Research councils may eventually have to ¡°rethink¡± the requirement for PhD candidates to have a master¡¯s degree if the number of studentships available for such lower-level courses continues to be cut.

That is the view of the director of one of the Arts and Humanities Research Council¡¯s new doctoral training partnerships (DTPs), who told a conference that new funding arrangements have created a ¡°strange paradox¡± where PhD candidates need a master¡¯s but will struggle to afford one.

Under the AHRC¡¯s new programme for PhD training, 11 consortia of universities and other organisations will run DTPs, with the first awards made in the 2014-15 academic year.

The partnerships will be rolled out alongside seven centres for doctoral training (CDTs), which will specialise in the research council¡¯s priority areas ¨C design, modern languages and heritage. The ?164 million programme replaces the existing block grant partnership scheme.

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Katie Normington, dean of arts and social sciences at Royal Holloway, University of London, is director of the London and South-East Doctoral Research Consortium (TECHNE), which brings together seven universities.

Speaking to Times Higher Education, after first raising the issue at a Westminster Higher Education Forum event on 23 January, Professor Normington said the new scheme would see TECHNE award half as many studentships for research master¡¯s degrees as the member institutions did under the existing block grants programme. Collectively the universities in the partnership allocated the equivalent of more than 50 professional preparation master¡¯s awards and close to 30 research preparation master¡¯s awards over the period of the block grants, which were mostly five years.

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Under the DTP, the seven institutions will be able to award a maximum of 15 research preparation master¡¯s degrees between them over five years.

¡°In order to register for a PhD, the AHRC currently insists on the candidate having a master¡¯s degree and yet there is next to no funding for someone to obtain this,¡± Professor Normington said. She said that she could see the argument why the research councils should not be supporting vocational training, but the new system creates a ¡°catch-22 situation¡±.

¡°We need a debate in the academy about how to address this,¡± she said. It should examine funding, but also think ¡°pedagogically¡± about the borders between research master¡¯s and PhDs and ¡°possibilities that could open up going forward¡±.

It could be that research master¡¯s and PhD degrees are merged, creating courses that last up to four years, she suggested at the conference.

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Mark Llewellyn, AHRC director of research, said that since 2010 the council had said that any new postgraduate funding scheme would not fund stand-alone master¡¯s studentships. Historically the AHRC has supported only ¡°around 5 per cent of the total arts and humanities MA cohort¡±, he added.

But Professor Llewellyn said the ¡°flexibility¡± in the DTPs and CDTs scheme meant awards could ¡°support master¡¯s work where specialist training need is required¡±.

¡°Part of what these block awards will facilitate is new and innovative approaches to training, which is so key to the future of the doctorate,¡± he said.

holly.else@tsleducation.com