The Nordic doctorate at a crossroads between Bildung, schoolification and projectification

The Nordic doctorate has its roots in the Germanic Bildung-tradition, with a decentralised and discipline-oriented curriculum, local and individualised leadership and autonomous supervisors. Currently, the Nordic doctorate has arrived at a crossroads where it is pulled in two different directions. The first characterised by formalisation and centralised Graduate Schools with study directors, middle-management and educational bureaucracy, and an increasingly generic curriculum. The second characterised by the projectification of academic work through new modes of governance on national and EU-level. The double pull threatens to create a ‘torn curriculum’, where curricular planning, formal requirements, and supervision and community support are not aligned, which confuses and fragments the learning journey and the PhD-degree. We argue that a new way is needed, which lies not in choosing either tradition, but to form a societally oriented, community anchored, and at the same time highly specialised and research-driven doctorate.