Although persons with graduate degrees increasingly occupy leadership positions, certain minoritised ethnicities  remain underrepresented in these degrees, particularly at the doctoral level (Mateos‑González & Wakeling, 2021; Williams et al., 2019).

Evidence from a recent survey hints at possible challenges within candidate selection processes. In the 2021 UK Council of Graduate Education survey of doctoral research supervisors, only 38% of 3,435 of respondents had supervised a UK-domiciled ethnic minority candidate in recent years (UKCGE, 2021). Although 75% of respondents agreed that increasing candidate diversity would enhance their workplace research culture, only 11% included improving access to underrepresented candidates amongst their top three selection factors. On the one hand, this contention may highlight supervisors’ concerns around merit. On the other, it may indicate that supervisors lack knowledge about how to integrate equity and diversity considerations into selection practices or, as the survey itself suggests, institutional processes may not be conducive to doing so.

Potential modalities of integrating equity and diversity considerations are alluded to in the survey due to some supervisors’ identification of other, primarily non-cognitive, selection attributes, e.g., enthusiasm, motivation, etc. Evidence from the US which highlights equity issues with cognitive selection criteria such as the Graduate Record Examination imply the equity quotient of non-cognitive attributes (Michel et al., 2019; Miller et al., 2019). There is therefore greater scope to understand the range of attributes which contribute to doctoral success and how they do, particularly in the UK context and particularly from the perspectives of academics with substantive supervision experience. While much evidence around doctoral experiences focuses on the student-supervisor relationship or students’ perceptions of the factors contributing to their individual success (or lack thereof), relatively limited evidence exists specifically on the perspectives of academics who typically select and supervise students.

Among the few studies is that of Kyvik & Olsen (2014) from the Norwegian context (where doctoral candidates are considered staff) which suggests that doctoral success factors include the doctoral training system; programme and research environment; student characteristics; cultural and social context such as institutional prestige and norms and expectations; as well as the differences between diverse fields. From the Finnish context, supervisors’ views of factors contributing to the doctoral success included the social dimensions of the process and the student-supervisor relationship (Cornér et al. 2019). Offering a Europe-level view, Mantai & Marrone (2022) analyse over 13,000 cross-disciplinary PhD advertisements across different European countries to examine the desired skills, attributes and qualifications of doctoral students. The most desired criteria were degree and achievements (81% of adverts); communication (52%); research, i.e., research experience (45%); interpersonal (43%); and personal attributes (39%). In the UK, interpersonal and personal attributes ranked lowest (17% each).

As seen, the literature suggests two categories of influences: student characteristics and institutional factors. As such, our study adopts Lovitts’ (2005) ecosystem model which conceptualises three broad factors, i.e., macroenvironment, microenvironment and individual resources (or individual students characteristics, consisting of cognitive and non-cognitive attributes) that influence PhD degree completion and dissertation quality.  Though individual resources appear most prominent in the model, they interact with and are influenced by the micro- and macroenvironments. In this paper, the model is used to explore the following research questions:

• What [valued] attributes do supervisors believe contribute to doctoral success, defined as completion?
• How do supervisors perceive that these contribute to doctoral success?

In addition to the importance of the perspectives of experienced academics in understanding doctoral success factors (Manathunga & Lant, 2006), the answers to these questions potentiate possibilities for equity in supervisors’ doctoral selection processes and practices.

Our findings draw from a broader study which sought to understand the perspectives and practices of doctoral selection committee members. The study is embedded within a project funded by Office for Students and Research England, alongside twelve others seeking to address inequalities in minoritised ethnic students’ access and participation in postgraduate research studies. The project focuses on PhD access and participation across five universities in Northern England. The paper focuses on a subset of the broader study’s findings and offers insight into academics’ views of successful doctoral students’ attributes, where success is defined as completion, and their perceptions of the attributes of the ideal (or desired) student. The data is from interviews with key staff in pre-selected pilot departments and schools who are active in doctoral applicant review and selection processes. Interviews were held with 10 academics and one professional services member substantively involved in the review and selection of doctoral applicants at their institutions. Five participants were from the Sciences, three were from Arts and Humanities, while another three were from the Social Sciences. Interviews, as part of the broader study, were extensive, lasting between an hour and two and a half hours, and covered the processes and practices of doctoral application, including the attributes perceived by selectors to characterise ideal and successful candidates, and the implications of current processes and practices for equity and diversity. To enable participants to reflect beforehand and, as requested by the study team, to retrieve specific information, interview guides were sent to all participants once interview dates and times were agreed. Interviews were recorded on Zoom and, as consented by participants, recorded with automatic transcripts generated. Transcripts were extensively reviewed and revised, and sent to participants for review (Shenton, 2004). A validation of preliminary findings, specifically those in relation to candidate attributes, was conducted during a workshop with consortium members which included some interviewees and other members of the project. Participants as well as other workshop attendees agreed that the preliminary findings represented their perspectives and experiences, thus assuring the research team of the direction of the analysis. Analytically, relevant segments of transcripts were coded to capture the essence of parts of the texts in relation to views of successful and desired student attributes; and codes were clustered into categories according to the pattern of meaning across codes (Saldaña, 2021).

Various attributes of the ideal and successful doctoral candidate were identified. After screening for synonymity, there were six intelligence and knowledge ideal attributes (e.g., makes original systematic contribution, produces defensible thesis, etc.) and 32 personality attributes (e.g., adaptability, commitment, enthusiasm, etc.) plus motivation. For successful, there were 16 intelligence and knowledge attributes (e.g., ability to do close reading, good background fit for Science, understands research topic/field, etc.), and 22 personality attributes (e.g., commitment, flexibility, hard work, etc.) plus motivation. The total number of non-cognitive attributes (56) was significantly greater than cognitive (22). While the number of non-cognitive ideal attributes was greater than that of non-cognitive successful attributes, fewer cognitive ideal attributes than successful attributes were identified. Participants acknowledged the importance of cognitive ‘technical skills’ but overwhelmingly reiterated their valuing of students who are ‘not just technically competent’ but who hold diverse personal attributes and were motivated. Resilience was perceived by nearly all participants as the most critical success factor. Microenvironmental influence was identified through valuing of students’ participation in research communities within and outside the institution, and the acknowledgement of the influence of students’ personal life contexts. Importantly, ideal attributes were typically discussed in relation to students’ experiences, particularly in terms of relationality (with supervisors) or communality (with peers, research groups, etc.), while success attributes were related to the completion of the thesis. The difference between the two was often blurry. The findings suggest that integrating equity into selection processes is consistent with supervisors’ most valued attributes, i.e., attributes which pose considerably less equity challenges, than those which they appear to presently explicitly select for. Institutional leadership is thus required to foster and support environments in which more holistic selection processes (Kent & McCarthy, 2016), which prominently feature non-cognitive attributes within candidate selections processes and practices, become commonplace.

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