Jacques seems very confident about the future of design education and
the role of doctoral programmes both educationally and in terms of the
development of design. On the other hand, the responses from Sharon,
John, Lorraine and Wendy echo some of my concerns.

I'm thinking ahead to the future, let's say 20 years, when I reckon that
the great majority of design lecturers in Universities will hold
doctorates and when we will be producing more doctoral students than
available lectureships. My questions are:

1. If students go from undergraduate/postgraduate to doctoral study
(which is the norm in many disciplines) where will they get there
practice experience? Can anyone comment on this from experience?
2. Will it be possible for a lecturer to practice, research and teach.
If design follows other disciplines, career progression will become
increasingly contingent on research standing and this may squeeze out
practice? Can anyone comment on this from experience.
3. For those who don't go into education, will a doctorate offer added
value  to practice (it must have a value to both the holder and employer
for it to be worth doing)? Can anyone comment on this from experience?
4. Will it be possible to research and practice, or will research become
a distant memory for the Ph.D. practitioner? Can anyone comment on this
from experience?

I predict that if we cannot find ways of integrating practice and
research, then practice will become an increasingly small part of the
doctoral design lecture's life and research will become an increasingly
small part of the the doctoral practitioners life. I can't see that this
is desirable.

Precedents exist for this view. For example, the professions rather than
academia appear to be the main force driving the development of
professional doctorates. In the UK the teaching company scheme was
introduced by the Engineering and Physical Research Council to
accelerate transfer of advanced knowledge into small companies and to
refresh academics' industrial experience.

Finally, I'm interested in understanding the nature of Wendy's
'struggle', and yes, it would be very interesting to hear about the
post-doctoral experience of recent design PhDs.

Steve


Wendy Siuyi Wong wrote:

> With one article published in
> Journal of Design History and severals on
> communication journals, I found myself have been
> struggling between practice-led design
> community/academic, and non-design intellectual
> community.
>
> I don't know how any people with a relatively new
> Ph.D.-Design out there, but I certainly interested to
> know about their life after "Ph.D.-Design".
>