structure the integration of new professors, in particular with duly designated mentors. He emphasized that the identity of professor, which must be cobbled together throughout one’s career, is based on variable geometry, following the transformation of the methods of producing new knowledge. We are ourselves agents of socialization and we should be aware of our own margin of manœuvre.

Wilfred Cude (freelance researcher from Nova Scotia) ended his moving personal account with an emotional appeal to universities not to forget the other 50 percent of students enrolled in a doctorate who do not complete it. This involves, in particular, those who are forced to give up right at the end of the process because of a decision without appeal made by their thesis supervisor or an academic jury. As he stated “You have the power to change this. I don’t.”

Marie Blais (FNEEQ-CSN) spoke on behalf of sessional lecturers who, after their doctoral and often post-doctoral studies, rarely manage to get an academic position. Through lack of access to research and professional development funds which would allow them to pursue their research and to publish, those wishing to enter a professorial career gradually give up their research activities. Thus, the more time that passes, the lower their chances become.

Based on four major surveys conducted in France since 1994 on the professional integration of young PhD holders three years after completion of their theses, Jean-François Giret (Centre de recherche sur les qualifications, Marseille) confirmed that, the older these individuals’ qualifications get, the less likely they are to be hired as professors. According to the 2003 survey, three years after the end of their studies, 11 percent of young French PhD holders were unemployed (compared to 7 percent in 1997) and nearly 25 percent held non-permanent jobs.

Nathalie Dyke (freelance researcher) presented the outlines of her research report published in April 2006, Le renouvellement du corps professoral dans les universités au Québec. Profil et expérience d’insertion des recrues en début de carrière (Renewal of professors in Quebec universities. Profile and integration experience of new professors early in their career). The 60 new professors from eight universities whom she met stated that, in many cases, it was the first time they had dared to talk openly about their integration problems, which are at times impossible to overcome.

Francisco A. Loiola (Université de Montréal) presented the case of Brazil where, under pressure from the World Bank, the rise of private universities has intensified in the 1990s – today making up 90 percent of the country’s university network. University unions, which at first applauded President Lula and his willingness to reform higher education, are now putting forward a counter-reform. New professors (there is a shortage of 25,700 professors in public universities alone, in which they number 40,215) are left to their own devices, and hiring procedures and working conditions vary considerably from network to network and from one institution to the next.

Philippe Moguérou (Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, European Commission – Joint Research Centre) commented on a vast quantitative study of the careers and mobility of young researchers in life sciences in the European Union countries. The survey shows that in 2003, 76 percent of the 8800 PhD holders remained in the European Union (64 percent in their country of origin) while nearly one quarter left it. What did these doctoral graduates do? 48 percent undertook post-doctoral studies; 18 percent obtained a permanent position in universities or in public research; 16 percent were in another type of employment in research and development; 16 percent obtained employment outside R&D, and an average of 3 percent were unemployed (6 percent in Germany and Sweden, 5 percent in Norway).

Based on the Relances surveys by the Quebec Ministry of Education and a survey by the Groupe de recherche sur la migration des jeunes (youth migration research group) conducted in 2005 on 5998 people aged 20 to 34 (including 50 doctoral graduates), Frédéric Deschenaux (Université du Québec à Rimouski) drew a picture of the geographical mobility and professional integration of young Quebec PhD holders. It was found that the placement rate dropped from nearly 100 percent for all disciplines combined in 1987, to an average of 68.4 percent in 2005 (ranging from 90.6 percent in education to 54.2 percent in the health sciences). Nearly 60 percent of young doctoral graduates come from a metropolitan area and 1.9 percent from outlying regions.

Like her colleague Claude Trottier, Thérèse Hamel (Université Laval) emphasized that professional socialization is a lifetime process, marked by a negotiation between the recognition gained from others and the meaning given to it by oneself. Through the accounts of professors in Quebec universities, she highlighted contrasting types of professional trajectories which correspond to three periods: “from the erudite teacher to the resolute researcher” of the late 1960s and 1970s, from the “strategic intellectual to the tough missionary” of the 1980s, and since 1990, “from the artisan researcher to the research entrepreneur.”

Claire Durand (Université de Montréal) shared the results of a survey conducted in 2006 on some 650 newly hired UdeM professors. Over half of the women (54 percent) and 38 percent of the men plan to have a child in the next three years. Just consider the impact! There is nothing surprising about the fact that they are giving priority to work-family balance and sharing the workload. Although well paid, especially the men as regards market-based supplement (the average bonus received by 49 percent of men is 30 percent higher than that received by 38 percent of women), these new male and female professors work long hours and say that they do not have enough time for research.

An Enlightened Participation

Throughout all these diverse and well-documented presentations, participants were immersed in the realities of academic life which nevertheless did not stop them, at the end of their discussions, from stressing the passion which sustains them. It does take a heavy dose of passion to persist in doctoral studies, enter a professorial career and gain tenure. Mentoring and peer support are determining factors. In addition to the pleasures derived from the relationship with students, the excitement of research and the solace of collegiality, there are also the miseries of the open and declared wars in some departments, the power struggles, the glamour or stardom, the imposed and self-imposed law of silence that newly hired professors must obey for fear of jeopardizing their chances of promotion, as well as the vagueness often surrounding the rules of promotion. The hope was expressed that the FQPPU would work toward standardizing the hiring and integration practices in universities.

The colloquium also led to a call for solidarity between associate and full professors and their young colleagues in order to help the latter express their integration problems. It would be more effective if professors spoke out as a group rather than individually, and thus prevent the newly hired professors from being stigmatized. The unions must be more open to this debate since the union council could be an appropriate place for expressing such grievances and seeking long reaching solutions. The FQPPU will take stock of the discussions and strive to identify what courses of action to take in order to follow up the ideas expressed at this highly successful meeting.

Further reading: Nathalie Dyke’s paper for the colloquium, “ Devenir professeur d’université : oui, mais à quel prix ? ” (Becoming a professor: an arduous entry into the profession)