As a part of the current transformations of higher education and the European research university, with demands of an adequate, global knowledge production and publicly accountable institution, PhD Education has come under scrutiny. From around 2000, there has been a considerable European policy production. Significantly, programmatic forms of PhD Education, like the Doctoral school (or Research school, Graduate School, etc.), play an important part of these developments. Much of what has happened over the last decade has also been depicted as groundbreaking considering the short time frame in research (e.g. Kottman, 2011; Goastellec et al., 2013). However, my interest is to explore the history of the present reforms and follow ruptures and contituities around programmatic forms of PhD Education, to deconstruct what many of the policies consider to be rupture. The objective draws on a genealogical approach from Foucault (1977), and complement other historical accounts of doctoral training (e.g. Geiger, 1993).

The policies in this regard, making PhD Education to a center of attention are made by university and doctoral students associations (e.g. European University Association [EUA] 2005; 2007; League of European Research Universities [LERU], 2010), councils and projects (e.g. EUA, 2010), as well as the European Commission (2005, 2010, 2012). The process has created debates and resulted in actions, handbooks and best practice examples to improve the performance, outputs and designs of PhD programs. Since 2003, PhD Education is also integrated in the 3-cycle Bologna system of bachelor-master-doctorate (Berlin Communiqué, 2003) to enhance the progression and qualification mechanisms of higher education and research. Hence, an important part of these developments is the standardization and coordination around PhD Education. TheDoctoral School is interesting from a European perspective, and commonly, characterized by at least three organising features. These work both towards standardization and diversification of PhD Education. One is the cooperation in or between universities, research groups and industrial or public partnerships; the other is the temporary, project-based and thematic organization and the third is the standardizations of publication formats, course offerings and assessment practices (see also Nerad, 2010).

This aim of the paper is twofold. First, it focuses on the Doctoral School as a reinvented tool of governance, with the early American Graduate School and German Humboldt master-apprentice model as “the mothers” of the reinvention (see also Kehm, 2007, 2009). Secondly, the features of the Doctoral School is explored by the forces of relations between standardization and diversification. Given these two aspects, the purpose of the paper is to discuss and critically examine the intrinsic lincs between power and knowledge being formed in the contemporary PhD Education.

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