Coimbra Group – Doctoral Programmes Position Paper
19 January 2007
On 19 January 2007, the Executive Board of the Coimbra Group approved the attached Position Paper on Doctoral Programmes submitted by the Task Force on Doctoral Studies and Research, “The Place and Role of Doctoral Programmes in the Bologna Process”. The approval by the Executive Board followed a discussion with the Rectors’ Advisory Board at their meeting in Brussels on 19 January.
The decision to present the views of the Coimbra Group Universities on doctoral programmes was taken at the Coimbra Group General Assembly in Tartu in 2006, and doctoral programmes will also be the main theme at the forthcoming Annual Conference of the Coimbra Group in Turku on 30 May to 1 June this year. To the thirty-seven long-established, multidisciplinary European universities that constitute the Coimbra Group the doctoral degree represents the ultimate expression of the inseparable link between the European Higher Education Area and the European Research Area.
As research universities of a high standing at national and international levels, the Coimbra Universities perceive the researchers who leave our universities with a doctoral degree as one of the most important contributions we can provide to innovation and development.
This is the background for the attached Position Paper, which has been prepared as the Coimbra Group contribution to the meeting of Ministers of Education in London in May this year within the framework of the Bologna Process.
The Coimbra Group Universities underline the specificity of the doctoral level as research training and encourage the Education and Research Ministers to acknowledge the definition of quality outcome at the doctoral level by the degree-awarding universities.
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