Doctoral supervision at Nova Lisbon University: an exploratory study

Since the implementation of the Bologna process and the Lisbon strategy, there has been an increase of the interest in higher education and in doctoral education in Europe. This political process aims to create not only a European area of higher education, but also research European area. Doctoral education is considered to be one of the keys to innovation and to the development of societies. The implementation of the proposals that emerged from the meetings of the ministers responsible for higher education (MMHE) and the European association universities (EUA), brought a new look to the third cycle (Dublin descriptor, 2004; Bergen framework of qualifications, 2005), and to the Doctoral education and supervision (ten principles of Salzburg, 2005). Within this context elements such as doctorate completion time, student's profile, skills and competence acquired in that period and mobility between institution assumed a greater importance (London Communique, 2007; Leuven Communique, 2009).

In Portugal, it was only during the last decade that researchers began to publish papers whose object study is doctoral education, the quality of supervision of doctoral research, supervisor and student profile and relationship. In this context, these research article pretend to characterize and analyse how the two aspects of doctoral education, monitoring and evaluation, are institutionally implemented in the third cycle at NOVA Lisbon University (UNL) and what implications may have on the success rate and completion time. The regulations of the third cycle in the nine schools that constitute the UNL and public annual reports will be analyses enabling to highlight some data.