Close the Gap: Fair Admissions in Postgraduate Research
Close the Gap is a four-year project (2022-2025) funded by the Office for Students and Research England. The project is a collaboration between Oxford and Cambridge universities that aims to understand the formal and informal processes and practices underlying doctoral admissions, with the goal of developing fair approaches to Ph.D. admissions. The project has four phases: 1) mapping, 2) developing, 3) testing, and 4) evaluation and sharing. In the mapping phase, which began in Summer 2022, we gathered information from sixteen departments and two DTCs across Oxford and Cambridge, by reviewing documents and conducting interviews with individuals involved in DPhil admissions to understand how DPhil potential is conceptualized and assessed in different disciplines.
Currently, we are in the midst of the developing phase, in which we are sharing findings from the mapping with our participating departments in order to co-develop ‘initiatives’—refinements and minor additions/changes—to existing admissions processes. Broadly, we have identified several opportunities for change: pre-application communications between applicants and supervisors, consistency between the purpose of the DPhil and assessment criteria, use of contextual data, and training for all those involved in DPhil application assessment. While we believe these areas are common to all departments, we also believe it is critical to recognize variations in disciplinarity, which are rooted in underlying assumptions about the nature and purpose of a doctorate. For instance, disciplines in the arts, humanities, and social sciences may be more project-oriented, requiring a research proposal that is often the centerpiece of application, while some disciplines in natural and medical sciences may ask applicants to indicate interest in particular research groups or existing projects, rather than submitting their own proposals. Thus, the nature of doctoral research in each discipline can influence the components of an application and assessment processes. This means that the co-development aspect of Close the Gap is key, and what works for one department will not necessarily work for another.
As we move into the testing and evaluation and sharing phases of the project, participating departments will implement and trial the co-developed initiatives in the coming admissions cycles, and the initiatives will be iteratively evaluated and refined throughout the remainder of the project. We look forward to these next stages and appreciate the ongoing support from all of the departments.