The Part Time Student

By Alistair McCulloch and Peter Stokes

The part-time research student is the forgotten man or woman of British higher education. Policy and procedures (whether put in place by government, research councils or universities) has been developed around the stereotype of the ‘young, full-time, funded student who is geographically mobile, without dependents, studying in a metropolitan area and intending to pursue a career as a full-time researcher or academic’. (A. McCulloch 2004) Only in the last year (2008-9) has any real attention been paid to the issues faced by students studying part-time or by the institutions charged with managing the quality of their research degree experience.

The things that part-time students and their institutions need to think about stem from their position at the forefront of the increasing heterogeneity in the research student population. Part-time students are more likely than full-timers to be mature, to have dependents (whether in the form of children or ageing relatives), or to be in work or have had significant career experience. The institutional tendency in dealing with part-time students is to expect them to fit in with the full-timers, or to put things on in the evenings. Neither approach constitutes an appropriate or sufficient response.

We would propose that policy-makers should explicitly address the needs of part-time research students by, for example, providing funding in the form of grants or expenses for data collection or attendance at the occasional conference. We also propose that universities should take a radical look at their policies, processes and support for research students and then redesign them as far as possible from the perspective of the part-time research student, secure in the knowledge that if they work for the part-timer, they will undoubtedly work for the full-timers.

What are the areas to which universities should give attention when considering part-time research students’ needs (and correspondingly, areas which part-time students should be aware of in their dealing with supervisors, departments and universities)?

Induction: It is very easy for a part-time student to minimise their engagement with induction. To do this is a mistake. Induction is the beginning of the research student’s socialisation into the academic culture the doctorate is designed to make them part of.
Interaction: If there are insufficient opportunities offered to, or taken up by, part-time research students to interact with full-timers, then the full-time student voice will continue to dominate and problems identified part-timers will be much less likely to be addressed by the relevant part of the organisation. Universities should make appropriate channels available and part-time students should use them.
Information: To echo Francis Bacon, ‘information is power’ and if part-timers are excluded from access to information, then they will find they have less power vis-à-vis the full time students. Part-time students may have to work hard to ensure they gain access to all the information made available to full-timers, but the results will pay off and universities should do all they can to facilitate that access.
Stories, Rituals and Routines: Access to the informal side of an organisation is a key to understanding it and to making it work for you. The stories that are told in informal settings of the students who asked the ‘stupid’ question warn new recruits not to ask the same question. A part-time research student who doesn’t hear the story stands less chance of avoiding the original ‘stupid’ mistake. Not being around the department means that informal invites to tea or coffee with the Head will not come to the part-time student thus shutting off that student to the networking and professional benefits stemming from access to the more powerful. Both part-time students and, as importantly, universities and their staff must work hard to ensure that this vital yet neglected side of the informal socialisation and professional development process are not shut off to a major part of the student community.

In addition to these areas, there are other key areas where part-time research student can and do miss out these include:

Funding (touched on above)
Access to learning resources and support (increasingly addressed through the Internet)
Access to non-internet-based resources and equipment (more difficult to address)
Access to the supervisory team (a key area)
Time (the key resources for most research students with part-timers generally being more time-poor than their full-time colleagues)

In the absence of a significant increase in the funding made available for research students, the proportion of part-timers is likely to increase over the years as people buy into lifelong learning and also seek to differentiate themselves from others through ever higher qualifications. Without the sort of radical rethink of support for doctoral education being suggested here, the current imbalance between full and part-time research students is likely to be perpetuated.

(This article draws on a guide on part-time research students written by the authors for the SRHE [Society for Research in Higher Education], Mcculloch and Stokes 2008.)

McCulloch, A. (2004). ‘Part-time Majority’, The Higher, 10 September 2004. (http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=191103&sectioncode=26)

McCulloch, A. and Stokes, P. (2008). The Silent Majority: Meeting the Needs of Part-time Research Students’, Issues in Postgraduate Education: Series 2. SRHE. (details at http://www.srhe.ac.uk/publications.gpi.asp)

Alistair McCulloch (University of South Australia, Adelaide) and Peter Stokes (University of Central Lancashire, UK)