The challenges of collaborative governance and governing collaborations: Doctoral Training Centres in the UK David Mills, Ingrid Lunt, Lynn McAlpine Oxford University

Research in progress... Doctoral Training in the Social Sciences: DTC pedagogies and the governance of research training Up to three interviews ( ) with the directors of nearly all 21 UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Doctoral Training Centres (DTCs) Documentary and Policy Analysis: Comparison with other RCUK Research Council doctoral training initiatives (and the leading role played by EPSRC) For this presentation: In-depth case studies of three ESRC collaborative DTCs Funding from Oxford’s John Fell fund Publications to date include: Lunt, I., L. McAlpine, and D. Mills. "Lively Bureaucracy? The ESRC's Doctoral Training Centres and UK Universities." Oxford Review of Education 40, no. 2 (2014):

30 years of reforming UK doctoral education: A condensed history Increased research council monitoring of University training, support and completion rates (eg ESRC in the 1980s) Initiatives to promote doctoral employability (eg collaborative and ‘CASE’ studentships with employers, industrial CDTs etc) Promoting professional skills and competences amongst PhD graduates (eg Roberts Report 2002) Developing ‘critical mass’, ‘student cohorts’ and concentrating resources in fewer institutions (eg EPSRC CDTs, Doctoral Summer Schools etc) Incentivising/requiring interdisciplinarity and institutional collaborations (Current ESRC strategic priorities) Increasing UK’s international competitiveness, within academia and beyond (eg current Newton Fund initiatives)

What’s the difference? A multiplicity of RCUK doctoral training initiatives Centres for Doctoral Training (CDTs) Doctoral Training Partnerships (DTPs) Block Grant Partnerships (BGPs) Collaborative Doctoral Awards Doctoral Training Centres (DTCs) “RCUK ensures that the UK is a world leader in a global market” (2010)

Centre for Doctoral Training in Digital Entertainment EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Future Communications 2: Training Tomorrow's Internet Innovators EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in My Life in Data Doctoral Training Centre in Complexity Sciences Industrial Doctoral Centre for Offshore Renewable Energy (IDCORE) Industrial Doctorate Centre in Non-Destructive Evaluation High Wire Doctoral Training Centre Doctoral Training Centre in Basic Technologies for Molecular-Scale Engineering Doctoral Training Centre in Next Generation Accelerators Doctoral Training Centre in Security Science Industrial Doctorate Centre in High Value, Low Environmental Impact Manufacturing Fusion Doctoral Training Network Some of the 150+ EPSRC CDTs..

And the collaborative ESRC DTC brands…

Case 1: Wales DTC Number of Universities: 4 (Cardiff, Swansea, Aberystwyth, Lampeter) Prior collaborations: WISERD (Wales Institute for Social and Economic Research, Data and Methods), including South Wales. Number of pathways: 17, sharing 33 studentships per year. Governance: Steering and Management Groups External non-academic partners: many, including Welsh government Leadership: Half-time Director appointed through competitive selection process

Case 2: SWDTC (Bristol, Bath and Exeter ) Number of Universities: 3 Prior collaborations: GWR (Great Western Research) created in 2006, building on strong links at VC and PVC level and ‘aligned’ research strategies. DTC seen as ‘research-led’. Number of pathways: 17, sharing 41 studentships, including 3 interdisciplinary jointly run MSc programmes, with students registered and co-supervised at 2 or 3 institutions Governance: Academic Advisory Board and Management Group External partners: Links with industrial and collaborative CDTs Leadership: Bid depended on trust and close working relationship between three institutional Associate Directors

Case 3: Scottish Graduate School of Social Science Number of Universities: 10 within Scottish DTC, nested within SGSSS that links up all 16 Scottish HEIs. A ‘permeable’ network. Prior collaboration: Extensive history of Scottish discipline-led training networks since 1990s (incl Human Geog., Economics, Anth, Psychology) Number of pathways: 22 multi-institutional pathways (2 Univ of Edinburgh only), sharing 65 studentships/year. 9 interdisciplinary Governance: Supervisory Board with all 16 HEIs represented. External partnerships: £1.3M funding from Scottish Funding Council, and strong links with Scottish Government (incl Internships) Leadership: Directorate includes Director (0.5 FTE), Deputy Director (0.5 FTE) and several Associate Directors (0.2 FTE)

One DTC’s experiences of collaboration… The agreement is at a very senior level.. that took out all the sting and the hassle of….some of the in-fighting …We want to get staff working together more collaboratively, and get away from the discipline silos’ there are opportunity costs to where your energy goes, and a lot of our energy has gone on organisational, governance structures, negotiating studentship allocation, creating new processes, learning new networks.. After all this huge effort, does it really make any difference to students? The collaboration has to be genuine, and we try and make an early decision on whether we want to lead, or whether we’re not strong enough and somebody else has to lead.it’s about identifying which collaboration you v want to get into.

Theorising collaboration...  Long history of academic and scientific research collaborations (within and across ‘loosely-coupled’ HEIs (Weick 1979)  Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff’s ‘Triple Helix’(1997) promoted awareness of the role of ‘entrepeneurial’ universities driving innovation through links with industry and government.  Evidence for the ‘value’ of these collaborations draws on ‘knowledge- based’ organisation theory and business case studies.  Management fashions and ideologies shifted from the intraorganisational focus of NPM to the interorganisational and network interactions of ‘New Public Governance’ (Osborne 2010) Despite the advantages of shared resources and expertise, as well as increased incentives through additional funding for multi-university work, research collaborations involving multiple universities impose significantly higher coordination costs than single university projects. (Cummings and Kiesler 2007)

HE Policy rationales for collaborations Changing nature of science: new incentives (REF etc), new means of collaboration (the internet), and new scientific values (eg democracy, open-ness, participation) all promote collaboration Regonalism: policies incentivising collaboration between HEIs and non-academic, industrial and regional partners RCUK promoting ‘critical mass’ and larger research student cohorts, as well as thematic priorities Treasury pressure on RCUK reduce costs, outsourcing administration to Universities. Universities increasingly developing ‘strategic priorities’ and ‘leadership’ approaches borrowed from commercial and public sector

DTC collaborations in practice: our findings Different genres of collaboration get co-produced, within and between HEIs, and with non-academic partners Geographies matter: Governance and funding of DTC collaborations links to, and benefits from, funding devolution and regional agendas. But…..location, location, location: research cooperation decreases exponentially with the distance between collaborators (Katz, 1994) Patience: Collaboration relies on developing existing research networks, personal relations and trust, all built over time. Reforms have structural consequences: ‘Stealthy engineering’ (Papatsiba 2013) of existing disciplinary and institutional forms? Collaborations have major coordination costs (Cummings and Keisler 2007), risks and unexpected outcomes, as well as leading to potentially unstable partnerings (‘institutional speed-dating’). Do RCUK targets, audits and reporting requirements limit the potential for more open and democratic approaches to DTC governance? Are all institutions equally represented in collaborative DTCs? What of non-DTC partner HEIs?

Governing collaboratively, or implementing ‘good’ collaborative governance? Is this contradiction left to the DTCs to manage?

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