The quality of doctoral degree awarding

Abstract

The responsibility of the doctoral school to maintain a certain quality level of doctoral studies is a subject of autonomy of a higher education institution. From the perspective of research policy, autonomy could be analysed as a self-regulation mode, when fulfilment of the standards is under supervision of the self-organized body. For the process of doctoral degree awarding (DDA), peer review is used as a major formal procedure implemented via committees formed of researchers. We have analysed the practice of the DDA process in Lithuania and reconstructed the committee structure in terms of social network analysis aiming to measure impact of self-regulation on the DDA process. Empirical evidences let us discuss the hypothesis that the space completely comprised by a self-regulation mode is less competitive and has tendencies to work in a more closed environment and could be critical for peer review process and biased in favour of colleges and close partners.