IDP: Background Information
For your doctorate, both novel scientific discoveries and official degree regulations are crucial. However, the dissertation is not all that matters in the end.
Therefore, in line with the ProBe Project funded by the Joachim Herz Stiftung, we designed an Individual Development Plan (IDP) at the MIN Graduate School in order to provide a transparent basis and useful tool for the career development of doctoral researchers at Universität Hamburg.
Although changes in doctoral education in Germany during the last decades raised the need for such supportive measures to guide doctoral researchers, IDPs are not established to date.
The doctoral degree based upon independent research towards a final thesis was and still is the ticket for an academic career. However, compared to the past, the social background, the total number and the expectations of doctoral researchers differ drastically today. In addition, the Bologna Process increased internationalization and diversified the structure as well as the content of doctoral training. Traditional models of supervision, i.e. the one-on-one relationship, often chair-based, are still common, despite the growing availability of graduate programs with supervision teams that from advisory panels. Nevertheless, the different status groups of doctoral researchers are primarily shaped by how they are funded or remunerated. Accordingly, career chances differ. And even more importantly, only a minority of doctoral researchers will stay in academia.