Our world, our everyday life, is beset by more and more often unforeseen challenges. These challenges inevitably affect the education and vocational training systems as well. Our research is looking for an answer to what effect the new and growing challenges to vocational education have on the appearance of research topics related to vocational education in European educational doctoral schools. When planning the research, it seemed logical to assume that the challenges would generate new topics, which the doctoral scientific communities would support, embrace their announcement, and incorporate them into their training system. In the framework of the research, we compare this hypothesis with practice. Our research is unprecedented and therefore can be considered experimental. The abstract reports on the results of the research so far and outlines the planned further steps.

In the framework of the research, we have so far reviewed the topics of dissertations produced in the educational science doctoral schools of 4 Hungarian universities, and collected information from some (12) European universities with the help of researchers involved in vocational training research. The purpose of the research is to find out whether there are essential differences in the situation of vocational training research in doctoral schools between individual countries, and whether there are any generalizable phenomena.

We assume, that compared to the technical side of the changes forced by new challenges, the consequences of their social impact receive much less attention both in mass communication and in the social sciences. As a result of technical development, the growing gap between people living in more developed and underdeveloped areas, between richer and poorer social groups, and the strengthening of the threat of secession as a research topic, is at a low level of interest compared to its weight. This depends to a significant extent on the level of society's stimulus threshold, as well as on the range of supported research topics and the nature of the funding sources. There is a low level of both professional and social resistance to the weakening protection of the interests of vocational apprentices with poor learning outcomes, who are most at risk, and manual workers with low qualifications who have difficulty getting a hold of the labour market. The power of social solidarity is very weak towards the most vulnerable social groups. It is understandable that science can only follow the changes with a certain phase delay and judge the new situation generated by the changes. But it is feared that in many cases the recognition of the problem itself, which would require dealing with the problem, is also missing.

The reasons for the low prestige of vocational training in Hungary, which can significantly affect the prestige of vocational training research, are well known. The question is how much these (suppression of economic interests, neglect of non-market aspects, strong centralization, weak protection of interests, lack of empowerment,...) influence the prestige of vocational training research in other European countries.

Due to the pioneering nature of the topic, as well as the obstacles to the accessibility of documents in English in many cases, the research in this phase, in addition to processing the small number of documents obtained, builds on the reports of the contacted experts. Even though the topic was welcomed by the majority of the experts who spoke, it is not easy to gain insight into the processes taking place at the national level, all the more so because, due to the novelty of the topic, it was difficult to decide what level and extent of information someone could release without risking their criticism and painting a negative image of the doctoral education in his/her country. This uncertainty and distance was inevitably perceptible in some cases of the researchers who spoke. Due to the circumstances outlined above, this study primarily aims to outline the problem and arouse interest in the topic, with the intention that in the future, within the framework of international cooperation, it will be possible to examine the country-level processes more thoroughly.

Based on an overview of the thesis topics of the major Hungarian educational doctoral schools and feedback from some European universities, it can be said that the test results so far have not confirmed our assumption that the doctoral topics necessarily follow the challenges related to vocational training. In the domestic investigation, we found a small number of doctoral theses on the subject of vocational training, and their topic did not necessarily resonate with the outlined challenges. By reviewing the topics of PhD theses of the relevant doctoral schools of four universities in Hungary (Corvinus, University of Debrecen, ELTE, University of Pécs), we came to the conclusion that between 2009 and 2022, only eleven doctoral theses dealt with vocational training as indicated in the title. In doctoral schools abroad, there is not yet enough information available to judge the weight of theses on the topic of vocational training, but the feedback so far indicates that vocational training as a doctoral topic is considered a "disadvantaged" topic in several countries. So far, we have found information on doctoral programs specifically for vocational training in the case of three countries, Great Britain (University of Warwick), Switzerland (University of Zurich) and Norway (OsloMet). International examples indicate that the phenomenon, that is, the gap between the challenges related to vocational training and doctoral topics, is not only a Hungarian peculiarity. It is not clear what led to such a degree of isolation and neglect of vocational training as a research topic, to such a degree of neglect of serious social problems related to vocational training, on the part of individual societies and related sciences. In the next phase of the research, we plan to deal with these questions as well.

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