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This chapter reviews and presents doctoral education in Sweden in a national and longitudinal comparative perspective. By exploring and analysing national policy documents as well as twelve institutional General Syllabi for Doctor of Philosophy from the discipline of Education (1971–2021), we present a historical analysis of changes, during the past 50 years, from an independent doctoral apprentice to an employed doctoral researcher. We identified three themes in this development: schoolification, increasing interest in stress management, and relevance in terms of professional competences. It was concluded that Swedish doctoral education is increasingly regulated at the cost of doctoral researchers’ individual autonomy.