Social science doctoral training centres not working, says report

CDTs (as they are called now) have both good pints and bad points and it is important to identify both in an article such as this: The good: 1. By bringing students together as a cohort, there is less of a chance that students feel isolated, and instead have a greater capacity to learn from each other. 2. They can be used to get significant input from external partners such as charities, industry and government - which in turn can built up strong symbitotic links with academia. 3. They can be used to force change on issues such as diversity, and thus in theory improve management practice. The Bad? Only a handful of big Universities get many CDTs. Most (even in the Russell group) will get 1 or 2. However, universities are diverse places, and forcing all academic who want to take on PhD students to do research into "Ageing" or "big data" or other such categories could potentially be destructive to that diversity of research effort. This effect is clearly greater on Universities lower down the food chain which receive fewer or no CDTs, but which may have important pockets of research excellence. So please be balanced and also delve down to the real issues. s that they c